ON RANDOM DAYS

 

 

ON RANDOM DAYS

The day does what it always does:/ goes away... /We need time to keep starting over. --- From “Counting Chicken” by Hannah Stephenson, The Storialist, 09-28-11

That day will come when another

will not, and there is no starting over.

Where will I find myself? How will I

strike it out of my calendar? Why?

Swinging on my hammock. Waiting.

No one arranged my empty schedule.

I would have to be grand and civil

then to uninvited guests? No choice.

I did not have to be born. No choice,

some hired help pulled me to an exit.

From darkness, I found light, and I

wailed till I could have turned blue:

“No, there must be some mistake!”

My scream was not that articulate.

All attendants at my beginning said:

“He breathes. He cries. He is alive.”

When that random day comes, I

will be generous with my Domecq.

Shall we have brandy, then, Monsieur?

How might I help you with your burden?

Ever the gallant host honed in niceties

now long gone from a trashy world,

I invite the closer of the deal to a toast:

“Long live days with no starting over.”

 

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

 

 

HOLES AND MANHOLES

 

 

HOLES AND MANHOLES

 

Tiny holes riddle the leaves of a heal-all plant, turning it to orange-tinged lace. What small creature requires so much medicine? --- Dave Bonta, The Morning Porch, 09-28-11

 

There are holes and there are holes: these are almost delicate patterns
seen against the punctures on her face—wellsprings of warranty, bliss,

solace, trinkets, pecking order symbols, insignias of heft on Wall Street
greed, vanity of vanities. What picayune creature needs this panacea,
this balm for irreducible ennui?

The caterpillar crawling on the leaf, gives back a mariposa’s glorious
colours, a leitmotif of magical dabs, to show for those holes. Maggots
on the fallen leaves become fruit flies, dump flies bound by ordained
duties in this woods’ give-and-take. Green fodder from those holes
are miracles of growth and beauty.

But those holes on the side of hills, entrails of ruptured caverns, geysers

dug offshore and spring caves, mines-quarries-tar-sands-reefs-fossils,
abandoned common graves in gold and coal mines moistened by blood
and congealed sweat—are diadem vaults of stones, silver, myrrh, gems,
uranium, plutonium, plosive grit— all, all molten nosegays to crown
the smallest creature of them all, fig-leaf-covered man and woman
still in bad need of blandishments of comfort, power, and lust to cure
his inchoate, eternal smallness. Pity.

 

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

 

 

THEIR TEMPS PERDU: THREE POEMS

THEIR TEMPS PERDU: THREE POEMS

Come hither, anyway, hide your pain in the cup/ of my hands, find that reprieve from a judgment / of endlessly inchoate loving, and let your heart/ rest from its ceaseless running. Escape stops here. ---From "Go Then, So You Can Come Back"

1. SIGNPOSTS

My errands get simpler now: cut marks

On trees, branches, rocks, leaves, walls,
wherever I know you will wind your way
coming home. It is a long route back.

But you will find them like those prints

of fallen leaves mottling the lake girdling
bluffs we run to when we retrieve lost
memories that somehow remain clear:

we smell them, we touch them, we feel

them like waning fevers that stay warm
on our flushed faces. We will not forget.
We are condemned to remember. Always.

2. WARM HUG OF HOME

Would the cup of my palms nestle you?

Give you a nestling’s echoing chamber,
where you could trill all you want or can?

That wind behind the trees, would it pick

your notes up and let your song be whole
again, your refrains brave and true again?

Through these woods, troll like a stout

heart whose one crescendo is of gladness
that the day’s night must bring a sunrise

as bright as it is gentle when it presses

your cold back to a warm hug of home,
where you will fearlessly sing your song:

Fly with me to the swaying tree tops!

Reach out for me. I am back. I am home.

3. SEDIMENTS

By the time I fill up to the brim,

I‘d have coughed up sediments
of crushed stones, jagged pebbles
and the craw-sticking bone chips
that remain from downstream
sieving for the one golden nugget
that was never there. I thirst still.

But the summers of our pine city

refuge have come and gone, too,
with our windy spaces, now left
as frozen wind tunnels when you
abandoned the cone-strewn trails
for your will-o’-the-wisp: a full
bowl of nectar laced with laughter.

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

 

WHAT REMAINS BEHIND

WHAT REMAINS BEHIND

 

“…Wither is fled the visionary gleam?/ Where is it now, the glory and the dream?/ Though nothing can bring back the hour/ of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower,/ we will grieve not, rather find/  strength in what remains behind.” William Wordsworth, Ode to Intimations of Immortality.

 

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 glory
to this arid field of clay? But it has never left you,
not when you still cup your ears to the murmur
of ebbtide, 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 our canopy of stars
knowing we could not but dared to recount them
from inconstant starts and lost our count anyway.
But that was once upon a time. It won’t come back.
 

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

 

RITUALS: THREE YOKED POEMS

RITUALS

(For Marisa Keiko, aka Sofia)

 

1. Coming to the Water

Wriggling and wailing as hard as she could,

our wee one had to have a say in this dousing.
The water on her head cleanses her of sin
she did not commit yet visited upon innocents
who are now enlisted in a continuing holy war
waged against serpents unknown---tall orders
bruited to spread the much deferred coming
of the warrior who will trample all the wicked
with his terrible swift sword, truth and wrath
his tandem of a battle cry that may yet be lost
before the struggle is over, staying alive a chore
of the weak and the lonely who have conceded
early in this hunt that one is not the hunter
anymore than the befuddled hunted in woods
fencing in what pretends to be the lost garden.
Her soulful cry is promising: she will not be coy.

2. Devoutly Wished

Have you made your wish yet?

She said it was the thing to do
Upon setting foot on a church
One has not visited nor prayed in.
He complied, kneeling at an altar
Peopled by images known to him
When he was a happy lad praying:
Please make them live forever,
To catch me when I fall, to love me
When loving has gone out of style.

3.  An Offering

To leave an extra plate for one not there:
Mother perfected that ritual when he left.
There was no returning, but what of it?

He will be here at sundown. "Your father
Is always prompt. The raw dinakdakan
Will spoil if he did not come on time."

She waited, but it took so long. She slept.
Wrapped in her flannel blanket, she knew
She’d have enough warmth for both of them.

 

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

02/09/14 Las Pinas City

PORCH TALK ON THE APOCALYPSE

It did not happen in 2012 as the Mayans were said to  have predicted. 2013 came in without the signs and went out with all the signs: polar vortex, global warming, ice storms where they did not happen before, melting down of the ice caps in both poles, volcanic eruptions along the Ring of Fire, storm surges, earthquakes, droughts, famine, wars in all corners of the Earth, random rapes of men/women/little children, mass murders, parents killing children, children killing parents, hue and cry decrying corruption among leaders and citizens, mayhem from above and below, human trafficking, economic strife among nations, economic debacles all over the earth, general man’s inhumanity to man where he is no longer his brother’s keeper, the Seven Gates of Hell described in the Bible’s Revelations all articulated world-wide through even the comeuppance of cyber and digital numbers fraud wrecking the banking and insurance business, all palpable results of the ultimate evil of 666 stirring, anarchy rife through dying democracies, base effrontery and indifference in slander and defamation in media including the Internet’s social media. But haven’t all these disasters been with us before? Superstition? Omens? Ah, but even hints of Armageddon have surfaced: gassing of Syrians (children slain like the Holy Innocents), threat of nuclear wars in Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, India, Libya, Israel, Palestine, even the holiest of places in the birthplace of Christ in Bethlehem (Petra) is not spared human greed and bickering, and the plea for Peace come from the Pope and the United Nations Organization but they remain as voices in the wilderness hoping for a salving Second Coming.  Are these merely “shade of His Hand outstretched caressingly?” Is this Wrath descending/ascending the wrath of a dying planet that has seen its forests burned to the ground, its water sources polluted by toxic substances produced by mining fossilized fuel in the Earth’s core, natural and man-made disaster ad nauseam where we finally see that for every new thing made by man for his comfort, an opposite dismal effect is produced to his disadvantage? Why has man finally put himself into a estoppel where an otherwise finer evolution has been interrupted, thus making him the proverbial homo interruptus? At the risk of being blasphemous and trivial, I offer humor and irony as my defence in an act of quixotic self-defense. Is the sky finally falling? Or have we simply turned into Chicken Little because resistance is futile? We have triggered the Apocalypse prematurely? Is there an antidote to this galloping end that promises both a bang and whimper? Paraphrasing Omar Khayyam, “Ah, Love! Could you and I with Him conspire to make this sorry scheme of things entire, would we not shatter it to bits, and then remold it to our hearts’ desire?”

 

PORCH TALK ON THE APOCALYPSE

 

Sun through a skim of clouds. A nuthatch and a downy woodpecker trade anxious, nasal notes between the faint shadows of the trees. ---Dave Bonta, The Morning Porch, 12-13-11, Via Negativa

N:    Think this winter will be our last? Mayan 2012, remember?
W:   Nah, might just be a peep at the God Particle by a savant.
N:    What’s with the peppy, sunshiny, head-in-the-clouds cant?
W:   Been pecking on wood all my life! What’s with the dander?

N:    Not enough nuts or weevils as it is. Why end it all? It’s futile.
W:   Boredom. Renewal. Occupy. He’s hinted these for a while.
N:    Occupy. Uh-oh. Come back to reclaim this neck of the woods?
W:   Final Coming. Like Advent. Last trip, like. He’s tired. Pissed.

N:    Like driving scruffy tenants out for punching holes on walls?
W:   More like ozone layer holes. Global warming, oil spills, Nuts.
N:    They’re already murdering each other. Wars, famine, Woods.
W:   He’s got to have the last say. He wants them to say: We repent!
N:    What’s the point? Couldn’t he consider his love well spent?
W:   Don’t know about you. I would like to bore a few more holes.

 

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

02/08/14

 

TWO POEMS FOR THE WEE LASS IN THE SNOW

 

 

THE WEE LASS IN THE SNOW: YOKED HAIKUS

The lass on my lap
Said: I won’t play with snow
Today, abuelo.

Even snowmen
Will freeze, will crack in two.
Can’t play tomorrow.

On the frozen pond,
Dead frogs and birds on icy
Snow are broken, too.

Use paper for fire,
Abuelo, the lass offered.
Nodding approval

I muttered wryly:
The snow is my newspaper,
Your eyes my fireplace.

---Albert B. Casuga

MISSING HER LULLABY

A nook without a fireplace

Remains cold, the books
Are not for reading here.
Haunting crackle of pages
Are just that: old ghosts
Grown tired of waylaying
Restless hearts into paths
And parts still unknown
To them, lovers at twilight,
Missing her---wondering,
If  she might have called
Out on the darkest hour:
“Mam-ma, Da-da, come!”

Eventides are quietly stark

When even door hinges
Are dreadfully silent, still
As the shadows slithering
Through half-cracked slats
Of  blinds that do just that---
Blinding her with a night
They could not be there,
Who are half a world away,
Missing her as much as she
Now needs to sleep on her
Abuela’s breasts like a ‘roo
In its mother’s warm pouch.
 

“Close your eyes, wee one, go

To slumber land, we’ll meet
You, there, by-the-by when we,
Too, are rocked into open-eyed
Calm hugging soft pillows like
You were there smiling as you
Gently droop into a sleep you
Will wake up from finding us
There where we always wait
When you call, raising blinds.”

 

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

 

 

LIGHT: BIG QUESTIONS, SMALL ANSWERS, YESTERDAY'S ANSWERS

"We are made of light, did you know that?" A late, lamented poet friend, Bayani M. de Leon, once asked me while we drank gin on a football field. I thought he was drunk then, because I fancied myself as a zygote from Mother and Father. Just that. He was right. He is right. 



LIGHT: BIG QUESTIONS, SMALL ANSWERS
1. Big Questions

What would it be like if there were no light?
The world, as we know it, ends with a whimper.
If there were no sun, all things would ebb like
floodwaters into black cisterns, dark vessels
where everything is nothing, where still points
are pointless stillness, a silence of the dead.

Who would see the hand of God in all creation?
Let there be light, a primal dictum, would be a shot
in the dark, a desperate plea of blind virtual lives,
cyber civilisation nowhere near a tungsten lamp.
Denied the power of Microsoft, the hard and fast
friendships of the Facebook, when will life begin?

Sans pings, bytes, binaries, infernal halogen head
lights, movie houses, Las Vegas slot machines,
a city that never sleeps, nuclear plants, scopes—
telescopes or gastro scopes—why would a world be?

2. Small Answers

For a small campfire by the sea to singed the smelt
to go with the purloined gin and tin cup of coffee.
Why? To mark the rhythm of shadows on the wall
when all one has is the warmth of frenzied caresses.

What would this cranny in Manhattan’s holes
be like without those lamp posts? Will benches
in the park be any better as sleepers for the tired
and angry without woodfire in those filthy drums?

Quieter that all this palaver, I guess. Certainly less
involved than asking for a light on a cold night
when a deep and good smoke will mean a distance
between life and death: a warm mouth massage.

Except that these answers are smaller questions.
Why answer questions with yet another question?

3. Yesterday’s Answer: A Lady of Candles*

It is what we have this candle for. To light
And brighten what we ought to, need to---
Life being all too brief---that through this,
We can accept this fiercely warm yet gentle
place we have been given, noblesse oblige,
To enjoy, to love, to offer for the wounds
And the pain of this lonely struggle, a life
We know we must give back when we end
The journey to get back to our beginning
To know it again and again as the still point
Of a dazzling light of Lights beyond this hole,
A sharp shining scimitar to slay an imitation
Of living where one strives only for the wind,
A quiet dragon breathing nothing but cold fire.

--- ALBERT B. CASUGA

*Nuestra Senora de Candelaria