sitting on the steps, leaving on a bike, at 10

There is a plausible reason why
women (may) tend to believe it is
they who are rejected.
The apparatuses of ideologies
repeatedly soak them so.
But long ago, before all these

we were ten and I said something
that had hurt you and I was sorry
and you wouldn't accept it,
refusing the popsicle offering
already starting to melt in my hand.
Sitting on the steps that summer

I learned who will always be
fearful; and suddenly fearful 
of my own discovery, I 

threw away the offering in anger.
The popsicle's sweetness 
melting away, its bone to the sun.

Was it my first desperation then?
The first grand show 
to the largest audience of one

whose magnificence I discovered
and feared. And she?
She wouldn't even look at me.

So at ten, I took my bike and
learned to leave in pompous glory.

by the river

A mile from where I am, there is a river.
There are ducks, some other birds. The water
fragments and glistens like glass, and runs
with a sound like bodied spirit-wind.

Sometimes the afternoon walks take me there.
Mostly to see the sun 
set behind the mountains. Beautiful sky.
There are men who sport fish, bass usually.

It is tempting to do the same; though, 
why bait and hook a fish merely for pleasure
stops me in much the same way
I stop myself from crossing what separates 

us.

archive

Three nights ago, exactly, I dreamed 
the woman from five years ago 
whom I've lost to Germany, married 

to a man my jealousy--
    how it shames me to myself 
    that one word over which anger 
    appears more dignified or honorable--

could easily stain undesirable,
something I nonetheless do not do.
Knowing it is my own ego

at fault and not the man himself 
who, on an even keel, I hope would
love her more than she does herself,

which is really another way of saying
more than I had, could.
Three nights ago, exactly, I dreamed

her, with a face I have never ever seen
before but still easily recognized
in the way of those eyes, those cheekbones,

those lips, and arms, and the very is-ness
of her. In the dream, she has grown
more toned, stronger in the way I have

no knowing whether it is out of brokenness
or something finally better. Knowing only
how it was so long ago since 

her dancing was a way to
punish her own body, wring out and into it 
the pain of her psyche:

The weight of words, she called it.
One day, she said, you'll never 
see me again... Three nights ago, exactly,

I saw her again in the dream:
the toned muscles, the scent of her,
"air ballet" I thought,

all that cloth, and all that wringing,
lifting as though made light
the weight of being.

Was she happy? I could not ask
in the dream, our faces were so close.
We could kiss, were about to, would

kiss I do not remember upon waking.
Only the recurring sense, as always,
that I had a chance and I chose

to lose it.

the teddy bear and the doll

Simone de Beauvoir might as well have corrected 
Freud, showing him without raising her voice, 
how the lack is not the girl's, but the boy's.

Freud had glorified the boy's little thing which
Simone describes as wart, in other words,
insignificant. She says

everyone begins protected and pees sitting down, 
until the boy 
is weaned again and is told

"Stand up, you are a man."
"Stand up, be a man."

And so the pain is converted, becomes aversion.
The want, into compensation. 
And then both of them meet, Freud and Simone,

on the same road noting the girl with her doll
and the boy with his penis and his animal toy,
the teddy. Notice

it is Freud, as nearly all men, who is trapped
in his family name; it is Simone who has her own.
As nearly all women, able to move fluidly

one house into another, belonging truly to
no one but herself. Her own name she keeps
no matter the changing family names.

It is all, really, a matter of perspective.

Whenever I see a woman, I know how small I am
against the mystery of worlds, the layers
she knows of life and living and loving, depths

I can never be, trapped on the shallows.
How I compensate, like everyone else.

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.











  

born not a woman

Should I be born again, I do not want
To be a woman.
She is capacity of the world and in it.
The weight of the sky
In her eyes

Even when she laughs and she smiles at you
Like you have given her the world,
You'd know you didn't, couldn't.
How she can carry 

Worlds and give birth to them, allowing
To take parts of herself she can
Not ever grow back.
Beside her what is a man

But an illusion of grandeur. Safely
Ignorant in this way, his sound deep 
Like a log hollow
Allowing him through all seasons

To stay afloat, surviving better
Ever on the surface, lacking depth.

Do not give up on poetry

because sometimes it is so much easier to
start the car and drive it
than walk to the station for the bus.
What are the ways we meet others?

On the street the car is parked by a tree.
There is a squirrel, a tabby can pass by.
I do not think of the deluge 

of work that knows I do not forget.
There is an opera next month
and the leaves are turning.
What moves us?

And does poetry matter when a mother looks
at her son in a real and palpable world?

"And what did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?"






lines from Robert Hayden

no water but space

What separates us now is space.
Like air   like blank   like nothingness
Not a void   I think  for it too must have
Some vague directions pointing which way
One must go 

Home for now is a transitionary word
Much like the lengthened stay at airports
I have nearly forgotten how it feels like
The not quite entirely have moved in

What sense is it
The mind always knowing this is not the place
Even though it is where the body is
And will be   for years

I try not to think of her warmth 
Realise it has always been this way--a distance
Metaphorical or otherwise

Here  it is the tail end of summer
At 8 PM the sky remains light
I have not yet looked up the skies at night
Knowing there are no stars

So far away from her

(the slow remaining days) a long goodbye 7

And how do women understand goodbye?
I do not know how to comfort
Someone who says she is alright. 
Do we not take one for one's word?
I tell her repeatedly I am leaving,
settle as many things as her buoys

She will have to learn to navigate
Absences, this beautiful woman 
Who reminds me of my own weaknesses.

Wiping the plate last night, she 
Suddenly cried. And we both know. 

It is very quiet now where I am. 
Morning sun gold after early rain.
The dogs are asleep. I am having tea.
This afternoon I will talk about 
Literature. And Times.

In the last moment of departures,
Like chess, unsentimental, I step.
And how do women understand goodbye?
Looking at the disappearing figure.

(thursday night) a long goodbye 5

For whom is the goodbye? I ask myself now
Finally understanding why they all ask

My consistent refusal for despedida
No send-offs, I said, No one is leaving.

Even so I think of returns.
Knowing all these are leaving me

As I leave them. 
I do not want to sleep, wanting only

To keep awake. Lengthen, possibly, time.
This Thursday night longer and longer still.

There is a date waiting for me. A door.
An airplane. 

(no essays) a long goodbye 4

In time, I will give in, finally
Into the overwhelming lake of words
Into the river of words flowing
Into sea, and eventually
Into the ocean of forgetfulness.

The reader (the world) (you) becomes 
Finally my faceless intimate friend
Sitting beside me on the cliff
Overlooking mists of distance,
Pasts, dreams, futures... our feet

Dangling on the edge and the sky
Forever with a silver still sun.
And I will tell in the way my father
Once told of his childhood stories,
My own childhood, misty with disuse

And untelling, kept too long in a room
Within a room, within a room barred
By hardwood door, by steel door, 
By brick wall meant as much to conceal
As to say, "Move on. It is done here."

Beside the wall, sometimes a table.
On the table, flowers from the yard.
By the flowers, tea.
Sometimes, beside the wall, a bed.
I knock on the wall. And sometimes

Tell a memory in that exact way
Telling fails to tell all the details:
Exact hue of the afternoon, exact
Feeling of the felt at the bottom
Of a chess piece I was playing,

Learning consequences and consequences
Long before a single move is made.
How did my own father failed to see?
He taught me the game. "Pensar. 
Pensar." Can a child see futures

When a decision is made? I inherited
Many things from my father, I'm afraid.
Including the older face on the mirror.
The same face my lovers see 
At night, in the morning, when I think

I am alone, placing palms on the wall 
Holding the flood of words into 
Becoming few and fewer still.  

a long goodbye 2

Are we not merely a passing?
A mere body of memory
That dissolves inevitably
Into traces? Even the earth 
That keeps us in its bosom

Means to erase us, compost
Of nothing significantly
Important, if only for a moment
There in that briefest
Brief encounter: soul meeting

In timid attempt at love,
Immortality, that kind of song
Praising our own slow passing.
We have given it a name:

Life. Love. Living. Song.
Poetry. Your name. Mine.
Others we know of. All of us
Mere passing, remembering
Each other in hopes of staying.

When memory is long

it is more difficult to forgive. I remember
the exact words you said 
inside the room 
where all the words we hurled at each other
lay with the shards of glass and mirror

remains of china, frames, memorabilia
what you wore and the colour of the sheets
the sound of begging
and finality, that immovable self-possessed weight.

The stolid words, once arrived, stay
no matter you sweep them with many vacations,
drowning them in tropical seas of laughter
into a forgetfulness; the words know

how to breathe darkly in subterranean waters
finding their labyrinthine way, resurfacing
as beasts of reason
for disbelief and anger 

unfaithfulness. 
You and I do not mention 

the lock is broken and I wonder why 
it cannot be said in plain words.
What we choose not to understand.
How memory gets in the way.
A hallway, a strait. You and I, different shores.

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.

the flock, the flock

I no longer say "Bless me, Father
For I have sinned." I have left
A long time ago. Not anymore
The same child who read the bible
Every afternoon, cover to cover
For the stories of unbelievable
Faith for a beyond admirable man

Or god; in my life there 
Are stories in middle of stories
The ones I do not dare have light
Or air on them--for what use?
They are the silence between
My god and me. 

I have keep my peace with 
Men and women claiming closeness
To god whom they seem to know
Up close: we are entitled to
Our own brand of delusions. But
I do not say this, let them be.
My own is that god and I 

Are this: cosmos letting me be;
My own weakness leading me--
From time to time--to becoming
That same child again who
Has nothing but faith and fear

And faith: all to be good again.

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?

on devotion

M has two children, two sons, both of them
with autism. Because they live in an island 
at least thrice removed from the capital
and once deluged (it took a night 

in a ferry for her to attend
a poetry reading where we first met)
there were no centres for the boys. 
She and her husband must have schooled 

themselves on love
and forgiving the universe, and devotion.
Also pride 
for their sons.

Then the two of them built a small school
in the island where afternoons the boys
play at the shore and wade waters.
M takes photos of them and tells proudly
of little, but large, accomplishments.

Like pointing a fruit the boy wants to eat.

She writes poems about the largeness of love.
Serenity
and gratitude.
I cannot admire her enough for bravery.

These days she and the husband trains
CrossFit in anticipation of what is known
but unsaid. The boys are becoming teens. 

Not to go gentle into the night

It cannot be trust, if it is not trust
Isn't it?
Not love, if not love

Things that can only be absolute are
Too large
For lives with threaded seams

Do weeds in a landscaped yard know
Their fate, just the same
They soak up sun and rain

Of course we know sweetness cannot 
Be had for long
But what is life for, if not for it?

the kitten under the rain

a boy was keeping a kitten
away from the corner of their yard

the kitten squeezed between potted plant
and garbage bin

soaked because it had been raining 
two days and the streets still wet

my dog tried to sniff the kitten
the kitten tried to defend itself

tiny claws tiny fangs all ferociousness
in a tiny life in a tiny body

i showed the boy how to hold 
the kitten by its ear

it will remember its mother
and stop being fierce

so the boy held the kitten
the way its mother did

the kitten remembered its mother
and trusted the boy

and the boy threw the kitten away

early walk with dog

                                                for W


We still see the stars in the morning
because we get up before daybreak.
Sometimes we mistake it for night. 
My dog, what does he think
when he sits as I get our tie,
open the door and begin our walk 
no longer as long it used to be. 
We both are getting old.
He, more longanimous than I.

Metaphors of walking frighten me.
A long singular walk
at times with company
staying as long as they could.
In the end...

I realise this morning
how terribly frightened I am.
In spite of faith and knowledge
things have a way of turning
alright. Of course, 

the stars are there in the sky 
daybreak or night.