HER BAPTISM

HER BAPTISM

(For Marie Clementine)* 

Was it cold water poured on your head

that jolted you into a cranky howl?

Who dared break your noontime sleep? 

A kindly old man with a blank cowl

said he has simply prepared for one

not there who would bring fire instead. 

I baptize only with water, but he for whom

I cry in this wilderness, whose shoe straps

I am unworthy to untie, he will use fire. 

Was it this fire from the fireless fount

that roused you then from your slumber,

where you must have giggled and played 

with the elves that sang you a lullaby?

It is the flame of my father’s spirit I burn

you with, sear you with his eternal love! 

Was it his ardent caress then that woke

you up to a quick cry of surprise not pain,

was it his outstretched hand on your head? 

Did he touch you, Marie, on your brow,

and asked: Will you be my lamb and follow

me, build the campfire to warm my flock? 

It will be very cold tonight at the stable.

Was it his gentle palm on your face then,

that eased your angry yell into a tender sob? 

Was he there, Marie? Did he smile at you?

---Albert B. Casuga

12-11-11

*Baptised as a follower of Jesus Christ at St. Francis of Assisi Parish Church, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, December 11, 2011, in the presence of her parents, Martin Lalonde and Adele Frances Casuga, her godparents, Alvin Kwan and April Veronica Casuga-Kwan, her grandparents  Albert and Veronica Casuga and Roger and  Therese Lalonde, nine Casuga-clan cousins, aunts and uncles, and family friends. Deacon Rev. Mr. Don Roberts, on behalf of Parish Pastor Rev. Joseph Grima, officiated.

THE UNWRITTEN SONG

THE UNWRITTEN SONG

You are learning/ to call to what you love, to see it returning.---Hannah Stephenson, “You Can do It”, The Storialist, 12-07-11

When the going is good, I would like to go

quickly and quietly like the kettle’s whistle

at tea time, hunched over a writing desk

daring to write that still unwritten song: 

The one that gets arrested in my dry throat

when I sing you to sleep, and you could not

or would not, afraid you would find me gone

in the morning, like most mornings we had

before we grew too old to stay longer in bed,

snuggling, counting the rings on the phone

before the children, now the grandchildren,

would put the intruder down and wonder

how we are waddling along, bum knees on

your right and mine on the left. Would you

want us to buy your croissants today? What

about the bok choy, and the other greens? 

This is as good as it gets, cold keys to pound

on, little words, cathedrals of thought,

wind on the pane, a houseful of memories,

quiet pictures to talk to on the walls, tunes

tinkling on the piano sans rhyme or reason

except to dust the keys off from imagined

dirt stuck by sticky children’s fingers who

raid the shelves of uneaten brittle cookies

and marmalade. Aiee, cochino, por Dios!* 

She would wail in her pained stentorian

dirge, mourning over violated piano keys

that remain untouched, unplayed, silenced

perhaps when arthritic fingers coupled

rheumatic knees, backs that recall pangs

of Calvary, and those kaleidoscopic visions

of ghostly shadows peopling porch walls,

bouncing, dancing, trembling like puppets

on a string, undefined, indefinable, strangers

come to visit us, and we do not know their

names. When the going is good, I will go

quickly and quietly, humming that song

I said I will write for you before I go.


 

--- Albert B. Casuga

12-10-11

*God, how filthy!

THE ACCOUNTANT

THE ACCOUNTANT

Sunny and cold. A nuthatch lands on the dead cherry and begins a close inspection of the limbs, dapper as an accountant in his gray suit.---Dave Bonta, The Morning Porch, 12-08-11

Almost invisible, he plods quickly through carrion
piled helter-skelter on the bulldozed hillock. Dead
heads, dead eyes, dead limbs, dead legs, dead dead
form wreaths on the gaping holes in graveyards we
now know: Kampuchea, Maguindanao, Somalia,
Libya, Uganda, Nigeria, Botswana, Russian pogroms,
Mein Kampf railroads to the Herr’s crematoriums,
killing fields: he was there, “been there, done that”,
his austere and remote account of his unique job:
counter of the dead, keeper of the books, master
of the morgues, “keep them coming while we could,
death shall have no dominion.” Nor a condominium.
Like the nuthatch, he walks with a limp in his dark,
gray suit, shrugs, leaps over the dead cherry and
stifles a long, deep yawn, and fixes his ledger pages.

— Albert B, Casuga
12-08-11

LOOKING AT RAIN

LOOKING AT RAIN

Rain. I’m mesmerized by the driveway puddles, how rings of ripples form and overlap, each raindrop magnified at the point of termination.---Dave Bonta, The Morning Porch, 12-07-11

Two ways of looking at rain

as an allegory or metaphor:

rain, rain, go away children

want to play! But we tore

through the walls of rainfall

naked, deliriously, gleefully

screaming for the sky to fall

on our tender loins, scarcely

touched by wind and fingers

carved coyly into cane leaves

that lash and tickle derrieres

poised skyward, athwart as if

to mock a voyeur leering in

some hidden crack of clouds,

to espy these glistening skin,

patches that pass for clothes

on the backs of carousing

children lost in their singing. 

Before long the rain stopped.

Into lives some rain must fall.

Songs ended. And we grew up.

Rain became our quiet call

to clear our driveways of debris

from torrents that shredded

twigs of their foliage, cut a tree

in a sudden storm we dreaded. 

---Albert B. Casuga

12-07-11

A TOY PISTOL

A TOY PISTOL

Toys and stuffed animals feed/ our first experiments in truth/ and desire--the dolls of our youth/ are pets, children. We call/ to our toys, and they all/ leap up, paw at our jackets/and faces. The racket/ of our own loneliness is loud. / We crave a friendly crowd. ---From “Toys Are Us” by Hannah Stephenson, The Storialist, 12-05-11

My first toy was a pistol whittled from a branch,

and from the windows of abuelo’s grand house,

I must have aimed and shot at as many cousins

who would yell for me to put on a pair of pants,

and come down to play with boys not dolls. Pistol,

I would yell back, I will shoot you, kill you all!

It had the shape of a Tom Mix shooter, a whittled

branch, really, cut and shaped by a drunk uncle

who said he would make me one if I quietly stole

the gin from father’s drawer so he could share

the ten-cent coke bottle with me when the gun

is done, and I could ride away on the banana stalk

horses with a gun to cut down all the little injuns

across the road who have been crowing all day long

for me to come down and shoot it out, their bows

ready to sling their arrows and pebble bullets

with their slingshots. Be sure you have pants on,

it will protect us from your gas-bombs, ass bombs! 

From those windows, I raised hell and rat-ta-tat;

I did not know it was only a quiet “bang” or “ping”

for a pistol the size of a pretzel. When I came down

to finally play with them, mother said my asthma

was gone, thank god I was ready to attend school,

learn to read and write, recite poems for abuelo

or sing old Spanish songs I barely understand

so he would get up from his rocking chair and

shout down the boys to leave me alone with dolls

or pistols before some stupid presidente would

consider me old enough to join the guerrillas

and like a pea-sized idiot get myself quartered

by Japanese bombs. My first toy was a pistol,

but now on my dotage not unlike my abuelo’s , I

have nothing but contempt for guns and wars

even to defend a homeland; all I want and  pray

for is be able to play with my live dolls who coo

and smile, and giggle, and before long say abuelo.

Before long, I am sure, they, too, will be pistols. 

--- Albert B. Casuga

12-06-11

OCCUPYING THE GARDEN

Photo by Bobby Wong Jr.

OCCUPYING THE GARDEN 

What do I want, what do I need? Later, I tell myself, later. There’s plenty of work, the hours full of obligation. But I know I am not virtuous: I am always my hunger. ---From “Hunger” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 11-30-11

What if this place were made only for the other?

You are yourself, but you are also others’ other. 

Were you conceived for yourself, or for a specie?

Someone must extend the process of evolution. 

Your first act out of the womb was to let out a cry.

Was it not to alert the birthing other you’re here? 

And you will bring joy to a union forged in dreams,

but you could always be the unwanted obligation. 

What if you were the inevitable happenstance

come from the aches of groin and gravid reasons? 

Are you an issue of love or lust? An afterthought?

When did you start to even aspire to be yourself? 

Dare you grow then to even ask: What do I want?

What do I need? Selfish angst? No. Must-ask ones. 

One cannot give what one does not have, operatio

sequitur esse.  Find and feed your hunger to know 

what you are here for. Are you a brother’s keeper?

Or does a lover keep you? Either way, a hunger. 

If you were for the other, you must be provident;

but fill your tills first before giving a ruddy cent. 

Is your neighbour the village thief? Love him.

Clothe the naked, as you would with a fig leaf. 

Before long, you would have guessed how little

you are without the other, and learn to whistle 

in the dark, and wait, and build, and gather

behind walls, until, one on top of the other, 

you begin to climb beyond your pauper space

to occupy a lost garden, a haven, as your place. 

---Albert B. Casuga

12-02-11

ECHOES

ECHOES

All is disposable,/ except for that which/ persists. The echo/ unhinged from/ the sound that/ threw it. ---Hannah Stephenson, “Aftermath”, The Storialist, 11-28-11

1. 

How far will an echo go

before it peters out to

leave its source’s halloo

sounding thin and hollow? 

How long will this echo

last in hallways that throw

peels of joy that follow

a escape from deep sorrow? 

Is it a will-o-the-wisp, too,

much like the brief flow

of warm breeze over snow

that won’t melt nor thaw? 

Everything here must go.

All is disposable. But echo

that ripples here through

time is an eternity or so. 

Am I not after all a shadow

of that maker of a rainbow,

who sent a dove not a crow

to fly from that ship’s bow? 

Am I not truly God’s echo?

2.   

Echoes shape corridors lean

leaving them a cipher’s silence

not unlike the axiom of a day: 

All things go up to fall the way

fractured birdwings fall, violence

met in the loins of wind. 

Lean corridors shape echoes,

silence ciphering them, leaving

a day axiomed as not what is unlike  

the way the fall of things strike:

violence on the fractured birdwing,

Winds loyned with zodiaqual zeroes.*

 3.  

O THAT A FALL MUST GO
GO MUST A FALL THAT O

THE WAY A COMET’S TAIL
TAIL A COMET’S WAY...

---Albert B. Casuga

11-30-11

*Loyned – being the sound of echoed “loined”; zodiaqual, is “zodiacal” (from arcane to new).