post-perspectives on (that night)
The first poem (versified haibun) to which I wrote a sequel posted earlier below this: also published at otata, January 2018, of which the editor said, “a masterwork, a splendid piece”. Verses in parenthesis read as haiku…
post-perspectives on (that night)
Alegria Imperial
1.
been told where midnight birthed the Child, a goat bleated and a lamb stared away
to count adorers, i was told, beyond three said to be kings,
in fact, a throng—could they have been cloned?
no heralds really and only the soundless rise and fall
of wondering eyes moved
on the one hand
stars (might have) abandoned
the stable for hillocks
2.
but said of the gifts laid down on hay, gold singeing the silence for one,
incense and myrrh rising as acrid mist—all unfit for dancing around the manger—
no eye winced, not the mother’s veiled though lit like a crescent moon
or the father’s side-glance, bent and weighed down, it had seemed,
braced by a cane possibly de-limbed from a comet-burst,
so i caught from word that came around
silenced (no trace)
boom of horns
3.
deeper into that night, the telling somehow tangles—a wild moon, i was told,
that the star outshone, hence, grown bereft flailed, and in shreds
fell on shepherds the heralds missed, as the camels drunk on light crossed over
from a universe of desert breasts coming to, centuries since,
a seething patchwork of wheeled-what nots, and men—the narrator opined—
pining to be kings scissor-ed streets, where spires of gothic cathedrals taunt the skies,
finding in a huddle of felled pines,
and plastic star-garlands,
their own stable-born
morning ruckus
(balled-up) winds hang
on sand-rimmed clouds
4.
but said of the adoration:
a stream of footfalls—human-forms spiffed up
in business suits and woolen coats,
the unclean eaten by greed, the twisted of bone,
the mummied-up with melting flesh,
the widow but her husband’s ghost,
though not a whiff of malodorous wounds—
inundated the aisle to the crèche as brass handles
of candelabras shed their sheen, and soon, on a parade of hands
a litany of rants rumbled like bamboo clappers,
breaths rising as
petulant wing shapes (or shapeless)
fog the rose windows
5.
one story teller, un-glued, swears he did catch
the plaster of Paris baby’s lids flutter, as lambs peered
at the adorers, and the child’s mother blowing praises into her infant’s
folded ears, while the father leaned back, perhaps deciphering a dream, while
late-coming adorers crept in, rustling
with agonies reprised over and over in a rhythmic ejaculation
of supplication for mercies, so the story
rambles on
corner knot (finger-frayed)
the pain of denial
leaves a wound
6.
this renegade tells
how he, too, waded
his way in, palms damp
from doubt, teary from wafts of incense,
lisping as he counted nights lost on fingers,
confounded by shifting
animal sounds,
and the
leaps and
swirls of
limbs
where
on a cross (hung from a concrete sky)
the midnight Star
Click to access otata-feb-2018.pdf
reconfiguring: if that night comes again
Just published at otata #36, December 2018 (p. 55), like a sequel to the same theme I wrote this month also last year…(verses in parenthesis can be read as one poem, as well). I hope you like it 
reconfiguring
if that night comes again
(will it be…)
on desert stillness
lamb eyes on a Child’s cheeks
a Star’s piercing shafts
(likely the same)
a gentled flock coating the ground
the shepherds’ mottled hands cupped for night dew
the mother’s breath a mist
(sense of truth)
a donkey braying from the myrrh-scented hay
gold glinting between sleep and dreams
the swaying wisps of frankincense
(or will it be…)
on sky cracks far off
hurtling open vowels spewing hurts
an ire-driven snapping king
(dripping vitriol)
fear-coated tongue brandishing
word-swords but where’s the manger
in baffling infinity?
in buff dunes burrows
and lopsided mountain hips
(perhaps)
swept in bursts of rancour
roaring off smeuse-d hedge-walls
(maybe)
buried with wounds
cankered from hollow praises
(probably)
still I was told
(that night will come again)
flailing wing tips
a wind-brushed sky flung open
humming in cotton-soft air
(a smile)
the sphere balanced as it rolls
on the Child’s upraised hand
darkness shorn of weight
draped with piercing shafts
(the Star’s)
About
autumn wind
wondering about lilies
in a mountain pond
Tell me a writer who really gets a satisfying jornal, in Spanish a daily wage or its equivalent, and I’ll bare a spirit in constant bouts of doubtfulness. Does a writer earn more because of what he writes and how he does it? Or is a writer paid more or less because of who he is? Is it money or honor he expects to receive?
Ahhh … but money as wage, and praise or honor as reward would be too predictable, too common as Job lamented in the Book of Job. It is in these lines that read: “Is not man’s life on earth nothing more than pressed service, his times no better than hired drudgery? Like the slave, sighing for the shade, or the workman with no thought but his wages, months of delusion I have assigned to me, nothing for my own but nights of grief. Lying in bed I wonder, ‘When will it be day?’ Risen I think, ‘How slowly evening comes!’
Restlessly I fret till twilight falls. Swifter than a weaver’s shuttle my days have passed, and vanished, leaving no hope behind. Remember that my life is but a breath, and that my eyes will never again see joy.”
Not money but joy is the ultimate wage as the passage implies. And joy is not hard to earn for it is in everyday life if we have eyes to see, a nose to smell, fingers to touch, ears to hear–a heart beating. This to me, is how a writer earns a daily wage. His wages then take the guise of treasures his heart can transfigure into a universe of thought that taps into other hearts, that causes a swirl in the depth of other souls, or that makes wings to sprout on leaden heels.
Sometimes not joy but rueful, poignant moments are my pick. Take what I earned once: On my walk home in my neighborhood, I caught two clumps of snowdrops–such tiny blossoms smaller than fingertips that do not look up but shyly droop close to black patches on the ground winter has frozen. That afternoon in the frosty wind, they trembled as if ready to turn away and run but how could they? For that poignant moment on seeing the wintry rain beat on the fragile snowdrop–as if pushing it to go home now, go to sleep–I earned my jornal, my daily wage.
Once on summer walk, the crackle of dried leaves just hit me both like the laughter of children and sobs long suppressed. Neither one of them would resolve the dryness, but I recalled how each does bring tears: laughter for joy, sobs for healing that comes with the release of a dammed-up pain. My jornal that day came as two haiku.
Fall has since shortened the day and the heart begins to crave for lost space that it doesn’t even recall which or where. I feel that most treasures have turned into mush so much so I wouldn’t be able to sift them off the ground. Yet I caught the dying day yesterday–so glorious in the gold of autumn it opened a flip side of serene heaven. Blades of grass coated in diadems of rain that carpet the lawns render royal walks poor by imitation. A burst of red maple against an inky blue sky humbled me, a soul bragging about her skill to recreate beauty in words.
I suppose I’m taking Job’s reflections to heart. I’d rather not gloss over each day and look beyond what’s there, right before me, or else fragile as is my breath one day “my eyes may never again see joy” to write. With what then will I compare the eternal joy, the ultimate wage I await?
Yet for now, as other eyes hanker to make the invisible visible, I put a tag on some moments of joy. Like on seeing the snowdrops, I paid myself $200 as my jornal.
What could have been yours?
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