The unconscious...

The unconscious...

The unconscious, according to Freud,

Is individual, unknowingly employed.

His colleague, Jung, said,

It’s collective instead,

And Freud got rather annoyed.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Semana Santa

SEMANA SANTA

The time of year when the world

Transforms into the inside of a tin can

Cooking in the noontime sun

Is when Jesus Christ is crucified

To astonishment of delirious crowds

Dropping in heat like dead insects

As reservoirs languish and asphalt streets,

Cracked, peeling, cry out for water.

Palm Sunday flutters weakly, a flag

Raising his arms in faint breeze.

You listen to the story of the Passion…

By the time Jesus is entombed,

You are wrung out and numb.

Days later, Maundy Thursday is mentholated,

Rising and setting in a wooded garden.

The reprieve is illusory.

Darkness shoves night inside an oven.

Soon you cannot escape Good Friday,

Twice hotter than the night before—

Turning round and round,

You are roasted on all sides,

Dripping as if broiling on a spit.

Two days’ provisions running low,

Holy Saturday finds you sitting peacefully

Beside a corpse for a companion

Inside a tomb pervaded by silence.

Comforted by cold, you imagine the sun

Without seeing the dawn.

You doze off the instant you wake up

To Easter Sunday suddenly present,

Pure, fresh water illumined by glory.

Inhaling a cloud, you glimpse the crystal city.

Originally published in The Galway Review (February 15, 2016)

...pure, fresh water illumined by glory.

The House of Aguinaldo

THE HOUSE OF AGUINALDO

To Emilio Aguinaldo

Your name means Christmas gift,

And yes, you bestowed

Upon your country

A fine gift, your house,

A generous patrimony,

Memorial to courage,

Summons to hope.

As travelers approach,

Many-gabled red roofs

Notably rise into view,

Presided over by a tower

Six storeys high,

A lookout embellished by

Five quaintly pointed spires.

Gracing the front esplanade,

Your bronze statue—

Your visage, undaunted,

Drawn sword at the ready,

Riding your stately mount,

Foreleg upraised, purposefully.

Entering the vestibule,

We see behind glass displays

Your bleached military uniform,

High-cut boots, rusted rifles,

Glossy buttons adorned

With Masonic symbols,

And the sword of the defeated

General Ernesto Aguirre.

Ascending the main stairway,

We encounter at the landing

A crossroads of sorts—

Left, doorways, the first

To a ladder-like stairway

To the third-level Music Room,

Rising to the Mirador

At the top, a tower

Overlooking sweeping views

Of Manila Bay and its environs;

Further down the hallway,

Your children’s bedrooms;

End of the hallway, a patio,

Galeria de los Pecadores,

Your venue for hatching plots

Against the Spaniards—

Right, your living room, commodious,

Harboring the original window,

Now converted into a balcony,

From which you declared

Philippine Independence,

Unfurling the first flag

Of the first Republic,

Marcha Nacional playing.

Mosaics, triangles galore,

Wood carvings in relief,

A plethora of symbols

Adorn walls and ceilings—

Eight-rayed, a sun

Honors the first eight provinces

To revolt against Spain;

Inang Bayan flourishes a banner;

Bearing a letter, a dove flies

Towards flags representing

The League of Nations.

Appointments, darkly varnished—

Cabinets of costly hardwood,

Flashing full-length mirrors;

Ornately wrought clamshells, which,

Pulled out from their niches,

Serve handily as pot stands

Attached to pilasters;

Grandiose, an outsize dining table;

Desks with sidewise compartments

To store important documents,

Or arms, for quick brandishing.

One corner of your sala,

A wooden panel swings open,

Disguised as a hat rack,

Concealing a corridor

That exits into your bedroom.

Herein positioned, an aparador

Built by your carpenters

To serve as your hiding place—

Dodging unwanted visitors,

You would sit inside, quiet.

A trapdoor from your bedroom leads

Two ways—one descends to

An indoor swimming pool;

The other, same level,

Is a corridor to your kitchen.

This hallway, Veterans Hall,

Is where you would meet

Your comrades-in-arms.

Their portraits line the upper wall.

Below, benches with backboards

Flip open to reveal hollows for

More documents, more arms.

Your spacious kitchen houses

A central table, its solid wood top

Hiding another passageway

Descending to an underground

Bomb shelter cum tunnel leading to

Santa Maria Magdalena church,

Five hundred meters

Down the main street.

Back of your storied mansion,

Your tomb, very large,

Monolithic, a single block almost.

Round the corner, in the garden,

Your Packard limousine, gleaming

Inside a house of polished glass.

Cleverly constructed, wily—like yourself—

Your entire second floor conceals

False panels, secret passageways,

Hiding places, an underground tunnel—

All of which gives us pause.

Never look a gift horse

In the mouth, they say.

To your consternation,

You might discover jutting teeth,

Or worse, dark jaws of betrayal.

Originally published in Cecile’s Writers (June 12, 2016)

 

Philippine Declaration of Independence, June 12, 1898

The Ladder of Silence

THE LADDER OF SILENCE

The ladder of silence consists of seven steps.

The first step is habitual prayer.

The second step is to speak only when necessary, whatever necessary, to the extent possible.

The third step is to reduce the noise of our external world under our control to a practicable minimum.

The fourth step is to grow in constant conversation with God and thereby to deepen our union with him.

The fifth step is to speak out against injustice and oppression.

The sixth step is to keep silent in the face of insult or injury.

The seventh step is to imitate Christ in his suffering and death on the cross.

Originally published in The Montréal Review (March 2017)

Dead Christ (c. 1480) by Andrea Mantegna

Irony

IRONY

Darkness is luminous:

It bends as light.

Day is over:

It rises with night.

A clock is a statue;

A desert, a lake.

Sorrow is joy;

A festival, a wake.

The moon is the sun;

The universe, a box;

Truth, appearance;

Reality, paradox.

Christ Destroys His Cross (1932-34) by Jose Clemente Orozco

I eat dry bread…

I eat dry bread…

I eat dry bread in the desert:

It tastes like a cake of dust.

I breathe in and out powdery clouds:

Nostrils singe, snorting fire.

I swallow my own saliva:

Thick paste coats my inside throat.

How will I sustain my journey in this land

When my mouth is filled with sand?

I falter inside a steel kettle, sparks popping about.

Black footprints flame at the edges.

I am dried up, a gourd rattling seeds.

Heat waves deceive like the devil.

Thirsty, I lick at a mirage with my eyes.

Twisting, I glimpse the taskmaster sun.

Hands astride hips, he glares mercilessly,

Glowering white noon death rays.

The sky is livid, a clown murderer, crimson lips, grinning.

He spills sacksful of hot ash from above.

Hordes, buried alive, scratch at the insides of a wooden coffin.

Spiritless as the burning air gone lifeless,

I am dark as a moonless, starless sky,

Staggering in an expanse unbounded beyond extreme sight,

Devoid of any atom of hope,

Despair, a universe expanding endlessly.

Originally published in Cecile’s Writers (August 28, 2016)

Mano del Desierto (1992) by Mario Irarrázaal, Atacama Desert, Chile

Dame Tu Corazon: Cuatro Poemas

The condor wheels…

The condor wheels,

Currents, warm, rise,

Noon pulsates,

Shadows entice,

Stillness, a wing,

Silence beats the air,

Dusk is solace,

Dawn, fair,

Day transforms,

The moon allures,

Clocks chime—brightly!

—love endures,

Time, a dragonfly,

Solitude, a dove,

I am solitude,

You are love.

Your love is a meal we share…

Your love is a meal we share, stopping as events blink by.

We are waiting trains, rushing travelers hop in and out.

Time slows, a luminous animal patrolling the depths.

We visit the bubble of an artisan polishing a vase.

Sitting down, transfixed by a moment of white jade,

We recall lolling on the sand as the outstretched arm

Of a comet flashed our future across a sable sky.

You sip my glass of wine, swirling it toward your lips.

I scoop toward you heaps of fresh rice steaming fragrant clouds.

We gaze at many dishes, teeming fields quilting a fertile valley.

Reflecting on your quiet life…

Reflecting on your quiet life, I gaze at you in repose, your eyes pearls shaken loose from treetops, silvered.

                                                                    

Rain pelts our roof with pebbles as you drift into sleep, river brushwood rubbing shoulders with land.

Rising and falling, a cloud bumping over a mountain, your white arms. Turning, you exhale deeply. Mist gently pushes back your hair.

Wild brushstrokes of pillows and linens tumble as children, their laughter, bolts of silk, shimmying.

Gazebo freshly planted, you wind your legs and arms about a trellis.

Let us be orchids who widen our filigreed faces, leaves tapering to wax points proffering greetings.

Nodding plants in a circle, we will dine with April as our guest, grasping his warm hands from the vows of dawn until the crown of dusk.

Our lives together...

Our lives together are braided vines.

We scale a wall watered by the sun,

Our roots meet in soil fed by rain.

Your arms in sinuous embrace

Lift us to climb ever higher.

Your eyes are nodding leaves,

Good fortune is the breeze.

Budding forth, your kindnesses

Blossom, imperishable.

Let us bask in the day entering

As liminal shadows open shutters.

When the gardener comes by,

I will ask him to trim our love

So that it intertwines forever.

Mango Vendor (1951) by Fernando Amorsolo