HER SMILE

HER SMILE

(For Marie Clementine)

To mean anything,/ a container must store/ a visible substance./ We destroy them, melt them/ all together, make them/ into new versions/ of what they were already,/ fill them again./ Bottomless refills...From “Bottomless” by Hannah Stephenson, The Storialist, 11-21-11

Hija mia, donde esta su sonrisa bella?

Where is your lovely smile, my child? 

As if on cue, a pair of glistening eyes

brighten her quick grin flashed on a

fitsful of face now suddenly larger

than the gaping windows around her. 

Barely dry from the ripples of a womb,

how could this infant speak a world

of adoring mime, a soundlessly gentle

smile that might as well be the sunrise? 

Is this the hidden world of a refilled

vessel, a venerable ghost in a new cup

of meaning come back to remind us

whence we come, a happy other place? 

There and here are a plenitude of grace,

where nothing is destroyed, where old

is new and a tandem of the eternal,

sprung from a gyre’s ever spinning cycle. 

A lover’s smile perhaps from a past

that is always present; a stored glass

brimming with what it already held?

Is this, therefore, a bottomless refill? 

Like a roadside cafe’s vending, does this

offer our parched lips with moistened

remembrances of ever tender kisses

that we slept by, warm and gentle still? 

De donde esta su sonrisa bella, hija?

Whence come your lovely smile, my girl?

---Albert B. Casuga

11-28-11

A WAITING GAME

Photo by Bobby Wong Jr.

A WAITING  GAME

This is the game/ we keep engaging in, Finding/ a Good Stopping Point by/ Seeing Clues in the Universe./ Tell me when, that’s us,/ grinding, waiting. Say when. ---Hannah Stephenson

Looking for a good time to stop,

is to stop looking like slumping

on a fallen trunk or a trail rock

jagged and jutting out of the bluff. 

Morning walks get longer along

empty spaces before familiar curbs

signal a turn to what we wait for:

the final bend. We are back home. 

“HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME.

Now Albert is coming back,

make yourself  a bit smart.”* Eliot,

of course, said it for me earlier. 

How long ago was that, when I

read those Wasteland lines? How

long have I waited to use them?

Is this a good time, yet? I waited. 

Because we have seen the clues,

because we have seen them all

already, I feel it is time to stop

waiting, sum up the bill, and go. 

What was I given to bear the pain

of knowing that I did not know?

Or build a home I could not live in?

What tools must I now return? 

In summing up, I will discount this,

in the game of haggling for a place

back in the Garden. Our stay here

was overpaid. We waited too long 

for that room with a better view,

that terrace with a canopy of roses,

and blue birds trilling on the sill.

O, for a touch of that distant sky! 

Next time around, if there is one,

I will be smart. I will settle only for

a room where I could see the sky

and the sea conspire to eat the sun. 

---Albert B. Casuga

11-27-11

*T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland, II. A Game of Chess, T.S. Eliot, the Complete Poems and Plays 1909-1950

OCCUPYING THE EARTH

OCCUPYING THE EARTH

A pile of fresh dirt at the woods’ edge: a groundhog has dug a den under the roots of a poison ivy-throttled maple. Will he itch all winter?—Dave Bonta, The Morning Porch, 11-23-11 

Places shape us if we let them, like a dug den
at the woods’ edge would define the hog’s
winter under maple tree roots, poison ivy
wrapping its trunk at ground’s access points. 

How much life can be eked out of this place
when boundaries throttle the explorer’s
spirit before one has started his exploration?
Not in my backyard, you don’t. Verboten. 

There is poison in the air, water, dirt, or fire
from the bellies of the earth to the fusion
chambers of atomic energy plants; death
in coal-fired stations belching black smoke
to ozone distances, drought in global warming. 

Seas gobble up atolls and resort isles; diseases
even sprout from infirmaries, and hospitals
become hospices for the dying and the dead.
Why must digging the dirt out of a den
start with the handicap of poison ivy? 

Why plant genius and courage in a man
when his unbridled enterprise and struggle
can only lead to disasters that make burial
grounds his enduring, grandest monuments? 

There is fresh dirt on the ground: An Occupier
will be buried among the tents in the park.
He could not restart his life; he took it instead.
Like that itch would do the groundhog in, I bet. 

— Albert B. Casuga
11-23-11

DISCOMFITURE

DISCOMFITURE

Stay still, we ask/ our things, while we repurpose/ them. What we mean is stay, / still, we need a little longer.—From “Repurposed” by Hannah Stephenson, The Storialist, 11-22-11

Memories are needs reshaped as still points,

if they could just be pinned down to stay

whole before falling like shattered mirrors

that recompose as harlequins of fluid faces

struggling to remould beyond the shadows

and the strange masks that fears and dread

now wear as they strut about as tall desires

we pray would remain longer than a mirage

of remembrances perishing like the carrion

of dreams and endless longings to be here. 

There are no signs nor arrows on this path

that could retrace those gentle and happy

days when we owned the place where we

could not get lost even if we heroically tried.

We mean to rename these streets and mark

them indelibly so we could come home again.

But those still points are never there nor still

when we need them steadier than chameleons

that we are born with, where our zero point

is neither water, nor dirt, nor fire, nor air.

--Albert B. Casuga

11-22-11

TAKING A BREAK. TAKING STOCK.

BREAKTIME!

Staycation doesn't seem to work with the abuela anymore, so we will take a week's break  somewhere even more quiet than the occasional rustle of newspapers and bills on the breakfast table.. We'll plan the longer one while there. Don't worry, kids, the inheritance kitty is still intact! (:--P) I think.

(Shh...More bills to pay!)

INNERMOST LONGINGS

INNERMOST LONGINGS

I’ve turned the bird of my inmost longings/ loose into the ether. / I’ll keep the green branch on which it roosts, / should it return. I’ll learn to live on this door’s swinging hinge, / sustain on flimsy hope. Because I/ love it so, I’ll let it take its leave of me.--- From “Aria” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa 11-10-11 

Should it return, I will be there by the sill
peering through drawn curtains, letting
the wind play with the chimes firmly hung
on its path. I need to be warned before I
open the door on its now rusty hinges.

I must appear unexpectant, must not look
surprised nor fazed, but gently regal even
as I welcome it back: You are home, love,
and your perch is still green like you never
left it. If you must go again, pray leave
the hinges swinging, you won’t take long,
would you? I could plan on it. But, will you?

— Albert B. Casuga
11-10-11

CHOOSING CHAOS

CHOOSING CHAOS

What is the difference between/ chaos and order, anyway. / Where would we look/to measure this. The before/or after. Where do those start. --- From “Methodology” by Hannah Stephenson, The Storialist, 11-08-11

 

Order is articulated chaos, its desire

an old rebellion that recalls the loss

of a streamlined paradise. Nothing

is needed here. Everything is given. 

Then, why walk out of this Garden?

A provident Eden where everything

grew including his wanton dreams,

of having his way: orders be damned. 

How simple things would have been.

Each pebble on the pond had a reason

to be there, each star a constellation

of sunlight, each sun a starter of life. 

How serenely flowers would bloom

on the tip of thorns, or water flow

gently from the cracks of dry rocks,

and ripe fruit fall on open mouths. 

Everything can happen here, nothing

is everything there, a cipher is full.

How benignly would mountains rise

from the sea, and lakes from mudpools. 

Would movement have moved this

conspiracy of stillness and creation?

He could not see this, nor feel the pain

of a yanked rib to make a woman cane. 

A yearning rooted in his belly burned,

a lust for roaming the hidden valleys,

finding struggle with fish and grain

a surprising tug on his arms and loins. 

Walking out on a promise of fullness

and unbridled abundance, did he

choose somehow to stand on hindlegs

and see whence came the thunderous 

offer? You who are made in my image,

shall have dominion over all that you

see and taste, all that is still or moves,

or none but the courage to choose. 

He chose to shape his own order out

of the unseen chaos of growth he

occupied East of Eden, and decided:

We will gather ourselves some fig leaves.  

We will make ourselves our own image.

--- Albert B. Casuga

11-08-11

*Adam and Eve in Paradise by Jan Brueghle the Elder

AN EMPTY SKY

AN EMPTY SKY

The sky has taken its place/ leaning against the wall. / It is like a prayer to what is empty. / And what is empty turns its face to us/ and whispers.../ I am not empty, I am open. ---From Vermeer, Tomas Transtromer

1. For The Buried Miners

All they could have done was to stitch slices

of their picture of the sky, its blank expanse

their thin measure of what feels free and safe. 

Buried for days on end under buttresses

that could no longer hold despoiled walls

of dirt, they prayed for a glimpse of the sky. 

They did not need to: even in the starkest

gloom of that dark and black tomb of gold,

they each had a share of that absent sky. 

O, for a smell of that dry air in Chile’s hills!

But this black hole, now a cloying dread,

is it all that is between them and raw despair?

2. Not Empty, but Open

Where is the sky when we need it? Or do we?

Even if it is there for the taking, will it answer

our prayers? It will empty itself of rain before 

we can be saved. It is closed. It is empty. Pray

to the rocks, as loud as an intoning bishop,

it throws the entreaty right back. But you hear 

an echo, a whisper  from an unseen face: I am

the refuge of all the winged who roam spaces

for the free and unafraid. It is your little voice. 

Like those darting sparrows, your unbound

soul will storm the abandoned bolted gates,

save that these doors are abundantly open, 

and have always been agape; and the garden,

once lost has always remained open, the sky

its door,  waiting for all who want to till it.

--- Albert B. Casuga

11-06-11

MOVING SOUTH TO OCCUPY

MOVING SOUTH TO OCCUPY 

While oak leaves spiral into the yard, six vultures tilt and pivot high above, searching for an updraft, then turn and drift on south. --- Dave Bonta, The Morning Porch, 10-04-11 

A mantle of oak leaves lifts with the updraft
like an unguarded skirt billowing to reveal
gnarled and spindly trunks, brittle leftovers
of the season’s turn, not yet rid of frost marks.

Nothing to look at from where I sip my tea.
Flapping vulture wings lend the fall wheeze
a healthier sound, their cackling a strangely
dismissive sneer as they fly towards tundra

where they might yet find carrion of seals left
after the hunt. Done with the hoarfrost, done
with the hollow whistle of the woods, done
with the walling-in poplar trees. Like nomads,

they fly south now to store meals heftier than
rodents and sparrows. Will they Occupy winter? 

— Albert B. Casuga
11-04-11

PATINTERO: REMEMBERING INDAY

PATINTERO

(For my dear Sister, Brenda Teodora Casuga-Maglaya+)

How do I best remember you, hermanita?

That father would call you princesita mia

after a swig of Domecq and sarsaparilla? 

You were not one to get excited by these,

nor would you bat an eyelash; you’d jump

off his lap and call out to me: “ ‘manong! 

                   That was always my cue for another game

                   of patintero under the lone lamp on our

                   camino; your sad eyes lit up, you’d smile. 

                   The smile you bravely left me when you

                   hugged me from your sick bed, was your

                   own smile, nobody else’s. I will not forget. 

--- Albert B. Casuga
11-03-11

GROWING AWAY

GROWING  AWAY

Every room is full, / even the empty ones. --- Hannah Stephenson, “Untitled”, 11-02-11

It is the room we dread to open

when we go back home because

we have to. You can bunk in here,

nothing has changed, you sleep

well in familiar places, don’t you? 

Except that this room is too full

of everything I might have been

running away from: you will be

back for the summer holidays,

won’t you? Mom would like that. 

I did not catch the train back,

nor did I try that summer when

father said he was ill: come home

as quickly as classes end, your

father would like that. Come home. 

It has been some time since I last

dusted off the cobwebs and dirt

from the sill and the pictures

in this room. I stare at them longer

now praying they would talk back: 

You’ve come home at last. Stay,

stay longer, we would like that.

There’s catfish to hook at the river

a stone’s throw from home. There’s

black berries to gather for wine. 

They stare back at my wan face

from the confines of the ornate frame

and the bursting memories in sepia:

Father in white gabardine suit,

Mother in her white terna de boda. 

I have come home, but I cannot stay.

This room is now full.  And empty. 

--- Albert B. Casuga
11-03-11

Click to zoom in on text.

TWO WOMEN: SUNDOWN TALES AND CANDLES

SUNDOWN TALES

For Lola Dora  (Dona Teodora Flores Casuga+)

All, all of those shadows that people

my stories, abuela, have their home

in your sundown tales. My poetry sings 

still with the rhythm of your voice, images

have been shaped before in the pictures

you etched with your face and fingers. 

They will not be blurred by old minds

fumbling with remembrances, recuerdos,

abuela, of all that you left to sprout 

in the moist and porous soil of our hearts

and the wild moss peats of our minds,

and every word from my pen is your word. 

CANDLES

For Grandmother (Dona Sotera Martinez-Buenaventura+)

If you were here, I would know where you

are: you would be by the gaping window

where the statue of the Sagrada Familia 

would be, lighting candle stubs, striking

matchsticks endlessly until all are lit,

and only the sound of struck flint remained. 

Soon, you would be wandering among empty

rooms, calling out for me to put on my church

clothes for a walk to the Iglesia and pray. 

However hollow those vaults were, or inert

those icons looked, the walls would vibrate

with your intoned oracion, and I’d feel safe. 

---Albert B. Casuga

11-03-11

A SWIMMING LESSON: REMEMBERING FATHER

A SWIMMING LESSON

For Father (Francisco F. Casuga+)

 

How much of those happy times

would you bring back, like the waves

ebb but must always rush back? 

It is the sea that returns you intact

into my now empty days, windy days,

your laughter always a raw memory. 

You threw me into those restless

waves, cried out a challenge: Swim!

Kick hard, swing your arms! Swim! 

And I never stopped, not for hurts,

not for lost dreams, nor for losses.

You warned me never ever to cry.

--- Albert B. Casuga

11-03-11

*Culled from "Poesias Para Los Muertos" (11-01-11). I was not able to say goodbye when he died at the Bethany Hospital in San Fernando, La Union.

TWO MEN IN MY LIFE*

ARTISAN BY DAY

For Lolo Jose  (Don Jose Buenaventura+)

I would look at your fingers, abuelo, if you

were here crouched by my easel, my paint,

my oil, my bastidores. They are my fingers. 

We hardly knew you, save that illustrados

from the city would look for you if they

needed the latest design in haberdashery. 

Don Jose, make my shoulders look broad,

Don Jose, I need to appear commanding;

Don Jose, please look away from my wife. 

Swarthy as your Basque roots, your eyes

blaze beyond your gaze; an artisan by day,

an artist and lover, abuelo de mis sueños.

COIN RACES

For Lolo Candro (Don Alejandro F. Casuga+)

Calling it a day at the old Mercado,

do you remember me running to you

snivelling at the tail end of every race? 

Kin of all sizes and wile would beat me

to all the coins in your trouser pockets

where you kept them as gold for the best, 

really, the most agile and the fastest

hands, the greedy and the needy, but you

said you knew I was simply the slowest. 

So you had the small pesetas for them,

but you always saved the peso de plata

for me near your heart: your chestpockets. 

--- ALBERT B. CASUGA

11-02-11

*Culled from "Poesias Para Los Muertos" posted 11-01-11 to higlight two great influences on my art and my other life as a politician and academic: my maternal grandfather, Jose Buenaventura, and paternal grandfather, Alejandro F. Casuga. The etches are how I remember them in my mind's eye.