Black Friday 2015

How this empire will lie when

in a century or so

it laughs its last choking joke

and flies farther than angels ken.

The waves of both maria,

maria vestra, not mine,

bring sad legs to these templa,

shrines of strange gods with pretty shine.

Their tired missionaries

take the gospel of self to

other shores. After one, two

years, they take off, leaving us to ourselves.

In this particular mound

of brown and black, I wander

lone, and not one spoken sound,

one whiff of skin, is tender

strange, without being familiar.

How does one live the life

of self in a community of selves?

It is a severed life

in the land which these people delved,

in temples like these—convenient lives.

I realize in writing this

I am angry. I want in.

There is tension

in being intentional

against other good news.

(And you, reader, see 

my fingers in their

natural state.)

How does one be in but

not of this religious

swimming pool of all worlds?

I have been reading too many epics

He sits in his bathtub, Prince

Hector of the city, when

wind comes by to prick, a wince

threatens, he bites it off, then

pants grasping for the golden

rails on the gossip walls. Ten

minutes pass he is shaven—

first shave, Hecuba, would you

believe it. Clang! The workmen

clang in the unseen (but to

clang in the visible our

Prince has yet this task to do).

Breakfast: the grapes are too sour,

and he makes it known with one

swift reprimand, for such pow’r

breathes rapt in his hand (not won,

but born with) and after milk

the sand outside in white sun

eats his sandaled feet like silk

until his plastic will brings

him to the pavement’s light lilt

but its gray stony scalp thinks

the shod ankles of the boy

are better off inside. Since

Hector follows Priam’s ploy

(or follows a boyish plot,

treats the hammer like a toy),

Athene pales as if in rot

and her shield lies decomposed.

Hector trundles forward not

ready. He stares at his toes.

The hammer in his knapsack

flies to Zeus and back, a roast

handle holding its head. Hacked

to the brain and pink his heart

Hector sees the  billow, slack

in step. The smiths’ fiery art

stinks, offense to him, but that

excused by his mind-tongue, tart.

Still, his arrogance never fat,

he enters in, tardy now.

He drops his bag on the mat

and explains glumly Just How

he got late. He doesn’t get

to finish. “Prince, please you bow.”

Hector’s child-hair tastes helmet.

He sees himself mirrored, Troy's

Prince Hector, and the onset.

___________

This poem was birthed only because of my inability to stop reading epics this year. I opted for fixed syllables in tercets (although not metered strictly), since I find free verse's liberty intoxicating and overwhelming. A fixed syllable scheme is also more fun for me: you begin with a rule—not necessarily with a story or even an image—then get surprised where it takes you. The (cheating) terza rima scheme is actually due more to Derek Walcott's Omeros than to Dante, because I'm not reading Dante in the Italian, and it isn't the Sayers translation either. Omeros is a postmodern epic, written in quasi-hexameter-terza-rima-variation, the incipit of which:

"This is how, one sunrise, we cut down them canoes."
Philoctete smiles for the tourists, who try taking
his soul with their cameras. "Once wind bring the news 

to the laurier-cannelles, their leaves start shaking
the minute the axe of sunlight hit the cedars,
because they could see the axes in our own eyes."

a-b-a b-c-d. Twelve syllables each line. Not Dantean terza rima, not Homeric hexameter, but a certainly more tractable fusion of both, and informed by free verse.

(Side note: Omeros is dazzling; not understandable entirely, but absolutely brilliant. I recommend it, if you have time to spare.)

Troas

Burned by the middle-sun, we came unto a city
Walled as if by thoughts, yet unwalled, bare,
Still awaiting the Sack, when she would
Scream. We came unto those unwalls and found
The Gate-elders, whose craniums were on the verge of bursting.

We approached those languid kings and
Inquired: "What is this city called? who rules it?
Who built it? who are you?
Where are we? do you understand us?"
So we said, to whom one swollen, wrinkled mouth:

"This city, we knew its name
Once. Who rules it, we know no longer.
This country, this strand beside the sea
Of the world, this earth: now it is as if foreign
To us, wizened into abstracted cadavers.

We understand your speech, but already I begin
To forget what you said: it dies away and the memory of its sound
Floats into that ancient Argive's void. We have lost
Our bearings; we are as children lost
In the undulations of faceless monsters,

We were consumed and excreted by the present,
Now ever pressed by the question: 'Where is mother?
Oh, where, where, where, is mother?'
We cannot retrace our steps, can only move forward,
Our god is Progress, whom we revile -- no other to protest.

The walls, I think, are sound, as your speech is.
A tune three thousand leagues away to the west hints
The foundations are sound also.
This city was built on terrifying rhythmic drum beats,
Or the blare of a mad poet's voice.

We are haunted not by sound -- the walls crumble -- but by
Black letters on pale parchment, and,
Of late, by pictures and by moving images,
The memory of movement, the soundless swells
Of torpid river-torrents of shields, spears, and scrolls."

His feeble voice resumed: "Before I forget entirely --
I am Priam, Laomedon's son, or was Priam;
Or was I Atrides Agamemnon?
Or Menelaus? or the father, Atreus, Pelops' son?
I am too old, too old."

His finger pointing near imperceptible to the right:
"This is Achilles, man-slaying son of Peleus --"

His once long and glorious beauty
The sorry hairs of an overused broom.

"He is Achilles, and look!
Look at his hands --" his voice's timbre was unchanged

"-- The blood on his hands!" We looked, but
Pelides' hands were the brown of ancient paper --

Whether it was the blood of Priam's sons, or the atrophy,
We could not tell. The smell gave away nothing.

We thought we saw a crystal tear run down
Priam's face, muddying itself in its course.

Pointing to the left: "Nestor, who has slept since, since..."
His pallid head was flung back, and his great mouth lacked every tooth.

Pointing farther: "Ajax the Giant, and Ajax the Lesser,
But who is who, I can no longer tell."

"That sea-faring king, Odysseus, left us long ago.
I miss him, I miss him, or do I hate him? Neither that can I recall.

That is Idomeneus, and that Aeneas --
But he left, too, didn't he? He left as well..."

We said, in reply: "Are you not all dead?
Why are you unsure of who you are?
Why do you sit side by side, who were
Warring enemies, who wept because of each other's
Brutal, bloody work?"

The decrepit megacephalic: "I am Priam. I am dying.
I would like to be dead and not dying -- indeed, all of us --

But that thread, a single capillary, has not run its span."
(A decade later, we realized we were the reason.)

"There," pointing to a figure sitting solitary, "is
Hector, breaker of horses," and, unprecedentedly:

"We are all overladen Hector,
Murdered, violated.

And we are all Achilles,
Murderous and doomed.

We are all Priam,
Ragged, filthy, and hungry.

We are all Agamemnon,
Slain by treacherous dagger.

We are all Menelaus,
Whose wife was stolen way.

We are all Paris,
Who is execrated by all.

We are all Aeneas,
All Odysseus.

We are every soldier
Whose blood poured itself forth in the sight of these walls.

No one who has stood on this cursed soil
Stands in and of himself.

I am vanishing --" he croaked an attempt at a laugh "-- We here all live
This lengthy and evil process of dying."

We stood silent, being able to do nothing else.
Priam's eyes glistened, as they did at Hector's rape.

"We all returned here, to this burnt land;
There was no other country who'd keep us.

We took the gods by the hand, we found
We were a match, we drove our spears straight through their mouths.

We slew the Olympians together, in the name of
Progress," said the king, who before our sight visibly wasted away.

"It did nothing. Father Zeus' brood were phantoms
In the end. Other gods had risen with the new sun."

"Proceed, if you wish," he continued.
"You will find multitudes inside."

After a solemn, motionless, darkening hour, we did so.
With a faint "Halt who goes there" dogging our steps, we walked
Into the fading, torn-paper streets, ascended
The hellish rungs of descent. After years, we found
Ilus, son of Tros, erector of the city, a skeleton on his toilet.

"... good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night."

I sort of graduated today.

I look forward
with heavy melancholy:

No more Papa reading devotions
to the accompaniment of aircon din.

No more Mama, arms all up bewailing —
because I ironed badly — that I'm not prepared.

No more
siblings.

No more cat to greet me
meow at the foot of the stairs.

No more puppy to greet me
panting puppy glee.

No more quiet afternoons spent
reading in the torpid upstairs.
_____
I sort of graduated today.

The end of a decade-long walk
   on a now burnt beach.
The end of a quiet, violent conversation
   which seemed impossible to reach.

The end, the bittersweet close
   of a play you love, you live in, you die in:
   of a book you breathe, you cry, you sieze —
   the black, iron letters peeling your shy skin.

"You will understand, won't you?"
The little gray seacraft bobs away from the dock.
She stands at the edge, looks out from the cliff,
a subdued Dido, weeping on the rock,

crying out no name,
only crying inward
an inarticulate, trembling cry,
while another cry is heard

wafted by the winds
from the vanishing
little seacraft
till now wavering.
_____
I sort of graduated today.

A weight of sadness touched
my head, pressed down, and settled
in my heart which sputtered:

"O Lord
.
.
Lord
.
.
Lord
.
.
O Lord, please don't forsake me,
a child scared out of his wits.
.
.
Never let me go, Lord."
_____
I graduated. Thank you, dear mother;
Dear father, thank you. Thank you
for being willing to let me go.
I graduated — no, God graduated me:

the end, thank you so much, the end.

Because I cannot swim

Went island hopping on Maundy Thursday.

Look out onto the liquid sapphire breaking
Against the seacraft's whited hull,
    the marble swells
Glinting in benign tropical sun,
Scintillating, spurred to dance by unheard song.

Look out into the vast, consuming blue,
Azure hills by unseen children rolled.
Go, get up; see the tallowy tides —
And wonder: are you invited or repelled?

Decide:
To behold only —
Or to taste and
Bleed?

In the pendulous silence, the quiet thrill
Of that moment on starboard edge,
You see and think everything, and likewise
See and think nothing, peering into the void.

You breathe, forgetting all rationality — jump!
You drown in a microcosm
Of almost savage wonder, thinking nothing
Of thinking, for everything's paused.

Then as the impalpable tide above you rolls,
Waves of panic wax
And pound your plywood hull;
A fiery terror siezes your paper heart.

You scramble and flail to climb up and feel
Familiar footing — and the thought crushes you:
That you cannot calm yourself in the sea,
That you cannot control the current,

That you cannot swim or see underwater,
For fear of stinging salt and of a vice
And of a death delivered by an unfeeling element;
That you are a little child, lost.

You have no power in yourself
To rein in the waves
Nor even power to reign in your
Inner chambers, to know "Be still, my soul."

You are frail (so you think),
You are dust:
What are you doing, you wonder,
In water?

Good Friday communion

Meager white cloth on modest wood.
Two tin vessels; cross-topped covers.
Two loaves of bread; cuplets of wine.

The minister steps down, invites.
We approach the table, silent.
"The bread... body; the wine... shed blood."

Take and eat, drink — and remember
The broken, bloody body of
Our Lord: for you, battered, shattered.

What started as an experiment in common meter

A mountain hurled onto a fly,
The fly surviving still —
Scarce more than a mere fly am I,
And overwhelmed by hill
                                     Am I.

The psalmist wondered who was he,
God of eternity,
That he of time should know of Thee —
Timeless fidelity
                       Of Thee.

How much less I, the little fly,
Who with not even half
Of David's pious fervency,
That I should ask of why

Why the mountain fell on me —
Who serves* You shamefully —
The mountain of such levity:
That under so heavy

A lightness I should be
Crushed —
               and being crushed, blessed.

_________________

*or treats (I couldn't decide on which)
_________________

I have just finished a collection of Emily Dickinson's poems, and was struck by the skill and ease with which she poetized in common meter. Common meter is one of the most common (duh) rhythm schemes for hymns ("Amazing Grace," for example), and I've been hearing it at least fifteen years now. But Emily Dickinson's made me view it in a refreshed way, and I felt the impulse to try my luck with it. I borrow more than one theme from her poetry. Of course, I cheat: the first two quatrains (or cinqtains, is that what you call them?) both have little addenda. The fourth quatrain doesn't maintain rhythmic consistency. The third has a general iambic beat (not really) but uses off-kilter rhyme. And let's not bother with the quasi-couplet at the end.

thoughts on college no. 5

bathed in the crepuscular beauty
of a lamp's lonely dying light

a boy at the piano
sits and sees the last notes on the page


morendo




morendo






morendo





it is the movement's end
but not the end of movement


it is the beginning of another movement
but movement has never ceased for one moment

crescendo






crescendo

not yet



crescend

no!


any louder the boy can
not




but it is the beginning of another movement
although before his eyes a final somber
dance macabre

and it is the beginning of another movement
and the next pages are written

but not yet for him
pages blank without blotches

he must enter the movement
begin the movement

and play
without knowing the blotched end

knowing the theme but not
the end

the beginning but not
the end


"at the still point"


but he must enter the movement
for movement never stops

not even in
stillness


he knows not
the end

but he sees
blotches

he knows not
the end

but he knows he must
begin

Auden's "As I walked out one evening"

Loki reading W.H. Auden's famous poem:

As I walked out one evening,
   Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
   Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
   I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
   ‘Love has no ending.

‘I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
   Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
   And the salmon sing in the street,

‘I’ll love you till the ocean
   Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
   Like geese about the sky.

‘The years shall run like rabbits,
   For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
   And the first love of the world.'

But all the clocks in the city
   Began to whirr and chime:
‘O let not Time deceive you,
   You cannot conquer Time.

‘In the burrows of the Nightmare
   Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
   And coughs when you would kiss.

‘In headaches and in worry
   Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
   To-morrow or to-day.

‘Into many a green valley
   Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
   And the diver’s brilliant bow.

‘O plunge your hands in water,
   Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
   And wonder what you’ve missed.

‘The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
   The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
   A lane to the land of the dead.

‘Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
   And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
   And Jill goes down on her back.

‘O look, look in the mirror,
   O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
   Although you cannot bless.

‘O stand, stand at the window
   As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
   With your crooked heart.'

It was late, late in the evening,
   The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
   And the deep river ran on. 

Two poems

Thoughts on college no. 4

In the blinding daylight
Of gilded future,
A boy releases a bird –
Two birds, five birds, and another –

And sits and stares and bathes
In the undulations of the daylight,
Blank-eyed, bleak-eyed, dead-eyed;
And the daylight dims as vision vanishes.

And out! a whirlwind – and a bird
Bearing a branch half-withered,
And another a twig, and another the same,

And another a branch bearing buds –
Almost alive, as though struggling to be alive –
And another a branch which had atrophied
Suspended in purgatorial stagnation –

And a last bird (a dove were it not trite)
Bearing a branch, a bird that told of the
Quiet deluge, that the flood was nearly over,
And that there would soon be dry ground –
For the boy hung in empyreal daylight –

And that the boy must soon descend
And dig his toes into the earth,
And grasp his fear and toss it
As a handful of wet dust,

And taste the fruits of the kingdom
And realize that the kingdom is not yet,

And feel the limestone edifices
And feel the marble, holy columns,
And feel in his heart a half-satisfied longing,

And feel a hand come over his eyes
And feel the earth come into his eyes
And feel the deadness come out of his eyes,

And that he must See
Into the gilded future, and See
Inside the gilded future, and See
Beyond the gilded future –

That he must See
And become a man.
____________________

Why I read fiction

On deep blue bedsheets
I knock on the door of a paper house
And open it, unbidden,
For no one is inside to let me in;

And in I go.

Sometimes I knock
On the door of a house
Not of paper, but of pixels;
I knock –

And in I go –

To Spain, to the gothic South,
To be excited, to get depressed;
In I go
In order to be moved

Without moving.

streets of Davao City

Written while sitting in a rusty jeep in the thick of a traffic jam that was bad enough for me to whip out my phone and start writing.

Welcome to modern hell,
the sounds and smells of
Hadean urbanity.

Welcome to the land of
promise and the land
of asthma, of gases, germs,
of jeepneys—hour-long rides!—
of furious, crazy
taxis, and of tricycles
which whir and wheeze their way
through tightest alleys
and up sweaty, arduous slopes,
of bad traffic jams
enough to make a
demon out of saintliest
bishops and ministers
and worse devils
of those who already are.

This is the realm in which
temples are huge, built
to displace plywood shanties,
temples for ancient gods
dressed in tuxedos,
sporting Ray-Ban sunglasses,
shrines for insatiable
deities of the
world of infinite matter.
They even hold masses
for masses perplexed
by their two-faced religion,
religion of a dead world
and religion of
another no less lifeless.

Burnt-out hearts seeking to
burn themselves some more—
the burning out of the soul—
walking on burnt paved
ground or driving cars
to earn to die for paychecks.

Edifices of wood
and hoary towers
of bright glistening concrete
lie uncomfortable
together so that
sidewalks span eight decades.

It is telling that the 
cracked pavement and the
rotting, rotted acacia-
wood can't simply be glossed
over. They are the 
inheritance of 
contemporaneity,
of the age of today, 
which never slumbers
and thereby murders itself,
and demands a rest which
                                isn't.

This, my world, is a fact,
my milieu, the air I
 breathe, the air that crushes me,
and which I cannot crush
but have to succumb
to and breathe and breathe and breathe
because there is still life
in the oxygen
of the city  and what can
you do? You are flesh, frail,
ashy, ashen flesh.
You have a body which grows
in pain. The world's soul
groans with sorrow
for the hell it has become.
But
that's why we pray "Thy kingdom come, Thy will
be done on Earth as it is in heaven",
                                                   isn't it?

thoughts on college no. 3

careening careening careening
carelessly
tasting creamy sweets
and unaccustomed to acrid bitterness

no rejection yet
all "you are accepted
you are wanted
you are needed
by the world"
but that's preposterous
in this world of
overachievers
or the ubiquitous
"leaders"
(like "harvard is for leaders" as
cambridge would quip)
what room is there for me or
for failure
what room is there for creeps
who have a home and have
no home
(o matres almae
what possibly can
this weird kid give you)

I wait for that
rejection
with dread and strange expectation

a slap to the face
is solely the method
by which to speak
to such a prick

what did Lewis say?
that pain is God's choice
megaphone?
I know the sound
the blast the boom
of that megaphone
it isn't safe but it is
good

thoughts on college no. 2

there's a guy who stands
solitary on a beach and
the dreadful thing is
it's not so much that he
approaches the water
as the water inches
closer to his toes
his feet are blocks of
dried and dull cement
the sand long since like an
antswarm has been
devouring his feet
the sand is a fact
he is a grain of sand
abraham's sand
but even facts can be effaced
and the comfortable order upheaved
by the geist of change
the facts of sand in the horizon of his vision
are gone and eaten up
with greater velocity than
the sand had earlier concerning his feet
and the fluctus aequoris
begin to reveal their threat
the old japanese painting
of the monster tidalwave
and inside the guy
the germs of fear
and of despair
and of seasickness crack
open and
open and
open and
out shrieks suffusing rapidly
the nauseating burden of
responsibility

but there is such a rider who
the foamy horses of the sea
who on the backs leviathan
in easy calm yet glorious rides
and of the man's dead feet shall be
reviver not of feet alone
but of each sinew and the wave
of change himself does spur not for
a drowning void of meaning but a
death and undeath into life

My First Poem in German(!)

Disclaimer: Not to be taken seriously. Thank you very much. Should Roi stumble on this, he should not be offended, because nonsense should not offend.

Behold, peasants! I have written my first scatological doggerel verse:

Roi ist ein
Fett Regenschirm,
Wer Würmer
Isst, und furzt.

Which is, being interpreted:

Roi is a
Fat umbrella,
Who worms
does eat, and farts.

Which is, being evaluated, a horrible translation of a frightfully inane piece of poetry.

Herr Johann is traumatized.

T.S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns Eliot is by no means an easy author to read. (I should get the Cats book.) But he is undeniably brilliant. The content of The Waste Land is exactly what is described by the title: the bleak vista of modernity. "The Hollow Men" furthers the themes of The Waste Land, with its lines of the "dead land." "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" feels as if it were written by the great James Joyce, employing stream of consciousness to communicate a sense of lostness. A very moving piece is "The Journey of the Magi," an excerpt of which I include:

All this was a long time ago, I remember,

And I would do it again, but set down

This set down

This: were we lead all that way for

Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,

We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different; this Birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,

With an alien people clutching their gods. 

I should be glad of another death.