ON WRITING 30 and RISK (COLLABORATIVE POEMS SERIES #20)

CELEBRATING POETRY MONTH THIS APRIL WAS CERTAINLY REWARDING. WE WILL DO IT AGAIN COME APRIL (NOT AFTER ALL THE CRUELLEST MONTH).

ON WRITING 30


Was this the end of the grappling then?
Tremulous nubbins on trembling branches
do not make for fair jousting grounds,
neither does the lashing wind make it.

But what if it was not the frolic of a day?
What if it was a mating romp atop the poplar?
Then woe to the one left behind on the tree.
The fall of the other was a risk well-met.

The fall at thirty feet is not unlike writing 30,
to a story troubling for a beginning and end.
Whence came the fall? At story’s sorry start?
Or was it the fitting end to one not yet begun?

—Albert B. Casuga
04-29-11


A Collaborative Poem Response (after On Writing 30)


RISK


Nubbin of green, tremulous branch
of a tulip poplar– how fast the careen
from thought to dream.

~ Luisa A. Igloria
04 29 2011

Poetic Prompt: Two squirrels grappling or grooming on a thin tulip poplar branch, among nubbins of new leaves. One slips and falls 30 feet to the ground.---Dave Bonta, Morning Porch 04-29-11



With these poems, we conclude our marking Poetry Month with the writing of poems almost on a daily basis.

This would not have been possible without the curating, prompting, and hosting (in his websites) of these poems and poetry writing by Pennsylvania poet Dave Bonta who has generously offered his literary blog, Via Negativa and Morning Porch for the creation of collaborative poetry.

This project was participated in by poets Luisa A. Igloria, Dave Bonta, Dale Flavier, and other poets whose work have been archived in Bonta's Via Negativa. http://www.vianegativa.us/

I am grateful for the opportunity of working with Mr. Bonta and Ms. Igloria who were steadfast in their devotion to the writing of poetry prompts and poems that could easily be considered as nothing but phenomenally patient if not surprisingly creative.

From this month-long activity, I admit I gained much more than I have invested. I know that I can still collect my wits to write when I sit down to write, wherever I find myself agonizing over an image here, a figure of language or thought there. Above all, I have rediscovered what prompts me to write. And so, write I will. I hope to my dying day. (At 68 yesterday, April 29, every day henceforward should be a bonus.)

For now, stay posted. I promise to keep the pace up. I will not disappoint a grandchild who has read my literary blog, and thinks of Gramps as simply awesome.

Luisa A. Igloria, Norfolk, Virginia

Dave Bonta, Pennsylvania

Albert B. Casuga, Ontario, Canada

TWO POEMS: A CURTAIN CALL and INTERMISSION (COLLABORATIVE POEM SERIES #19)

A CURTAIN CALL


The homo viator moves on his stage,
prompted by hoarded plaudits stored
in his hungry heart: one more bow,
and he retreats behind the curtains
to await those calls for an Encore!
No calls come, the curtains fall.

The gobbling fowl’s theatre is not off
the prompt mark: preening, hamming,
posturing, he goes through the acts
lusting for audiences who might weep,
laugh, bellow, strut, and ache with him.

When the curtain falls, and fleeting
encomiums echo only in the emptied
cavern, he wonders if the season
would end when even hummingbirds
no longer wait in the theatre wings.

—Albert B. Casuga
04-28-11

Poetic Prompt: Up in the field, a turkey erects his traveling theater and poses for an audience of two. The first hummingbird hovers in front of my face.---Dave Bonta, Morning Porch 04-28-11

INTERMISSION

…often there is no word/ for such intermissions./ …A homing— the way you cup/ the back of my head in your hand…---Luisa A. Agloria, from "Interior Landscape, with a Frenzy of Wings", Via Negativa


There is no word for such intermissions.
A rendezvous at some theatre wing,

a random counting of all the lost days
when you travelled to parts unknown,

a quick embrace, prolonged gazes heavy
with unspoken desire. O, I know this

was a homing—the way you cupped
the back of my head in your hand—

you are back, but you have not returned,
so, love, while the curtains are down

tilt my face toward the crack of light,
find my hungry mouth, fill my empty

arms before the final act opens, or even
before they send in an old, tired clown.

—Albert B. Casuga
04-28-11

Collaborative Poem Prompt: Luisa A. Igloria's poem, "Interior Landscape, with a Frenzy of Wings" posted in Via Negativa http://www.vianegativa.us/2011/04/interior-landscape-with-a-frenzy-of-wings

OLD SONGS: (COLLABORATIVE POEMS SERIES #18)

OLD SONGS


There were songs, and there were songs.
But the old ones were those that stayed.
“Sometimes, I wonder why I spend
the lonely nights, dreaming of a song…”
Remember that refrain? Do they die?
Not when you sing them as you putter
around your plot of roses: “Roses are red,
violets are blue, sugar is sweet, my love,
and so are you….” How can they fade?
Not even when Crosby-like you pine
for a Mexicali rose: “Stop crying, I’ll
come back to you some sunny day.”
That’s how they come back, don’t they?
Like the ebb tide kept on erasing those
love letters you wrote on the sand.
“O, you laughed when I cried each time
I saw the tide take our letters on the sand.”
But you were young and you kept writing
though the tide did not stop. You did.
It’s like waking up to a familiar song,
it takes a while before you know it’s new;
you’ve heard it before, then forgot the words,
until one day these were just the right words
for your song after your morning cup of tea.
Just like that yellowthroat’s warble:
it’s a late spring you know, and you heard
its lilt last fall. Like old songs, they just linger.

—Albert B. Casuga
04-27-11

Poetic Prompt: A song so familiar it takes several minutes to register that this is new, the first I’ve heard it since last fall: common yellowthroat. ---Dave Bonta, Morning Porch 04-27-11

Give me a feedback: Is this poem maudlin? How much emotional content can a poem have before it turns saccharine?

A HUNGRY HEART: (A COLLABORATIVE POEM SERIES #17)

A HUNGRY HEART


And I have only my hungry heart, my/ wobbly heart: I cart it everywhere I go.---Luisa A. Igloria, From, “Not Yet There”, Via Negativa

1.

It is when things are exactly
where they ought to be, that
you begin to wonder where
you might have lost yourself
or found yourself needing
all these quicksilver thoughts
of longing, of desire pulsing
through your hungry heart,
your wobbly heart, and you
wander among the debris
of past lives, old loves, fallen
dreams in crumbled houses,
carting your throbbing heart
through every dark chasm
posted with forbidding signs:
“no hearts accepted here”,
and bravely, you walk away,
still carting your defiant heart
through uncharted streets of
lost loves and wanton desire.

2.

Now, you find yourself lulled
in a spring garden as a flower
stripped of its honey colours,
a mere tendril, a bud worn
as some valediction, and still
you dream and chase the
will-o’-the-wisp, and cart your
heart, your wobbly heart,
to parts unknown where signs
forbid the chastened lover.

—Albert B. Casuga
04-26-11

COLLABORATIVE POEM PROMPTS: (1) “Not Yet There”, Via Negativa, http://www.vianegativa,us/2011/03/not-yet-there/ and (2) “Breviary”, Via Negativa, http://www.vianegativa.us/2011/04/breviary/ by Luisa A. Igloria.

This poem uses two Igloria poems as prompts and was posted in Via Negativa, 04-26-11 in response to the poem “Breviary” which is Igloria’s response to Dave Bonta’s Morning Porch 04-26-11 post.

TWO MORNINGS: A WAKING UP POEM

TWO MORNINGS


Waking up on Fifth Line, when the ground fog
creeps on moonlit streets like a late lover lost
under slept-on sheets, surprises me as still
the best time to rise when mornings are really
midday scrambles to catch something: bus,
tram, train, time, traffic, trash bins trampled
over, reeking tramps, ad nauseam. I am still.

On a porch, where houses are still better off
with them, I sip my minted tea as serenely
as I could, miming the movements of my mind:
if I knew then what I know now, if I loved then
as fiercely as I could have, if I could turn time
around and give it a kick in its arrogant behind,
if I could shelve that rushing sunrise and not
waken to carpenter bees and highway buzzing…

However languid or rushed my mornings are,
does not matter now. Waking up still beats not
getting up or not waking up to another still day.
I am most still when I can feel my shoulders shrug.

—Albert B. Casuga
04-26-11

Poetic Prompt: Thanks to insomnia, I have two mornings: one with ground fog lit by the waning moon at dawn, the other hot and abuzz with carpenter bees.---Dave Bonta, Morning Porch, 04-26-11 http://www.morningporch.com/






 
 

A SECOND TIME AROUND: THE WISHING WELL (COLLABORATIVE POEM SERIES #16)

A SECOND TIME AROUND

Malleable heart, mouth open to the sky and rain,/my discipline is to learn your one singing note—/to fish it out of the depths of a fountain like a penny/someone tossed there long ago, or like the sun/in hiding.---“Singing Bowl”, Luisa A. Igloria



Is it your one singing note that I am deaf to,
one you have always kept unsung, unheard?

How deep must I plunge into the whirlpool
that your malleable heart has hidden, unmarked

uncharted, like uncollected coins grown old
in a broken fountain, tokens of desire or whimsy?

Dare I fish it out, this one uncollected penny,
from what depths it has reached in that well?

When you tossed it away, it was best forgotten
like some wilted petals in a convent’s breviary.

I have coveted that one note, I have haunted
the barnacled wayside fountain, brackish now,

where you must have thrown it like a shrug
one winter over your cold uncovered shoulder.

In spring thaw, I could see it again, leaden
and rusty as the sun hidden by some penumbra,

and I must collect it now, make it sparkle
once again, rub it on my sleeve, and wrap it

until I could wheedle from its sheen that
one note you have always kept unsung, unheard.

---Albert B. Casuga
04-25-111

COLLABORATIVE POEM PROMPT: “Singing Bowl” by Luisa A. Igloria, posted in Via Negativa, 04-22-11, Morning Porch Poems Spring 2011. http://www.vianegativa.us/2011/04/singing-bowl/

RECONCILIATION: (A COLLABORATIVE POEM SERIES #15)

RECONCILIATION

Such pageantries of suffering, our little/ lives rounding toward the dream of sleep and rest,/their waters all-forgiving…---Luisa A. Igloria, from "Vigil"



O, let them come to the water: all who are weary,
let them come. It is invitations like this that I
recall from Sunday school, and the biscuits shared.

Then we grow away from them; too pat, too easy.
Are we forgiven all transgressions then against all
who heap scorn and who trespass against us?

A tit for a tat. Lex Talionis is clear and simple.
Pluck my eye, and I would make a clean bone
of your eye socket. Je me souviens. I will not forgive.

Did not Simon Peter sever an ear dear to Pilate’s
Malchus? “Upon this sword, Peter, I shall build
a Rock of a church, no perfidy shall prevail against.”

“Would he had said that, and not wait at Gethsemane,”
they now murmur, vanquished, huddled in vigil
to await a third day before the cock crows thrice.

The hill of skulls has since become a bastion of power,
even the mighty tremble before it. All because he
said: “Forgive them, they know not what they do.”

What’s left of this edict is now a little pageant
around empty tombs where the Empty Tomb
was finally sealed: He is not here! He is risen! He has left!

Little lives are left in a trek of remembrance. He is risen.
He has left. He will come again to judge the living.
He will judge the dead. O let them come to the water.

Where they flow far from the old Jordan river, they wash
the stain on every limb cut and every hand that cut them.
Our little lives will remember. We will forgive.

---Albert B. Casuga
04023-11



Collorative Poetry Prompt:  "Vigil" by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa http://www.vianegativa.us/2011/04/vigil/

EASTER POEMS BY PHILIPPINE POET FRANCISCO R. ALBANO

THE PASSION OF JESUS ACCORDING TO:

The Basin:

The Governor condemned the Man to die,
Then plunged his patrician hands into
My rosewater and ringed me with filth.
My sheen caught blue eyes of compassion,
And suddenly I became whole again;
A crack long unnoticed healed.
I didn’t get to wash the holy face.

The Pillar:

Had he been Samson I would have fallen.
He was stronger than my stubbornness.
I held him fast for twenty lashes or more.
When at the ninth hour he died, the earth shook,
And I shuddered, I with his meaning, alone,
But standing, his ropes around me still.
Binding me with his love.

The Thorn:

In my clumsiness I dropped to the ground,
And his right foot fell on me when he made
His way. I embedded myself deeply into his sole.
I helped carry the world and heaven on his shoulder.
He carried me well. Torturer forgiven and blessed,
One with the nail hammered to his feet,
I blossomed with the rose of his blood.

The Street:

The crowd soiled me with sweat and spittle.
I smelled their eczema and rotten sandals.
His cross grooved my back but spared me pain,
As I led him to the Skull. Ah, but I was
A ribbon of winding light before he died,
Before he rose to a full moon, a dazzling sun.
I am the way to his truth and his life.

The Dice:

My self divided into two in cupped hands,
Shaken crazy. They rolled out my numbers.
One won a seamless robe. Did Chance leave me,
Ivory in dust, everything over? With seven eyes
I gazed at his face and wondered if he had won,
Accomplished anything in life. Was I just lucky?
Was I part of a great cosmic design under his cross?

The Rock:

Grave men and an ox forced me to seal his
Borrowed tomb. Then all was pitch darkness
Inside and out, and I died. But on the 3rd day
He flashed through, violent silence, breaking,
Waking the night of olive trees and flowers
And transforming me into a risen sun.
To angels and humans I said, He is not here!


--- FRANCISCO R. ALBANO

Francisco R. Albano is a notable Philippine poet whose work has influenced countless activists who have fought relentlessly for democracy and human dignity. He was ordained as a monk, and subsequently served as a parish priest in the Northern Philippines. As a former academic, he also became rector of the Catholic seminary in Isabela, Philippines. In his late 60's he still serves the Church by being rector of an Isabela shrine, even as he pursues his literary career as a poet of liberation. His poetry (under a pen name) has been published by Philippine periodicals and anthologized in a number of publications like Dr. Gimeno H. Abad's A Habit of Shores (UP Press).

These poems form part of the National Poetry Month celebration. His use of the appurtenances and circumstances around the Passion of Christ is an ingenuous and original manner of presenting the Christian perspectve of the Jesus Story. His use of the "basin", "the pillars", the "streets" , the "crown of thorns" and the tomb's "rock" are powerful metaphors for this venerable and abiding Christian ritual. Albano's poetry will be remembered, no doubt, by this Catholic content---vis-a-vis those of Belloc, Chesterton, Manley-Hopkins, et al, who have contributed their art as Christendom's claim to universal art.

ALBERT B. CASUGA: CHRIST IS RISEN! A LENTEN MESSAGE FROM REV. FR. FRANCISCO R. ALBANO

ALBERT B. CASUGA: CHRIST IS RISEN! A LENTEN MESSAGE FROM REV. FR. FRANCISCO R. ALBANO

A COIN IN THE FOUNTAIN: (A COLLABORATIVE POEM SERIES # 14)

A COIN IN THE FOUNTAIN


It has been some time since I threw a coin
into a fountain: I worry my wishes might
just come true. The last one was terrifying.

Did you ever wish for men to stop bickering
about how to achieve world peace, love,
and human dignity? The last one who did

got all his loincloths splattered with blood
gushing from gaping bullet wounds that must
have shattered his heart. Gandhi-ji fell.

Before him, another man of peace came
riding into old Jerusalem on a tired donkey,
and rode forsworn into the place of skull

where he promised a craven thief a place
in paradise before he moaned how his people
and his Father have forsaken him. Crucified.

On a good day, like this, on a Good Friday, too,
I look back to the skies, as that man on the tree did,
and see a sun glowing faintly through a penumbra

like a rusty coin at the bottom of a broken fountain,
and whisper a wish as would a perching whippoorwill:
May I find rest today, a little respite from myself,

And wish nothing for the lonely and the restless save
a quiet day humming a hymn of hope on a hammock,
and not the sour wine soaked on a hyssop branch.

—Albert B. Casuga
04-22-11

Prompt:  The sun glows faintly through the clouds like a coin at the bottom of a fountain. Three flickers bicker above the springhouse.---Dave Bonta, Morning Porch 04-22-11

ALBERT B. CASUGA: GOOD FRIDAY AS GOD'S FRIDAY: ISAIAH 52.13-53-12

ALBERT B. CASUGA: GOOD FRIDAY AS GOD'S FRIDAY: ISAIAH 52.13-53-12

SPRING HAIKUS. THE PORTRAIT (TWO COLLABORATIVE POEMS: SERIES #13)

SPRING HAIKUS


1.

Host to all living
things, Earth’s Spring welcomes all,
even alien weeds.

2.

Tardy blossoming
for roses, lilacs, myrtle,
becomes tardy spring.

3.

Purpling greening lawns,
creeping myrtle provides grass
an excuse to grow.

4.

Ah, spring, though late,
is spring sprung and spread:
balm to icy blahs.

—Albert B. Casuga
04-21-11

Prompt:  Even the invaders’ spring is late: barberry, lilac, multiflora rose just now leafing out, the hated myrtle purpling what used to be a lawn.---Dave Bonta, Morning Porch, 04-21-11

THE PORTRAIT


Outside, / the wind has no regard for our little nostalgias. ---Luisa A. Igloria


My endlessly tattling nieta asks:
“Who is that old woman on the wall, abuelo?
Why does she follow me wherever I go?”

I have always meant to dust it off,
this picture on the wall: a patrician pose,
an arching neck, a hint of a shy smile.

“No one you know. But sing me another song,
that one about a new song unto the world.
How does that go again? Sing a new song.”

“Her eyes are sad, and they always follow me.
Why does she do that, abuelo? Is she lonely?
And she has a funny-looking dress. Tra-la, lala.”


But that was another time. Another world.
At sundown I look into those eyes, and I go there,
beside her, and sing old songs. O, the old songs!

The late spring wind ruffles the gossamer curtains
brushing against the jangling chime bells: outside,
the wind has no regard for our little nostalgias.

—Albert B. Casuga
04-22-11

Collaborative Poem Prompt:  This poem is a response to Luisa A. Igloria's Via Negativa post. http://www.vianegativa.us/2011/04/dear-letter-that-arrives-long-after-its-sender-is-gone/

A NOCTURNAL FUGUE (COLLABORATIVE POETRY SERIES #12)

A NOCTURNAL FUGUE


I love those times/ when the body has not completely left/ what embraced it last.---Luisa A. Igloria, “Dear season of hesitant but clearing light,” Via Negativa

1.

By sunrise, the strain on the highland flute
has reached a decrescendo ending a sky dance:
the moon fades, the sun rises, a tale told
often enough it has spawned its own legend:
they are lovers who must in the morning part
as a besotted night must leave its rising day
like one whose body cannot completely leave
what embraced it last. Like love lost and found.

2.

What magic these celestial wonders have
over the awestruck and fevered lovers
vanishes like the lambent moonglow at sunrise,
when the moon glimmers into its dying pallor,
its lingering light languidly laving the river
stream that ends around the dreamer’s bend.
A ravenous sun eats all that evening splendour
sworn to by all hearts that have loved and lost.

--–Albert B. Casuga
04-20-11

Prompt:  Where the moon had glowed through ground fog at 4:00, now the sun glimmers. Four ruby-crowned kinglets flutter in and out of the lilac.---Dave Bonta, Morning Porch, 04-20-11

Collaborative Poetry Prompt: “Dear season of hesitant but clearing light,” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 04-20-11

 
 

MORNING SHRUG: (COLLABORATIVE POETRY SERIES # 11)

What’s that wrapped in paper?/ Who heard? The leaves are buzzing with news of the world. ---Luisa A. Igloria,  "Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe"


MORNING SHRUG

Ahhh…so much mirth with the greening Earth,
so I ordered more rain for the plains of Spain!
Perplexed yet with this morning’s menu?
Hail, rain, sleet, sunshine, winter remnants
are of no moment when I sip my minted tea.

I tap my fingers with the rooftop staccato,
dip my biscuit not once but thrice with brio.
That done, I slide my anteojos gafas down
my schoolmarmish nose to read the paper
rolled like a salami on my morning table.

Unfurled, my gazette of daily mayhem
confirms the slaughter of yet more lads
and lasses in the name of country and god,
of yet more hungry children orphaned
in lands where force majeure trumps
the rule of nature and law, where hurt
and pain are never ever granted furlough.

“Aiee, Dios mio,” I sigh quickly, and drink
my tea before it gets cold. Birds steal
my biscuits, but like the windblasted trees,
I droop and execute my dotard shrug.

—Albert B. Casuga
04-19-11

Prompt:  An accelerated tapping on the roof—who ordered rain? One bird says Konkerlee, another, Drink your tea. Takes me a second to sort them out. ---Dave Bonta, Morning Porch 04-19-11 http://www.morningporch.com/
Collaborative Poem Prompt: "Morning Shrug" is a response to Luisa Igloria's "Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe" posted in Morning Porch as her response to Dave Bonta's Tweet prompt. Extending Igloria's light tone in the host poem, our response adopts the blase and cynically ironic and helpless response of the persona as he sips his tea and shrugs about the state of a world alien to his universe of careless and powerless dotage.

ALBERT B. CASUGA: READ OR DIE!

ALBERT B. CASUGA: READ OR DIE!

RIVAL TRILLS: COLLABORATIVE POETRY SERIES #10

There is beauty, and there is work. ---“Territories”, Luisa A. Igloria


RIVAL TRILLS

Of course, pulcra is its own territory:
Isn’t beauty its only excuse for being?

When created, it has its boundaries
defined as edges of petals or blades

of leaves, twigs of branches, birdsongs.
And work? Work is the homely sibling.

Pulcra et utile. Beauty and usefulness.
Where poetry works, there beauty is.

Where, pray, is the bounden territory?
Rival trills of a phantom symphony.

—Albert B. Casuga
04-18-11

Prompt: The thin forsythia at the woods’ edge is in bloom at last. Two towhees battle over territory: rival renditions of the same six-note trill.---Morning Porch, Dave Bonta,04-18-11 http://www.morningporch.com/

Collaborative Poem Prompt: Luisa A. Igloria”s “Territories,” posted in Via Negativa, 04-18-11 http://www.vianegativa.us/

A SONG OF TWO GAMES (COLLABORATIVE POETRY SERIES # 9)

Photo by Bobby Wong Jr.

I never said I’d stopped playing. /… your turn now/ to guess which one is hiding the sun. ---Luisa A. Igloria, “Letter to Fortune”, Morning Porch


A SONG OF TWO GAMES

1. Game One

“Quick, guess where the pebble is,
and if you do, you will be happy!”

What if this were the only wager
in a game of chance of opening
and closing a cup over a rolling
pebble, not unlike the hide-’n-seek
the sun plays now with clouds
darting hither and thither with
winds blowing from all directions?
Will you take it? Will I dare?

What have we got to lose,
one way or another? I hold
your hand and you squeeze mine,
a signal to choose the arrant hiding cup,
and voila: I miss it. Happiness, too?

Happy is as happy does: you are
with me to roll the dice. Would I care
willy-nilly where happiness lies?
Under the cup where the pebble
has custody of nothing, least of all
my joie de vivre — you, my love,
who will be my ransom should I
lose this game of chance?


2. Game Two (After a Letter to Fortune)

“Quick now, guess now: high winds
rearrange the clouds, having learned
too about this game of chance.
Which one is hiding the sun? Which?
Mind the wager: if you fail this test,
should you pin the tail on the wrong
side of the donkey, or choose poorly,
you will keep on guessing all your life
whether or not you can be happy.”

Happy is as happy does: you are
with me to roll the dice. Would I care
willy-nilly where happiness lies?
With you, my love, neither wind nor
cloud will hide the sun. You are my sun.
Should I choose madly, choose badly,
what of it? I never said I’d stop playing.

—Albert B. Casuga
04-17-11

Prompt:  “A Song of Two Games” is a response to Luisa A. Igloria’s “Letter to Fortune” posted by Dave Bonta in his literary website, Via Negativa, 04-17-11. This is part of the author’s participation in writing poetry collaboratively to celebrate Poetry Month (April).

“Game One” (first part of the song) is a response to Dave Bonta’s prompt in Morning Porch written shortly after its post; i.e., The rain’s stopped, and high winds rearrange the clouds, holes opening and closing as if in a game of chance: guess which one hides the sun. http://www.morningporh.com/

“Game Two” was appended to the first poem (Game One) to form the response to Igloria’s “Letter to Fortune” http://www.vianegativa.us/

Posted as the collaboratively created poem in this literary blog, “A Song of Two Games”, yokes a couple of personae playing the games of chance.

Inset Photo by Bobby Wong Jr.

COLLABORATIVE POETRY 8: COMING HOME

COMING HOME



Dear heart, at the wood’s edge, the blue-/ headed viroe repeats its only line. It isn’t true/ it has nothing to say— just as it isn’t true/ that sameness will not want to make us/ look again.---Luisa A. Igloria, "Letter to Sameness and Variation", Via Negativa, 04-16-11*



I am back, but I have nothing new to say,
nor anything that I can offer save myself.
Unchanged, undefined, unshackled, free.

There is no other way you would have me.
Would you rather I had lost my insouciance?
Would you have me speak only one language,

that of fear, and would not risk this loss again?
Sing only your song? Part my hair another way?
At the edge of the woods, I have mastered wiles.

You’d think I had changed and now just a shadow
of a broken man come home to lick old wounds
that were left unsalved, cankered when I lost you.

I am the same, and this sameness will make you
want to look again even if the thousand faces
that you behold are those from a shattered mirror.

—Albert B. Casuga
04-16-11

*Prompt:  This poem responds to "Letter to Sameness and Variation" by Luisa A. Igloria, and posted in the 04-16-11 Via Negativa post (http://www.vianegativa.us/).
It is part of a series of collaborative poems where this poet responds to Igloria's response to Dave Bonta's Morning Porch prompt http://www.morningporch.com/. Blending, these result in the creation of separately standing poems with re-drawn context and expanded nuances.

COLLABORATIVE POETRY 7: RETURN MAIL 4 (AFTER LETTER TO LOVE*)

You never say So long/ or Au revoir, only Next time will be sweeter. ---From "A Letter to Love", Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa



RETURN MAIL (AFTER LETTER TO LOVE)

Fancy hearing from you after some time.
I have gone back to that wayside inn more
times than I would care to remember:
and, like you, I would wonder how a day
would be like without you calling out before
you leave: A la prochaine! And sweeter!
Never goodbye. Never Au revoir. Nunca.

But next time, it will be the tryst of trysts.
We will quaff our wine from overflowing cups,
we will laugh at reflections of our faces
in the ponds we throw wishing pebbles in;
we will wish for the hours to last longer,
for the glances to linger. We will stay longer.

We will wish we had met when there was
still time, and we were much younger,
and braver, and mad with a world that did
not need to have memories of a wayside inn.

—Albert B. Casuga
04-15-11

* The Prompt:  Return Mail (After a Letter to Love) is in response to Norfolk poet Luisa A. Igloria's post, Letter to Love,  in Dave Bonta's Via Negativa. As a collaborative poem, the poem above adds to the dimension of the original poem thereby expanding the nuances and contextual breadth of the poems read as one "birthing" the other.  Igloria has used this letter format to write quick poetic responses to Bonta's Morning Porch.
 

Via Negativa: 04-15-11 http://www.vianegativa.us/ and Morning Porch: http://www.morningporch.com/