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ALBERT B. CASUGA, a Philippine-born writer, lives in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, where he continues to write poetry, fiction, and criticism after his retirement from teaching and serving as an elected member of his region's school board. He was nominated to the Mississauga Arts Council Literary Awards in 2007. A graduate of the Royal and Pontifical University of St. Thomas (now University of Santo Tomas, Manila. Literature and English, magna cum laude), he taught English and Literature (Criticism, Theory, and Creative Writing) at the Philippines' De La Salle University and San Beda College. He has authored books of poetry, short stories, literary theory and criticism. He has won awards for his works in Canada, the U.S.A., and the Philippines. His latest work, A Theory of Echoes and Other Poems was published February 2009 by the University of Santo Tomas Publishing House. His fiction and poetry were published by online literary journals Asia Writes and Coastal Poems recently. He was a Fellow at the 1972 Silliman University Writers Workshop, Philippines. As a journalist, he worked with the United Press International and wrote an art column for the defunct Philippines Herald.

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

COMING HOME: TWO POEMS ANTE

COMING HOME: TWO POEMS ANTE
 
 



ARDENT WISH
That night will come, fully felt, indelible,
there will be no key to turn on the door:
it was always with me in my breastpocket
where it is easy enough to feel, the throbs
underneath it urging me to take the path
home where you said my stenciled footsteps
can still be traced even with the early snow
on the cobble stones. I shall retrace them.

—Albert B. Casuga

POST POSTSCRIPT

If leaving were easy and found myself
in a hereafter, I might find these words
for you (if thoughts and our pillow-talk
could still cut through the walls-on-walls
of dark nights and blank sheets stiffened
into cold knife-edged shields guarding
against our talking to each other again):

"Leave the window open, let the branch
grow close to it, you will find me there
scrambling among bridges of moonlight,
starlight, sunlight, even flickers from your
turned-down lamps, singing those little
songs I always sang to keep the fine rhythm
of my pats on your thighs, caresses to put
you to sleep on warm nights you thought
were not made for slumber or some such.”

---Albert B. Casuga


 

THE CLOTH STAINER: A PROTEST POEM

Am reposting this poem prompted by the hapless lives of child laborers in Bangladesh so the rest of the world could sport clothes like unrepentant dandies. In light of the recent disaster where hundreds of garment workers perished in the rubbles of a building housing five garment factories, this should call attention to their plight.





THE CLOTH STAINER

Two of her ten children drowned in that river

retrieving rolls of cloth grabbed by current
swollen by monsoon rains; rescuers found
them upstream near the Bay wrapped snugly
in the newly coloured sheets as if they simply
stole sleep and took a nap when they could. 
 
When the Giant Tiger supplier from the city
asked for his stained raw materials that day,
he found the old woman starting to colour some
new rolls all over again. He said he would not
wait, and paid another gaunt stainer, bundled
his purchase, and threw it hurriedly into his truck.
 
Laundry day today. The shirt I am throwing into
the hamper, could it be from that roll in Bangladesh?

 

--- ALBERT B. CASUGA

Monday, April 29, 2013

REMEMBRANCE OF A TRYST




More love poems. But please pitch those stones as soon as they get maudlin! :)

RETURN MAIL (REMEMBRANCE OF A TRYST)

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


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TWO POEMS: RETURN MAIL (OF DOTARD PASSION) and A CIRCLE'S SHADOW (A PENT-UP LONGING)



RETURN MAIL (A DOTARD PASSION)
“I an old man,/A dull head among windy spaces./…I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it/ Since what is kept must be adulterated?/ I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch:/ How should I use them for your closer contact?---T.S. Eliot, Gerontion
When I got your letter, it was past my hammock hour,
and mellow from the longings I had the night before:
you said we will grow old and the flares will flicker
 
but not our stubborn dream, reckless, an ignited habit
of holding on, a moribund troth of our semper fidelis
that needs must break through a dotard, decrepit passion
 
put to use only when desire overflows its bounden
confines--- unchecked memories of passion on the sand
underneath overhanging bluffs, trysts at wayside inns.
 
Perhaps, I will never really be able to take you back
to that belfry of the carillonneur where we hummed
our evening songs, brave songs, love songs. I am old.
 
Shall I trudge those seashores and skip over waves
with trouser bottoms rolled? Shall I steal those kisses
for an eternal ingénue and say: O, ‘twas accidental?
 
But like you, I still taste the brine on my tongue,
the dark seas still haunt my lonely hammock hours,
and your habit of rootedness is really a habit of shores
 
that must always roll the waves back to the sea
that takes back all the buried footprints, even love
heart sketches (ran through by arrows) you drew.
 
---Albert B. Casuga
 
 

A CIRCLE’S SHADOW

It the sea eats limbs of love, so love, so life, may not
to its eternal wanting finish what it late started must
soon deny: a clown’s journey through a circle’s
 
shadow, the circle rending rapture, where, threatening,
the Shadow begins what beginnings should have done:
to fill the empty cups, the gaping tables, with lilies
 
of the marsh, and vases of the Sun. But the circle
and the shadow uniting are miracles come from the Sea,
its womb and lilies devouring. Perhaps you are right.
 
Desire’s pent-up longing is brighter still, stinging still,
and will never, ever go away, like the homing waves
that take us back, take all things back, to a beginning.
 
---Albert B. Casuga
 
 

Saturday, April 27, 2013

THE UNWRITTEN SONG: A LOVE POEM


Now, back to the writing desk for more love songs and the like. Love songs, you say? They are always difficult to write, but we try. :) Here's love in twilight years.

"Let us go then, you and I,/ When the evening is spread out against the sky/ Like a patient etherised upon a table;/ Let us go..."---T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
 
 
 


THE UNWRITTEN SONG

You are learning/ to call to what you love, to see it returning.---Hannah Stephenson, “You Can do It”, The Storialist


When the going is good, I would like to go
quickly and quietly like the kettle’s whistle
at tea time, hunched over a writing desk
daring to write that still unwritten song:


The one that gets arrested in my dry throat
when I sing you to sleep, and you could not
or would not, afraid you would find me gone
in the morning, like most mornings we had
before we grew too old to stay longer in bed,
snuggling, counting the rings on the phone
before the children, now the grandchildren,
would put the intruder down and wonder
how we are waddling along, bum knees on
your right and mine on the left. Would you
want us to buy your croissants today? What
about the bok choy, and the other greens?


This is as good as it gets, cold keys to pound
on, little words, cathedrals of thought,
wind on the pane, a houseful of memories,
quiet pictures to talk to on the walls, tunes
tinkling on the piano sans rhyme or reason
except to dust the keys off from imagined
dirt stuck by sticky children’s fingers who
raid the shelves of uneaten brittle cookies
and marmalade. Aiee, cochino, por Dios!*


She would wail in her pained stentorian
dirge, mourning over violated piano keys
that remain untouched, unplayed, silenced
perhaps when arthritic fingers coupled
rheumatic knees, backs that recall pangs
of Calvary, and those kaleidoscopic visions
of ghostly shadows peopling porch walls,
bouncing, dancing, trembling like puppets
on a string, undefined, indefinable, strangers
come to visit us, and we do not know their
names. When the going is good, I will go
quickly and quietly, humming that song
I said I will write for you before I go.


--- Albert B. Casuga


*God, how filthy!




Monday, April 22, 2013

THE BIG QUESTIONS, 30: A RAISON D'ETRE (WHY NOT MAKE IT OUR DUTY TO SPREAD BEAUTY AS A REASON FOR BEING?)

This is Poem #30 in my series of poem responses to the Big Questions to mark National Poetry Month (NaPoMo April 2013). In search of a reason for being? Why not make it our duty to spread beauty as a reason for being?




A RAISON D’ETRE

Imagine if all of us were caterpillars,
all inching toward that one branch
or leaf whence we spread our wings
to carry out a bounden duty of flitting
from one rose garden to a hillock
smothered by a rainbow of pansies:

Would we race to the highest branch
and shed our cocoon shackles quickly
to fulfill this raison d’etre of spreading
beauty where it is scarce or now gone?
Imagine if all that we lived for were a
task as gleeful as this godlike whimsy.

Would we not scale beyond this boot,
and swing beyond this silken thread?
Or tear through bramble or grappling
gossamer webs that drag us down
even as we crawl toward sunlit fronds
to spread our wings and get beauty done?
 

—ALBERT B. CASUGA

THE BIG QUESTIONS, 29: HAPPINESS GRAFFITI (WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO MAKE US HAPPY? WHY WORRY/ BE HAPPY.)

This is Poetry #29  in  my series of poem responses to the Big Questions to mark National Poetry Month (NaPoMo April 2013) What can make us Happy? Why do we need to be happy? Can one be happy without being free"to dream the impossible dream?"



HAPPINESS GRAFFITI
 

“Sleep then work/work then sleep/I am free.” ---Graffiti on Wal-Mart’s Wall


Must have been a dead-beat father,
Must have been a cheating mother,
Must have been their runaway kid,
Must have been a homeless tramp:

Who would scrawl a happy graffiti
Like that? A stock boy at Wal Mart?
His mom who just quit and found
A lover working nights, asleep days?

Or his sleep-deprived old man gone
Berserk with new found freedom
Having been thrown out of wedlock
And mocked as sans prowess in bed?

Is this all they need to be happy?
Work then sleep. Sleep then work.
I am free. A new union mantra? Are
You happy? But are they really free?

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

 

THE BIG QUESTIONS, 28: NO EXIT (WHAT IS OUR CLOSEST LOOK AT HELL? CAN WE LIVE A HELL OF A LIFE AND STAY ALIVE?)

This is Poem #28 in my series of poem responses to the Big Questions to mark National Poetry Month (NaPoMo April 2013). What does hell look like? What is our closest look at hell where we are? Can one live a hell of a life and stay alive?



 
NO EXIT

Endless malls that have no exits
should be our closest look at hell:
too many nice-to-haves too little
time, no cash nor credit cards—
no unemployment cheques nor
bank debits, only foreclosure notes.

But what’s so nasty about Hades
with air-conditioned corridors?
That knock-off Louis Vitton purse,
or that Burberry bag slaved over
by starving waifs in Bangladesh,
you can do without—but in this
heat, in this beastly humid heat,
why does it matter if there is No Exit
from an endless mall air-cooled
by the taxes paid from mortgaged
homes that will soon become houses
grabbed by money-lenders and realtors?

Here, where lilac leaves hang limply
at the end of a dead dry day, I dream
of an endless mall that has no exit.
Like that homeless tramp snoozing
his hunger (or hangover) away near
MacDonald’s, I hope I never wake up.


—ALBERT B. CASUGA

 

THE BIG QUESTIONS, 27: GRAVESTONE SCRAPING (WHAT, INDEED, DO WE KNOW ABOUT ETERNITY?)

This is Poem #27 of my series of poems in response to the Big Questions to mark National Poetry Month (NaPoMo April 2013). What, indeed, do we know about eternity? Has anyone come back from the other side to tell us what we have known by faith or what we can hope to know before we kick the bucket?
 
 
 
 
GRAVESTONE SCRAPING


Has anyone come back from this defiled form
and mapped out ways to get back to that eternity
we claim as heirs to, where days are as chartless
as the river stream that must flow to an endless,
ceaseless fountainhead which has no beginning?
There is no other way back except by destruction.

When every rampart has been carted away, we
do not pine for them like those we cannot lose
because we store them in vaults of our memory:
they are our milestones of an afterlife we choose
to build from achieved desires, fulfilled dreams--
these chambers of a heart that will not crumble.

What, indeed, do we know of eternity? Save this:
We are never away from it. Until memory fades.


---ALBERT B. CASUGA

THE BIG QUESTIONS, 26: WITH THIS TOUCH, WE KNOW (IN THOSE HOUSES WHERE WE GREW, HOW SOULFUL ARE THOSE MEMORIES STILL?)

This is Poem #26 in my series of poems in response to the Big Questions to mark National Poetry Month (NaPoMo April 2013). Why do we need to touch those that have touched us? When do know when we must let go? In those houses where we grew, how soulful are those memories still?
 
 
 
 

WITH THIS TOUCH, WE KNOW

 “We tore down the ancestral home. It had termites all over.” –Letter from Home


We go in and out of the chambers of grace
and afflictions in the heart of things at our
own peril. These are houses we scarcely know,
but before long we think we have known,
and cried at every mention of how things were
in those days in those houses where we grew.


We have known them all: the familiar songs,
the loves gone by, the pains forgiven, the hurts
that linger, and all that has touched us we now
want to touch, maybe not with caressing hands
but certainly with steady and soulful embraces
that know how to let go when things must go.


We have known them all already, we have touched
them all. With each touch we have learned to pray.

 -—ALBERT B. CASUGA
 

THE BIG QUESTIONS, 25: RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU (HOW BIG CAN WE BECOME?)

This is Poem #25 in my series of poem-a-day responses to the Big Questions to mark National Poetry Month (NaPoMo, April 2013. Can we be any bigger or better than those who came before us? Why is this necessary to find life significant and meaningful? How big can we become?
 



RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU

 
The space cleared/is bigger than they were/...as the maker of the snow angel/ once they get up from the ground.---From “Personal Space” by Hannah Stephenson, The Storialist


I thought it was the other way around:
When one is no longer there, he will be
bigger than the space he occupied. I
cannot begin to gather the memories
grown rampant of those I have loved
and lost, they will fill my days to the brim.

How can I run with my father through
those fields with a wayward kite? How
can I sing those goodbye songs in my
abuela’s tremulous voice? Will I keep
in tempo with grandfather’s steps when
I find myself walking up the winding
stairwells, my little palms in his hands?

Will I tell those tales of enchanted
elves and flirting fairies as animatedly
as grandmother Teodora, and hold
my own grandchildren in thrall? How
large a space must I have to grow with
them while I keep this quiet watch over
the rhythm of days as we bravely wait?

I will not be able to fill these spaces you
have carved yourselves when you were
here---they overwhelm me with grandeur.
How will I cope with the largeness of your
presence now that you have gone from us?

Like the lad who threw himself on the snow
to create his winged likeness, I find my
snow angel larger than I am achingly small
engulfed by lingering memories of your
abiding love and immeasurable greatness.
 

---ALBERT B. CASUGA