TWO POEMS: NOBLESSE OBLIGE, OMEN

NOBLESSE OBLIGE

(For Luisa A. Igloria)

It alights on the most unlikely places

when it is ready to unload its augury:

a herald that answers to no postmaster. 

Did it touch your face before perching

on your head preening like a silken bow?

Fear not, but beware its noblesse oblige: 

Whom the gods want to destroy, they

first caress, a beau geste for its fondest,

most innocent, most willing sacrifice. 

Like the heart that knows no rest,

the mourning papillon flits from leaf

to welcoming petals ready with nectar. 

Though it comes bearing sweetness

for its bounden message, it drops its

wings to let the doleful colour show 

and flies out of reach and rancour, out

now into the cusp of wind and fire, out

of grace, out into the world of Tiresias 

blinded but must prophesy what passes

from this life, all loves and lovers, gone

but never let loose, ever, not now, not yet. 

For any day now, the heart that bent

to the swallowtail’s random dance,

would find its elusive life full of radiance.

---Albert B. Casuga

05-30-31

Poetic Prompts: 

I hold my hand over my heart/ because I know it knows no rest:/ it does not want to mourn what/ passes from this life, just yet.---From  “Trauermantel” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 05-28-11

Any day now a god /might unfurl its wings to rend the canopy;/any day now, that radiant and elusive life.---From “Foretelling” by  Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 05-29-11

http://www.vianegativa.us/2011/05/foretelling/

OMEN

A papillon with the mourning cloak
bodes grief; leave it free to flit from
whence it came to where it goes. 

Capture it, and you become a gaoler
of the ghost it carries from unknown
gardens, uncharted lanes, lost zones: 

Mark how it circled you thrice before
alighting on your chair not your tea cup
where it is moist and comfortable.

  
Let it leave its yet undelivered
message: a brew of auguries and omens
from the cocoons of the netherworld. 

Do I scare you with this ghoulish rant?
Or shall I leave you to scare yourself

with your own disembodied yearnings? 

Ah, but beware my morning porch friend,
beauty, wherever you find it, is an omen.

—Albert B. Casuga
05-28-11

Poetic Prompt:  A mourning cloak butterfly circles the porch and yard three times, going behind my chair, including me in whatever it means to outline. Dave Bonta, Morning Porch, 05-28-11 http://www.morningporch.com/2011/05/

MORNING TEA BANTER (Conversations with Stick Series #5)

…what /do they know of warnings and misfortune?/ Leaf of the cherry, red heart, organ of fire: /…I name you as if I could thread your bones;/ I name you not knowing your mystery.---From “Night-leaf Tarot” by Luisa A. Igloria

MORNING TEA BANTER

That dream of some rain in the dead of night,
what do you make of it, Stick? I ask my errant
escort leaning on the porch wall at tea time.

“Huh? What rain? Who is in pain?” It blustered.
More riddles than secrets fly with the wind:
the mystique lurks in strewn cherry blossoms.

Like tea leaves in divining cups at the temple,
the petals now pell-mell on the pavement beg
for a name to pin her will-o’-the-wisp down.

Where, in what undiscovered country, would
she find the luring shadow of her vision?
Or is it a yearning these leaves could not see?

“A tea-leaf? Did you see the absconding thief?”
A roused Stick, rocked from wooden stupor,
growled. I swirled the tea leaves down the pot,

and poured a steaming spot into my empty cup,
straining to see through its roiled and rippled
surface if the redheart leaf bodes fortune or grief.

—Albert B. Casuga
05-28-11

Poem Prompt: "Night-leaf Tarot" by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 05-27-11, http://www.vianegativa.us/2011/05/

A SCENT IN THE DARK (Conversations with Stick Series #4)

A SCENT IN THE DARK

The last time we bantered about smells or scents,
Stick, I gave up on scents, the smell of knowing.

Everything I have loved and lost come back to me
like haunting odours, like those scented mothballs

under clothes Father left that I could not, would not,
move from attic chests I am wont to open when lost

between worlds of the child who would pipe down
from fearsome anxieties and the man-child’s anger:

“I know you hear me, Father, when familiar scents
break out of drawers, and I am your little boy again:

I run through the hills in pursuit of the wayward
kites you shaped for me from those bamboo slats

cut from groves of shoots we would gather and boil,
and oh, how the aroma bridges our unwanted space,

your scent pulling me into arms I know I’ve missed,
into rhythms of lullabies on the mountain hammocks!

I cherish these as urgently as that boy who runs to you
at sundown for a quick toss in the air only fathers can do.”

I know and keep these memories as long as I could,
Stick. I know them, hoard them, mostly from their smell.

—Albert B. Casuga
05-27-11

Poem Prompt: “Redolence” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 05-25-11, http://www.vianegativa.us/2011/05/

POEMS ARE MADE OF THESE (Conversations with Stick Series #3)

Summer light, /thick as honey, pooling in squares at our feet:/ we ask to be touched, before being taken.---Luisa A. Igloria

A CONVERSATION: POEMS ARE MADE OF THESE 

Take a look at this strophe, Stick, and weep.
If that’s not a tease, I know it is poetry. How so?

Summer light in squares thick as honey catches
us aquiver with blends of what eyes can see

that tongues can lick, a mélange of what rooms
can become when—as palaces of leaves—they

transform into sylvan hideaways engulfing
all who are bewitched by redolent fragrance

come like warm palms caressing cold backs
that must be touched. Poems are made of these,

Stick, like a strange amalgam of brew salving
the hurt and the lonesome before they sleep.

I need that brew tonight, Stick, before I sleep.

—Albert B. Casuga
05-27-11

Poem Prompt: "Letter to Myself, Reading a Letter" by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 05-26-11 http://www.vianegativa.us/2011/05/

THE SMELL OF KNOWING (Conversations with Stick Series #2)

THE SMELL OF KNOWING

There are smells, and there are scents. Which is it?
When the smell of heat thickens in the morning,
that would be your scent of toil, the smell of work.

That will not be smelled in Joplin when it wakes up
to the potpourri of cracked-open trunks, blown off
branches, debris dust, and wafted septic tank odours.

There will be the scent of fear that crumpled houses
have crumpled bodies that could no longer smell
this scent of anger cloyed into helpless disbelief.

How does fury smell when it descends on the fearful?
The funnels that have twisted flaccid limbs into braids
of half-extended embraces, empty arms flailing in air,

did they bring with them the redolence of apocalyptic
stench, or the stygian miasma of inexorable defilement
promised on the Day of Rapture, now a ruptured tale?

What scent do we assign the sweat and drivel dripping
from the agape and limp body of a mother’s barricade
to shelter her suckling infant, alive and puling at sunrise?

Will the smell of a sunlit palace of leaves at a greenhouse
that was spared provoke the promise of a better day?
The oriole’s song, is that the dread left by the scent of death?

Talk to me, Stick. I cannot understand the smell of knowing.

—Albert B. Casuga
05-26-11

Poetic Prompt: Morning Porch, by Dave Bonta, 05-26-11. The early-morning air is already thick with the smell of heat. Sunlit rooms in a palace of leaves. The oriole’s glossy song. http://www.morningporch.com/

MO(U)RNING CHOLER: CONVERSATIONS WITH STICK 1

MO(U)RNING CHOLER



It is not a pretty sight. I pointed to the stained cobblestones.
What isn’t? My walking stick, constant companion now, asked.

Carcass strewn on the pavement, Stick! A birdling’s carrion,
one with an uningested wriggler between its broken beak,

stared back at me between eyes half-chucked out of sockets
that must have slid down its tiny breast when the wind came.

Story of our lives, I said. Stick perked up: What is? What is?
You know, just when we would have had a bellyfull of chow,

we get cut down, even before coffee and doughnuts and love.
That’s it, Stick! I will not take this anymore. Endurance, nil,

Act of God, the full enchilada. It will always be uneven, Stick.
Violence on the birdwing, that is the daily axiom. Patience?

Love? Endure this carnage anyway you want, Stick. I quit.
Let me just behead these dandelions, and skies be damned.

—Albert B. Casuga
05-26-11

Poem Prompt: "Letter to What Must be Bourne" by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 05-24-11 http://www.vianegativa.us/2011/05/letter-to-what-must-be-bourne/

POETRY: REWRITING A COVENANT

REWRITING A COVENANT

“You have your paintbrush and colors. Paint Paradise, and in you go.”---Nikos Kazantzakis

It would have to be a clear canvas, and all the walls a limitless

expanse of nothing. Yet.  My easel could turn or slide in all

possible directions, my palette a saucer of rainbows. 

These are my terms before I end up in a heaven or hell

not of my own making: that I would be a child again,

wild again, unbridled in conjuring my own quaint realities 

where realities match quicksilver dreams that shape

and reshape themselves however I fancy them; that I

would be free of the shackles of meaning or the ghosts 

of language as their intolerable gaolers in dungeons

where there are no keys nor clanging cell doors to open;

that I would have all the sunrises and all the sunsets 

under my control, and all the days of my life kept neatly

folded in drawers I could open and reopen for change

when I itch from sticky underwear and not have to curse 

the padlocked building laundromat; that I would be free

at last to work at a burgeoning poem or a canvas whenever

I start one and not be constipated to leave it unfinished 

because days would not be long enough, word processors

not fast enough for my careening thoughts that must see

their tail and catch it while running to fill all empty vases 

of lives and loves as meaning of what meanings would

have been if my life meant anything at all. But does it?

Paint your paradise, I am told, and in you go. But I can’t.

---Albert B. Casuga

05-23-11

Painting by Gustave Corbet

BLADED QUESTIONS

BLADED QUESTIONS


…the air is full of questions. Sometimes/ I cannot bear to think past them, to pry them/ loose from their trellis of hope and doubt and fear.---From "Balm" by Luisa A. Igloria


Do you still keep the bladed questions
in your closet’s little fragrance drawer?

When you bolted them last, they were
struggling to break out as a conspiracy

of fearsome pain that could break you.
Why test your fearful heart once again?

Gather them like twigs, kindling sticks,
and burn them with the brittle promises.

Past days have no way of turning back,
they travel through dark one-way streets.

Only those bladed questions will return.
Will their cutting edge be blunted then?

Spare your balsam for the dead and dry
days: when they descend, you will need

your balm to salve the hurts that have
yet to come. Leave settings hammered.

---Albert B. Casuga
05-21-11

Poem Prompt: "Balm" by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 05-21-11, http://www.vianegativa.us/2011/05/balm/

TWO POEMS: YOU AND I and WHEN RAIN BEADS ROLL OFF LEAVES (05-20-11)

WHEN RAIN BEADS ROLL OFF LEAVES

If each of those fat beads of rain rolled off those leaves,
what would the bleeding-heart offer for weary eyes
in the morning when sunlit dewdrops sparkle? Leaves.

Each foliate sprout should be reason enough for being.
Each leaf will, in the height of seasons before a late fall,
be spun-over refuge of spiders stalking cocoons

erupting into preening papillons, or fountainheads
for termite and weevils, slalom pads for ants, ladybugs,
and sieves for trickling sap: a whole universe of use.

O, how quickly the magic of spring turns into dry days,
when we wonder where the wood thrushes have gone,
their trill drowned by the banshee wail of rustling foliage.

—Albert B. Casuga
05-20-11

Poetic Prompt:  "Each glaucous leaf of the bleeding-heart has rolled its rain in one ft bead. I'm wondering: where have all the wood thrushes gone?" ---Dave Bonta, Morning Porch, 05-20-11 http://www.morningporch.com/2011/05/

YOU AND I

Words in their primary or immediate signification stand for nothing, but the ideas in the mind of him that uses them. ---John Locke

Are you talking to me? Are you writing to me?

Answers to questions you pitch into the dark

are meanings I assign to the questions you ask. 

Always, you and I, will be at opposite ends

of a half-lit hallway where echoes are as urgent

as the tremulous confessions we burden ourselves 

with each time we look into our reflections

on the one-way mirrors we look into when hiding

hurts hurled like hunting knives at target trees. 

When I call you, I mean to quickly hold you down,

to find your voice, to shape your feelings, to own

your thoughts, to mould you as I want to have you. 

I interpret you through my own lenses and mirror

you as you would me and have our confluence

in this reflection, a dragging into a cold dungeon  

of thought constructing meaning instead of finding

it, and the “You” becomes the “I” held in bondage.

Except that in this conquest, I lose everything. 

Questions and answers become elusive phantoms
of meaning, configurations of troth to the other
turn into fantasy, dreams and desire but delusions.

---Albert B. Casuga

05-20-11

Poem Prompt: “You” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 05-18-11, http://www.vianegativa.us./2011/05/you/

TWO POEMS: A YEARNING and A PILGRIM SONG

…what is it about labor/that burnishes the surfaces it works/ over or levels down?...Change me,/I begged my beloved…

A YEARNING

That mute pebble rolled hither and thither

when the river current rushes downstream

after a thunderstorm, will it sit in the pond,

remain where it is lodged, stay unchanged?

In yet another rush, a stone crusher would

remake it into jagged edged crystal shaped

perhaps to a gem capping a band wrapped

around a fragile finger: an artisan’s manner

of altering the commonplace into a diadem.

But how will I change you? Into what shall

I change you? Would I were your Pygmalion,

maybe then, I could find my Galatea in you.

---Albert B. Casuga

05-19-11

Prompt Poem: “Song of Work” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, http://www.vianegativa.us/2011/05/song-of-work/

What is it about cleared land that turns a lilting refrain into a burden, a shrill work song?

A PILGRIM SONG

When the gleaners return from potato patches at sundown,

they trudge back to their homes to the beat of a quiet refrain: 

“This land will be clear again, this crop will be good again.

We leave the roots to sprout at night, the leaves in the morning.

This land will be good again, this home will be fed again.

We leave the fires beneath cauldrons burning until morning.” 

What is it about cleared land that turns a lilting refrain

into a burden, a shrill work song?  What is it about the song

that lifts the load brought back into homes in the evening?

Is not the rhythm of work the rhythm of life? A song’s refrain?

---Albert B. Casuga

05-19-11

Poetic Prompt: “What is it about cleared cland that turns a lilting refrain into a burden, a shrill work song?” ---Morning Porch, 05-19-11, Dave Bonta, http://www.morningporch.com/2011/05/

TWO POEMS: RETURN MAIL (After a Letter to Nostalgia) and RETURN MAIL (After a Letter to Duty)

RETURN MAIL (After Letter to Nostalgia)

City I once wore like a shawl/on my shoulders.

You left that shawl on a pine tree branch

where I etched your name so you will return

to see it grow with the tree. But you did not. 

It does not matter. You wear that old city

on your shoulders like that green shawl

I still keep in a wooden chest carved in Ifugao. 

Its ridges, its sunsets, its clay soil, the rocks

shrouded now by sunflowers jutting through

cracks and crevices lining the zigzag roads, 

the halloo of the terrace gleaners bursting

into song at sundown: all sounds echoing

through those mountain rims and alleys 

in the city, the Indian bazaars, the roadside

bars, the cathedral overlooking the city like

a muezzin singing from his minaret, its belfry 

our lighthouse, a beacon from the lowland

refuge of white beaches and emerald seas,

the redolent smell of pine at the city limit. 

I know you keep them now in the eyes

of your children, in their laughter, and sighs

when you draw the city’s face over your heart. 

---Albert B. Casuga

05-18-11

Poem Prompt: "Letter to Nostalgia" by Luisa A. Igloria posted in Via Negativa, 05-17-11 http://www.vianegativa.us/2011/05/letter-to-nostlagia/

RETURN MAIL (After Letter to Duty) 

Is this all that remains/ of desire’s candle that burned, its two seared/ ends meeting in the middle?

Here you are asking if something is left behind

from those days and nights of heat and splendor.

The nest under the springhouse eave, the errands

to bring the birdling feed to gaping hungry beaks---

is this all that remains? What will bring back

the glory in the flower? But it has never left you;

not when you still cup your ears to the murmurs

of ebbtides and  the trill of children running after kites

blown wayward in the hills, or feel the quick flush

on your face when you recall the warmth

of nights we lay on our backs counting the stars

knowing we could not but recounted them

from inconstant starts and lost count anyway.

 ---Albert B. Casuga

05-18-11

Poem Prompt: "Letter to Duty" by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 05-16-11 http://www.vianegativa.us/2011/05/letter-to-duty/