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 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.

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.

gentle non-fiction

One type of genre I step back from is the personal essay. In spite of ideas such as fossilised written selves vis-à-vis transitory selves, the certainty and nuance of an elusive self migrating in space and time, the lies of protracted drama in the name of art, the unreliable "I", other beautiful and convincing arguments the many number of friends writing in the genre say, I remain a step away.

Non-fiction, no matter how gentle, how sincere, tells too much. A freshman's first draft of narrative essay tells how she was physically abused by a father, how she cried in the middle of a cornfield, thought of running away from home, decided to stay. Another draft of a Haiyan survivor's account.

Sometimes I pretend not to wrestle with the question why. 

No matter sometimes I feel something surfacing from the well of quiet to be written this way, in this genre of gentle sincerity. There, a lump in the throat. A remembering of something that is, perhaps, being slowly forgiven by the self within the self, in spite of the self.

And yet, I step away. Less courageous than a nine-year-old battered by her father at the cornfield.

after the party is better

After the party is better
at night when only empty glasses
remain crowding together
on tables being cleared

There, a few careless stains 
on tablecloths for what spilled
and broke of so much cheer

The band is done
all dancing, too, as guests 
gone
memory of a good night:

waiters making sounds
stacking plates etc. minutes.
They too, very soon gone.

How much conversation
is left, is to go on--is how much 
night we have left.

I think I will prefer now
after a brunch party

Still sunny, we still
can have rest of the day 
together yet. 
                  

                                     photo by A. Schneidt

the gaze

all points in the room point at
the one thing
partially acknowledged and therefore 
there at the corner of my eye

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. 

exiles

That one has to drive two hours from the City of Angels to see stars
we all laugh about it, it being close to impossible where we are now
seated in the middle of an island still to be overtaken by what has
already covered cities of our past lives, stardust, blankets, bog
no one really wants to talk plain about in words brave enough not to balk
from one's own forgiving the things underneath, unspoken, hidden.  
A circle of us who ran away, who got away, are sorry to have left but are
not coming back, are lost but not asking, are abandoning, are making.
Here, no need to drive anywhere to or walk away from but the moving
is constant anyway, from shadows real or of our own making.

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."



















 

folded in wind

some places are no longer the same.
the wind blows.
and the appearances say nothing.
all else are the same.

what draws the line between spaces?
one point to another.
past or present, here or there.
all else are the same.

there are erasures in time.  in space.
only the mind that bears knows.
the bearer and the burden.
all else are the same.

what can be done with traces?
that this pair of shoes is most likely
similar to what was once known.
all else are the same.

no one speaks anymore, weighed
down by the weight of explanations.
a ball lies at the center.
and no one dares to look

although some child 
within wants
to answer the beckon.
all else remain the same.

a lesser man

I.
the first time i met d* i almost run out of wind, that kind
when you are caught between exhaling and inhaling
so strong the point of shock.  i thought i saw my mother.

a most curious case and i had to remind myself
i was seeing another.  even though there really
was less mistaking in that smile.  
also, those eyes.  the oval face.

of course, mother is older.  with more wear.  a difference
in contexts and years.  although i could not help thinking
seeing d* i am seeing my mother in times much happier.

a lucky man who won her.  although 
i could not say the same for her.


II.
one of my fears is becoming my father.  i look 
at the mirror and see more and more his face.  
some day i am going to write the whole of it.
but not now.  not yet.


III.
there are a moments of most clarity.  
when i see her and wonder
what she sees in this man--
raised to be stubborn, built as 
less.  who meets her halfway 
only under light of day.

what does it take to be a woman.
a man will never know.
he who is always
lesser beside her.

why i write poetry

because i do not want to 
explain in many words 
what words cannot explain.

the many, many kinds of
this

because i am always 
at a loss in the middle 
of nuances, even though.

because a poem is always
both obscure and clear.
because when i am alone... 

the burden of light

summer here hits 38 to 40 degrees celsius.
the asphalt roads make mirages.
dogs not meant for the climate, suffer. and
people make homages where the ACs are.

still, everyone is warm
even though most dream less. 
many retire to their fate.

and while all TVs here show melodrama
and people easily laugh, cry and curse
the sunny weather does not 

tolerate stories of a particular kind.
if you were here, sitting across me
we will break open a bright conversation.

and will have to wait for brightness to somber
before telling stories of a dark, quiet kind.

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.

existential anger

When you peel away the layers, you will find
at certain times, the anger
throbbing like an unhealed, hidden wound.
Alone, in an otherwise beautiful night, you
wonder why the only genuine affection
comes from dogs.  Why
no one sits outdoors to look at the full moon.
And the mind has never any breathing space
while the body is in outgrown places.
Somewhere in your marrows, you ask for sea
or cans after cans of beer with conversation
expected to end into something else.
Maybe a consuming night of uncontrollable
passion, the way you still remember.
Or falling, at last, into a deep well 
of sleep.  Dreamless.  As when you were
so much younger.  When did you realise
the world is not going to get any better?
At fifteen, a nun brushed away the answer
to your question.  At ten, you kept yourself
awake on guard.  And learned restraint.  
Also how to keep surfaces from imploding.
When you peel away the layers, you will find
at certain times, the familiar anger
throbbing, an unhealed hidden wound.
And alone, in an otherwise beautiful night, 
you wonder of genuine affection.  Why
no one is outdoors to look at the full moon.

this world as a fold

teach me how to fold origami, fold this paper
piece the way slender fingers do

they are graceful as a woman's,
as precise

as her heart the way it holds the brim of a world
into a cup of her hand.

the versions of our selves (after south part 2)

1
I remember R--.  It was many years ago.  I was young, although at the time, stopping to look at posts on the board, I didn't know.  I was about to leave, waiting for papers that shuffled themselves behind office doors, and he passed to stopped by.  R--, visual artist, sculptor, art historian, saxophone player, postmodern-renaissance man.  Stood behind me; and we looked at posts and he said without cue "don't let them take you".  Of course, this wasn't how he said it, except this was how I remember it.  Many years ago.  I was young, although at the time, stopping to look at posts on the board, I didn't know.  And I didn't understand what he meant.

2
I came back a good time after.  A version of a previous self, although this time, stopping occasionally to look at posts on boards and everything in everywhere else, sometimes I forgot to know.  Wondering why every thing felt the same and felt different, yes.  Some people were gone.  The air breathed a different feel.  There had been a great tumult, political, factional.  Palpable in the air.  Papers had shuffled, committees, courts, arenas.  A country I did not know.  R--, too, was gone, in self-imposed exile.

3
In company that night J--  began his retelling of 76.  Geographically away from everything else, every one in company of stiff drinks and beer.  In the background, large grey waves hit the pebbled shore.  Somewhere else, news said there was storm.  But the waiter served us three pizzas complements from the house.  And how the stories of near hits and near misses rolled.  One time we were stuck in a cabin, in the middle of a fish farm, in the middle of a thunderstorm.  One time we were invited to a wedding and we didn't know.  One time... A roll was passed around.  And the stories turned to a driveway of angel trumpets, happy brownies, Mary Janes.  And R--, he said how he tried a certain mushroom once.  It made the world aglow and angels sing, and plunged you into depths into certainty of death.  "Completes the process before it lets you go. Like a spiritual experience," he said.  "Although if you ask me would I take it again, I wouldn't."  


4
We all went to see a certain architecture. Presumably 16th century, coral stones fortified by egg whites and goat dung, 8 feet to 9 feet tall in some areas.  An hourglass on top of a skull on top of an arched entryway.  Presumably, a church for innocents (children who died before baptism).  For centuries, it was buried and when finally unearthed, the walls were found to be have become filled with bees, the coral stones were bleeding honey. 

selves as containers

there was a time when things were so very bad and it was a long time ago in a different life not this but of another no matter it may appear our existence is in a chronological order and that life was first and this second and this version only possible because of how that first was turned into something else and brought out into the open air for sun for breath and those that remain insoluble are kept stored in airtight glass containers and kept in cupboards or closets or hidden under old unused linens to be forgotten.

nobody talks about the time and the glass containers no matter their details have fused themselves as stalagmites and stalactites into the limestone caves of our minds where we keep a guard the small but wary version of ourselves who makes certain the door is locked to keep underground water from following its way following the indelible map that breathes in the dark having been accustomed in the dark that leads into the gap into the time when things were so very bad they remain dregs in our sleep

they call and make us walk in their wakefullness in our sleep the perpetually abandoned us haunting our own adult selves who have become amnesiac and selective and brave and afraid

yes there are so many things so many stories of times when things were so very bad it takes All of Silence to keep our dam selves whole.


                                                  
                                                                                                    of Mamala and women who live among people












                                                                  

what is the Golden Fleece?

The lost
The seeking
Argonaut


At the end of each day's hours, in a world's corner where we retreat  to hide at our most vulnerable time, at that most peculiar instance of only a few breath spaces long between waking and sleeping, 

We do sometimes remember.  
And see this strange world as it is: 

A large labyrinth city where we, the argonauts, seeking the fleece, have gone lost, 

Trapped in between sky high walls
working hours
job descriptions
streets, society, and survival.

Perhaps, the minotaur is no beast, no Other, 

But Us,

Who, having lived longer 
 

And longer in this maze 
have turned into 
memory-less beasts.


Where is the skein of thread?
Where is Ariadne?
Where is the Fleece?