Reckoning

Into the bottomless depths of
an insatiable human vanity
Some vision, perhaps an illusion
Of youthful conquests, green laurels
Linger in a colorless reverie.
I, cradled in Morpheus’ arms
Unwilling to be awakened from
A blinking dark to light kaleidoscope
Trophies with dull gleams
Plaques with tarnished sheen and
Illegible citations of dubious merit
Brittle sheepskin with obscure Latin script
Are these all that I have wrought
In a lifetime of toil and invention?
How beggarly my existence has been
As I face the numinous One
To Him who bequeathed a legacy
For a life that is replete with promise
Of selflessness, of beneficence, of divinity
All of which were left stillborn in me.

In A Field of Daisies

Daisies arrayed row on row
On a blanket of mottled green
Marked by black and white monoliths
On the ground and above it
Only the sun to ease the reposed from
The tedium of morning, noon and end of day
Just stars and the moon give brightness
To the dark and cold of an unsympathetic night
Memories swept like dried leaves and cut grass
No visitors now lay garlands and wreaths
No more caring hands to pull weeds
And unwanted tare on the unkempt lawn
A beloved husband then overly grieved
Now in aloneness amidst other scattered bones
A son and daughter’s mortal remains interred
Beneath a coarsely woven impenetrable veil
Of forgotten existence and faded affections
Soon names and epitaphs on hard stone
Are erased by wind, rain and indifference
Not even the lowly worms delight
Over bare and dried up skull and bones
Only hypocritical daisies bow in the wind
As if in reverence, as if in remembrance
Are the dead thankful for the decay
And insentience of their mortal remains?
Surely they are for they can no longer feel,
Nor see the faithlessness of spouses and lovers
Ingratitude of children and the inconstancy of friends.

Poesy Defiled

What have I gotten myself into?
A dance of nances, a dilettantes' ball,
Men in mistaken milieus
Ladies feigning radical chic
In pretense of art and sensitivity
Of the unwanted and the ignored
Spewing vulgarity and unabashed behavior
Hiding behind the absurd and the ambiguous
As if fearful of being stripped naked
All in the name of mythical temperaments
And consciously fabricated personae

Poets with fractured verse gather
As in symbiotic safety
Unmindful of grammar formality
Spewing anarchic syntax
Senseless verbiage strung indiscrete
Metaphors unmatched and asinine
Words spelled as heard
Free verse shamelessly abused
Mouthing poetic license as an excuse to
Inflict mayhem on literariness
Drawing attention as avant-garde
The charade lives on, robust and raucous
In the circle of fools

The Wayfarer

Stranger from the highlands and cold climes
Your gaudy costume and cleated shoes
Speak of romance and never ending adventures
What can you tell me of the land that you came from?
Did a mother cry when you tightened your bootstraps,
And did a sweetheart pour her heart out and tore her golden hair,
In the highlands grooved with gorges and capped in white?
What made you turn your back from the warmth of the home fire,
From the safety of familiar haunts and comfort of kinfolks?

I look at you in wonder and in honest envy,
Did I not have the same urge to seek out the world?
The long road beckoned, a gilt lined horizon held promise
Of riches, strange loves, sights and sounds waiting to be felt
The wanderlust of youth never been put to rest
Now the resolve is almost gone though the urge remains strong

I listen to you with whirred hearing
Your tales conjure images unclear and lackluster
How pitiful that imagination has failed
To see the splendor, the spectacle, the thrill
Of faraway places from whence you came.
What is the color of a sunset from a mountain crest?
Are daffodils and edelweiss as bright as sampaguita?
Tell me again and again because the images fade quickly
Blurred flashes, a confusion of gray, black and white’
A mind-numbing monotonic haze is all I see.



Rest your tired arms and legs on my soft chair
Let the cool sweetened bubbly quaff moisten the dryness
Of a roughened gullet so that you can weave more tales
To regale my inquisitive yet hardly comprehending mind.
Looking at you now and trying to feel the pleasures
You must have felt throughout the years of wandering
Leaving your trail on foreign sod, seeing faces
Black, white, brown, yellow and other hues
Friendly, hospitable as well as hostile and cruel.

Tell me if it was worth it all
Leaving a crying mother and a woeful wife
Abandoning kith and kin, familiar and friendly haunts
Or is it just the folly of youth, the dare of the unknown?
Do you not regret having the hot winds sear your face,
The trackless routes, the gravelly path, the thorns in your shoes.
Do you not regret these?

Tell me I am right in staying put
The travel itch still unscratched, but, I would not know
If the pleasures are as my mind earlier envisaged
Or will I forever wonder what glories and fortunes
Have passed my way when I did not sail or fly my fancy.

Bare Assed

I come to you now unclothed, unwashed and unabashed’
This is my barest, lowliest, truest self,
With wanton passions brimming, ogling with animal intent
This is me wallowing neck deep in the sweet but unctuous tar pit
Nurturing my prurient delights, my wettest of dreams
I slink through dark parlors besotted and puking
I spew lewd orations enjoyed by kindred low life,
My gem of the barrel dregs!my jewel of sewer silt!
I come to you unclothed, unwashed and unabashed
Frenzied and clumsy in anticipation
I rush and come to be one with you,
So embrace me now my lovely, quickly
Before I don my clothes again.

The Morning God Sang

The sounds came rushing in, where did it come from?
Has it always been there? Angels’ halleluiahs, God’s riant laughter
Ascending, reverberating in crescendo at the gladdening hour,
Trilling with early birds, buzzing, whirring with the bees on morning forage
The day now begins clearly, with light spreading from the ridge to the lucent lake below
Love songs sung in gaiety, noble anthems, magnificent hymns and gentle pinings
Like Orpheus’ flute, the music wafted in the air, oh what euphony!
Tones winding in and out, weaving with the breeze, brushing against pine needles
Out-shouting, out-running each other in playful chase, playing tag with grasshoppers and soprano birds

Then as quickly as it appeared, the joyous harmony stopped, stillness began
The reality of the late morning sun caught up with me and imposed a silence in its recognition

The Medium Is the Message

Let’s not talk about terrorism, write, nor broadcast it
No more the sight of blood and gore from dismembered
Carcasses of men and women, young and old, and the tender flesh
Of babies scattered, alighting on treetops and eaves of houses
Unchecked hell, ball of fire singeing, bloody scimitars like
Venomous tongues of diamond-eyed serpents strike
With senseless abandon on bright sunny days of barrio fiestas

Innocents dragged for ransom, indiscriminate and ruthless
To forward political and religious causes, or is it just banditry?
The white flags drip red oozing from wounds of the unwary
Enough of this on tv, enough of this in newspapers and radio
Get your revenue from somewhere else, not from blood money
You only stoke the flames, ransoms go higher, embolden scum and make
Famous the infamous, opportunists into heroes ready for the polls

Enough of the false glitter reflected on the tube and silver screen
Let’s be done with silly plots, martyred women and crying waifs
No more the inane and vulgar dialogues and dragging scenes
Clothe the immodest, the mammalian freaks who bare as if in art
The sick and kinky pleasures penned by hysterical fairies
Selling obscene laughter from the tasteless slapsticks of gay ridicule
Lewdness and crudity are now clicheic fare regardless of audience

Let’s raise the cause for better media offerings
Uplifting themes, virtue rewarded, moral lessons to children
Heroes worthy of emulation, not the rich and the powerful who
Flaunt their ill-gotten loot, getting away with their insidious deeds
Let’s sing hymns to those who serve well, applaud exemplars from the barrios
Those who labor with honest toil, plowing and seeding the native sod
Let media deny those who self-aggrandize, those who create saccharine images
Reject bulging envelopes of releases with ulterior motives and wads of bills
News that disinform, make malice, besmirch the honest, lionize the crooked
The tube and the diode box are bad news, the press blotted by its own ink
Let’s now defer listening, seeing and believing the heralds of a muddied estate

The Foothills

The foothills seem rueful and evasive today
Its outline glow seems palled and
The twilight reluctant to give up the light
Its sun a dull emboss on weak pink,
With rays like wrinkled fingers crawling.
A lethargic passing of a day

Clasped by avian claws a hare’s mangled fur
Wriggly worms feasting on rotting mouse
Crafty spider weaving zombie bags
An aloof mantis lops off her lover’s head
A woodsman felling venerable trees
The air reeking with scents of battered wood

I promised to keep this to myself
As I looked away from the scene
I shudder to think of the mayhem
Happening everyday in a sleepy glade
But, some things in the foothills
Are better left veiled in gorgeous green

Bottom Feeders

Bottom feeders
In a cloudy tank
Eagerly watching
Dimpled pink morsels
Settle down on a pebbly bed
Watch out from the rear
Your gorgeous apertures
Jeopardized I fear
Sit tight
Bottom feeders
In a frenzy

If I Was Going –

If I was going
Surely I will come
And go as I went

I met three on the way
Coming back I met three
Should there be more?

The morning sun went
From east to north
A long day, today

If I was going
Surely I will come
And go as I went

But, I Wanted To Sing –

Sparrows in my mind
Scratching for ort
Stirring a host
Crowding in my bowels
Have the fireflies flown?
From a grumbling cavern
They fly up to
My uptight gullet
Pushing up bile
Tamped down
By peristalsis

Aach, what a sting!
But, I wanted to sing

Pastorale

The fog draped on
Mildew, mushroomed
In a field of wax
I lost foothold
Slipping and
Grasping straws
The wind denied my hands
Lost in a field
Of waxen mildew

I am blue
My horn I blew

Red Book (Juan Makabayan)

Red book pages were props
Up on the mountain tops
Slime green cascade
Spoiled my marmalade
Glo was here today
With dogs held at bay
Furious hands grapple
The doctor prescribed apple
Mike took them all
Nothing left in the mall

I had to go down

Counter Flow

The patter pitter of the rain
Played concert with the
Tock tick of the clock
As my day started with the
Setting of the sun
I could hear the music
Rolling and rocking
From the room next
As people went out and in
Slamming doors

From the window
I strained my neck
To see and look
Behold and lo
People about and up
Flowing fro and to
Like the tides and ebbs
Of swampy waters

The strange sequence
Of events that go and come
Had me bewildered and bothered
But on the down and up
Considered, it may be better
That our fortunes go and come
And fate is as we die and live

Bye, Bye Blackbird

Blackbird
Singing from high tension wires
Urging me to sing along
Follow the frittering flashes
Of smoldering plumes
Strung up like notes
I should be home by six
But it is a pity to miss
Bird burning up high
Will anyone understand?
Asked Billie, what lament
The song intones
Blackbird strung up
In high wire
No harder luck story
Than this been told
Make my bed and light the light
I’ll be home late tonight

A Murderous Season

His dark majesty rode in with fluttering cape shrouding the day
With no bugles to herald, no chorus chanting his usurping of the light
The people in the village huddled and together trembled with fright
Pulled down the shades and barricaded the doors of straw and mud
“We’re not ready for you,” they shouted peering through slits of rotting wood
“I come at my pleasure”, he roared from his fiery eyed ebony mount

“Where are your offerings…your fealty…your sacrifices?
Where is the fattest of sheep, the youngest of sons, the purest of maidens?”
“Tempt me not to summon my minions to wreak havoc on your lowly abodes”

“Oh your eminence, forgive us for our shortcomings, turn your anger
Somewhere else…the next village perhaps…we will be ready in a fortnight”
The sheep will be fattened, our Benjamin ready and the virgin dressed in white
With a shrug that shook forests, blew away clouds and tossed seas
He said “I am a god that does not wait, I want your offerings now.
Your pleas insult me, your excuses disgust me, your promises infuriate me

All throughout the village a heavy pall of fear and dread hovered
Then he left with a shattering flash of lightning and the roar of crashing waters
Even the dawn was reluctant to shine out of the gloomy wake

Through the gray of an unsettled morning light
No babies bawled, raucous children silenced and dogs lost their whimper
Huddling in corners of their decrepit huts mumbled prayers ululated
Fathers and mothers wrap their arms around their quivering wards

Somewhere in the village young men grouped and with loud voices
Declared “prepare, be ready, let’s put up a stand against this onslaught”
Lit torches crackled, the staccato thud of pegs driven on hardwood and
The gnashing of metal sheets lashed on steady moorings were heard all night
(Lit torches crackled, steel against steel gnashed with their honing
The staccato of bamboo poles hewed and sharpened in broken rhythms)

As before, his dreadful majesty comes without herald, without ominous harbingers
The sky will crack up and with bright electric storm light up a silhouette of trees
Along the edge, a bleak horizon flashing off and on in rapid succession
As bats dot the darkened the forest’s canopy like scattered ants in a broken hill

Now he came as threatened…sudden, looming big, terrifying and horrid
Against a backdrop of a splintered sky…a tattered Aurora’s hem
Thunderous hooves fell on hard and dry ground shaking up mountains
Primeval forests bared and hills flattened with every heavy stride

It was a peaceful night in the tiny hamlet, only the rustling of rotted leaves
And the mewling of a distant cat could be heard in the village square
Past the ruins of an adobe chapel, by the field of withered corn stalks
Roods of odd sizes and slabs of crude granite scattered on weeded plots

A murderous season came to pass, a plunder most cruel and swift
There is no redress, no recompense, no relief and no reparation
Injustice, unfairness and unconscionable cruelty never were protested
It is the way of all things and it will inflict its fury again in time

David’s Birthday Poems

1. There is this David from Saigon
Upon seeing a cake on a ledge
Huffed and puffed away
At eleven candles on its edge
Hey! It’s his birthday today!



2. Today David turns eleven
No finer lad this side of heaven
With his smile and clever wit
And a grouch not even a bit
Blew big candles on a cake
A bite of which you have to take



3. No nicer lad than David you will find
A cheery face to match a clever mind
Hey! Today is March three in Saigon
A day for moping and sulking to be gone
For he turns eleven and not a day late
Surely a day for everyone to celebrate.

Sea Change

Do you have a sea within you
Where awesome barnacled monsters
And fragile fish in shiny crimson vests
Scatter in the sea grass as they meet

A swarm of wrasse streaming through
Like muted skylarks chasing wind
On a swathe of gaudy pink corals and
Upon fields of somber olive kelp

Oh what a powerful will lie in wait
In the calm waters of the deep
Only the undulation of the sea grass
Give hint to the burgeoning force

Oft times, restless waves with billowing roar
Swell up to heave foamy white crests
To crash against the stolid gray cliffs
Challenging steadfast promontories

But the land will always frustrate the dare
The sea falls back deeper into its abysmal depths
Then, gathering strength, it rises again
Rallying waves to get back at a startled shore

Dark Eden

I lived in depths of a thousand fathoms
Where days are dark and cold
Darting shrimps leave silver streaks
The only light to be seen at noon

You can’t tell when it’s ebb or tide
In my abyss no precision gauge
Measure what is great and small
Leviathans and weak fish equal in esteem

Friendly barnacles smile but who’s to see
Sea grass greet should anyone come
Fiddler crabs play mute chamber music to
An audience of groupers with mouths agape

Endless miles of filigreed corals
Graceful kelp lined row on row
A regal maze of lime green hedges
Lie hidden in deep blue trenches

Loveliest place in all of the seven seas
Only if a million bonfires could be lit
An Eden kept secret, you know it’s there
Illumined by floodlights of my mind

I Remember Valentine

Do I recall saying,
Lines that ardent swains’ whisper?
Borrowed sonnets from the Portuguese

Do I recall offering,
What every adorer bears?
Wine-red roses and chocolate truffles

Do I recall the impetuous act,
That a lover on impulse dare?
Clasp hands delicate as Dresden blue

Do I recall the affectionate kiss,
That I, with fervent passion implored?
Scarlet lips voluptuous as Autumn cherries

I do recall with longing all these and more,
A lunatic fringe all young lovers dwell in,
Reckless adoration of the beloved on Valentine’s Day