here there where (at qarrtsiluni’s ‘fragments’ issue)

day in the park

a cat eats weed flowers. my dog sits on the bird bath. a mom spreads a picnic blanket for baby’s feeding bottles. three crows swoop in on my bag of popcorn. a weed flower sticks to my dress.

the baby drools. on her blue bib. the sky turns golden.

i gather my crumbs under the blooming junipers. i pull up a heather. a squirrel flies over my head on a twig.
chippers chatter.

my heather turns blue. the baby picks a dandelion. the sun slides down. over skies a swarm of snowbirds fly home. i have no wings.

silence

silence is not the absence of sound. a sheer wall in the mind perhaps. a blockade for the heart. one cannot hear a heartbeat. the whooshing of blood in and out of ventricles. blubbering air in the lungs. a grumbling emptiness in guts. random complaints from muscles trapped in passions.

silence as gaping space traps what fills air waves. winds that fissures slurp. secrets blossoms share. coughing of uncouth machines. grating wheels those dumpsters edging out magpies. the cawing of crows to be understood. marble chirps colliding with fresh acorns among the pines. sonatas on toes around the rim of dreams.

births are seeded in silence. in secret. the first cry is a child of silence. wakefulness its gender.

new calendar

first day of the year. just another grey day. a pall on the new calendar. as if what makes a difference really doesn’t.

the ticking clock. a distant squawking of a crow or better yet, complaint. deep sigh of engines passing by. the trudge goes on.
i look on the cypress with a creeping sense of sorrow. the deep cold dark in its twigs. holiday gifts piled beside it now debris.
a black garbage bag rests folded in the bin.

i gather the cards. wishes slide off my fingers. a bag of pebbles waits to be planted in the vase. like wishes that might take root, i would have to water them each day.

blue notes waver in the light. as if there’s something i should know.

death still

death still on the shore. no breath lapping sand. the bay water clear as eyes. a selvage edge of secrets. a quiet suspiration under a translucent film of air. a shimmer that wavers underneath over shell shards.

emptied mollusks. spawning stones. furry algae. fibrous weeds.

dead still but not sealed. only walled in. like your eyes, when you stare within. an absent look. a vacant thought. like i’m not there.

http://qarrtsiluni.com/2012/08/21/here-there-where/

A special piece for me. All four reveal how I really write. Most of it have somehow strayed to a few of my haiku or tanka or even haibun. But this is me. I thank qarrtsiluni for this 2nd acceptance and publication.

I’m sorry for the vacant days. I’ve just been so busy with projects and the writing of a Sunday column for a broadsheet, Business Mirror Philippines. I’ll strive to catch up soon. Thanks for your continued support!

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blue notes (haibun)

 

 

Another grey day has fallen as a pall on the new calendar as if what makes a difference really doesn’t. Only the ticking clock and the distant squawking of a crow or better yet, complaint, as well as the deep sigh of engines passing by tell the trudge goes on. I look on the cypress with a creeping sense of sorrow. The deep cold has darkened its twigs.  Gifts piled beside it now holiday debris. A black garbage bag rests folded in the bin. I gather the cards. The wishes slide off my fingers. A bag of pebbles waits to be planted on the vase. Like wishes that might take root, I would have to water them each day. But for now

blue notes waver under the lamp

 

Spangled Seasons (for One Shot Wednesday)

Under hazed New York
spheres, spring sousing Riverside, earlier
cocooned in the Moor shedding off
mover’s trip, bundled molehills against
walls –once sparks we strung
onto a nebulae over
nights on Federal Hill—you and
I trudge on.

Trails we looped
between Chesapeake,
Susquehanna and
the Hudson, Venus sputtering
on Pennsylvania woods these,
too, we tucked abreast in
memory, if Manhattan
spares us.

Our cherry
noon-s have leaped into infinity
from finiteness; as well warbled
peace from cypress groves at
Inner Harbor, dandelions mirroring
our masquerade, a yucca spurting
by the window squirrels flying
a trapeze on pines mocked,

ends of days orioles
griped about—we plucked to
spangle our seasons. Soon mere
revenant: Baltimore winters we
skidded, wincing but
un-bruised. I posed for you
that summer cicadas plunged
into passion deaths, smearing

wind shields Fells Point’s
mists we eluded fogged.
Tall suns now spear
mornings at the Moor, we flex
our years on West Broadway: summers
on a mountain lake maybe, a bowery at
Brooklyn Gardens in the fall, sunset
behind Grant’s tomb perhaps, or by

Shakespeare’s lagoon, divining
on its surface the play
of wind on our
dreams

I posted here the first two stanzas of this memoir in verse on Nov. 3 to announce its first publication on Poetry Super Highway, Poet of the Week, Nov. 1-7, 2010. It’s been recently posted on Jendi Reiter’s Reiter’s Block, Great Poems Online, Jan. 19, 2011.

Posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry, where poets and artists who love their art share their work and sustain each other. Join us! Click OSP on my blogroll and find out how.

Deserter (One Shot Wednesday)

Spine-sagged figures trudge where mottled hill
smacks a smoky sky. A breeze lifts arms but weighs down on phantom weights, crosses the shape of forebodings.
I plead for coddling. But gray huddle bursts–on command
of the winged kingpin–derisive of my intrusion,
message on their repulsive eyes. I recoil
faceless among faces, creep away.

Had I feathers not sticks to heave survival arms
uphill in desert cubicles where suns sketch moons
over trees, I would fly away. Had I beaks not lips to warble jeweled clips not statements of commitments
without weight or facets I could not hold out to
to some light or undecided darkness,
I would sing. Hence, spirit-less

I creep up a clump of cypresses–those grave
sentinels that now stir in the wind, a warning. Am I
perhaps who has given up fighting, scrambling to my end
where martinet on my deserter’s trail awaits? Hinted stars witness my trembling, and then my calming—
when over my head twitters from sparrows roosting
drip as notes, congealing as affirmation of peace

my endless steps into the day, how it winds
to fill and drain then draw up tweets I drop like theirs,
balancing my spirit on a concrete sky.

NOTE: Editing refuses to read my line breaks on line #2 stanza 1, break on down on/phantom weights; line #3 stanza 2, break on warble/jeweled; line #4 stanza 3, break on stars/witness

Edited from original published in “Poets Against War”, March 2008
posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry blog. Join other poets and link up your poem wth Mr. Linky in the site.

winter picking2

frost on tips of cypress–

in the silence

i wait for the sun

It happens. It must be the season. Pickings get scarce. Hard to find a jornal, which is why this haiku is a rare treasure I ‘picked’ on a bus ride.