And what about at the sacristy

Grandmother, when I was so much younger, brought me
To the sacristy. It was my birthday. A man was there.
He was wearing a gown, wearing a smile, and smelled
Of something else. I was supposed to ask for blessing
Only he was able to give, or so said Grandmother.
This was another lifetime ago, of course, although

I still do remember the door. And the wall. The shape
Of what was dark and deeply engraved on sides of pews.
Grandmother smelling of talc and old lipstick,
The old man with his voice thick as torso.
The noviciate I whispered with one night of songs
Who stepped back into the shadows in fear when told.

The bible has long been unread. The child on afternoons
Reading verses long gone. Still, these days I continue 
To refer what it is: poetry: the word turning flesh.
The old man who was called Father was a stranger.
Grandmother has stories I will never come to know.
I heard a bell outside the sacristy

And with the door I had come into behind me, the man
Turned his back towards a blind corner in the room
And disappeared. There is always another door.

Some days there is the heat

undeniable, seeping its way
into skin and deeper still
through the eyes to be 

itself: a drum throbbing 
in the middle of temples
and behind brows

making everything else too
bright, too humid, too
loud--the temper too short.

Some nights there is the heat
undeniable, seeping its way
past reason and deeper still

into body that throbs into
becoming an animal heaving
groping, finding a latch

in the darkness for release.

a very long wait

I think it is not fear of death itself as much as
Fear of dying; death is a given, the psyche
Attuned to it since time beyond memory: all 

Archetypes of travel (companions, fellow solo
sojourners, boats, terminals, stop-overs...) 
Everyday, departures are what have come to be 

known like the pace of one's own breathing--
But who can tell of true arrivals?
Everyone has ideas, some more convincing

Than others; what may be more fearful is 
Living: that very long wait, so long 
We become desperate lovers of life itself.














  

Not to go gentle into the night

It cannot be trust, if it is not trust
Isn't it?
Not love, if not love

Things that can only be absolute are
Too large
For lives with threaded seams

Do weeds in a landscaped yard know
Their fate, just the same
They soak up sun and rain

Of course we know sweetness cannot 
Be had for long
But what is life for, if not for it?

Never enough time

Never enough time to be a mother
Never enough time to be a father
Never enough time for a child
Who grows out of itself by tomorrow

The child will be gone
Replaced by a woman
Replaced by a man
Replaced by a stranger 
Come tomorrow

Never enough time to be wife
Never enough to be husband
To be lover 
To be child
To be constant
Come tomorrow

Come tomorrow
Come stranger

Who does not fear tomorrow?

sezon deszczowy

I bought cigarettes at a corner store because 
it was late because I wanted to wait awhile longer 
till (maybe) she'll come around because her messages 
had said situations because her new lover left 
and her old meddled and her father half a world away
are simultaneously happening into a bad place 

because in nearly seven years since we met at Gerry's 
she had not talked about bad places except very briefly 
and in passing the time her mother passed on 
and she did not return home and I did not ask because 
she did not tell why because once she said who wants to 

listen about bad places because people care about funny 
and she had worked herself funny because she did
not want to tell about lonely because it was clear because 
it need not need any telling because it was bright as day 
the alcohol and the series of lovers because she insisted

staying in this country because when i asked why there was 
no clear answer because something was lost or someone was 
because she was slurring when she called 
describing how to move the night because she was still 
in transit but wanted drinks because I've taken rain checks 

because our hours rarely meet because she comes when 
she comes and who else was. 
I sent her a message saying I was

coming over because there was really no need for her to bother 
bringing the buckwheat and the wines to my place when I could 
because it was always easier for me to leave than for me to ask 
her to because hours could get so late like the time it was already
morning and my head had become a blast because she comes 

when she comes because I wanted none of it because we've known 
each other seven years now because it had always been good 
distance because there were bad places that need not telling 
because they were bright and clear because it was always

in keeping of spaces she remained quiet while I waited 
outside her door this rainy evening in this rain-est season of the year 
because it was (always) proper to wait for a woman's invitation 
to be let in because no matter the bad places described by phone 
into an invitation to share a certain loss because her door

never opened after knocking and five cigarettes one after another 
because the weathermen predicted rain because she did not stay 
sober enough for an umbrella, story, or train.

what we left behind in love

Who, what we left behind in love.
Left behind out of love. 
All reasons into one final tangible thing--
The leaving. Who truly understands it

Not even fully the one leaving, 
Feeling only that which comes first
As feeling before any knowing--
Feeling being the very first language

Of that that cannot be enclosed
Into any simple names.
Who, what we left behind in love.
Left behind out of love.

Others, as well as our own selves--
Versions of the less or more of
What we now are.

the angry books

Just this morning while calm 
out with dogs, I thought about
the angry books. The several
I keep where I take turns 
unmasking myself, also
masking self partly from self.

Perhaps, several years from
when I've written them I will 
see them better, see myself
better. Understand blindness.
As when I see my father now.

entering oceans

He said he would like to farm one day, spend 
the remaining of his life bearing with the land.
This man I admire so much for kindness
my own dark heart slows its pace.

It has been nearly a decade now since last
we spoke. I continue to echo his words,
writing is word made flesh.
Perhaps, after all, I've heeded the calling

no matter in another form. Quiet mornings
by the window such as this, I think it is
the lonely sailing that I feel. At seventy

I would like to stay very close to the sea,
see all the time the horizon all will cross
on the given day.














photo by J.Quintos

what can be shared

What can be shared but what I can tell you and you, me
The burden words have to carry, a weight in universe
To ferry across the tide of nothing, myself to you and you to me
No matter the truth it battens: no such thing that matter
Truly can be shared. For what is love, but two lonelinesses
holding hands in the dark.












after J.Garcia

what is not real-- a true

One long marriage after, do you still believe?
I want to, if still possible now. But I am no
Longer the same from that many years ago.
What has been broken, remains

Weathered and less than the one who dreamt.
Who still dares to tread the narrow?
The young, the fool, the brave.

I watch them admirably, listening to
The pounding of my own unbelieving.

Anger

is something i have 
in bursts i try to understand
where it is coming from
some remote place
insisting to remain
unnamed---
is something turned
from inside out---
roger does muay thai
to reciprocate 
violence into the cosmos
a channeling out
of fury
a welcoming of pain
we had a good laugh
about his broken heart
how his body wants
to be broken in turn---
three months he says
honeymoon stage i say---
who has the capacity
to take in 
my negative when it hurls
itself dark and unforgiving
angry

The Poor

Who are the poor? It depends
who is defining the abstruse lot
that continually grows
no end, all children
of an absentee god.

An Occasional Prose

Recognising Envy, I chose to stay clear 
from her table where she is entertaining guests.
The lights are low, her jewellery sparkle 
her loose bun calling attention to her nape, also
inviting fingers to finally unfasten all that hair.

For a colleague, on his passing

The next day everything else remain in place.
No single death can move a sheet of paper 
held by paperweight on your table, waiting for your signature. 
It is a common enough thing such tangible patience
steady and all of us passing.  We sing anyway 
as much to ourselves as to you who must be amused by now.

watching in the dark

It is Friday and it is raining and I do not want to begin 
a line about the weather, but the drops are heavy
the TV repeats news from last night about the forty-four 
dead young men, soldiers 
no older than any son in M'danao.  Mothers weep 
fathers trying to close as many doors as possible
from the inside, no country.  No one
understands deaths of young ones

of children, of dogs.  The neighbour who
padlocked his house and never returned for his 
Lab in a kennel all of us could hear baying silently
patient even in dying, thirst and hunger none of us could help. 

a passing away before midnight

The first thing I did was to give her an instruction.  In a voice
collected, not unlike the last time I heard myself doing 
the same when an entire block was burning and she 
had refused to leave the room where we were, seated

hands on her lap, eyes there and not there saying the fire 
will burn itself away.  I heard myself say yes you are right

but let's anyway bring outside a few things like this see?

And so when it happened when the dog, after three hours 
nestling on my arms, gasped for air finally letting go itself
to become warm and limp on my lap, she broke crying 
and the first thing I did was keep still 

to keep myself, quietly closing a number of doors from 
feeling.  It was not yet time.  A bag, a phone call, 
an arrangement and a truck driven under the first of January stars

outside a few things like this see?

the young reader

What do I know about the irony 
of questions? The young self asked 
a long time ago.  What did you ask 

after reading the book?  He threw
the large questions at the sky
brightening in its blurry night

a kind of descending darkness
at the edges of soul.  Crime,
the phenomenon and the ontology

of it:  can one tiny be
wiped out by thousands 
of good deeds?

               But I was very very young, barely
into the hale storm of teens.
And in the quiet of clutching

a book and all the senses 
of life in it, saw the spectre 
within.

A Whisper of Storm (a pastiche)

Three days of rain             Early sunrises             Early darks

On this listless December         On this island of rain
There is a whisper of a storm not half an ocean away

Nights the beggars pretend not to beg by carolling
The city gates have opened         The strays have come to stay


                                          *  *  *


I drove all the way to your neighbourhood and found
You were not yet home         Your new wife        The one I haven't met

She answered the door and knew my name
She looked different from the last two I've known

What leads you 
one woman to another?  

"I just dropped by.  Friday and thought maybe a couple of beers."
I drove around town


                                          *  *  *


Finally at 65         G will be leaving for Spain            to retire
We threw a celebration for her leaving or for her life        both

T made quiche
And after everything        we all had tea

Of course nobody really talks about leaving


                                         *  *  *

And

Adam wrote to Eve
"I am breathless and anxious and sick with dread and desire."



















 

about Now

Life has been quiet lately.  The writing too, quiet.  And it must have been months now since I   last sat and truly patiently waited for what must come to come and be written.  I wanted, needed, to go for another residency, a long stretch of timelessness to be able to listen to write.  The noise of paperwork from the university and the field has kept me farther and farther away, to a kind of tone-deafness...