to the rocks

for my youth
i heard all the music of the rocks
it was hard but it was good
it was rough but we learned to like them all
nothing destructive
just the surging and the hilarity
of the roller coaster
ride to
the present stage,

and now,
to the rocks shall everything be,
i keep the career
and i cannot keep both,

soon, i shall shy away from
any contractual obligations
i have my own reasons
so shall the other party,

and the judge of all time,
God, or man, or everyone one,
shall say,

we agree, the binds are too strong
but somehow there is a word
to loosen it,

they are right,
they have called it by the name of chains
iron locks,
nightmare clocks,

at night, you see a face without eyes and ears
and there is that big scream


on those days
you keep on watching how the wind is robbing
the trees of their leaves

and then
at the end, you realize that there is nothing that you need

the nothingness engulfs you
and then happily
you embrace its arms, you rest, you are gone

you leave a note to the sands,
forget everything
leave all as they are.

venus raj

i should have
been fearless
i could have answered
the question with

'it is none of your
business! '

the truth

brace yourself
to all these lies
for in the next room
at the next door
and at the next window
and at the next
open porch after all
these lies
may be truths
and you are no longer
willing to believe them
because they too
know how to hurt you

last night

last night i had
a single pill of 'x'
you know what
it is
do not make any
pretensions
it did not obstruct
a word
it slipped right though
smooth and easy
and then
the usual things happen
i am into this garden
they call Eden
and there is this Eve
and the apple
and of course the snake
i still doubt whether
i was God or
i was simply
the sinful Adam

when i wake up this
morning
my body was as heavy
as the Titanic
which as you well know
sank.
my mouth is sewed
with invisible thread
and i can feel
the pain in my lips
my teeth are imprisoned
soldiers
i want to eat some of
my words for
breakfast
but i cannot.

you see? this happens
sometimes
and so what we can do
is simply sit on one
of the chairs drenched
by last night's rain
at the porch
and just be silent.

the poetry

it is not
in the metaphors that
we invent from
day to day
those that we see
in things that
we dress for ourselves
those that we
think can speak what is
unspeakable in
our beings
which in any way no matter
what we do
remain unspeakable
because they are.

the poetry in us
is not the poem.

do not ask me
it is nothing

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