taking a world on the shoulder

What we had was time and an excess of courage.
Immortals dreaming of endlessness
What to do with the beyond imaginable: True
Love and sunsets of halfway around the world.
Was it as clear as your toes underwater
Crystal sea on a blue tropical Sunday? What
To be.  How.
A little child squeals, the mother surprises with
Delights: look an ant on sand carrying a world on its shoulder
Look the endless tireless march to the beyond
All of them certain of tomorrow and afraid.
What happened between the dreaming and the coming
True?  Incremental losses
Of time and faith and courage: all necessary
All inevitable.
So that the mother looks at the child now and remembers
feeling the known unnameable.
     

sometimes bolder

after a number of drinks
and right before
a single bed

a conversation with
half-meant debate
about the matter

of it all: art
and change
to what

extents

can men go on 
and on ignoring
libido 

loneliness
and the liveable
change

about music and silence

so much has been said about silence, its many ways
of being and through being.  one truth is 

it is difficult now: to find it in between many things.
the world does not leave, no matter

how one keeps away.  something always calls:
a task, a calendar, a message, an urgency.

the book i promised myself to read continues to wait.
the plane arrives.  the plane leaves again.

the music does not stop.
but do we really want it to?

burning

there must be a reason why, valentine
why

they all share the same
patron 

Oh!  of lovers
love, epilepsy, and plague!

cape town

if you come to visit a city, do so not as a tourist.  
else there will be many things you will miss.  

the tourist is always asked to see
the many beautiful things,  

of course he is also asked to see
the beautiful only.

rocks, water, light

photo by A.L. Abanes (may you and your family be safe)

at what point the anger? 

the resignation, the calm? 

how aptly it was said: 

when you know the storm is coming, 

the quiet has a shimmer. 

and shimmer it did; and Haiyan 

took many lives: children, 

men, women.  

no mention of countless pets,

no word about lovers

only strangers with unknown names

in a city nearly wiped unrecognizable.

was it only half a year ago i came 

backpacked to visit and stand

to admire the sunset at their pier?

no news, only reports of dead 
bodies in evacuation centers,

trying to explain the unknowing-ness

of storm surges. of divine plans.

but the footage of a man

the body of his six-year-old 

daughter in his arms, cold.

a shimmering light with it all.

  

after south (part 3)

someday, i will meet you at the coves
where the cliffs meet the sea
and the sea, the sky

and we will see
all the fishermen with their boats
and the tides that meet

at the line between sea 
and sky.  where the children are
the only versions of our selves 

left after the aging in our minds.
the mornings will be beautiful, 
the dusk

the wind on ears, strand of hair, 
brine on cheeks and tongue.
and at night

the world will be full of stars--planktons
shining on edges of the waters surface, 
fireflies at the darkened trees,

stars on the clear night sky--
and twinkling also, a human-
made satellite

moving like a wishing star.













                                      

one night in June

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.

two lists in this season of rain

things to do in this season of rain:

1.  graduate school final paperwork and grades
2.  first draft of proofs
3.  two new programs
4.  a paper
5.  a second collection 
6.  (project that has been sitting in my head for a year now: need to kick myself) 
7.  mind the front yard grass


 things to be happy about in this season of rain:

1.  graduate school final paperwork and grades
2.  first draft of proofs
3.  two new programs
4.  a paper
5.  a second collection
6.  (a project that has been sitting in my head for a year now:  to kick myself)
7.  the front yard grass
























 

two parcels

the first parcel had been, supposedly, received 11 months ago.  documents processed for at least two days, an airplane ride away.  i was promised delivery by courier, and waited, patiently, through 11 months.  no reply.  called long distance etc.  meanwhile, the office went ahead with things and so it appeared the parcel had been received.  until i personally checked to make sure.  there was nothing.  retraced steps personally:  airplane, inquiries.  yes, the parcel was sent.  the young lady searched the files:  in a packed drawer in a steel cabinet, in a pile of brown folders on a table, etc.  she produced a trace in a card:  yes, it was sent months ago.  she typed the code and printed electronic proof:  yes, the computer does not lie.  the parcel had been sent, and received (supposedly) 11 months ago.  the electronic trace gave a name.  i called the name.  hi, do you remember receiving the parcel on this date?  the name denied.  no, i did not receive anything.  less than an inch away from literally saying are you accusing me?  i ran my fingers through my hair.  there was no use arguing or pushing when the next words wouldn't be good at all.  okay, i tell myself, what would be the point of arguing and the prize of winning it?  the documents are still lost.  lost in the jungle of the name's working place.  sigh: to retrace the steps, to book another flight, to process the documents again.

the second parcel was received yesterday.  Gloria, who must be feeling partly responsible for the lost documents, was excited: she sent me sms and walked with me the moment i arrived at the office.  your documents have arrived! she said.  the odds are.  one look at the sender and.
the second parcel was expected: i was informed i was to receive it within the week.  still, it is a happy thing.  the second parcel of papers.  with all the copyediting marks of the hardworking copyeditor who must've wondered why there were too many absent punctuations.  why subheadings and titles are in small letters.  i will have to begin writing stet after stet after stet.  the note enclosed in the parcel said a cover artist has been assigned and i sent email that i've asked someone to do it.  that she is in muscat/masqat, oman may need to be discussed.  in the meantime, let's see what can be done.




















 

pilot lights

we write letters to the universe.  thoughts into the flesh of words.  no matter the words, too, no longer assume a physical mold the way they used to do when books and their pages were tangible.  still, we write the words and flung them out into space, into the vast expanse of the Net like a wide lake, like an ocean, often folded, keeping in its bosom both the shipwrecked and the sails.  we look up the stars, who live longer than our lives, and who have been pilot lights to the many more others before us.

through the looking-glass

photo by K. Kwe

someone read me cards.  i have always been half afraid of taking a peep into the future, like a cheat.  in the same way i try to never spoil a movie or a book or a story, even if told in midst of a conversing circle, how things will inevitably turn out in the end.  in the same way when i travel, with a luggage or a backpack, or when i run to get to know a new city, or new corners in the old city, it is always without definites in mind.  we all know astrology, sure.  and there are always the horoscopes in a page of any newspaper sold around the corner, sometimes even left on the doorstep, if not the yard.  no matter of great genius there, to connect cause with consequence, and to plot possibilities given the circumstances.  what is young will grow old, what is borne will die, and good times can turn bad, and bad, into better.  one can say it is all inevitable.  and yet.  these all do not stop us from loving and from growing children, from caring dogs, from planting perennials.  from collecting memories as if they were dimes, pennies along the pavement found in secret by little children on way to the market or the grocer, holding mommy's hand while crossing the street.  with a happy thought.  who knows, by chance, something pretty and special might just be there.  and we've got a few pennies in hand.

Things of Light

Lately I’ve been remembering things
Of light: Sundry shining things:
Coins, pebbles, marbles in a glass,
Fleeting glimpses of mottled mornings
Of floorboards newly waxed,
April shower dripping on a poinsettia path,
Shafts piercing a maculate afternoon of acacias.

Clouds roil and rain stains the parchment
Sky of a dry season (thunder rolls
Across the horizon), but the glinting discs
Of lightning long remain in my recall—
The moment glancing on the well-worn
Edges of my window sill—still chasing me
In my smog-blurred somnambulant noons.



Marne Kilates