DEFINITIONS FOR VALENTINE'S DAY

DEFINITIONS FOR VALENTINE’S DAY


(For All My Loved Ones)

A waif on beggarline throws his blanket over
the shivering man’s back when he gets caught
in the windchill unawares. The boy catches
falling flakes, the old man manages a toothy grin.

The doddering woman past her prime lifts
the wailing child across a snowpack while
trying to wipe off mucus from its runny nose,
and steadying herself from a sidewalk fall.

The half-clad farmer pushes the masticated rice
into the mouth of his infant son after chewing
it soft like most birds drop wrigglers into the beaks
of their twittering chicks frantic in teetering nests.

Yelping pups snuggle to nudge the canine teats
hard for milk curdled in withered breasts
that no longer swing from a thin and bony ribcage,
and the bitch blinks its bleary eyes in the dark alley.

One finds it when and where no one is looking
but it becomes a circus fare when a young warrior
gets himself crucified on a tree in the hill of skulls
spread-eagled and denuded defining love as love is.

--- ALBERT B. CASUGA

Reposted from February 13, 2011

A VALENTINE STORY*

FOUR LOVE POEMS

 (FOR ALMA AND RELLY)

This selection of love poems is for Alma Anonas and Relly Carpio whose love for each other has strengthened them this far to carry on despite the dread of Relly's stroke that has disturbed their otherwise productive lives. I thought this is as good a Valentine's story as any, if it means to celebrate love, loving, and living. Mabuhay, Alma and Relly.**

THE JUDGMENT 

Surely there must be a way… /…to dwell without/rancor or remorse in moments when I /might press my face against your nape/to catch that drifting note—/unnameable, unmistakable, stirring/even my sorrows into fragrance. --- From “Reprieve” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 08-02-11  

It is the way of beauty and of virtue you require,

the canon forgotten in our striving for the wind.  

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.  

Should I then pledge fealty to being your gaoler?

Should I find you an open cage to freely return to?  

But these will only be tethers that must bind you

when all you pray for is to be loved and unafraid.  

Now, therefore, with all my courage, and all

that I can grant, I absolve you from this price  

of laying your life down for the countless kisses

you have given and not taken any in return. 

---Albert B. Casuga

HIS PROMISE

…If I disappeared into one of the ruby-red rooms/of the pomegranate, would you stain/your fingers to search for me?---From “Each Question is Always the Same Question” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 08-11-11

You could not hide from me if you tried,

no ruby-red chambers have room enough

to shield you from my dowse, my heart’s

divining rod, I will find you. I must.  

Would stains stop me? Neither will filth.

Each question you ask will be the same

question I will always seek to answer

if this search shall take me from here  

to the last seed that would have sprouted

from dry clay hiding your eyes, your limbs,

your mouth in each branch or leaf, or twig.

I shall kiss them all, and I will find you.

---Albert B. Casuga

PALABRA DE HONOR 

How long does wood need to steep,/to stay alive long enough with clay/it loves in the kiln?---From “Each Question is Always the Same Question” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 08-11-11 

I would take forever, if I were wood, to steep

in peacock colours and stand tall as a totem

pole. But I am still an uncut trunk, a lookout

point really, staying true to a palabra de honor.*  

On my word of honour, even when I am felled

to provide fire for cauldrons or heat for kiln,

I will stay alive long enough as ember until

you have been formed as that earthen jar  

to hold what we have always wanted to keep:

all the love and promise moulded in crucibles

of passion molten at last as honey to last us

to the end of our journey beyond these woods.  

This kiln fire would have long cooled down,

before the flame of this palabra de honor,

my troth and my word, would have flared out.

My trunk will be imbued with lustrous red soon. 

---Albert B. Casuga

*Palabra de honor ---A word of honour, a troth that one is ready to live or die for. 

ENTREATY

Summer turns its coat/…sleeves out, and makes a promise the way you do:/no vows, no witnesses but for a few letters/in the sand. But I row, you row; we both do.---From “Turning” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa, 08-21-11 

It is what we do when we are in an open sea,

locked in roiled waters on uncertain weather:

you row like my life depended on it, I row

you away from your fears that somewhere,

sometime, in this abiding turbulence, I will

absently dive into the dark depths and stay

under, finding solace from not resurfacing,

when bobbing up for air means we have to row

into a shore of rocks, run aground, and dash

like the homing waves into a brackish boulder.  

But I am rowing back with you to that sandbar

where I etched the letters framed in a pierced

heart that has yet to be erased by ebbing tide.

Will you find time then to write your promise?

---Albert B. Casuga

* Eleven months after a stroke, Relly de Guzman Carpio hangs on with all the loving care he is getting from his writer wife Alma Anonas-Carpio. In a recent Facebook post, Alma writes about how she has so far steeled herself with courage despite a steady barrage of angst and dread. I thought that if there was a love story to mark Valentine's Day, this was it. Read Alma's Notes, 11th MONTH, "Dear Relly," in her Facebook post.

http://www.facebook.com/alma.anonas.carpio

**Culled from previously posted poems in this blog.

THE SHOW

THE SHOW

Snow in progress: curtains that fall and fall until they become the show itself. A nuthatch like a prompter—its anxious calls.---Dave Bonta, The Morning Porch, 02-11-12 

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

02-11-12

Photo by Dave Bonta

A COUNTERPOISE

A COUNTERPOISE 

…So it goes, this task/of rolling the body’s stone forward then back,/ forward then back, until one forgets one’s name. //How many trips have I made? I’m listening/ still, trying to figure out how to answer/ paradox without breaking silence, how to sever //the contradictions that faithfully dog my steps. ---Luisa A. Igloria, “The Jewel in the Fruit,” Via Negativa, 02-09-12

How much of this is punishment?

Where is the jewel wrapped in stone? 

Would my Sisyphus escape Tartarian

Tedium, rolling itself to a boulder 

Of sin, of fear and endless trembling?

There was another stone rolled away, 

From a cave that could not bury love

Even as it was nailed to die on a tree. 

Which rock would I now cleave to?

Which promise? How many times 

Must I roll downhill with this burden?

Why should I fall with his craven cross? 

Is the absence of choice a birthright?

Or is it the fearsome fate of being alive? 

On sundowns like this, I will not break

My silence, nor weep to beg for light. 

Without a whimper, without regret,

I will take my rock uphill or downhill, 

Pare it until it becomes the river pebble

That must one day crack downstream

Like a wounded oyster birthing a pearl

From the dirt of an abandoned quarry, 

Like this place, this injured home,

This Earth, this leftover dungeon of fear. 

On the death of days like this, I kneel

Before a cliff that can only take me down. 

Like the tedium of sunrises and sunsets,

I steel myself into a still point of hope. 

---Albert B. Casuga

02-10-11

THE FINAL FALL

THE FINAL FALL

A branch breaks at the top of an oak, clatters through the too-loose grips of lower limbs and lands in the new snow’s too-shallow grave.—Dave Bonta, The Morning Porch, 02-09-12

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

02-09-12

AM BACK. AM HERE. (I THINK)



I did not write when I was away. I slept in most of the 14 days. Did I get recharged? I had plenty of time exploring nothing which could be everything. That kid behind me with her two fingers representing horns got it right---sloth is the playground of the devil. And rust. Let me re-crank. Am back. Am here. (I think).

TAKING A BREAK. TAKING STOCK.

TAKING A BREAK. HOPE TO TAKE STOCK, TOO.

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS!

A SENIOR MOMENT: LUCY DOES NOT LIVE HERE ANYMORE

LUCY DOES NOT LIVE HERE ANYMORE



Caminare. Fare una passeggiata.
Eh, come stai? She shot back looking askance.
Perched birdlike on her stroller, she inched
Her way to the middle of the cul de sac ---
Where I tarried, a wide wave our ritual,
I called out, Come va, Nonna?

Her andador tilted off the cobbled strada,
She stared blankly, but smiled nonetheless
In the courtly manner she never failed to show
To neighbours and strangers alike.

Her sallow skin becomes her regal face,
I thought, but the same face furrowed,
Her eyebrows arched impatiently then;
She demanded: Are you the police?
Or are you my son with a Florida tan
Hiding as usual from me? I called them
From 2441 because I could not find
My house, nor my keys. Was just walking,
Was just enjoying the sun for once.
Crazy Calabria weather. Rain. Sun. Wind.
Sun. Snow. Cold. Hot. Aiee... who are you?

“2441 is your house, Nonna. And you have
A daughter who will be here tomorrow.
And this is Mississauga. I am Alberto
With the nipotes Chloe and Louie at 2330.”

Aieee...dolce angelo! My angels.
How are they? E come va, amore mio?
Caminare. Fare una passeggiata.
O, com `e bello, O sole bello!
But you will help me find my home,
Won’t you? Won’t you? Amore?
A lilt on her voice, she flirted rather coyly.

---Albert B. Casuga

ALBERT B. CASUGA: CRUISE FARE 2: HOLOCAUST IN MY MIND

ALBERT B. CASUGA: CRUISE FARE 2: HOLOCAUST IN MY MIND

CRUISE FARE 3: BRAZILIAN LOVERS

UMBERTO AND EDO DE BRAZIL


--- It rained at the Grand Anse beach in Grenada. Writer’s Notebook on the Cruise

Hurriedly, furtively putting on her top piece,
she looked triumphantly nubile coming out
of the make-do change nook of towels held
by her Umberto to hide her from sparse beach
traffic gaze --- gauche stares from a hawker
of fun would have been de rigueur in Rio
when they were young, but she must now
twist and turn to cover a sag-here a bag-there:

El triumfo de vejez! Nuestra juventud perdida !
Aiee, que lastima ! Aiee, hermosura perdida !

She would have wept, but the Viejo beside her,
is once again her swain, coaxing her: Venga!
is all she needed to rush into the lapping waves.
Venga! Queridisima mia! A lass again, halloing
again at the water’s bite: Come, Umberto! Come!

But the mountain cloud bringing the first rain
after a searing summer has overtaken her glee:
Lluvia! Lluvia! She cried, bewailing the sudden
leeward burst. Bolting out of the roiled sea,
no longer Venus-like, she scampered --- her
caballero in tow --- to the thatched shed,
pell-mell shelter from an abrupt summer rain.

Was it the surprise of a wayward downpour
stopped her from her frolic in the sea?
Or was it the intruding pall ruined her mark
of the sun, gone from the sky, gone from the sea?
Lluvia! Lluvia! She warned anyone who cared
to listen --- the beach frolic rolled unabated.
Under the windblown shelter, she asked him:
Por que? Dime, amor mio, por que hace llover
cuando estamos contento con poquito alegre?
Con poquito de luz del sol ? Con tiempo poquito?

He shrugged as he shook the water off his ears.
Put your clothes on, Edo. The rain won’t stop,
might have been what he wanted to say when
she asked: Why must it rain when all we need
Is a little sunshine? In such a short short while?


--- ALBERT B. CASUGA