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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, February 18, 2014

OMNI SOLI SEMPER

 
 
OMNI SOLI SEMPER


Keep your eyes wide open if you want to dream---Paolo Coelho


The ones we talk about or ache to recall
the morning after, we call nightmares.
A love-sick, maudlin, slobbering goodbye
in the tight-pillow-hug tearjerker dream?
It was not a dream. It is a stifled desire,
a constipation “devoutly to be wished”.

Shrinks shrank these into Freudian blots
on the balance sheets of love and hate:
You want to run as wildly far away as you
could, id permitting, haunches allowing.

One needy life is enough torment; free
yourself then from this strangled trellis,
where hanging like a wanton leaf is not
the twin of hanging on but dangling still
until hurts can no longer wound you,
nor gentle caress save you. You are a stone.

No fall can sever you from tangled vines
that summer burns, nor frost cripple you;
you would not even pray for the spring
to bring sunrises and sunsets to heal you.

Open your eyes and dream that loneliness
becomes you; you are strong and alone,
omni soli, semper. Will courage redeem
you then from the stupidity of being brave
and alone? And when you sleep, will you
remember to open your eyes and dream?


--- Albert B. Casuga

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