True Love True love. Is it normal is it serious, is it practical? What does the world get from two people who exist in a world of their own? Placed on the same pedestal for no good reason, drawn randomly from millions but convinced it had to happen this way - in reward for what? For nothing. The light descends from nowhere. Why on these two and not on others? Doesn't this outrage justice? Yes it does. Doesn't it disrupt our painstakingly erected principles, and cast the moral from the peak? Yes on both accounts. Look at the happy couple. Couldn't they at least try to hide it, fake a little depression for their friends' sake? Listen to them laughing - its an insult. The language they use - deceptively clear. And their little celebrations, rituals, the elaborate mutual routines - it's obviously a plot behind the human race's back! It's hard even to guess how far things might go if people start to follow their example. What could religion and poetry count on? What would be remembered? What renounced? Who'd want to stay within bounds? True love. Is it really necessary? Tact and common sense tell us to pass over it in silence, like a scandal in Life's highest circles. Perfectly good children are born without its help. It couldn't populate the planet in a million years, it comes along so rarely. Let the people who never find true love keep saying that there's no such thing. Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die. Wislawa Szymborska

	See You Next Year (for Donna Leombruno) Thanksgiving is in the tears that burst like ripe grapes. Proclaiming, see you next year, we wave, begin to panic. With these tears, the further we go the tighter we are entwined. We hold onto each others image, hold each other way-deep as the bus pulls us apart, stretching our gratitude for miles. -Judith Pordon

Lost

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.


David Wagoner

The Crystal Gazer

I shall gather myself into my self again,
I shall take my scattered selves and make them one.
I shall fuse them into a polished crystal ball
Where I can see the moon and the flashing sun.
I Shall sit like a sibyl, hour after hour intent.
Watching the future come and the present go -
And the little shifting pictures of people rushing
In tiny self-importance to and fro.

- Sara Teasdale

He was so old his bones seemed to swim in his skin.
And when I took his hand to feel his pulse
I felt myself drawn in. It was as faint
as the steps of a child
padding across the floor in slippers,
and yet he was smiling.
I could almost hear a river
running beneath his breath.
The water clear and cold and deep.
He was ready and willing to wade on in.

Ed Meek

I stood out in the open cold
To see the essence of the eclipse
Which was its perfect darkness.

I stood in the cold on the porch
And could not think of anything so perfect
As mans hope of light in the face of darkness.


Richard Eberhart

My hands
open the curtains of your being
clothe you in a further nudity
uncover the bodies of your body
My hands
invent another body for your body

Octavio Paz

TIme and again, however well we know the landscape of love,
and the little church-yard with lamenting names,
and the frightfully silent ravine wherein all the others
end: time and again we go out two together,
under the old trees, lie down again and again
between the flowers, face to face with the sky.

Rainer Maria Rilke

the fusion of gray

an eye of light
peeps in the tiny hole of darkness

and darkness lifts
up its skirt

so the hands of light
may hold what it keeps

between its legs
and light waves upon itself

as though in a trance
a dance

there is this fusion in gray
area where softness lands

and hardness stiffens to
the strength of life

at dawn pastel streaks are born
like a breed of black and white

nothing like an albino or
a negro

this is its offering for its
being lost and wary and

now weary it sits on the window
like a cat waiting for its thoughts

of prey
calculating the next ambush.

on the other hand

nothing is really useless.
even those who only wait, has that function.
waiting.
and it is a sacrifice, just imagine
you, at the train station,
wanting to leave and be somewhere else,
yet you do what you are assigned to
do that whole week,

waiting. It saddens me.
I tremble to some extent.

Like a heavy thud
of impatient feet, throwing away the shoes
that serve no purpose.

on the other hand, i assure you,
everything has a purpose.
the cup, the saucer, the teaspoon
and the white
sugar & the coffee,
they blend and you take your day
sipping.

in your world,
there are lapses, something glitches
you see slipping moments,
and you sigh.

ah, do not worry,
they also do what you are supposed to do,
they serve us &
you serve them

a bowl of cherries, a can of laughter,
a nugget of wisdom,
and time

this time, we note what ponder can do,
what blankness can paint
what seeds can sorrow grow?

to your world

there is a plant there,
lots of green leaves
concealing the color of its twigs
and hungry always
for the sun's attention
there are no flowers or
fruits
it has no power to bear
what it should have given
like the rest

i got a pen, and paper
and wrote the word: pretense.

the latest news

now, i found you,
bald, and fat and black lipped.
your shirt is tight wrapping your body.
the abs are gone
and the smile is having the tints of
pain, if i may say the
exact word: the angst still hounds
and sounds
the memories of the hissing snake
looking for a secret moist place to live
for another day.

now you found me too
very much like you, the shape of my body,
the tone of my hair, the sound of my
cracking bones, and the
silence that reigns in my lips.

it is not that we are afraid to say
something we feel within
but it is just that we have nothing to say anymore

perhaps we are feed up with the oral word
we keep our minds to searching the right words
of our existence

nothing about verbs anymore
but most about adjectives
more in the past tense

let me explain this to you, somewhere
perhaps, perhaps,
when we meet again

but how can we? as you said, our worlds are torn apart
by a distance
that we cannot bend to shorten it
to make it closer

i don't know, i still have to find my way back home
that friendship that we thought
may last.

how his children found farming

eddie is the guy
he used to be a lover of women in the town
when his father Toldo died
he inherits

tenancy, and so he married early
got six kids, wife ligated, and lived a
simple life beside a
ricefield, on the empty

fields he can see the black crows
and the sparrows
and the scarecrows, for year and years
he

tilled the land left by my forefathers
as we finish our courses
this time i come back to see him
how

old has he become, emaciated, deep brown skin
dry long hair, cracking lips,
gnarled fingers,

i though he too would not recognize me
we had a talk about the farm and the rice
produce, the cost of fertilizers and pesticides
and the chinese cartel
and the massive importation from vietnam
killing all of their dreams

i have not done my duty, but here he is
surviving on few grains left
on salted fish

all his children gone
domesticated in other homes of the rich
few in Hongkong
one in Dubai the other one opens her parlor
in Vigan

at the end, there is only the two of them
his ligated wife and himself
unbending.

guilt

it is the usual guilt
numbing my
senses, that bulb switched off
as i hold your arms and
as your body grinds above me
i see someone else
and feel what love is there left
for me

a situationer

the shadows dance
under the moon
you are alone under the tree
tearing the leaves

a poem for you

bury the head
deep into paper files
like one cormorant
looking for
deep sea fish
one finally longs for
air to breathe
a face to see
like the one you missed so much
yet you cannot even
touch
you rise with the fish
on your beak
swallow everything
but nothing satisfies
not the books
not the fish
not even that face that you long to see
this time
it is the memory of the deep sea
that entangles you
like a flower
vine creeping
holding on to the trellis

for Cita

perhaps you are a boat without an anchor.
we need anchors
because we are like boats
sailing in an ocean
sometimes the storms are bigger
and our sails are too small for the winds
and our rudders
are broken,

what i see is that you do not have any
and so i feel pity for you Cita
as you imagine walkie-talkies beside your ears
and talk about the machine of destruction
that is boring in your head like
grills,

that machine that bores holes in your skull
and yet everyone hears nothing
sees no blood

they cannot see what you insists
those that stole your locks and open your doors
and stole your furniture and computers
and spurn you

what education you have in the university
now you throw away
like a cheap earring

Cita, this poem asks you
see God.

Set yourself free from anything that might hinder you in becoming the person you want to be. Free yourself from the uncertainties about your abilities or the worth of your dreams, from the fears that you may not be able to achieve them or that they won't be what you wanted.

Set yourself free from the past. The good things from yesterday are still yours in memory; the things you want to forget you will, for tomorrow is only a sunrise away. Free yourself from regret or guilt, and promise to live this day as fully as you can.

Set yourself free from the expectations of others, and never feel guilty or embarrassed if you do not live up to their standards. You are most important to yourself; live by what you feel is best and right for you. Others will come to respect your integrity and honesty.

Set yourself free to simply be yourself, and you will soar higher than you've ever dreamed.