from a burning room

I am slow to anger, except in particular times
There is no water. Nothing except dry heat
For instance this, in forsaken countries
(for there really are such forsaken places).

It was not always like this, the slowness 
The calm with which I attempt to take in stride
The many kinds of failure: processes and people.
There had been much audacity when I was younger:

Edition of myself that had not yet known better 
Someone I can now only admire on those still 
Burning in fire, those still absolutely certain 
On certainty. Leading the walk ahead convinced 

Nothing cannot be surpassed, no matter literal. 
Such admirable conviction! Such admirable anger!

Perhaps anger can be exhausted, though not all
Not all. There is still anger in reserves 
The kind that is slow to come, vengeful 
Poisonous and antipathetic, something that does

Not easily yield to forgiving or forgetting--
It is terrible! As all things are when passions
Come alive. Who is afraid? Who else is afraid?

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.














  

Rodovia

Portia passed away yesterday. Word reached me late, 
translating itself from Portuguese to English, 
from the last photo I saw of her (Atlanta, smiling 
beside another colleague on sabbatical leave)
to the photo found after having made my way across

morning coffee, rain (another storm is coming
to these islands), and jazz.
On the news, only a broken motorcycle on highway
only a trace, previous presence. No Portia.

Had I been at the office yesterday I would have had
company to share loss with: this kind 
of irreplaceable space occupied by her joy.
Her youthfulness at 67.

She would have had a temper for mentioning the number--
the only way to cause her age. But such a life! 
Of indefatigable joy.

My Father's Birthday

My father's birthday yesterday, I remember but chose not to
Say anything, choosing to remember why not. 
The backstory is long, kept away in a partially closed room

Not far from where most people stay to admire the garden
Among others. Stoicism is plenty, so is civility.
Keeping surface clear, spotless from hostility as a glass table. 

My mother expected me to call. I am always never 
Too far from anything I chose. She must be upset now
Not replying to my message left like an after thought

Pretending forgetfulness. Of course, she knows and chose
Not to remember. My poor brave mother whose dreams 
Must have been as bright as she before bearing a child

So similar in many ways to the father who, too, must have been
As bright as any bright and dreaming young man before 
He succumbed to secret darknesses.

a close kind of distance

What must one feel seeing you, beautiful
the pictures that mean your life in blossom, by sea.
With you the dogs, sun, yukelele. 
You on bare feet singing with the wind
orange skirt catching orange skies.
What must one feel seeing you, beautiful
in love, in life, in blossom, by sea

when one must say nothing
must say nothing
must say nothing.

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.

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.

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.

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...

public, private, and secret

Gabriel passes away at 87



So a storyteller passes away.
into an other world where perhaps 
there would be no more need 
for stories.  This world we have,
so needy for a better place.
'Though sometimes we forget--

or perhaps because we remember--
we celebrate what brightness
survives in the dark.  A piece
of fleeting life.  He says,
"All human beings have three lives:

public, private, and secret."
And so we live each and each.
A tight exclusive circle.

on mystic writing

I.

another detail i recall:  her side of the bed is
side-by-side with a patch of leaves of grass.

this is another house.  not the same one
that had appeared in too many dreams, 

like a puzzle.


II. 

roger, the mystic says, do i not keep
a journal of dreams.  no, i say, no.

we are surrounded by dark green walls
in the middle of a steak house. it is noon.

how did the conversation move to dreams?
i tell him of the house that appears

recurring in my dreams, now for years.


III.

this house, stands at the edge of a land, looks
at a body of water. on its feet a lake, bay, or beach.

right of the house, a cliff.  where on one dream, 
i was standing on when i saw the house.

left, pebbly driveway where i manoeuvred 
my motorbike on another dream.

the driveway, next to a boundary wall.  
the driveway aligned to a small bamboo cottage

by the lip of the water.  in one dream, 
i was in a group beach picnic when i looked up

and saw the house is whitewashed wood.
with a large glass window on its forehead.

european design, but the location 
philippine. "two-storey?" roger asks.  

"yes," i say,
"and with a balcony up front."

he laughs.


IV.

it exists, he says.  
after the description in detail.
european house, by a lake in bukidnon.
cliffs, yes, driveway too.
and the short rocky, pebbly slope
to the lip of the water.
right, even the cottage.
an artists' retreat.
housed at one time, a poet.
in another, a painter.
heavy furniture imported 
all the way from germany.
constructed in 2011.
been there.
with g* and p*, he says. 
we took photos.  beautiful place.
even though
the house is hostile.


V.

i began dreaming of the house, 
2009.
in all the dreams, the sky
always in shades of gray.
the last time
i dreaded
seeing it.


VII.

didn't you mention about going on a writing retreat this summer?

what happened to icarus

ICARUS


Only the feathers floating around the hat
Showed that anything more spectacular had occurred
Than the usual drowning. The police preferred to ignore
The confusing aspects of the case,
And the witnesses ran off to a gang war.
So the report filed and forgotten in the archives read simply
“Drowned,” but it was wrong: Icarus
Had swum away, coming at last to the city
Where he rented a house and tended the garden.

“That nice Mr. Hicks” the neighbors called,
Never dreaming that the gray, respectable suit
Concealed arms that had controlled huge wings
Nor that those sad, defeated eyes had once
Compelled the sun. And had he told them
They would have answered with a shocked,
uncomprehending stare.
No, he could not disturb their neat front yards;
Yet all his books insisted that this was a horrible mistake:
What was he doing aging in a suburb?
Can the genius of the hero fall
To the middling stature of the merely talented?

And nightly Icarus probes his wound
And daily in his workshop, curtains carefully drawn,
Constructs small wings and tries to fly
To the lighting fixture on the ceiling:
Fails every time and hates himself for trying.
He had thought himself a hero, had acted heroically,
And dreamt of his fall, the tragic fall of the hero;
But now rides commuter trains,

Serves on various committees,
And wishes he had drowned.




~ Edward Field

burning

there must be a reason why, valentine
why

they all share the same
patron 

Oh!  of lovers
love, epilepsy, and plague!

consider utopia

Consider utopia and how it exists
only in the mind.  An elaborate system
fallible when set into form.  Governments
that rise and fall, imperfectly perfect
people with souls greater than their selves.

If we all are a reincarnate of previous 
souls or dust flecks from stars, are we all
but mere refuse
from utopia?








shane

what we fear

what we fear must not be death, but pain.  for the poor vulnerable vessel (the body, the mind) of the soul.  that every one will die, we are all resigned.  but in the meantime, we live and suffer the pains of living.  and because we know this, how we labor with hope.  how we labor with love.

i woke up shivering

Any one can comment about the strange weather these days.  One country can talk about their drought and heat wave, another about intense cold, these happening all at once.  It is the middle of January, 

and none of the things we used to know apply.  In this humid country, for instance, closer to the ring of fire than others, typhoons are keeping themselves at  bay, watching the too many dead and the grief-

stricken. Now coldness has come, temperatures dropping lower than people can imagine.  In the mountains, animals are dying and the whiff of their death like pollen everywhere, she said, 

commenting on my state over an elaborate breakfast of fluids.  I had woken up in the middle of the dark morning, shivering with fever. Now she looks outside the window and listens to the sound of the river.  

when half of the rest is asleep

always, when half of the rest is still asleep and the world as is known is quiet, with only shades of light in hues of blue and gray, the nip in the air still brings with it traces of the origins of sleep.  always, it is the best time, i think, to wander and wonder what is it in this world we all have to so joyously suffer.  one's perceptions so limited no matter how the travel and empathy.  not a few times did i wonder if it is better not to know a good number of things, including that one can only know so little.  perhaps it is better to be asleep like the rest and the others who sleep joyfully, fitfully in unknowing...