jade

Carve out a hollow into your existence

You will find there is no difference 
between you and the American woman
who touched the Maneki-neko,
unashamed to ask for luck and fortune.

    outside the lonely shell of you car

You will overhear two colored women
tell each other organic food is luxury,
will read an unadorned student's poem
say thirty dollars a month for food.

                         through the steady pace of your feet

You will see the question is never too far, 
it is always here, no matter
the whitewashed porch and the flowers 
blooming quiet as if in peace.

                                       this blooming day of falling leaves

You will touch what is intangible, this
palpable need to fill in the hollowed out.
Not unlike how you felt as a child pouring sea
from cupped hands into the hole in the sand.

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. 

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

The Word

Jimmy once so aptly said it:
Brothers and Sisters of the Word.
We all agreed: the Word, sacred.

Sometimes, I say:
Writing is the Word
made Flesh.

But it has been a long, long while:
do I still believe? the Story

is just that: a story.
Even though sometimes

the child, afraid, calls 
out in the unknown dark.

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. 

The Visit

after St. Francis and the Sow



Francis comes over to visit and there is none of the Spectacle
before and after him, mob frenzy in madness in dance parading
a black crowned man to his death, a dark child with burnt world 
on its hand.  The horde waits for him in patient hunger,
hollow ecstasy.  Father! Father! they call out to him.  

Father! Father!             From a distance

he touches them, oh he touches them
 as he once touched the sow.

The Kamasutra of Kindness (Position No. 3)

The Kamasutra of Kindness
Position No. 3



It’s easy to love
through a cold spring
when the poles
of the willows
turn green
pollen falls like
a yellow curtain
and the scent of
Paper Whites
clots
the air
but to love for a lifetime
takes talent
you have to mix yourself
with the strange
beauty of someone
else

wake each morning
for 72,000
mornings in
a row so
breathed and
bound and
tangled
that you can hardly
sort out
your arms
and
legs

you have to
find forgiveness
in everything
even ink stains
and broken
cups

you have to be willing to move through
life
together
the way the long
grasses move
in a field
when you careen
blindly toward
the other
side

there’s never going to be anything
straight or predictable
about your path
except the
flattening
and the springing
back

you just go on walking for years
hand in hand
waist deep in the weeds
bent slightly forward
like two question
marks
and all the while it

burns
my dear
it burns beautifully above
you
and goes on
burning
like a relentless
sun




by Mary Mackey

talking about truth

for G. Lloren



Thursday on a week that has the weight of years
you leave the office past seven.
Outside, the dark says both 
the day is old and the night young.
The crisp breeze blows the leaves a promise.

At the convention last night
everyone wrangled
about the word you summoned
afraid of its presence 
in midst of a tagline.

The word was a beast
giant and a phosphorescent green
reptilian and curled, 
legged and tailed.
"Too spiritual," someone said.

"Too dragooning," another said.
They all tried to poke it away.

You hail a cab and look for coffee
there are bills to pay.
And you are now past forty.
How the strange beast, last night
was queried by fools. 

"Is it sectarian?" someone asked.
"Measurable?" asked another.
"Vendible?"
"And does it fly?"

after city

The children are dead.
The news does not say
even though their bodies
are all around.  In parts,
in missing wholes.
The entire city has begun
to smell of loss.  There are 
arms, dismembered, waving
at Red Cross trucks carrying relief.
Too many bare feet, caught 
cold in the act of running.
Everybody is howling.
But there are not enough names.

At the centers, the lines are long
for food, for water, for medicine.
Also for calling God.
But the telecommunications 
are all down.  
And the entire city is dark.








(Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda, Philippines)
 







by shane

today in the middle of nowhere

Today in the middle of nowhere, I held your imaginary hand
the van was dark, crowded with strangers familiar with each other  
the ride, long.  We did not talk.  You looked outside the window
I tried not to listen to the news, public television blaring too loud.
South of this country, men are shooting each other over religion.
Up north, there is talk about plunder.  Somewhere, three men
raped a twelve-year girl, who had fallen asleep with her homework
before she was carried off to a rooftop.  Neighbors thought
she was duffel bag.  Her mother cried, the media feasted.
I wanted to bury my face on your hair.
Heave my burden.
But then you turned and smiled a weary smile,
the van was crossing the bridge and the city lights
looked near from a distance.




shane

greeting

a temple of dragons

The red temple of dragons sits atop the city.  Above the known residences of the elite overlooking the city that sprawls itself like a net for all the working middle; that spreads itself thinner as it goes farther from the Uptown and closer to where the port-less edges.

T, though no longer as militant, and I couldn't help "reading" the landscape while climbing up the red stairways of the red-pillared temple:  how myths were, or have become, religion; how a culture is strong and vulnerable, how art is, how economy is.  No lengthy discussions; only many fragmented ideas.  Some photographs.  We tried de-constructing the temple:  turning it into the highest temple of the folk Sky heavens:  Agyo's; or the dragons, turning real, the last protectors of the temple under siege.  We've had had more conversations on culture and the comic book (as cultural by-product) the past forty-eight hours.  

Inside the temple, a kowtow.  And the scent of incense.

For a moment, at high noon, at the foot of the stairs before leaving, T mentioned a word I took for dusk.  

We went to another temple, a coral-stone church; and then another of the most recent architecture, a hundred white walls like dominoes on top of a land that used to be sea; all in two hours. Then it was time to send off T to the airport, to the parallel universe I once had been.

Along the way, watching from the window the road edge curves and the stiff street light posts, I realized I liked lines.  Literal, visual, two-dimensional lines: the way they are drawn against a backdrop of negative space.  "Espasyo," T said.  

The sky was so clear, it was white and cloudless.  Marching the beginning of summer.


On my way home, the dusk in the city was a gradation of the lightest  yellow, to cyan, to a sober dark blue.  No tinge of red.  A waxing moon was rising, thin and white like a clipped nail.