I don't mean the flowers, I say, when I meant how the day was. We were at her little yard, a patch of grass trying to populate in spite lack of water and too much sun; it has a few herbs here and there, spots of turmeric and also what resembles dill. Not too long ago, I helped tend her basil. The jasmine tree, flowering this time of the year, has a series of firefly lights. Twinkling now and making mellow glows, making being in the yard feel it is those years again. Letting some part of the evening seem to wait for the sweet telltale scent of pot.
She brings a dainty white pot of oolong tea; on her other hand, a book she is about to finish: about a man proving evil in the world. I am cynical about it: evil needs no proving; but keep peace anyway: she most likely is as cynical about poetry.
I think instead it is quite an evening. Remembering the time we had wine and talked--while embers used to grill the fish for dinner slowly turned to ash--about things forgotten now. What did we talk about?
This evening it is about a possible trip to C: the guide says white sand beach, waterfalls, springs. There again the pictures of sunsets, horizons and outrigger boats. In essence they mean leaving. I notice the slice of red watermelon on a plate placed on the table for me and the palm-size local papaya for her. I think about what I might not have for a long time soon. What we try not to talk about.
The slight headache I have had earlier returns. A breeze passes and the bamboo chimes on her doorway make their water sounds. I pet one of the dogs. It is quite an evening. I shove the rest of the papers and things to do in a full drawer in mind.
what comes in the end after beer.
we talk about multi-modality
how so many different things mean
different on their own and different
when happening simultaneously.
the mind always attempts to mean.
platforms can change. so are worlds.
even though they essentially remain
the same. what comes in the end
after beer. i take the slow walk home.
feeling the lightness of the new
walking boots she gave me. dark blue
the colour of deep sea. and quiet.
some forms of serenity. a thought
came over talk asking is this the way
it feels before dying? ha ha ha.
about half a year left before leaving.
we did not toast. he is leaving too.
scotland. i name two states, where
the wind blows i go. the cosmos.
she remains to wait. i am already
thinking of coming home to her.
where really home is. we did not
toast. i come home walking slow
the sky is november too clear.
beautiful women so beautiful it hurts
the way one feels the loss of many
things. time and other lives.
this one now being what is had.
my dogs call out from feet away
sensing my return. some loves
are perfect that way no matter
how unperfect the receiver.
what comes in the end after
beer. a sweet kind of sadness.
the kind also known as gratitude.
Comes the bird
touching water
shore of another
same world.
there are photos and memories and dreams
to keep close in pocket, in mind, in sleep
when one finally holds oneself
grown and able, still
with fears no more
and no less than
a child's
photo by S. Kho Nervez
The entire day with rain. I remembered my colleague yesterday saying love the rain;
so I sent a video Singing in the Rain and remembered too late it is about love; and
didn't the colleague tell me in a question the wife was having an affair? The entire
day with rain. News in a long list came in, drenched, through the front door. A list of
too many unnamed: dead children washed ashore, refugees, the world a square.
S sent an email from Singapore, saying his non-fiction on Philippine boxers is done
also, how is my writing. Should I say the manuscript is done and now I hear nothing.
On its stead, I spend an entire day with rain solving math equations imaginary
problems with clear solutions--how about children caught in war and un-leaving?
There is a Simic upstairs: a child running with scissors.
A new piece I need to write for a public reading for teenagers on the 13th.
A party faring a dear friend well into retirement.
The book review of a first compendium of local literature long overdue.
A module to leave for when I leave.
And places here I have yet to be in.
A yearlong farewell; till home again...
...sometimes I dream of empty. That sound of water, that wind, that sky...
but until then, not yet, not yet
the logic is to measure as many things
to live the finite life, it's end
at the very end certainly known
even as certainly unseen.
the body feels it for us, receiving the Quiet. cell
by cell as if room by room, coming in
door after door in this poor temple
of soul. the young do not hear
yet the Quiet's footsteps echoing in the wind.
but come years of footfall after footfall
one finally recognises the visitor
has been in all along. the logic is
to measure as many things to forewarn life
the finiteness of every moment that needs
be lived. sense the silhouette passing
minute after minute quantifiable
ultimately by calendar. but how long the length of
a passing year for uncertain waiting?
the letter gave no promises, only half
affirmative gesture, the word "about"
encompassing. so one continues to move the motor
of day-to-day, no certain number
except what wind presses on
one's cheek, what dogs in gentle
wisdom knows, the way they keep close. in the way
one's mind attempts to see an entire
year more, the whole turn around sun
from now, but sees only part of it.
I rather not have yet the leaving a form, a body, a face
as number of remaining days, of date, hour
of plane departure because it is inevitable.
I rather at this moment let it remain
a spectre she and I would let in in time, but not yet,
not yet. at the moment, let it stay
a welcomed guest at the front door.
1
When we lie down seeing the sky,
we may as well be standing
from another angle; the sky is sea foam.
Such ways the world can be
seen, different eyes: punto de vista.
2
The call, sooner than expected, arrived
yesterday; half the request granted.
What it meant we knew from the beginning.
In the beginning, we knew
different and the same: punto de vista.
1
To roll the stone up the mountaintop, only
having it roll back, to start again. Do you
sometimes feel this old? Bones, body
weathered as stone, faith broken like a horse
learned of certain gain, loss. No longer having
child's eyes even if you cling on to wonder.
2
Yesterday, sitting at the back during a vision-
presentation; and later, in a conference
by activists: the things done to roll the stone
of the world. To where we hope a better place.
(Sometimes it takes twice as much to keep on
believing). We do anyway; like the stranger
who introduced himself and shook my hand.
3
And courageous, asked "Will you take a look
at my poems, tell me your thoughts.
I've shown them to no one else." Such trust.
Such honor to be given it. No matter the poems
were bad; there is always enough gentleness.
Aren't attempts half the success itself?
4
I wrote T a very long letter last night while
I was high, with an explicit apology: "Let me
say these before my short sentences surface."
I meant sober where sober meant quiet.
This morning, I dare not open the sent emails.
Because T is afraid of permanence (and I
never asked why) and I give thoughts bodies
5
of perceivable, tangible form. No plant in pot;
all of them on ground. Rhodora, fierce
woman, I met her again a week ago, gone
the sharpness into gentleness of the weary.
Retired after warring ideologies for sixty years.
6
All these slow march of protests towards that.
Even though we might carry no banner.
The things we do to roll the stone of the world.
I kissed her last night after making love.
The soft lights showing gentleness--
that which makes us keep on
rolling stone of the world.
Easy to say since the news, anxiety has been breeding dreams fretting in my sleep. No balm to soothe. I replay, in spite myself, the exchange again and again. I could have done
better. But why. Did it come across as entirely something else? How to. I think about the steam and the propel. And shall I get to see you again. Shall we meet in a cafe, maybe, by the end of some other year. I always do something else in the meantime. Other news arrive. Such as framed joy on other planes. A deadline. A knock. An impatience. And a distance that will have to be crossed by any means. Since when did I feel running out of time. The idea was to remain. And let time run by itself. They say, "in September." It is only becoming June. The last dream, I was somewhere in Malaysia, surrounded by bamboo beds. There is an image of you, your back towards me, on a kayak. Through the water. On your hands a paddle. And we were heading off to some other shore. photo by S. Kho Nervez
Who are the poor? It depends
who is defining the abstruse lot
that continually grows
no end, all children
of an absentee god.
between pages of a book, a torn piece of newspaper
showing a foot on tip toe, perhaps dancing, and
nothing more; the two pages facing each other,
one telling What you need more of in your life, I think,
are some elephants, the other about finding brave.
Be favorable to bold beginnings, said Virgil
Easier said than done. I'm still wary
from the last beginning. Nevertheless, I've begun
a vigil: wait for the ally who believes
endings make beginnings necessary,
and who's plenty bold. Enough not to worry
about how much to give, how much to withhold.
I held my breath and closed the book.
(after Centolella)
The people on this island who still remember
their indigenous science can tell
an impending storm is coming
feeling the absence of wind, despite all
sunshine, clarity, and birds.
The large ring around the moon tells them
remember remember remember to tell.
But the animals who need no remembering
sniff for wind, are listless and far
from the pretence of sleep. Blind, I can only
watch the forewarning swirling on the web.
A hurtle is restless, is angry, is coming.
Remembering the count of one to ten,
I prune the sweet wilderness of trees.
Because you are sitting at the same seat
at the same corner in the same pocket
of the universe, the angle is the same.
Unless you try to see.
Or ask the breeze, brushing momentarily
at the broad banana leaves, for a lift.
Gina comes over from New York,
bandana, chemotherapy, shaking hands
and all. She wanted to see the aftermath.
A childhood in an entire city sluiced down.
And talks about a kind of seeing.
Even from an ocean and two breadths away.
Even with an IV, these days she's reading
little known memoirs of wars, what is kept.
Still as political as ever, against an enemy
headless and constant.
Confronted, rewritten, killed, and revived.
An ongoing battle until one sees the other
dead. How her hand shakes now,
holding a pen, her sword. And her insistent
voice grown hoarse. The indefatigable.
Because unlike fiction characters, you and she
are real, are weathered now by the constant
confronting and writing---no matter where
you sit or what corner in the country-like
universe you go, the seeing will exact its toll.
But no matter now.
Merlie the poet returns after an exile
to her island home. You promise her a visit.
And Gina, Gina has taken her flight.
Pennant
by Eliza Griswold
Love was the illusion,
the tent on the beach
with an ivory peak
that said you're never alone.
The tent is gone.
It takes you days to notice.
No pennant sings from the hill,
no slip of bright everlasting
pretends to be home. The last night comes.
The bald dunes sleep. The pilot fish leap
to bare their glistening skin.
how no love is ever lost
who was it who said everything has to go somewhere. that nothing disappears. in this world, in this cosmos. even the chromium and cadmium may find themselves in the bodies of weeds, absorbed by plants, long after they are disposed on garbage heaps. how nothing disappears. no matter the ephemeral. every thing a palimpsest. even this world, layer after layer of events, known as histories, known as peoples, also known as love. do you believe in energy? in warm thoughts, as well as warm bodies? do you believe in the vast-ness of this universe, in the minute-ness of atoms, in the indefatigable force that binds us all?
the exact moment of your coming of age, do you remember? the moment when
the rosy scales from your eyes fell
and your heart grew a stone
and you finally see
the world is not what you once thought it to be?
--on reading college freshmen essays
in the middle of writing a post on the concept of line as ****, IT
dawned: the ground concept on which to build the reading on ***. for some months now, the enthusiasm to write about this series has been hibernating; but, until now, there was no particular seed with which to germinate the entire articulation. also, there were, and still are, too many things on the calendar. too many projects and legwork necessary. the near-unbelievable paperwork and the meetings and post-conferences, including the working-dinners over which the more important and sensitive matters are discussed while couched in the trivial act of eating. i want to mention this concept of the line right now (such is my excitement), but one must not get ahead of things. i am looking at the clock---as i have the habit of removing my wristwatch, like keeping the phone away, when i intend to have a "breather"---and it says two hours before the need to leave for work. today, as wednesdays should've been, would have been a writing day; except, for weeks now there has been no writing days. for instance, two meetings are scheduled this afternoon...i wish to write again through hours that seem to stretch the day and the sunlight; but it is difficult to sit down and keep still to call the thoughts into form, into a piece of infinity entry, in the middle of a deluge.
one night in june, the moon rose full, a large yellow melon from the edge of sea.
it was as closest as it could get to the land, where its lover waits
gazing at it night after night as only one who dreams
and loves from afar can.
it may be worth to think about why two dead lovers are the best lovers. one, their love is as eternal as their youth, their passion as steady as in the Grecian Urn. then: no hunger will tear them apart, no sickness, no need for health. why then wish to be alive? perhaps it why too many wanted to love and be loved in Twilight.
but,
what about boredom? the ebbs and tides that make for joy and laughter?
and unpredictability that make for those rarest, temporal moments we have when the world and the universe, and life itself, despite everything else, is simply beautiful...
waking up midnight at the sound of summer rain...
you are rain. secret in the middle of the night, in the middle of summer. like an apology in the dark, in the night, like passion without words, after days long of summer heat. months dry white torrid scorching. you are. rain, at last. draft through the windows left open, fluttering the curtains. unexpected, relief. a welcome, a handful familiar of contours on the palms of my waking. here, the sound of rain, hard and gradually. coming to gentleness. to becoming sound. of drops, random, spent, and cool, like kisses, finally, easing themselves, sliding, from the bush leaves, to the soft blankets of night grass.
