do you sail?

The past few weeks I have been thinking of rowing.
There are two rivers nearby, large 
at this time of the year. 
There is much need to release and attempt to draw 
out into a clear line what has been repeatedly said.

I have stopped taking walks and will have to resume.
I no longer have my dogs.
I sleep and dream and wake up as though 
I haven't slept at all.

St. Patrick's may be a day with a reason.
Maybe one day we will happen to meet, you whiskey 
on hand, me, on the rocks.
And because I do not believe in therapists, 
I wrestle with own shadows,

Fill up the to-do list and bed with heaviness.
Sometimes the day begins with a clear mind
which means nothing and I come down to make tea,
which means coming through a number of doors 
that entering or exiting becomes uncertain.

More nights ahead

We can put together a hundred or more possibilities,
letting two characters meet, in spite the number
of ways, streets, corners, bars, restaurants, cities.
Did you not once say you will have a hard drink
at the bar at the edge of your sleep? Even though cold,
I have returned to the uncertainty of outdoors now, 
stopping at diners where tired men and tired waitresses
call each other by name. The home fries both nostalgic
and sorry. Something always pulls me back. 

Sometimes I look up and watch flocks of birds, mostly
when flocks of young people pass by. Do they
know how we can devote our entire lives
to a cause truly lost?
How the foolish idealism of our once immortal
sense drove us to where we are now. Here...

And is it wrong to think women like you will always be
less lonely? I have come to deny myself. But 
how it bangs its fists on my door wanting
to be let out, telling me 
I am human, human, human. 
So I try to keep away from the door,
away from the bar at the edge of your sleep.

The Act of Remembering

A dangerous thing, this act.
Betrayal to one's own mind who
once decided and precariously
ordered the will to 
severe part of itself, 
preserving most 
of what spirit remains.

And then suddenly this-- 
re-collecting, bringing back
to make as part again
what had been 
intentionally let fall away.

When still young, there was 
so much strength to push
ahead, against the gusts.
To keep forward the head
steady from not looking back.

Perhaps because the road
was still long, the young
eyes still unable to sense
what lies by the by, 
by the bend.

Our immortal's time.

Now here we are. Here I am.
The familiar autumn 
on my back. I try, I try
to push against the gusts.
To keep away from the act,
from surrendering to
remembering. I do not want

to say I am afraid that come
this winter, the bones will,
on their own, remember.











  

Preface

If you were to devote only one time to read 
a piece of Hegel's, take the Preface: it may be
the actual body of what he may have meant: how 
always it appears in the beginning of any book
yet, not the first thing to be written.
What he found 
was a horizon where conflicts settle themselves 
to remain settled as conflicts. A horizon 
we keep moving towards, in spite ourselves, 
we cannot ever reach. He died, the book 
unfinished. Might as well be. 

a long goodbye 3

Dear Friend, I fancy meeting you in a very crowded street in an intersection of peoples when the red light turns green and everyone including ourselves rush forward to our own elsewheres. 

The preciseness of things will allow us not to see each other unlike the way one morning on a particular June day I met again at once four people in a corner paces away from ---. 

One I was with about two years in my early twenties with no love lost between us at parting. One met in the late twenties leg of whitewashed paintings. Another through her large scales paintings of cats and flowers. The fourth mere hours from an airport. 

What are the chances we meet again? Together in a spot as if rehearsed sometime somewhere. If at ten dreaming in California someone tells us we will commit suicide at 26 and have PhD at 36 and then be half way around the world bearing a kind of slowness of

Being, that there will be sunshine and sea and we will wonder if this is still life or dream. Why should we not fancy multiverses where in another life some things did not happen and all these merely a child's wondering. A child still must be dreaming elsewhere 

On a bed with starships taped on the ceiling and midmorning flooding in a roomful of books. Or must it be a dog, one of the hundreds of strays in a Catholic country with least love for the least. I fancy hectares of land where dogs run and not only dream. When I move 

From one place to another and meet people and memorise faces in spite myself I fancy meeting them again in another life. One where hurriedly passing the crisscrossing pedestrian lines we are less estranged from ourselves.

the space between cities

The space between cities is a body of distance
hardly translatable into a map we can pretend
able to transverse by way of roads and rails,
ports and piers cohering so-called boundaries

of what is there and here and then and now as
east and west and north and south referring to
sun and wind and seasons, the way we attempt
landmarking passages if only to remember all 

places we've been, also those never been to 
except heard by name or gestured at in story.
The space between is body of distance, tunnel
lighted dimly: memory and dream, both palpable

to skin, real enough to hear the laugh from
a mind's photograph of one's own ageless self 
in a moment everlasting. Who else is there?
an entire library of snapshots handwritten in

cursive with names, some clearer than others, 
invoked often as bridges over which one's own 
mind and body travels, loop of a map a place
only in river-spaces crossing between cities.

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.

nearly midnight

It seems to you there is a consistent hunger
In you somewhere you can neither point nor name.
Everything else appears alright.
Action movie on the cable, some mutated turtles

The kind you could have loved lifetimes ago
Now you place on mute and sleep through.
Its only redeeming quality, a young woman
Too beautiful only the young can believe

To be real. You would have preferred bio pics, 
Political conspiracies, the end of the world 
As is known, at least; these are familiar.
Closer to what you have come to believe.

And what do you believe? At eight, you had 
Your last faith in Santa Claus; at fourteen,
Fools' love. You wonder how some can go on
Dreaming of romance. Or world peace.

You remember someone saying to look at
Inevitable failure in the eye, exchanging
Blows with it anyway. A hopeless kind of talk,
Pessimism you do not subscribe to but

Remember anyway. The hero suffers in the movie.
You feel yourself pointing out refugees dying
In the next channel. And at the street, 
the stray dog scrawny and sick with open woods.

The three candles you lighted at the church
Of Saint Teresa saying god alone suffices.
You still believe. And you feel it--although
What it is, you no longer know. 

All news by the day growing more and more
Disturbing. Stranger than any tall story
About mutants or aliens. These kinds of movies.
This world. Growing more complicated to resolve.

The TV goes on without sound.
Your dog shifts at your feet. 
It, too, cannot sleep. Ever shameless
In trusting you, waiting for you again.

the motorcycle broke

and i am ill-tempered
over so many trifles

the many things hungry
constantly entitled 

to attention: annual
registrations monthly

bills daily upkeep
such as the yard

weeds who regularly
misunderstand such as

dust overstaying its
welcome the mouse

i saw in the corner
and the by-hour count

of batteries such as
the watch the mobile

phone is it possible 
to leave and be away?

i have half the mind
tell Gloria i am not

appearing anytime soon
but am sure she will

ask for the numbers
when what will she say

do to keep what at bay
until my return

what will not leave
will wait insensitively

the things to do 
in this world

the motorcycle broke
chapters to translate

manuscript to write
events and weeds

i take the dogs out
for a walk and miss

running

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?

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.














  

a clearing in the woods

Let me tell you a secret. This

          is my clearing in the woods

                       shared only by you.
          
                               Three years now.


I have grown a little too old for public 
announcements, the way younger ones have made 
out of the internet: a potted plant, a garden, 
a landscape, a directed trail to the woodshed 
by the lake right after the painted sign 
on reclaimed wood: Welcome Crowd 
tail as they hunt in search of themselves.

Consider the woods at the back of my house
through the screened door opened by keypad.
A password uttered in silent type.
The woods, metaphors of the real: the steel gate
needs fixing; the few garden herbs that survived
the yard onslaught of a playful young dog; 
list of things to do including translations

of poems for anthology, necessary visit
to the bank, call from the secretary, 
a last stretch of familiarity. I walk through
the woods throughout the day 

with some moments of clarity as when 
being in transit between actual places,
as when I hold my oldest dog 
who (I am afraid) I might not see again.
As when I allow myself to be fragile 

to a woman's love. As when I sit, seemingly 
alone in this private clearing in the woods 
in quiet company with a fellow soul.

where you and i are

Names can be deceiving.
A letter, when given to a room
Ceases the room to be.

What is a room?
Room that is in a house, that is in
A life, that is a space

To occupy as love would
Inhabit a time.
And loving, a state of habitation.

Where you and I are, shall we
Receive a name for it or forgoing
Let the where itself be.

I thought of a lover by another name 
In another way, is still a lover.
As love is afraid and brave

Certain of uncertain.

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?

the romance of faith

Faith requires, as far as the romance of it goes,
A certain certainty: the blind seeing with his/her heart.
Such faith, such faith! When sober, I wonder.

But how many times in secret in deepest darkness
Did I return the call and listened for what answers. 

drowning with woman

Counterculture communes in the 60s and 70s
attempted to distill love
through music, herbs, and freedom in forest
idyllic edens or as thought to be.

My own short experience told me 
youth has a way of imagining 
as does any spring beginnings.
To have a time of easy belief in hope

has its own good, if only to make the later years
bearable with dream-like memories. 

There is always something beautiful
about the long ago we have lived or survived.
Thus, that smile when we are
alone one morning with second cup of coffee

and remembering. Times, there, of love
also of beauty we had not recognised
while it looked us on the face. Gentle gust.
Perched on our palms like easy wind.  

How time flies. 

The hours we wasted arguing and hating
each other as much as ourselves for 
nonetheless loving both self and other. 
No counterculture communes truly survived.

There is no way to distill love.

On Intimacy

Because in the darkness on a sea of sheets we cannot help 
remember even without remembering to, in the night

to step out of our bodies palming our way back to origins. 
I, blind and hungry, feel the shadows for curves, touching familiar

strange landscapes, the soft places I've always known
long before any knowing. Woman, her entirety

the tangible universe and the only god I could bury myself into.
Because the darkness keeps the secret that I could never 

fully grow apart. Helpless, I nestle on her warmth,
suckle at her breasts 

feet

The bedsheets are fresh.

After walking the dogs
on a clear windy night,
I prop up my feet
on the couch. Tired.

The dogs fall asleep again.

Tomorrow a long list
of things to do that
do not ever run out.
Sometimes you wonder
if they really 
are as important as 
they appear to be:
the immediate world
to crumble if undone.

Suppose one day I don't

move my exhausted feet 
return phone calls 
or make presences.
See without me
wheels still turn.

the discussion of philosophy

is probably meant not for everyone.  some 
work for the next meal, and this is enough.
the barber whom i see more than the church
tells five reasons to live, in specific order:
college, work, marriage, kids, house.
a man of his world, he is.  tells about his rise
from employee to owner of the salon.
also how to conserve water,
through homebuilt-system of gallons and pipes.
the house needs everything, he says.
and i do not argue with him.  having respect 
for what he does, meticulously.  with heart.

the man does not know hugo or kant.
does not bother with art or phenomenology.
but he thinks not only of his next meal.
and values work.  and honesty.
and also his kids, two of them, whom
i haven't seen.  he probably meant them
when he talks of his house.

and we do talk about the weather, the expected
changes in it.  also the leaving and arriving
that i do, although we never get to specifics.
i do not know if he sees the blue 
of the clear blue sky in this country.
do not know if he thinks of the line
as both phenomenological palimpsest and
illusory divide of consciously built boundaries.

he may not think of these, or of feminism.
although
i think we all do.  between the hours of rain
and morning or the hours of stars and night.
with enough solitude, we all do

discuss philosophy and question
laws, existence, universe, our selves.