HUMMINGBIRD DREAMS

HUMMINGBIRD DREAMS

(For Marie Clementine at Sauble Beach)

 

Before long, the lullaby of the ebbtide

Would have lulled her, and the sundown
Swoon of the seagulls diving leeward
Becomes sights and sounds of another day.

Eventide catches her cuddling her doll,

Dancing on the sand all done for now:
“Goodnight, little stars, in the blanket sky,
Be good, be bright, be my light by-and-by.”
 

She wraps her ragdoll into a threadbare

Shawl left loose on a bare sunburnt back.
“Goodbye, sea, goodbye, sun, goodbye, all,
Let me sing our song until sleep shall call.”
 

She will not walk by moonlight, starlight

Being her appointed fireflies, like campfire
Fairies flitting from folded flowers to fire,
Quietly singing like little hummingbirds.

---Albert B. Casuga

August 21, 2013, Mississauga

 

 

 Photo by Adele Casuga

LITTLE SHADOWS AT SUNDOWN

 

 

LITTLE SHADOWS AT SUNDOWN

(For the Wee Ones at Sauble Beach)

 

There is where here is:

Do you hear the murmur
Of the seawaves laving this shore?
It is the whispered caress of a mother
Come upon her little ones’ romp
Among the sundown shadows.
Where the flushed horizon
Meets the sea, a father’s
Face gleams ruddy
With laughter’s heat
Still on his crinkled brow.

O, that this cacophony of sounds

Becomes the noise of a lifetime
This heart (from a distance)
Could hearken to, leap up to,
Velvety notes of a joie de vivre
That this place was built for,
Made of, remembered by:

Is this not, after all, the paradise

He thought was lost in time past
Visited now upon his dotage
When he hankers for joy,
A little life left while there is time?

The little shadows taunt the sea

To reach their limbs. Gleeful,
Their now surprised screams,
When touched at last, are drowned
By whimper of the ebbtide waves
That has turned to gentle laughter.
 

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

August 20, 2013, Mississauga

  

DESERT ANGELUS

 

DESERT ANGELUS

1. Prayer

Wish this upon that wasted waif

reaching for a cob of corn on a cold

night among the lean-to shelters.

 

Pray for this as hard as you can

before the scorching desert claims

his little body back among debris

 

of sticks, stones, and bones dimly lit

by fluttering fire from stoked ember,

frying the flies gleaned from holes

 

hiding them in the crannies of boxes

left by a howling army of thieves

absconding with the relief supply.

2. Biscuit in the Sky

 

A border guard sips freshly brewed

coffee from his tin cup, cocks his

rifle at its ready-to-fire 45-degree,

 

sneers at the child’s shaking body

in the arms of a tremblingly bony

hand of its mother begging for tea

 

or a tad of coffee, a balm for a cold

night at the gobi, where a half-moon

floats like a half-eaten biscuit in the sky.

---Albert B. Casuga

 

 

 

DOORS: HERE, THERE, NEXT DOOR, OR ELSEWHERE

Photo by Melissa Datuin Nolledo, Cover Photo FB

DOORS:  HERE, THERE,

NEXT DOOR, OR ELSEWHERE

Cierra algunas puertas. No por orgullo, ni soberbia, sino no porque ya no llevan a ninguna parte (Close some doors, not because of pride, nor arrogance, but because they no longer lead to anywhere. )---Paulo Coelho.


1. Closing Doors

How many more doors must he close
before he would know when stillness
has finally found its way to his door?

Doors swivel here and would not stop,
even for the doorman who grumbles
at how endless passages take, rotates

at the touch of dainty hands, the push
of gnarled palms, thrust of a bunioned
foot, or the dithering hold of an arm

by the lover who would rather he had
stayed when going ended up nowhere
anyway, and she merely stifled a plea

for him to stay; but he dreaded staying
because all wanting has finally died,
fervent desires wrinkled on the sheets.

2. Caution: Swinging Doors

There is just the urgent need now to run
quickly away from the swinging door
that will impale him needlessly to walls

closing down on him even as he spreads
his new-found wings to rise beyond all
this debris of meaning, love’s carrion,

when that is all gone, all abandoned, all
forgotten as just the drivel of cripples
who would not think of shutting doors

whence come the vultures of unfeeling
ennui, numb hearts still beating, still
blubbering about how lonely it will be

before the eager beaks have garroted
their brittle necks straining to grumble
a futile prayer that this visit is too brief.

3.  Last Door: Too brief

to even know how to close that last door
when the rainstorms have blown off lids
to protect him when he pleaded to go on?

Too late, he could not stem the rapid swivel
of a door, rotating inexorably to crush him
when he could have eked out and be free.

There is just the final question: Is he free
at last, this door having failed to swing back?

4. Some Answers Next Door

There must be a little door

that will not end in a room.
Space is all. Is there an end
to these rooms? An exit
into a free space all his own?

He requires a room-less door

to step out of when leaving
would finally mean being
unbound, no walls to fence him
in, no house to shackle a home.

For what would a sky be for?

Why would suns set over hills?
Suns rise from the edge of seas?
Why do springs expand to falls?
Why is beauty its own excuse?

Whence come this splendour?

What does it mean for a flower
to bloom? When all questions
have been answered, where
ends he whose end is a question?

Or are answers simply next door?

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

 

 

OCCUPYING THE GARDEN: QUESTIONS AND AN ANSWER

 

 

OCCUPYING THE GARDEN:
QUESTIONS AND AN ANSWER

Old Question: Where is Abel, your brother, Cain? New Answer: Am I My Brother's Keeper? A Shot in the Dark: Perhaps, you were made for the Other. Am I?

"Der Mensch wird am Du zum Ich" (Through the Thou a person becomes I.)---Martin Buber, Ich und Du (1923) in Werke (1962) vol 1, pg. 97.


1.  Who Goes There?

What if this place were made only for the other?

You are yourself, but you are also others’ other.

Were you conceived for yourself, or for a specie?

Someone must extend the process of evolution.

Your first act out of the womb was to let out a cry.

Was it not to alert the birthing other you’re here?

And you will bring joy to a union forged in dreams,

but you could always be the unwanted obligation.

What if you were the inevitable happenstance

come from the aches of groin and gravid reasons?

Are you an issue of love or lust? An afterthought?

When did you start to even aspire to be yourself?


2. A Place: From a  Pauper Space

Dare you grow then to even ask: What do I want?

What do I need? Selfish angst? No. Must-ask ones.

One cannot give what one does not have, operatio

sequitur esse. Find and feed your hunger to know

what you are here for. Are you a brother’s keeper?

Or does a lover keep you? Either way, a hunger.

If you were for the other, you must be provident;

but fill your tills first before giving a ruddy cent.

Is your neighbour the village thief? Love him.

Clothe the naked, as you would with a fig leaf.

Before long, you would have guessed how little

you are without the other, and learn to whistle

in the dark, and wait, and build, and gather

behind walls, until, one on top of the other,

you begin to climb beyond your pauper space

to occupy a lost garden, a haven, as your place.

---Albert B. Casuga

THREE POEMS ON PAINTING RUINS

 

 

THREE POEMS ON PAINTING RUINS

1.  A Riot of Ruins

That I might smell, that I might see:

was a measure of how good my painting
would have to be before I kept or framed
it for a ready gift I did not need to wrap,

or before I burned it with leftover oil like

the posturing madman I was more often
than not, when scented chiaroscuro was
a poem’s altered form as long stretches
of babbling Babel plagued my wordhouse.

“A dab of sienna would be mouldering

leaves, a worm’s dark squiggle in the dirt,”
a shadow of a bird on rotting barn roof,
bundled twigs left askew on burnt grass:
always, always a riot of ruins on canvas.

2. Ruins, Woeful Vanishings

Why would the stump of a crumpled bell

tower find itself the fulcrum of colour
pasted, splashed, whirled into whorls
of pastel fading into a stray of gossamer
at the bastidor’s edges? How does it smell?

Dark. Dark. Like a gaping eyeless socket,

the belfry where the bell hung is empty
save for a blackened rope whipped by wind
that must have driven the bats that have
long absconded, leaving their putrid dung.

Dread. Dread. Like the threat of volcanic

mayhem, seen now from a distance
of quite hues, a shadow upon a shadow,
a hurt poised by razor-edged memories
of other ruins, other woeful vanishings.

3.  Ruins of Ruins

On the tip of my ashen grey is sulphuric

stench that would always be redolent
of lacerating betrayals, carrion of love’s
cadavers forever embalmed, forever
alive, forever recent, endlessly rising
from ruins of ruins flooding my senses.

--- ALBERT B. CASUGA

 

RESOLVE: WRITING 30

 

RESOLVE: WRITING 30

 

It is never over until we decide to stop.
That tired lady pleaded to magistrates*
that her fight is at an end. End it. 30.

What is writing 30 on a breaking news
Except that that’s how much is known
At this time. There must be something

More behind a story, something before it
To fret about, laugh about, cherish dearly.
Is it foolhardy to consider all dimensions?

We are strong dreams throbbing on loins
Even before we are ready for wounding
In a place not of our making. We suffer.

But what of it? The storm is here. Here
We are; we ride it out because we are still
Here. We are still but not stronger. There.


---Albert B. Casuga

*The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that a terminally ill or ineluctably suffering human has the right to an assisted suicide when dying with dignity is one's preeminent consideration or condition. Protesters of this ruling look at it as a potential breeding ground of elderly abuse.

 

THE SHOW MUST GO ON

 

THE SHOW MUST GO ON

Curtain falls. The show begins.

The end is really its start.

Like small stories before this,
a protagonist struts on the stage,
his antagonist leaps unto a wing,
they quickly mumble their lines,
and like crossed swords swoon
into muffled profanities sworn
to befall the other at cockcrow.

Nothing thickens the plot, no

act curdles to beg for untangling,
there is no climactic resolution.
The stage is darkened and bare.
No one stirs for a curtain call,
not even a stagehand to watch
a quick and easy curtain fall.

Like life imitating a theatre act,
there is no audience for this end.

-- Albert B. Casuga

THE FINAL FALL

 

THE FINAL FALL

A bough burdened with foliage

swings wildly with winds wound
through woods that must rot
somehow when growing skyward
stops, pulling these branches away
from ungathered stars. A broken
branch clatters through weakened
limbs that would not save its fall
into a frigid grave of new snow:

it is the axiom of growth, that one

dies as soon as the climb has gone
higher than is needed to tickle
the ribs of gods who would rather
not find a jaywalker in the sky
who has dared stray into sublime
pathways that are also diving cliffs
of those who strive to live not lose.
Either way, it is a hard final fall.

---Albert B. Casuga

STILL LIFE

Painting by Fernando Amorsolo, Philippines

STILL LIFE

On the canvas, still life remains still,
but for the ravages of neglect and time.
For a little while, movement there will
come from light thrown off like mime
from palpable forms that are frozen
inexorably, dictates of chiaroscuro,
ideographic demands, or even unspoken
meaning jutting out of dashed impasto.

Will their narrative then lend them light
like the moon borrows from the sun?
How luminous will faces shine in sunlight?
Will flowers glow, will river streams run?
When these happen, will all the sparkle
Bound by bastidor* speak or mumble?

---Albert B. Casuga

 

*Bastidor – frame