MOURNING

MOURNING 

Try to tell the woman changing her husband’s/dressings he might not see this year’s first snow./ ---From “Try” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 08-18-11

I will not lose you, not this fall, nor winter,

not when leaves abandon their trembling

branches, not when snow covers dead twigs,

not while I have enough life for both of us.

No. You cannot leave even when that is easy,

you cannot simply turn around, run, give up,

and limply bare your neck for the sneering

reaper to slice through it like I would a hen’s

throat, and still be cocksure I will forgive you,

because I will not, not when dying becomes

the final act of betrayal, the unkindest cut

of all. I need you to gather the firewood

that should last us through all our winters,

harvest the berries we’d throw at each other

before summer burns them into ugly prunes,

to watch autumn paint a graffiti of rainbows

around the porch we pieced together when

we built this house fencing in our home.

No. I will never let you leave me in spring. 

O, if only her silence were just the stillness

of a quiet memory. Not ceaseless mourning. 

---Albert B. Casuga

08-18-11

HER SILENCE

HER SILENCE

Too many times like passing ships, at both ends of missed/opportunities. Why can’t we touch at the center, in silence?---From “Ghazal of Unattainable Silence” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 08-17-11

Her stony silence was her bullwhip,

she did not have to raise her raspy

voice to make us fall in line and freeze

if that were what hell was made of. 

Her eyes fixed at a shadowy distance,

she would not bother to look our way.

We always knew she had absconded

once again to a place we will not find. 

There are low zarguelas trees there,

their fruit are within your easy reach.

Just stretch your hands as high as

you could toward the sky. Zarguelas! 

We would hide in the farm for days,

and you would cook rice cakes for us,

and pick green mangoes from the tallest

tree, and cut off pineapple eyes for me! 

I would look at you in silence for hours

and whisper how much I would lose

if you had gone away and not come home.

O, how my whole world would crumble! 

If she could lisp those words she wrote

him when he rushed off to that war none

of us would wish even on the slit-eyed

enemy, she would be singing them now. 

Abuela, tell us about that place where you

found him chopping wood for the vats

you brought to cook the sweetest rice cakes

to last you two a lifetime. Abuela, tell us. 

We fall silent at the hint of a smile on her

quivering lips that would have formed

his name who might have just passed by

on a cold breeze like a silent passing ship, 

to touch her back, her hair, her face---

but she looked away into that dark, distant

place uttering perhaps her fondest rebuke:

You are home! What took you so long?  

O, if only her silence were just the stillness

of a quiet memory. Not ceaseless mourning. 

---Albert B. Casuga

08-18-11

AN ALLEGORY

AN ALLEGORY

When the air is clear and the sun

rises through a mottle of trees,

a riot erupts among the smallest

citizens of the Hollow: fruit flies flit

against a traffic of gnats, like rock

throwing thugs in a dying ghetto: 

all part of the fun of playing out

dangerous games like staying alive

where there  is always the fear

that sunshine dries the swamps,

exterminating their interim places,

like hooded Chemco sprayers. 

---Albert B. Casuga

08-17-11

Prompt: As always when the air is clear and the sun at a low angle, I’m astonished by how many small insects drift back and forth between the trees. ---Dave Bonta, The Morning Porch, 08-16-11

DESIDERATUM

DESIDERATUM

...They pose, / then fall, purposefully, / yelping WOOO!, which translates / as A little fear is fun. / The pool looks / too shallow to hold them, / but they plunge in and resurface, / grimacing to show how cold the water is. ---From “Resemblance” by Hannah Stephenson, The Storialist, 8-16-11 

How little of fear is fun? How much of fun is fear?

Intensities of either define staying on with courage,

Some grace under pressure, if there were no choice. 

But there is. Yet, you probably screamed your pain

away by claiming you did not choose to be born

when struggle became a burden and living a chore. 

Does your mother still cap birthdays with the story?

The one about how fearful she felt that giving birth

was not going to be fun, until she heard you yell 

your tiny heart out, trembling for air, screaming

as early as then: This is not fun, you know. Being

pushed or pulled even before you got your bearings. 

Would you have understood what in great blazes

everyone was happy for? Or was that a grimace on

Father’s face to counterpoint the smile on Mother’s? 

Before long, we forget the fun that was earned

to vanquish the fear marked on all things mortal:

a day after birth, we start the art of dying. Living? 

Why should it be delirious to be riotously happy?

How much of fear is fun? How much of fun is fear?

If there were no life hereafter, would you even ask?

---Albert B. Casuga

08-16-11

SUMMER POEMS

SUMMER DANCE  

48 summers ago, on our maiden dance,

I knew I had only one left foot,

but almost died to discover I had two.

BAGUIO SUMMER ON MY MIND 

Skating, sailing at Burnham Park,

I stole my first kiss, and carved

her name on a pine tree’s brittle bark.

SUMMER SUNDOWNS 

Now we watch shimmering summer sunsets

on porches while we play our waiting game,

wondering if her name is still among the branches.

---Albert B. Casuga

08-15-11

These "one-line" poems were earlier posted in their original forms in Dave Bonta's Via Negativa, 08-13-11

A SWAN SONG

A SWAN SONG 

How often do your thoughts/stray among the vines of morning/glory, curling toward me?--- From “Each Question is Always the Same Question” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 08-11-11

They do not stray, those tendrils on the lattice:

I know they have taught me how to crawl out

to even the wispiest of sunlight, slivers of warmth

on the sill where I look out waiting for your call— 

Halloo, is there anybody home? Where are you?

You espy on my flights of angst, startling sense

into some otherwise absurd tableau of prancing

dancers, a burden of memories I now cower from. 

Where were you when coming home was good?

When did you invite your demons to live with us?

Why do they snarl havoc when I coyly beg, plead,

for them to leave what once was our only haven? 

These questions are the same dreaded questions,

I dare not answer. I am old, and often my thoughts

stray among withered vines whose flaccid hold

on trellises stop them from curling back to seek 

leftover rays from a sunset we no longer tarry

to chatter about, their warmth and magic gone. 

---Albert B. Casuga

08-14-11

PALABRA DE HONOR

PALABRA DE HONOR 

How long does wood need to steep,/to stay alive long enough with clay/it loves in the kiln?---From “Each Question is Always the Same Question” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 08-11-11  

I would take forever, if I were wood, to steep

in peacock colours and stand tall as a totem

pole.  But I am still an uncut trunk, a lookout

point really, staying true to a palabra de honor.* 

On my word of honour, even when I am felled

to provide fire for cauldrons or heat for kiln,

I will stay alive long enough as ember until

you have been formed as that earthen jar 

to hold what we have  always wanted to keep:

all the love and promise moulded in crucibles

of passion molten at last as honey to last us

to the end of our journey beyond this woods. 

This kiln fire would have long cooled down,

before the flame of this palabra de honor,

my troth and my word, would have flared out.

My trunk will be imbued with lustrous red soon. 

---Albert B. Casuga

08-13-11

 

*Palabra de honor ---A word of honour, a troth that one is ready to live or die for.