A bus ride

 
The frantic chicken flapped and flapped
        while the man tried to pen them back
                – None of them was having any of it

Jostled as the bus swerved and jolted
        on jutting cobblestones and potholes
                – How the pens burst open in the first place

When feathers and poop flew about
        nobody was having it and shouted
                cursing man, bus, road and birds
                        in the anointed vehicle of Christ
                                His image stern and His finger up
                                        looking sterner even having to watch
                                                both the comical and the pitiful

Amid the flying feathers and curses
        flailing arms and a-tossed bodies
                heavy-bosomed ladies in Mayan dresses
                        slapping chicken and angry faces
                the priest who had boarded at Santiago
                        criss-crossing the sinners in vain
                the man cooping his poultry up
                        cap askew and covered in crap
                the driver holding the wheel for dear life
                        but his foot down the pedal nonetheless

Amid the chaos the woman next row
        beamed a smile as our gaze met
                in disbelief and amusement
                        – a smile impossible to resist

                                who would have thought
                                        that love could be found
                                                while all possible hells
                                                        broke spectacular loose
                                                                on a chicken bus to Antigua

  

night of all the dead saints

 
nights like these engulf the dark
make an anomaly of light
alter the perception of loss

nights like these will turn you blind
if you ever let your guard down
bloat shadows back into their fold

nights like these scorn the senses
for even in the dark of dark
silhouette always a volcán

 

The window

Looking out the window, a postcard

– the dogs on the patio, resting –

– the steep downward slope of the street –

– the lake sitting in the caldera

spangling in the morning bright –

– peeking above the lip of the volcanoes

banks of clouds and ash plumes –

even this is a harbinger of life.

One can discern the vibrant lanchas

cargoing the commuters across

– arrows on the still waters –

the trees around unmoving almost

yet the wind surely flutters by

– the birds hardly beat their wings.

The window isn’t quite clean

– though Maria did them all yesterday

and she’s a pretty good cleaner –

for the ash never takes long to settle.

When the wind blows over the lake

the window groans, the joints creak

and let the rain in when it’s lashing down. 

At night the breeze whistles through

– even as I caulked it twice already.

In an hour or so when the city is bustling

I’ll hear every passing conversation

every distant motorcycle engine

– as if the window weren’t there –

the birds chirping as if sitting on my lap

– not much of a window, I know –

yet every day before work I look out

and it’s the same postcard I like

– on rainy days it cools my forehead –

– on warm days it turns the kitchen table

in the perfect sleeping spot for the cat

– whose bowl clinked on the tiles

like the Fuego on a bad day.

In that same spot yesterday sat

the puzzle of you I had just finished

– when I finally found the truth out –

heartbroken yet unable to look away

– missing pieces didn’t matter anymore –

for when I showed you, you knew, and cried.

Today I wish all the world’s Fuegos would

all go at once so we could be done with it.

The Spinner

 
Here I was, am, shall be,
tending the tree I planted,
by the well I built,
with water from my hands.

The clay under my fingernails
that wouldn’t wash off.

In turn my gaze, piercing volumes:
strata of stars and nestled nebulae,
maelstroms of filaments:
from roots to trunk to branches:
twigs, leaves, crown.
Birth, life, death.
All of my own, and none of mine.

There is, shall be, was no day,
no night, no time:
only the thirst, mine and the tree’s,
quenched by the well.

Both absolute darkness and light
thrumming out of my bosom
fluttering in strands about my robe
my fingers spunning like twine
woving into the tree’s roots.

In my reflection in the bucket
my eyes sparkling constellations,
seeing all around, through, across.
And back. All that was, shall be, is.

Seeking, and finding, and ruling, always.
Making sure that which cannot stop
shan’t be, wasn’t, isn’t, stopped.

Sleeping in turn but ever awake.
Vigilant, aware, keen.
Then, here, there.
Once, now, yon.

All is, shall was be, making sense
as one uninterrupted yarn
eased by the clay and the water
and the hands’ constant spinning.

The heartbeat in the hand touching the tree
his, mine, that of the space inbetween
the home, journey and destination,
the source of joy, grieving and sorrow.

Here I was am shall be
all and nothing and myself
between and the tree and the well.

 

Some lives

 

Some lives, arduous, indocile, unbridled,
need not be shunned but embraced –
they show where strength can be found
– when all one sees is woe and pain –

These lives had to trudge through deserts
and snows and tundras, so now they know
how to balance a mountain at arms’ length
and not yield under the impossible weight
– how to bend the darkness to find the light –
– how to cradle a pulsar, tame it, and love it –

These lives are wont to carry heavy things
– hearts, breathing, silence, boots –
they know what to do with the dark
– fold it like an origami – dense like
ten hundred thousand suns –
– seemingly effortlessly yet
their shoulders bent and their gaze away –
– paperfold firmly set on their bedside table
glowing shadow in the unlit room –
– a constant vigil so it doesn’t unfold –

These lives hold the maps to emptiness
– had to find paths through unmarked lands –
feeling their way with outstretched hands
– unsure of step and yet adamant on
learning how to harness the darkness –

Those sheer voyagers of the soul
pay no heed to us who carry joy
like a handbasket on a Sunday morn
– they carry chagrin like a moving globe –
– thus we may sit still, unmindful, on the grass
unsuspecting of the pain we’re spared –

A knowing nod, an intent handshake
would lighten their selfless toil
– if only a little for a little while –
for carrying what we couldn’t has a toll
which would make our joy trivial
and our issues embarrassing

in the face of some lives.
 

Mothers

 

"Men don't understand what mothers are. I am no different from other women except in the wrong done me and the wrong I did, and my very heavy punishments and great disgrace. And yet, to bear you I had to look on death. To nurture you I had to wrestle with it. Death fought with me for you. All women have to fight with death to keep their children. Death, being childless, wants our children from us. Gerald, when you were naked I clothed you, when you were hungry I gave you food. Night and day all that long winter I tended you. No office is too mean, no care too lowly for the thing we women love--and oh! how I loved you! And you needed love, for you were weakly, and only love could have kept you alive. Only love can keep any one alive. And boys are careless often, and without thinking give pain, and we always fancy that when they come to man's estate and know us better they will repay us. But it is not so. The world draws them from our side, and they make friends with whom they are happier than they are with us, and have amusements from which we are barred, and interests that are not ours; and they are unjust to us often, for when they find life bitter they blame us for it, and when they find it sweet we do not taste its sweetness with them. . . . You made many friends and went into their houses and were glad with them, and I, knowing my secret, did not dare to follow, but stayed at home and closed the door, shut out the sun and sat in darkness. My past was ever with me. . . . And you thought I didn't care for the pleasant things of life. I tell you I longed for them, but did not dare to touch them, feeling I had no right. You thought I was happier working amongst the poor. That was my mission, you imagined. It was not, but where else was I to go? The sick do not ask if the hand that smooths their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the lips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin."

Mrs. Arbuthnot, in A Woman of no Importance (1894), Act IV, by Oscar Wilde.

 

Mermaid

 

Strange calls in the night
songs unsoothing the soul
the place where the gods had left
I had arrived

I was done, so done
I was ready, at last
I unwaxed my ears
sank my sail on the skerries

woke up tangled in kelp
a mermaid glaring over me

both wondering why
I was still breathing

I asked her to sing again
and again until I drowned

I saw all my pain and grief
manifest and explode
but it didn’t kill me

I taught the mermaid
heartwrenching songs
and singing she spun me
round and round
down to the bottom

but I wasn’t drowning
so I forged a blade
for her to spear my heart
opened my shirt wide
showed her the beating flesh

she stabbed at it, twice, thrice
her nails clawed it out of my chest
squelching blood in her angry fist
beads of pearls on the sand at our feet

but I wasn’t dying

we embraced and shed tears
we tried a million different ways
time lost importance, even for her
she consoled me every time
I woke up breathing

something in me wouldn't let go

one day as she held my head
on her lap, she stared at me
for so long days passed
weeks perhaps and
in time she said I love you
and plunged in the ocean

I waited for her, and waited,
suns and moons in harvests aplenty
she never swam back to me

the ache, the ache was so great
that finally the wild went silent
and I closed my eyes

 

A voyage home

 
The way long and long out of sight
Bearings and light leeward lost
Darkness abounding de-fettered
Night lining out our hearts
Even in daylight plain

Resolve dissolved in blood
Dreams a-throng yet wraith-hued
Picking bones for lack of food
The hands of the gods against our fists
Lost, utterly lost in the glaucous glen

Seas gnawing at our sides
Gulls sending false omens
Winds whistling us mad
Shunning our sun-seared sails
Though offerings were made

We had memorised how to recognise
Warriors, witches, and death
The nostos inked onto our palms
The eye keened to keep the way
Lit by lunar glints atop the waves

The cool of sunset soothing the burns
Laving the day’s salts and sweat
As days unnumbered themselves
Spinning inner songs of despair
No amount of wax would seal away

Death-scorning hubris we felt
For it had shied off of us still
Though countless times met
Thwarted by elden craftsmanship
And centuries-honed skills

Until one fateful moment when
Many auguries unclouded became
Whilst the sea rent the ship a-twain
Our invisible shield of hubris
Cloven in one fell stroke

Many of us drowned
Many of us in our prime
A handful stranded a-shore
Bloodied and cut and humbled
Yet clear-visioned and resolute

Like a first-time whore strutting
Unsure of step yet gut-driven
Embracing fate more than ever
We knelt to our urns in awe
Dumbed by wonderment

We knew our Ithaka out of reach
Nost-algia clouding the breath
Like agèd wine to a sour palate
Too many shores and sunsets
Dreamt of yet memory-lost

The sweetness of the stalls’ smells
Tip-of-the-tongue forgotten
Almost, almost at last remembering
A gossamer veil we couldn’t part
Weighing more than mountains

A tiredness unheard of
Marrow-burrowing
Deeper than the spearheads
Holding the tents encamped
Where we waged war

Life was odd for we were
longing-looking for home
Yet at its very doorstep
Unreckoning uncrossing
Oblivious to the signs
-
Walked on, distraught
As if blindfolded
By some callous hand
Unwishing us home
Undeserving of the kindness

We wander the wilds still
In-transit through constellations
We know never to attain
Aware of our self-brought doom
Cursing ourselves even more.

 

Fragment #24

 
Home being an Ithaka of sorts
I find it where most stop looking
Even in the smell of rain

 

To the girl waiting under the tamarind tree

 
You could have had your elbows
propped up on the parapet
of the ferry to the kampong

You could have sighed
at the sunset faded
from the lone harbour

You could have taken a selfie
off the river Mekong
with a yūgen gaze

Yet you chose to sit shaded
chin cupped in your palms
under the tamarind tree

where you looked most beautiful