POEMS: A COLLECTION

Poem1:

STANDING BEFORE THESE BAMBOO CULMS

i feel a dwarfness

i know is due

to a comparison of heights

and strengths

between our bodies

and perhaps, our hearts

(but where yours are, i do not know,

for aren’t your bodies hollow?)

and yet, i see you

standing before me,

bodies of yellow poles

propped in this world

of concrete and steel –

bodies firm and resolute,

to carry the weights of men

and their devices

for a giant paint job

of a young building.

and i wonder

if your hearts are here

inside your poles, only quiet

and stoic,

or is it back

in the soft grounds

where they uprooted you,

singing songs lost to the winds.

Poem2:

BARBIE LIES DOWN IN THE BED ALONE, NAKED

She’s got her party

dress hurled on the floor

red and ruffly and

all, black nylon stockings and

newly bought pumps

tossed in some parts of the

room like

pollens or berry dust.

Now she thinks of her mother, who

had TRAVEL AROUND THE

WORLD WITH BARBIE

stamped on her head

too, only she had long gone

out

body twisted.

Barbie thinks if

daughters truly become just like

their own mothers. They

get beat up just

like that, their lips bitten

by angry teeth, their faces

throb after willful

hands, the same

hands that cupped

their breasts, draw circles

around their hard

nipples,

the same hands that would

plunge under the

blonde hair in great

pleasure.

There are curses

for him in every

tick

of the clock,

but still

in the end

she’ll fall

on another

of his pleas —

again

and

again

just like her mother.

Poem3:

HOW DO YOU SAY SORRY TO YOUR BLUE-BEARDED LOVER

a wet tongue to paint great landscapes

        on the whorls of his ear

a slight brush of the hair

        on the naked nape

                that slowly bows with veiled surrender

a sweet violent push to the minty fields

        of warm warm grasses ready

                to hug you both under a lovestruck sky.

Hold his hand like how he used to

hold yours

        tighter than any man

        you ever knew or made

        love with in the dark

let him sleep soundly against

the milky-whites of your breasts

while you bask

on the juicy apple-

bite you made

                                            behind his back.

Poem4:

HAPPINESS IS A MORNING DEW

OF

blended rain and lanzones scent

when dewdrops morph into butterfly kisses

        h                 v                 r                     n

                o                 e                 i                                 g

over pillows and purrs.

The taste of toothpaste

on tongue is as blissful as the

yellow sunshine

when stares and sighs

are served

with a cup of tea.

Poem5:

ADMONITIONS TO A SNAKE

Oh, spawn of Medusa,

who poisons the air

with your terrible hiss,

You will not lay a kiss

on my lips

nor will you lay one

on my toes or heels,

though you are emerald

like the fruits

of this mango tree

or the brooch

on my mother’s chest.

I can never desire

your eyes, like swift

poisoned arrows

turning me to stone

or your thick, lithe body

coiled in that fruit-laden branch

you’ve claimed your throne.

Now I tell you,

this is not Eden

and I am not Eve.

A long brown stick

stiff on the ground

could send you back

to the earthen soil and dirt

like the fallen angel

you once were.

Poem6:

HOW TO LOOK THE WAY YOU LOOK (ON NORMAL DAYS) TOMORROW

Get a cup

of water.

Put ten or

a hundred shards

of ice

you have

just splintered

with a knife.

Stare

how

little

by

little

beads of liquid

form around the body

of your cup,

like seeing life

spring out from nothing.

Carefully place

a spoon (could

the one he always use

when you have meals

together) inside your

cup and when

the time is right,

press

the already cold

silver steel

on your hurting

puffy eyes.

Poem7:

A SELF-PORTRAIT TOLD BY THE SUBCONSCIOUS

The face is where things of fascination thrive – an

immortal map of some sort, like the lips that is plump

and pink as two shrimp-meat fitting together

to hide teeth of imperfect shapes. This pair

of shrimp-meat can broaden into a smile

not like Helen’s for Troy

or Mona Lisa’s for Leo,

but that owned smile, genuine as a

possessed cruise ship —-

grand and pride worthy;

With these two laugh lines on each side of the mouth

resembling the curves of a

canoe cast on a pure warm shore; and two dimples like

miniature comets posing with their tails, and yet they still

come and go.

Poem8:

AFTERNOONS at the LOCAL CAFE

The black ant scuttling on the crown of a bitten starbread,

one end of the blue straw bent inside the mouth of a Coke bottle, beads of water

slithering on its body

slipping away like rain water on a mother’s breasts,

the closed yellow highlighter on top of an open dictionary,

the word slither marked with yellow,

a slate white paper full of scribbles, four pieces of clean unused tissue paper,

a rose petal stolen from the church altar,

plain simple people carrying their own plain simple food

unknown faces

passing with a smile

or a nod.

Poem9:

DADDY

Swish swoosh swish

letters to bottled heartbeats

Tell angels and saints

to paint their nails red

and still keep their halos and wings.

The hibiscus red lipstick

stashed under piles

of radish white KLEENEX

may turn the palest pale white lips

into a pretty O of Egypt’s Cleo

suntanned and skinny

inside a big dark room

daddy closed with a bang for good

to stop midnight worms from creeping

over some infected rose.

That’s what daddy

told

with a bang on the door

after a lot of swish

swoosh swish on the floor,

the hibiscus red lipstick

perfect on the swollen O.

Upper roller lower roller

Upper roller lower roller.

blueberries and sweet bananas

sing with The Donnas in your

low-waist pajamas,

Wait for moon

tonight, when it

is an orange

in a basket,

swallow whole

a jawbreaker

and pretend to be

a virgin mother.

Swish swoosh swish

your little girl’s fading like a reef.

Poem10:

TO STARLA: A LETTER

Starla,

Revenge is a lazy form of grief.

I heard from your cousin Nena today that you haven’t

been answering their letters

since you’ve left for Japan to

marry that wealthy businessman you met in a bar.

I know, since the day you told me

about him that you are going to

leave this place without you

turning back.

It was freedom for you.

We have two lamays

here in our place now.

First is that of Aling Gemma’s husband

who was hit by a truck after crossing

the highway drunk and happy from

a whorehouse.

Aling Gemma is still known to be

an abortionist, yet the neighbors here still

shut their mouths. She is pregnant

with her 11^th child before the accident happened.

There are whispers that her latest client

was Selima, your childhood friend,

the one you ran along with the

other children in the palayan

near our shanties

and play your Loko-Loko Kabayo.

Selima left their home a year ago,

three months after you have gone away,

to live with Andoy

and came back with a bulge in her belly.

Her father, whom you dislike for prohibiting

Selima to get along with you

and for giving sermons to anyone who

happen to pass in front of their gate in the early mornings,

now has gone hiding inside their house,

too shy to even come out at night

to buy a lapad at Aling Maring’s.

He was caught peeping at his

neighbor’s banyo.

The second lamay is that of

your Uncle Ramon who died the other day.

The last months of his life

he suffered by coughing blood.

Your Manang Tinay took twice

of her usual laundry load

with the hope of getting more money so Dino

and Bong can still attend school.

She is now thin and her

breasts are twice more sag.

I know they were not good

to you. That you often pray you

can just run away and let them know you

can stand on your own.

But is there really no space inside you for the ones

you have left behind?

Don’t let any hatred change you

Starla.

Care is still the best payback.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

by John Keats

Ah, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, 
  Alone and palely loitering;
The sedge is withered from the lake, 
  And no birds sing.
Ah, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, 
  So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full, 
  And the harvest's done.
I see a lilly on thy brow,
  With anguish moist and fever dew; 
And on thy cheek a fading rose
  Fast withereth too.
I met a lady in the meads
  Full beautiful, a faery's child; 
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
  And her eyes were wild.
I set her on my pacing steed, 
  And nothing else saw all day long;
For sideways would she lean, and sing 
  A faery's song.
I made a garland for her head, 
  And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love, 
  And made sweet moan.
She found me roots of relish sweet, 
  And honey wild, and manna dew;
And sure in language strange she said, 
  I love thee true.
She took me to her elfin grot, 
  And there she gazed and sighed deep,
And there I shut her wild sad eyes-- 
  So kissed to sleep.
And there we slumbered on the moss, 
  And there I dreamed, ah woe betide,
The latest dream I ever dreamed 
  On the cold hill side.
I saw pale kings, and princes too, 
  Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
Who cried--"La belle Dame sans merci 
  Hath thee in thrall!"
I saw their starved lips in the gloam 
  With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke, and found me here 
  On the cold hill side.
And this is why I sojourn here 
  Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake, 
  And no birds sing.

*****

In La Belle Dame Sans Merci, John Keats imitates the folk ballad, thus at first I was inclined to take notice to the work on its narrative level. An unidentified passerby, which is the poet, comes upon a knight and describes the condition of the knight and the place where they meet. In the first two lines of stanzas I and II, the poet asks questions to the knight. We can observe that the first question found in the first stanza is repeated in the second stanza ( Ah, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms) and the second questions in both stanzas are parallel to each other because both suggests the knight’s pitiful condition according to the anonymous speaker’s perception. The speaker sees no reason why such a knight would be alone in that place “loitering“, looking so pale, haggard and woe-begone. The mention of the words sedge, which means in dictionary terms a marsh grass that is usually found in wet meadows, lake, birds and squirrels suggest that the two met in a woodland lake. Additionally, it is in late autumn because the poet describes the spot as barren (“the sedge has wither’d from the lake”),(“and no birds sing”), the squirrel’s winter storage is full (“the squirrel’s granary is full”), and the harvest is completed (“and the harvest’s done”).

The third stanza elaborates the knight’s physical and emotional state which are then associated with dying and with nature. In the previous stanzas, nature is used in the realistic sense, but here, nature is used metaphorically. “Fever dew“ refers to the pallor of illness and this pallor is compared by the poet to the whiteness of the lily. Taking also into consideration some traditional symbolism, the lily is actually a symbol of death. The knight is also compared to a “fading rose” which is withering fast which may mean that life is fading. With these interpretations, it may be assumed that the knight is evidently dying right before the poet’s eyes.

The knight’s narrative starts off in the fourth stanza. He describes his encounter with a mysterious and beautiful lady. We can see the lady only through the knight’s eyes. The minimal details of the lady given by the knight and the mention of descriptions such as “a faery’s child“, the singing of “a faery’s song“, and “elfin grot“, the term elfin which pertains to elves, suggests that she is a supernatural being, and more like a nymph. The first two lines which describe her ostensibly contrast to the last description of her (“and her eyes were wild“) which resonates a darker and sinister meaning.

In stanzas 5 and 6, the dominance of the knight is quite observable, the first lines of each stanzas describe actions (“I made a garland for her head“), (“I set her on my pacing steed“). But in stanzas 7-9, there occurs a shift in dominance and we are given the idea that the lady now takes the dominant position and initiates the action. This is presented in the lines (“she found…..“,”she said…“, “she took…..”, “she lulled me asleep…..“).

Starting with the second line in the 9th stanza down to the next two stanzas, the knight talks about his dream. The men in his dream are all men of power and distinction (king, princes, warriors). The word pale is always repeated and is used to describe those men in his dream. It is also emphasized that those men were “death-pale” and that they cried to the knight, as if warning him, that they were all enslaved (“Hath thee in thrall“) by the lady. Their paleness also associates them both with the knight, which is described in the earlier parts as pale, and death. The description of her former lovers (“I saw their stary’d lips in gloom“, “with horrid warning gaped wide“) is ghoulish and creepy.

The last two lines of stanza 11 and the first two lines of stanza 12 tell the consequences of his dream. The use of the word sojourn in the ;last stanza implies that the knight will stay there “on the cold hill’s side” for quite some time. The repetition of the two lines from the first stanza (“Though the sedge is withered from the lake“, “and no birds sing“) suggests that there is no movement in connection with the knight.

The ballad has 48 lines all in all and the twelve stanzas each has 3 tetrameter lines. In this work, Keats used simple language and merged realistic and familiar details with the unearthly and strange, which made the sense of mystery linger to the poem. We can also observe the short-footed lines of each stanza. Lines 1,2 and 3 of each stanza usually consist of eight or nine syllables, while the last lines of each stanza have only four or five syllables which makes them shorter. By this, we can consider that this “shortening” is parallel to a diminishing act and can be associated as a sign of weakening. We can somehow feel weariness and loss of vitality through the pattern of stanzas, as if the knight is already worn out in telling his story and life is slowly escaping from him.

Interpreting the poem as a whole. we can consider that this ballad deals with the conflict between dream or imagination and reality and the pain it can cause to a person who remains trapped to his created ideal world. The mysterious lady can be associated to the “ideal world” of a person. Just like the lady, imagination enraptures and compels human beings to be absorbed by the pleasures of imagination, leaving the real world behind. If that person is not able to leave that ideal happiness, the dream of the ideal, and is not able to face reality and the real fulfillments, he remains trapped to that imaginary world, and at the same time contributes to his downfall.

Admonitions to a snake

Oh, spawn of Medusa,

who poisons the air

with your terrible hiss,

You will not lay a kiss

on my lips

nor will you lay one

on my toes or heels,

though you are emerald

like the fruits

of this mango tree

or the brooch

on my mother’s chest.

I can never desire

your eyes, like swift

poisoned arrows

turning me to stone

or your thick, lithe body

coiled in that fruit-laden branch

you’ve claimed your throne.

Now I tell you,

this is not Eden

and I am not Eve.

A long brown stick which lays

stiffly on the ground

could send you back

to the earthen soil and dirt

like the fallen angel

you once were.

The face is where things of fascination thrive – an

immortal map of some sort, like the lips that is plump

and pink as two shrimp-meat fitting together

to hide teeth of imperfect shapes. This pair

of shrimp-meat can broaden into a smile

not like Helen’s for Troy

or Mona Lisa’s for Leo,

but that owned smile, genuine as a

possessed cruise ship —-

grand and pride worthy;

With these two laugh lines on each side of the mouth

resembling the curves of a

canoe cast on a pure warm shore; and two dimples like

miniature comets posing with their tails, and yet they still

come and go.

Until aprons and knives grow eyes and teeth

Crimson onion, I peel you layer by layer and weep

Out solace till I sleep.

If tears are meant for the weak

Then let those gaping cobwebs and overturned

tissues tell you I’m weak (for these liquid pearls no light may see)

Not ’til all summer firetrees are burned in glee.

I wait for the moon to rise

To pour you a cup of empty speeches hot coffee

as dark as the black hole in your eyes

Boiling as the scream of muteness, shameful as your piss

Now let me tell you the thing you won’t forget

even from between my legs, this silence will make you fret.

DAY1:

I like the image of the butterfly settling on top of the temple bell. Both things are fragile and delicate. They should be kept away from hands that would tear and throw, break and crush. They are two things I would keep inside my own thickset of a box or anything that would keep them unscathed, not to be touched or even not to be known by any other being. They are like my heart, like any other heart, beautiful and inevitable to break.

DAY2:

Butterflies are things associated with freedom and spontaneity. I was a butterfly once. I passed forbidden forests, glided through undiscovered meadows, had motorcycle-rides in a foreign road, sat in front of a bonfire set in an alien land, slept and woke up in a bed not my own. I had smelt air not from the place I call home, grazed at grasses I have not trodden, had been under a different sky for one full day.

Now, I am at home. I creep once again inside my cocoon. 

DAY3:

Babochka is the Russian name for butterfly. It is a word that is somewhat symbolic to the Russians since there was this old belief that the souls of people who died got into butterflies. I have also read that there is even a dialect word Dushichka for the same insect. Dushichka means a little soul. We are often visited by brown butterflies. Whenever we find one perched in the sala curtain or clinging its slender legs on the wall like a nailed portrait, Papa would tell us that it is our Lolo Demit or Tito Halsey visiting and blessing us.

Maybe at night, when all are in deep slumber, butterflies throng in cemeteries to come back to their graves and that place would be full of shredded wings in the morning.

DAY4:

When I read the poem again, one thing fascinated me—it was the image of the sleeping butterfly. The butterfly may well be a symbol for another thing. One thing that would come to mind is that of a beautiful sleeping woman. If this is so, this could be one erotic poem Basho had written. I will tell you what I have in mind: a beautiful Japanese woman lying with her straight raven tresses on the temple floor. Her satin robe sliding on one side of her shoulder blade to expose flesh, one leg bare, a silent predator waiting for the next victim that would fall under her temptation.

DAY5:

It was a very interesting thing to think that the butterfly in this haiku is actually a symbol for a beautiful woman as mysterious as a memory from the past. It can be that Basho, reminiscing his acquaintanceship with a woman, has written this haiku out of his praise of her beauty. It could be that he was captivated by her physical beauty and vixen ways that he had actually fallen in love with her.

She really must be that beautiful that a great poet had her as his muse.

DAY6:

I searched through the net if Basho had a fondness of butterflies and I found out something quite intriguing, and somehow conform to every assumption I had in mind. Basho had met a woman by the name of Lady Butterfly. It was said that she had been a woman of pleasure before she was taken as second wife by a haiku-loving husband. She was the perfect mistress. A silent predator indeed. When she had requested Basho to compose a haiku for her on his return to visit her husband, she was again weaving an intricate web of desire that only she can take reign.

DAY7:

I LOVE THE IDEA OF HAVING A POET AS A LOVER.

Not so that there would be someone who would recite me a poem whenever we make love, or would serve me tea in cups with poetic doodling when I wake up, or would teach my kid (if, and only if, I can be convinced that the only essence of being a woman is to bear a child) how to recite Blake’s The Tyger, or have someone to encourage me to read Longinus’ On the Sublime again.

What I like is to be the force that would cast my lover-poet into fine frenzy.

 He to create great poems in praise of me.

one end of the blue straw bent inside the mouth of a Coke bottle, beads of water

slithering on its body

slipping away like rain water on a mother’s breasts,

the closed yellow highlighter on top of an open dictionary,

the word slither marked with yellow,

a slate white paper full of scribbles, four pieces of clean unused tissue paper,

a rose petal stolen from the church altar,

plain simple people carrying their own plain simple food

                  unknown faces

                                       passing with a smile

                                                       or a nod.

I trod on soft grass

lost within acacia leaves

falling in confused flight.

(Tr. Ezra Pound)

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead

Played I about the front gate, pulling flowers.

You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,

You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.

And we went on living in the village of Chokan:

Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you.

I never laughed, being bashful.

Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.

Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,

I desired my dust to be mingled with yours

Forever and forever and forever

Why should I climb the look-out?

At sixteen you departed,

You went into far Ku-to-en, by the river of swirling eddies,

And you have been gone five months.

The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went out.

By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,

Too deep to clear them away!

The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.

The paired butterflies are already yellow with August

Over the grass in the West garden;

They hurt me. I grow older.

If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,

Please let me know beforehand,

And I will come out to meet you,

As far as Cho-fu-Sa.

Day1:

I am fond of reading prose fiction rather than poetry. On weekends or school breaks, my routine contentment would be like this: sleep, eat, read a novel or short fiction, eat, sleep. Reading a poem, or writing one was never in my option. At least I tried to. It’s Just that I’m too afraid to face one of my life’s monsters in the closet: poetry.

I am not going to deny that I was kind of terrorized when I found out that we are going to take up poetry classes this semester. All I can think of was grief then. But today I am writing about it now and actually learning to love it. If I am asked why this sudden change of feeling, I would probably put the blame to our erudite professor and reading 5x a day Ezra Pound’s The River-Merchant’s Wife which is taken from Li Po’s original poem.

Day2:

Ezra Pound’s translation of the famous poem by Li Po had me quite fascinated. I was left bombarded with overwhelming images I had easily grasped because of its simple yet unplain language. The poem is about a letter from a river-merchant’s wife, as the poem’s title suggests. It is actually about Love and Waiting. The narrator married her childhood sweetheart when she was 14 and at 15 she was that blissful young wife who wished to be with her husband even in death. But when she was 16, a year later, her husband left her and went far into Ku-to-En. She then tells about the sorrows of a young bride left by her husband, and how time went into a slow creep when her husband went away.

Her  waiting is a bittersweet symphony of life.

Day3:

What made me choose Ezra Pound’s translation over that of Arthur Cooper’s is one thing I want to ponder on. Things such as this should have definite answers for at least I have something smart enough to say if I am to be asked. I am not going to settle with because it sounds better, which I think is very lame for a Creative Writing student to say.

What comes to my mind exactly is that I have come to love the way the lines were fashioned. Pound has used words that are easy to grasp, even perfect I would consider, in formulating a focused, direct and simple presentation of the image.

Day4:

I have mentioned in my last entry the focused, direct and simple presentation of the image which is evident in Pound’s poem. I would like to elaborate this particular trait the poem has. The River-Merchant’s Wife: A letter is image-centered and has this picturesque quality of the Chinese ideogram, which is said to be found in the poems of Basho, Buson and Li Po. Because of this centrality of image to poetry, the Imagists were heavily influenced. The employment of this certain quality is an achievement for me because the poet is able to paint a  verbal picture that’s delicately elegant and expressive. Pound, in this sense, is able to raise the mundane into transcendence.