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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.

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

DO NOT DISTURB

 
 
 
DO NOT DISTURB


You are noisy/ even when you are silent, / the world is dripping with/ Do Not Disturb signs in/ languages we don’t even/ recognize as languages. --- From “On Eggshells” by Hannah Stephenson, The Storialist, 01-03-12 

It is easy enough to hear silence
at the edge of the woods. It is loud.

Your pounding heart is not there
beating sense into your dulled mind.

They just jump out like shadows
on walls, turn their backs, ignore us.

On its own, one whines with longings
struggling to spill out, uncorked,

from unguarded gaols of feelings
that have lain fallow, rotten carrion

of desire tardily unbound, love gone
still, a truant finally nailed dead

on broken beds creaking under cold
sheets that will never find heat again.

The other, a slug of a mind, stays mute,
until it is egged on to scream out a pain

in its pure form: a memory of loss,
a raw betrayal of troth. Cut, cut clean.

Out of the woods, on his way home,
it was easy to read on the locked cottage

door an absent sign: Do not disturb.
Silence has its sharp language. It is clear.

 
--- Albert B. Casuga

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