Horton Heard a Who, No One Hears Me

My online existence has been zapped to oblivion. I am back home in Manila but have no internet access. So all my contacts on various online media seem to be living behind a very high wall while all I have is a spool of thread and a paperclip – I can throw bits of paper stuck to the paperclip but the wind blows it away before it reaches the top of the wall.

So much for connecting with people. Sigh.

Flying on a Heap

In a few hours I will sit for nearly a day among total strangers with one thing in common – we shall convince ourselves that a heap of metal, rubber, glass, plastic and other materials held together by technology (or magic, faith, man’s arrogance? what’s a better term?) will successfully (if not safely) take us across vast masses of land and water.

I wrote this poem many years ago while flying from Manila to Cape Town – today I fly the other direction, and maybe some day a poem from this current trip will be born. I’ve attempted a translation to accompany this post. The original Filipino appears in my book Baha-bahagdang Karupukan.

Kalawakang Binabagtas

lumilipad akong pabalik sa panahon
na anim na oras paatras
palayo sa sinapupunan

palalim nang palalim sa gabi
itong eroplano,
patay na ang mga ilaw sa napakahabang pasilyo

nakabalabal kami ng maninipis na kumot
humihinga ng hanging hiram lamang
sa kalawakang binabagtas

nakatiklop ang aking mga binti
nais bumulusok pauwi
sa payapang lawang pinagmulan

samantala, pinupuno ng mga sinag
ng bagong umaga ang inyong silid
at malapit ka nang magising, inay

paggising ninyo ang aking pagtulog
at higit pa sa anim na oras
ang muling mamamagitan sa ating daigdig

-o-

translation attempt 9abril2012 (I fly in a few hours)
1323-1341
pb2

The Space We Cross

I am flying back in time
six hours behind
away from where I was born*

deeper into the night
this plane plunges,
lights turned down in the long passage

we are wrapped in thin blankets
breathing air borrowed
from the space we cross

like a fetus with legs folded,
I wish to fall back home
into the calmness of a lake

meanwhile, rays of light
begin to fill your room
just before you wake up, mother

as you rise it will be time for me to seek
slumber, and more than mere six hours
rend me from your world

-o-

*the Filipino word “sinapupunan” means womb, but in translation it sounds inappropriate

Like a Stranger, April

I write to a friend whom I will never see in person, someone I’ve only met online. We are words and images flickering on a monitor, transmitting thoughts. It is an odd feeling knowing someone this way. Strangers who, in another time, would have walked past each other perhaps on a busy street or in the caverns of an airport. More likely we would never have met at all, submitting to the reality of living on either side of the world, sunrise and sunset forever chasing each other.

I tell this friend I am going back home. Home where my umbilical cord was cut. Where my feet first touched soil warm with the struggle of sun and rain, on land close to the band of heat that whips the planet. This friend has only known life in four seasons. Looking up to the heavens at night gives us some comfort – we become equally small and bound by the earth’s pull, beckoned by stars.

I tell my friend my worries. Time having pushed all family and friends to trajectories away from mine, we will be more like strangers than we dare admit. It will be like rebuilding a house on another plot of land – the same rooms perhaps, but not the same views out the door and windows. No, that’s not quite right. It will be more like a tent than a house. Sharing a temporary space, forced in a squeeze of time. We will be taking fragments from the past and try to make them fit some picture neither of us will fully recognize.

All will be over in less than three weeks. And I will step into a plane that will take me back to being a stranger to everyone. Again.

It is the reverse of homesickness.

-o-

A photograph that reminded me of a photograph

This is a first draft and I may have to delete this post should Mimo Khair think it does not do justice to her own photograph. Here is a LINK TO Mimo’s Photoblog.

A Photograph that Reminded Me of a Photograph
for Mimo Khair

A friend showed me her photograph of the children who took her
away from the entrance to the Valley of the Nobles, the ancient
tombs cut from stone. In place of silence and eternity, she surrendered
to the call of giggles and handmade dolls. Small, dusty hands
clasped hers. Off she was led to their houses amid a made up chant
of her name, as if a long lost playmate had returned home.

Yellows and reds and wide smiles in that photograph
echoed a desert trip in India with my family. We expected
camels and vast stretches of nothing but sky and sand.
Not the laughter of children in bright floral saris, their hysterical
screams that made our twins withdraw. We should have
stayed a while longer in that village until their voices
settled. Instead we kept to schedule, caught
the paid-for camel ride into the sunset.

Without permission I stole their laughter,
stored it in my cellphone camera. Those children
who only wanted to play with our children
before we disappeared from them forever.

-o-

 

 

A very good friend from an online poetry critique group suggested I try shorter lines with this. So here. Please tell me what you think.

-o-

A Photograph that Reminded Me of a Photograph
for Mimo Khair

A friend showed me her photograph
of the children who took her away
from the entrance to the Valley of the Nobles,
the ancient tombs cut from stone. In place of silence
and eternity, she surrendered to the call
of giggles and handmade dolls.

Small, dusty hands clasped hers. Off she was led
to their houses amid a made up chant
of her name, as if a long lost playmate
had returned home.

Yellows and reds and wide smiles
in that photograph echoed a desert trip in India
with my family. We expected camels
and vast stretches of nothing but sky and sand.

Not the laughter of children in bright floral saris,
their hysterical screams that made our twins
withdraw. We should have stayed a while longer
in that village until their voices settled.

Instead we kept to schedule, caught
the paid-for camel ride into the sunset.
Without permission I stole their laughter,
stored it in my cellphone camera.

Those children who only wanted
to play with our children
before we disappeared
from them forever.

-o-

 

The Duck Dance

One of my daughters, when she was around three, used to perform on cue something we ended up calling “The Duck Dance.” She would bend her knees a little, lean forward, pull her hands to her chest, lift her elbows slightly, then wiggle her bum. It made us all laugh. The lightness that laughter and pure joy bring is what comes over me when I find out a work of mine had been given some space somewhere.

March has so far been a good month. After winning the Goodreads.com Poetry Competition with “People Like You,” I received the good news that a number of poems had been featured in the South African website LitNet.co.za. One poem, “Someone’s Head” is on their main page while four others are in the “Poetry Blog” section. After months of waiting I can now say I’ve got a foot in the South African poetry scene. Now I suppose I have to muscle my way through the door somehow. hahahahha. Perhaps doing “The Duck Dance” in front of an unexpecting audience at a local poetry reading will be too daring. I’ll wait until I’ve earned some kind of name for that.

Here is the link to the Goodreads.com Poetry Competition.

Here is the main link for “Someone’s Head” as featured on LitNet’s main webpage.

The LitNet Poetry Blog links:

Stranded

Being Drawn

Cape Town Suburb Sunday Afternoon Remix

Main Road Paranoia

My poems from Alien to Any Skin are finding their way in more places. I’m glad for a wider readership. At least in theory.   

Sign up, Vote. Quick! Then laugh with me

Poll

GOODREADS FEBRUARY NEWSLETTER TOP FINALISTS’ POEMS — PLEASE SELECT ONE!

CLICK HERE TO READ THIS MONTH’S FINALISTS

* Voting is anonymous and choices are listed randomly.

Thanks, as always, to our judges, Wendy Babiak, Tara McDaniel and Ruth Bavetta for selecting six finalists from this month’s group!

Eggcorns –Heather Kamins
After Falling Down. Again. –Robert Masterson
People Like You –Jim Pascual Agustin
an e e afternoon –R.A. Munroe
Wife’s Lullaby –Deborah Hauser
His Life –Burgess Needle

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Please read the poems and decide for yourself which is the best. Although you do know which one I am hoping you would choose.

Another Shot

My poem “People Like You” got selected as one of six finalists in the Poetry! Competition at Goodreads.com

CLICK THIS LINK TO SEE THE POEMS AND VOTE

Please vote for my poem – at least to keep it from being last in this particular popularity contest. Tough not having enough friends. Or maybe it’s the poem. hahahaha.

You have to join and vote quickly because they close the polls soon.

Sea Fireflies of Mindoro

Sea Fireflies of Mindoro
for Veronica

That was the last time
We laughed like children.
Water warm as the tropical air,

It was impossible
To grow cold and wish to leave
That darkening, calm beach.

We took moments to see
The water held
No mere reflection
Of the silent bursting of stars.

Points of light gathered
Round our limbs.
Wave a hand and they grew more
Luminous. We were surrounded.

Stilled. Galaxies
Unfurled with the gentlest
Sway and curl
Of our fingertips.

Beating lights traced our skin
That would never again be this
Close to constellations,
This warm.

-o-

Veronica is a very good friend whom I’ve known for many years. We call her Barok – the name of a character from a comic book back home – or Veroche (yes, it sounds like that other word for a type of bug) which the late Fr. James O’Brien did not approve of (perhaps jokingly? I’ll never know). She has worked with various tribes and sectors of Philppine society that do not often grace the headlines.

This poem tries to recapture a time when we were young. We were among a group of friends who shared the legacy of Fr. O’B’s Tulong-Dunong Scholarship Program. We had graduated from various universities by that time, and decided to go on a group holiday. I can’t remember how many we were who went on this particular trip to Mindoro’s coast, those beaches that are hopefully still as enchanting, though not entirely free of danger: tsunami, earthquake, poisonous sea snakes, to name a few.

It is Barok’s birthday today. Maligayang Kaarawan, mabuting kaibigan!

This poem was first published in UNDER THE STORM: An Anthology of  Contemporary Philippine Poetry (Manila 2011). I hope to see this in a new collection tentatively called The Sound Before Water.

I Wonder if People Like “People Like You”

Ok that just sounded silly as a title. But catchy in a weird way. CLICK THIS LINK to get to the relevant post regarding this poem.

Here’s Hoping

Poll

GOODREADS FEBRUARY NEWSLETTER TOP FINALISTS’ POEMS — PLEASE SELECT ONE!

CLICK HERE TO READ THIS MONTH’S FINALISTS

* Voting is anonymous and choices are listed randomly.

Thanks, as always, to our judges, Wendy Babiak, Andrew Haley and Ruth Bavetta, for selecting six finalists from this month’s group!

The Augur’s Prayer –Terry Lucas
Sabrina –Taylor Roberts
Et quid amabo nisi quod aenigma est?

–Maggie Cleveland
Nine Pounds

–Christina Nip
Signs of Impermanence

–Edward Nudelman
Those Who Still Have Black Blood Under Their Feet –Jim Pascual Agustin

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