Long Reckonings Poems
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—after a remark attributed to Albert Einstein—
There are convictions hid beneath the skin
of every ordinary afternoon, whose proofs
arrive before the intellect can rise
to crown them with its late authority. Thus once
I watched a father, bearing broth upstairs,
halt midway where a child's thin coughing broke
the architecture of his practised tread;
one hand still held the bowl, the other reached
as though the stair itself required a pulse.
The soup grew cold. No ordinance was lost.
Yet something in the house had altered weight.
The mason laying stone while thinking still
of yesterday erects another wall
than he whose whole consent descends through wrist
into the waiting weight. The orchard knows
which hand arrived entire. The apple keeps
a season no inspection ever finds.
I saw two lovers at a crossing once.
The city's engines gathered in their throats;
red brake-lamps flowered beneath a lowering rain.
He bent to meet her mouth. Yet all the while
his glance kept reckonings with passing steel,
with painted lanes, with mirrors and with haste.
She smiled; perhaps she never marked the theft.
The kiss came back with less of itself in it,
like rain returning from a roof of slate.
The organist whose fingers found each chord
while counting hidden debts awakened wood,
but something left before the anthem breathed.
I know that absence. Many nights my own
guitar received obedient hands alone.
No string accused me. Still, one listening note
remained outside the music all evening,
as though the room had lent it other work.
The hawk descends with every feather sworn.
The river reaches sea without debate.
No flame consults another element.
Then something entered for which sight possessed
no elder tense.
Two candles stood apart.
Neither declined, nor leaned, nor touched the air.
Yet after they were lit, the darker one
began to cast the brighter one's shadow.
Nothing thereafter seemed to keep its name.
Years later I passed that same crossing.
Rain gathered where the traffic used to wait.
Upon the rail, one swallow settled first.
The second circled twice, then folded all
its sky into the space beside the first.
Neither of them looked anywhere else.
343.
The Water of Alena
Oh Sanggre Alena, Keeper of the Jewel of Water
Pour unto me the blood of being kind & sober
Kind towards people who are in need
Sober towards those who have wronged us in deed
Baptize me with the flexible being of Sapiro
To be like an adventurous patriot & hero
Just like the water of life – stir up my spirit
In coping up with both coldness & heat
Being the most romantic of all the siblings
Your indomitable spirit is beyond reckonings
The wave of your tide –oh wash away impurities
Brought by the kiss of filthy enemies!
-02/25/2015
(Dumarao)
*Superhero Collection
This system has caused me irreparable harm—
Yet still I speak your name in prayer;
I would have been anything you wished of me,
Soft clay beneath your careful feet.
I wandered once in erring youth,
In foolish shadows, small and blind;
Petty trespass against the world—
But not the darkness in their minds.
You gave me life—I gave it on
To one bright child of fragile grace;
She walks the earth because of love
That time and trial cannot erase.
Compassion.
This sorrow stretches long as years
Beyond the span that he himself dared tread,
Long as the ancient pilgrim host
Whom Moses through the desert led—
Toward a land he saw, yet never knew,
A promise burning overhead.
Grace.
As planets turn about the sun
With faithful, uncomplaining art,
So do you turn and look again
Upon the number 90-14869 and my heart—
Strange reckonings of guilt and blame,
Cold figures set apart.
Empathy not he the beast.
I did what youth in terror does,
When bruised by hands that were not kind,
Trying to cry without a voice,
To force the cruel world to mind
The brutality of a single man
Who should have sheltered humankind.
in Love.
Then is not now—yet children live
Because some souls refuse to sleep;
They guard the small, they tend the frail,
They sow where broken fields lie deep.
Without safe children, none grow whole,
And none return the lost to keep.
Change.
O good Woman, bright with light,
You who outshine the grievous day,
You lift the fallen into dawn
And show the trembling where to stay.
I am your servant in this hope—
Your friend, if I may say.
And if the world be hard and stern,
Still mercy moves in Magdalene—
A tenderness that walks through dark nights
And washes what has been.
—After the First Reading—
The apple loosed no oracle to earth.
It fell.
The branch resumed its ancient poverty.
No leaf looked down.
The wind withheld its praise.
Only the ground, receiving what was given,
kept faith with something older than the tree.
We gave the motion names.
The orchard did not answer.
Morning entered every root alike.
The fruit surrendered neither truth nor sign;
it merely found the place prepared for it
before the dust remembered it was dust.
The brook instructed no one.
Stone by stone
it passed, and every stone remained a stone,
yet each lay otherwise when water moved.
The current never sought to prove itself.
It simply did not cease.
Above, the falcon wrote no law in air.
Its turning altered nothing that could last.
Yet when it vanished, heaven seemed less empty
than while it flew.
We lowered cords,
and measured height with hands that could not reach.
We called it gravity
Because the page exceeded literacy.
A beetle crossed the road.
No kingdom shook.
Still something entered quietly the world
which all our reckonings had left outside.
The dust received it without argument.
The dust has always known
what learning comes too late to understand.
"Fata Morgana"
feet hardly touch the ocean
when silent stars of no voice
transmit words to pay the ferryman
on the water no reflection
gently the sun waves smiling as if to say
feel that, the warmth of waking sleep
no fear of what remains hidden
it will unravel from inside that which is all too deep
walking towards you across the briny mist
from ancient stories forgotten
a halo of St Elmo’s Fire surrounds
it stands still for a short while before you
watching
you,
walking water with your bare feet
faith in dreams consistent in their constancy
that visit you when you are complete yet incomplete
holds out its hand to lead the way across
sharp burning rocks, now a desert, climbing mountains that are steep
a small life crumbles to powdered sand
more than 40 days silent gone astray
years the turning of untimed tides pretence
meets a haunting vision beckoning, new horizon, odd unclear
safe harbour left long ago,
lost in that ornery time, cursed by flying monkeys' bellows
of bloodletting and betrayal, stock still, standing amidst the shallows
somewhere along the way dark narcissus followed
what breaks over the bow
washes all stern fear away
sacred wings of albatross
ne’er to be sacrificed, no more night nor day
souls of ancient mariners
forever follow me, even when I stray
the rich baritone of bedtime stories
messages in code conveyed, I hear them still today
now swallows spooning spinnakers
running directly before wind and sea
the water turns to wine, much stranger the belief,
all manna of trust it feeds
bells tolling
no man’s an island entire of itself
in unusual reckonings
observing swimming hearts, that hear and see
the eyes that melt, this more curiously
in truth, the dream defends
messages eternal
life it never ends
tides move in and out
never alone when we begin
fata morgana
softly the moon ascends
(LadyLabyrinth / 2020)
VCB
Lux Vitae
5.5.10
"Under a splintered mast,
torn from ship and cast
near her hull,
a stumbling shepherd found
embedded in the ground,
a sea-gull
of lapis lazuli,
a scarab of the sea,
with wings spread—
curling its coral feet,
parting its beak to greet
men long dead."
("Talisman", Marianne Moore)
I’ve been unashamedly holiday focused,
everything fit together like a puzzle,
all febrile worries were pardoned,
we took haven in our comforts.
I slept shamefully late,
We weaponized fun.
The world seemed parasitology free,
pharmacology, pathology and histology free,
if not entirely anatomy free wink wink
and except for my mom, assessment free.
It’s been great, it’s been Christmas!
But soon, my cares will, again, be fined tuned
by the Gordian knot of learning
and it’s ungentle reckonings.
If it weren’t all asked for - I’d be pissed.
.
.
A Song for this:
Coney Island Man by Swing Out Sister
123.
Discreet Persecution
So you think I've been deaf & blind
Who can't hear & see from behind?
Doors & walls clearly speaking
Floors & roads plainly showing
Omens so artificial
Messages so diabolical
Tired of listening
To a cat meowing?
Want it o go hide & seek
Knowing that it's already weak?
Wanted/Missing without search
Whipped & slashed by thorny birch
What more discreet persecution
Pack & throw, chop & burn?
Can't imagine such bloody reckonings
Longing for more sufferings?
You think my mind shall be conditioned
With such dreadful gleamings aforementioned?
And after such bloody execution
Behold the Almighty's retribution!
-05/22-23/2012
(Dumarao)
*My Painful Poems Collection
In the workshop of my waking hours,
I am the maker of my own day,
Crafting moments with a DIY attitude,
Twisting fate's threads with hands unbound.
At 6 AM, I pick up my tools,
Coffee grounds and ambition,
Mixing the elixir of caffeinated dreams,
Stirring in the alchemy of determination.
The clock ticks, a relentless metronome,
11:11 winks, an angelic muse,
As if the universe has a sense of humor,
A cosmic jest in numerical ruse.
"Make a wish," they say with a smirk,
As if dreams were granted in seconds,
But I'll forge my own destiny, thank you,
With sweat and grit, not ethereal reckonings.
No celestial arithmetic can guide these hands,
Turning the wrench of daily toil,
In the cacophony of self-made symphonies,
I dance with chaos, a rebel in the coil.
Lunchtime, a respite from the assembly line,
Sandwiches wrapped in brown paper,
I nibble on the crumbs of inspiration,
Savoring the taste of self-made capers.
The afternoon sun spills its golden ink,
I dip my pen into the daylight,
Scrawling plans on the parchment of possibility,
Mapping out a future, bold and bright.
5 PM, the whistle blows, a release,
Yet the DIY Day is far from done,
For in the studio of the evening,
I sculpt my leisure, a masterpiece begun.
Dinner is a feast of flavors and reflection,
A banquet of self-appreciation,
11:11 appears again, a cosmic wink,
Mocking the notion of divine intervention.
"Make a wish," it whispers with a smirk,
But I've outgrown such whimsical fancy,
For in the sweat of creation and the grind of will,
I find my muse, not in numbers but in the dance of circumstance.
So, here's to the makers of their own destiny,
The dreamers who wrested the real from fantasy,
In the DIY symphony of moments and minutes,
We find our purpose, our own sweet serendipity.