THE GHOST TOWN

THE GHOST TOWN

Now that the birch closest to the porch is bare, I notice a large hornets’ nest: a ghost town, a wino’s abandoned bottle in a paper sack. --- Dave Bonta, The Morning Porch, 10-19-11 

The last ghost town was the one I left
when I grew up—strange requirement
to abscond when one is no longer needed, 

like that bare birch tree, shorn of its foliage,
is no longer the sanctuary for that dotard
who left his empty rum bottle under the tree. 

Cheek-by-jowl with the porch, it was the Ritz
with free coffee or tea doled out by a host
who talked funny with his metaphors: Hornets. 

They, too, create ghost towns of hives on trees.
No point staying when leafless trees no longer
need them, no flowers to touch, no bees to kill. 

I have outlived my usefulness, haven’t I? I asked.
She said: Verily. How else respond to this curt
snort, when all I really had or have is only a pack — 

not even of beer, nor cheer, not even care? Zero.

Nada. End of the line. Really, all I had was a pack
of wornout metaphors, lost love, lost coin wallet. 

and a wayward heart too needy to want to betray
its anguish, its plea, to come home soon where
there is nothing but a ghost house in a ghost town. 

— Albert B. Casuga
10-20-11

THE STILL POINT

THE STILL POINT

Where should I go/ so the wind can reach through me,/ so I can rifle through life while/ living it.---From “Great Plains” by Hannah Stephenson, The Storialist, 10-19-11 

Stand still. Find your still point.

You will find a sanctuary there. 

All the wind you can whistle for

will run through you like spirits 

hovering, pulling you through

all the small boxes keeping you 

your own unshackled prisoner,

moored to fears fencing you in 

like the pages of a book bound

to a rind, like a caged sparrow 

perched on a bar will hop down

rather than fly in narrow air. 

When you get there, that place

will not be there till you find it. 

Build it from fondest dreams,

house them in open chambers. 

Let the winds of everywhere

and everything rifle through 

its corridors to find you free,

unafraid to roam elsewhere 

because you know there is always

this still point to go home to. 

--- Albert B. Casuga

10-19-11

PAINTING RUINS

PAINTING RUINS 

The spicy smell of moldering leaves. On the barn roof, the shadow of a blue jay lands on the shadow of a limb.---Dave Bonta, The Morning Porch, 10-17-11 

Camouflaged in the trees, the shadow of a bird that looks upon the scene and sees the worm’s dark squiggle vanish into the dirt. And there are always ruins— the remnants of a bell tower in the foreground, the dark sweep of a volcano’s skirts steepling away in the distance…From “Composition” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 10-17-11 

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. 

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. 

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

10-18-11

HER EMPTY NEST

HER EMPTY NEST

By Albert B. Casuga

Far away, farther than the sights of a bird perched on some craggy roost, I follow her every move in the falling-down house: my lips touching the rim of her coffee cup, my fingers opening and closing on the shapes of bread and cheese and fruit I want to heap upon her plate; the rings of silver and gold and pearl I want to slide back, lovingly, upon those thin, arthritic fingers which once sewed every seam of my world neatly into place. --- From “Aerogramme” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 10-16-11

EL NIDO DESOLADO

(Español, versión original)

(Para mi Madre)

Los pajaritos están dejando su nido;
el invierno de su vida ha venido
tan muy temprano!

Madre mia. ¡Mira! ¡Mira!

Tan fuerte ahora, sus pájaros
están volando a puertas desconocidas;
están volando tan lejos para que
nunca jamas devolver y quedar en la casa
de corazón triste, ahora casa abandonada,
nido desolado, madre mia.

O mi madre querida!

NAPANAWAN NGA UMOK

(Ilocano Version)

(Para ken ni Nanang ko)


Pinanawan dan ti umokda,
nagtayab da aminen;
kasla ti naapa unay nga
isasangpet iti lam-ek ken
panag-uyos ti biag.

Kitaem man, Nanang! Kitaem!

Napigsadan dagiti bil-lit;
pimmanawdan --- agtaytayab da
payen nga agturong iti saan nga
ammo nga pagkamangan ---
adayo dan, adayo unay iti
pinagtayabanda tapno saan dan
nga agsubli sadiay umok
nga pinanawanda --- balay kano
iti naled-daang nga puso,
napanawan ken ub-baw nga biag,
umok kan iti angin-nen.

Ay, Nanang! Inak nga dungdungwen!

NILISANG PUGAD

(Filipino version)

(Para kay Inang)

Nagliparan na ang mga ibon,
at iniwanan na ang kanilang pugad,
tulad ng maagang pagdating
ng tag-lamig sa iyong buhay.

Tignan ninyo, Inang! Masdan ninyo!

Malalakas na ang mga ibong kamakaila’y
sisiw pa lamang --- sila’y nagliparan na
patungong kung saang isang dipang langit
at di malamang malayong sulok
upang di na muling magbalik sa pugad
ng kalungkutan, pugad na nilisan,
isang bahay na wala nang laman.

O Inang. Pinakamamahal kong Ina!

AN EMPTY NEST

(English version)

(For my Mother)

The birds are leaving their nest;
quite like an early winter that arrives
too soon proroguing your quest.

Look at them, Mother! Look!

Now grown strong, these agile birds
are flying to unknown havens,
far-flung places, never ever
to return or stay in a house
of gloom, an abandoned home,
a desolate nest. O my mother.

O my dear, mother!

--- Albert B. Casuga

Revised 10-16-11

A WRITER'S CRAFT

A WRITER’S CRAFT

Crevices flourish with signatures of moss. / They might not know it, but even they/ have stories to tell. All is elegy, / departing or gone; incessant rain, /language the earth understands. --- From “How I Came to Writing” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 10-14-11

Even the crevices will be covered with moss,

and grass before it. Cracks on these memorials

are stories told and retold where burial grounds

are salons of the lingering undead, memory

hounds like incessant rain. Nothing is ever lost. 

Only elegies stay, a language of remembrance

for all who would care anyway. Like tombs,

they have embellished narratives of kindness,

gentleness, rectitude, abiding flames of love.

Like Taj Mahal, these remain unextinguished. 

Stones or pillars, marble markers, or epitaphs

recall these lost lives and loves from crevices

covered with moss and grass before it, but all

will sprout from mute and scorched earth

like words cranked out of pain in an empty heart. 

--- Albert B. Casuga

10-14-11

RAIN DANCES

RAIN DANCES

Rain. And in the woods, a continual downward flight of leaves, meandering from side to side like all lost things. The rain falls harder.---From The Morning Porch by Dave Bonta, 10-14-11

Lluvia! Lluvia! It was a chant
sung at the top of our voices,
croaking like frogs hopping
from the rice paddies. Rain! Rain! 

Naked, our hallooing was no match
for our scrawny bodies carousing,
running through the monsoon
downpour like scampering chicken. 

The rain at the edge of the woods
is not the same rain where we got
lost like cascading lilies rushing
through boulders at the field’s edge. 

Rain rips foliages off their branches
like surly gardeners cutting off twigs
from blackened trees and bushes
to prepare for a long, dreary winter. 

Lost in autumn’s mayhem, yellow
leaves reel in a wild wind dance
pitching them off to unseen crannies
to rot in the rain like all things must. 

But it is not this dying we rue. Lost,
gone in the fall of discarded days,
we scarcely remember rain dances
where we were naked, free, and happy.

— Albert B. Casuga
10-14-11

OCCUPATION

OCCUPATION

There are sparrows occupying Wall Street,
as we speak, their quavering notes, grown
angry and provoked, scream their mantra:
“Revolt!” In a sparrow’s time, will this last? 

A curtain of gold leaves have not yet fallen
off their trembling branches, quite like
the price of gold shooting through Dow Jones
roofs; behind them, a hawk flexes its wings. 

Will this march through the wind tunnels
of Manhattan rouse vultures perched on bank
ledges to swoop down on twittering sparrows,
race the predator to wads of foreclosure notes? 

The CEO of Chase cackles in lieu of a fiddle,
watching the fire below behind a barricade
of gold bullions stacked against a molten door,
no match, indeed, for the twittering sparrows. 

 

—Albert B. Casuga
10-12-11

Prompt: White-throated sparrows in the meadow—their quavery notes. Behind the curtain of gold leaves, a split-second glimpse of a hawk’s wing.---Dave Bonta, The Morning Porch, 10-12-11

THE CRUISE

THE CRUISE

"We shall not cease from exploration/ And the end of all our exploring/ Will be to arrive where we started/ And know the place for the first time."------Little Gidding, Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot

"...in the stillness/ Between two waves of the sea./ Quick now, here, now, always---/A condition of complete simplicity." (Ibid)

(For Franco and Perla Patricio) 

A condition of stillness pursues you,

wherever you find your exile, at sea

or in any exploration. You will be there. 

It is your image on the mirror: an old

longing for the simplicity long lost

in the shuffle of life, loves, and losses. 

Every wave that beats on the ballast

asks: Are you happy at last? Will this

outlast the lingering left-over dread? 

Out there where waves break at the edge

of the firmament of quiet stars on stars

you can see through moving darkness. 

Where have all the pains remained?

On what shores did you neglect to load

them, overstaying albatross of gloom? 

Your heart leaps with the bobbing bow

and stern, and you whisper a prayer

drowned quickly by the sea. You laugh. 

They cannot haunt you anymore than

dead memories can bear you down.

You have built a mansion of dreams. 

You have been here before, haven’t you?

Exploring the depths of what happiness

you could grab, you will hold them, 

and will never let them slip away; you

have earned them. In this brief exile

on the sea, would you hold on to this 

sudden grace of simple stillness?

Will this still simplicity pursue you

wherever you roam? Come home then. 

--- Albert B. Casuga

10-08-11

A FEEDING HEART

A FEEDING HEART

If you have a heart murmur, or if your heart/ murmurs to you what it wants/ or doesn’t want./Ask your doctor if your/ heart is healthy enough for/ what you are feeding it. ---From “Do Not Take This Medicine” by Hannah Stephenson, The Storialist, 10-06-11 

Could it have survived that steady diet

of longing? Unsalved pangs of desire?

Cold nights on empty beds? The pains

trickling like needles into  its auricles

as you waited for her to come home,

but only the scent of rain broke through

the door you left open for what felt like

forever? How much could it have taken? 

Where would it find the balm for hurts

no apothecary could blend with prayer

to mend a ruptured, haplessly broken

heart? You did not care what you fed it?

Throbbing through those lonely dusks,

did it not plead in its halting murmurs

for more time to rebuild its violently

riven chambers so you could come back? 

Should you find the healers in some

infirmary where you might be nursing

a petrified heart into pristine tenderness,

pray, point them to my direction while it

still beats in the throes of one overfed

by disaffection, a wounded and hungry

heart that might, just might, suckle from

warm healing breasts and be mended.

--- Albert B. Casuga

10-06-11

THE OTHER SOLITUDE

THE OTHER SOLITUDE

…what is it like to live by oneself?--- From “Dear Solitude” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 10-04-11

On my hammock hour, I watch shadows
jump off my porch walls, talk with them,
and watch them grow tall at sundown.

Dusk and the quick sunset swallow them
into a night I hope would not be bivouac
cold. My boys are too young to be cut down.

I don’t need medals or a flag if they come
home at all—there’s a law that says I could
not use them flags for blankets on cold days.

Nor give them medals to their dear mother
who has gone ahead to happy hunting grounds.
Medals? I’d rather have tin mess cups for mugs.

—Albert B. Casuga
10-05-11