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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.

Monday, September 5, 2011

A COUPLE OF DREAMS



A COUPLE OF DREAMS



Before brittle bones buy you out
of a reckless dream tickling you pink,
before tired loins give up on you,
why not throw all caution to the wind? 

No flaccid arms should stop you zip
through virgin dreamscapes, nor fear
cut the throb pumping pure pleasure
bursting through your ecstatic throat.
Suns do not set here atop the trees,
there are only fierce blue skies staring
you blind as you dangle on your wire,
shrieking, eyes shut, your raucous cry, 

a wild howl of triumph over dread
that growing old leaves you graceless
among the willowy and the delicate,
a hapless hag on a throne of words. 

Why not a dive from that bright sky?
A tandem clutching each other, sure
of an embrace that will not weaken
even as you float down to the ground? 

Dreams are made of these: a soaring
to heights unknown, a mellowing
of flames, a folding of chairs at day’s
end, to wake up eager for yet another. 



---Albert B. Casuga
09-04-11


Prompt: …So long I’ve dreamed/of climbing into a harness and zipping/across swaths of hidden forest, where/no one has yet catalogued the dream-shapes/of ferns and flowers beneath the canopy;/or dropping from a little plane with you—/one quick tug, and the pocket of silk/billows up like a mellow flame, its/rustle an ineffable name, to bear me/back down to checkered ground. --- Luisa A. Igloria, “Dear Recklessness, Dear Jeweled, Via Negativa, 09-03-11*


* (From the poem written by Luisa Igloria on her 50th birthday, September 3, 2011, posted in Via Negativa.)

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