and…

See
It was like this when
we waltz into this place
a couple of Papish cats
is doing an Aztec two-step
And I says
Dad let’s cut
but then this dame
comes up behind me see
and says
You and me could really exist
Wow I says
Only the next day
she has bad teeth
and really hates
poetry

—
Hanging out at Caffe Trieste today and who’s sitting across from me but Lawrence Ferlinghetti. It’s cool seeing someone from the “Beat Generation.”  I’m hoping I’m part of this new “blog generation”. Now if only this “blog generation” could write and stop spitting out shitty content, rather than regurgitate press release content, then we’d be somewhere.

But first, here is where my body
starts to ache, and here is where
I rest, and here is where my heart
explodes, and to the left we will
find the top of the world, where I will
find you, today and everyday.

All the land between here and there
those three islands, those two bridges,
that ship, my embrace, my kiss, my smile,
my laugh, may I humbly give to you
these are yours today and everyday.

A little more coffee and a few more roses
in a garden locked by a magic gate
unlocked with a secret knock and when
we return may all the roses bloom
to greet you. These roses are yours too.

When at last we must part I only wish
to extend your kiss one more stop to feel
the soft touch of your lips, the promise of
tomorrow the sunset and everyday thereafter.

Our last day is tomorrow
how does one express deep sadness
darkness, emptiness, the two inches of tingle
that surround my neck and my fingers and hips
anticipation that all I can cling to
are visions of your face and smile
visions that are unclear, afraid to lose even that.
Not a photo, not an inch of cloth, not a strand of hair
Nothing to hold on to, nothing clear.

I’m afraid my memory will fail me
of how it feels to grasp your hand
embrace you with every inch of my skin
remembering each contour and movement
our dance that day, and the spot kissed by your mother
no one else will find or I hope someone does.
You are not mine and I can not have you
and even my memories of you are not only for me
if only I can have one more hour,
one more hour and the next thousand years.

I trace the lines of your smile
from too few memories
I wish I had more to give.

And each hill I climb I pass
wildflowers of violet, gold, and ruby
maddeningly picking each flower
and saving every petal
There are no more flowers
none feel like you.

Those times I’m surrounded by water
hearing only my heart beat
I may also hear your voice
drowning in the brown pools of your eyes
there’s no more time left.

At the top of the largest ferris wheel
overlooking the world
I call your name and you can not hear me
I can not find you anywhere.
Were you ever with me or did I dream
perfection.

Stay for every breath until my last
Stay for every step and every ache
until my heart explodes, until each hair
is grey. Your memory pushes me further
how strong so few moments are.
But I have known you forever.

It sparkles only in the Summer sky
and as I looked I wondered
if you saw it too.

Did you hear the song from the songbird
that night. Did the wind carry it to you,
or my whisper
a crazy man talking to himself
no you heard me twenty miles away.
You felt me shiver and you wanted to keep
me warm.

How many more Summer nights must we spend
apart, how many more will we see
with a million stars dancing away
too hot for blankets, just a sheet will do.

I can’t help it
and neither can you.
I can not help but smile.
But why.

It’s not how your face glows,
the feel of your skin,
the embrace of your fingers,
the smell of your perfume,
the song from your lips,
nor the touch from them
oh how soft your lips can be.

I smile and you smile back
the languages you speak
it’s too many how could
you ever choose me.

I smile and you smile back
you know as I do
how happy I am to be with you.

I paint your smile
on a canvas that forgets
that you are not mine
and I cannot have you.

My dear cherry blossom
the earth shifts you
closer to the sun
and bees wait
for your command.

Each passing day,
I see you resting on the sand
I shall not wake you
Let the waves crash upon the shore
and the water tickle your feet.
The ocean loves you
embracing your hands
fullness of breath
there is no one else here.

I miss the color of your skin
next to mine, how we blend
together, bleed into each other
making a single portrait.

How your voice sings and catches
my deeper tones, an immediate
poem and song through
our words.

And as we attack the world
your gaze and my smile
each flower opens up
a brighter sun warms us
and the wind keeps us cooler than most.

And as we hold hands,
you can not tell which one is yours
except for your shorter finger
and my weathered grip.

But your skin, sweet like caramel
soft like fresh wool,
the sun and the moon fight
to shine their light on you.

Have you seen me in your dreams
in your memory, that time
when you and I were the only
two people left.
It was time to go you said
I could have stayed forever.

Where are you from,
I know you from somewhere,
We could not have just met
four hundred years ago
twenty years from yesterday
I touch your lips
and still you tell me to leave.

How can I not love your eyes
that let me look across the ocean
I was there with you then
you have seen me before.
My fingers across your skin
barely touching you
holding you like a flower holds a branch.
This time you stay, you said.
From the moment we met,
I never left.

One day, there will be more somedays.
The somedays when the sun kisses your skin
the cherry blossoms shade your path
and all the world hears my heart beat
with the anticipation of Spring.

The somedays when the bronze lion and heroes glisten
flowers even those that don’t usually bloom greet us
in orange and violet and red and pink and blue
a park bench in the middle of the world and an embrace
of rough hands strolling through a park.

The somedays with the blackest coffee or one spiked
with chocolates and almonds,
just enough dessert where old photos smile at us
the right amount of smiles and the right amount of laughter.

The somedays when the stories unfold of fathers and mothers,
how bees carry honey and the burdens of butterflies
whose song fades in the air where we both hear that
one day, there will be more somedays.

Write, for example, ‘The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.’

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another’s. She will be another’s. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

- Pablo Neruda, W.S Merwin translation

Cezanne and his workshop,
two sunny eggs pierced with a fork,
at Pugsleys and “there” killer blueberry muffins
served in a red basket with a large pat of butter.

Across the country and back three many times
I knew I shouldn’t have had that pork cutlet
and that cheddar cheese ice cream with corn bits.

An educated fool with money on my mind.
It didn’t work out with me an your mom.
Bonjour tous le monde, bonjour. Wait,
I don’t speak French. Or do I.
To the East Fabrice. To the tire swings we’ll meet.

Those coupons are expired. Fuck, shit,
why don’t you go read a book. And while “your”
at it, get me some pudding. And a pair of Doc Martens
with some clotted cream. Is it soft? Peut-�tre.

Victoria Falls, Turkey, Israel, Thailand,
well I’ve been to South Carolina, Myrtle Beach
Damn it, I need to rest. Can you wait?
I’m scared. There are no handrails at the steps
of Rome. Suck it up ‘ol man. So how many toes
do you have?

Some birds aren’t meant to be caged while some birds
vanish like a fart in the wind. Get busy living. Wish
I could come with you. You’re only 34. I think.

Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel faces down frost;
green thrives; the crops don’t fail.
Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war,
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best intentions do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen to you.

–Sheenagh Pugh

- KA

Tell me you love me because you know you do.
Rain reminds me of that night,
a struggle to say a few simple words
the rhythm of your tears on my chest matched
the rain drops on the earth.

Tell me you love me because you know you do.
I see those words etched through the shadow
of my face, behind those brown eyes
Have you not been loved before?
Don’t you know what it means?

Tell me you love me because you know you do.
The smell of you gives me comfort.
Inhale. Inhale and breathe you in so there’s nothing
left in me. Let my skin smell like you.

Tell me you love me because you know you do.
I shout for the third time. Clutching you safe.
Shaking, trusting, not knowing, out of place.
What’s the answer? What do I say?
Say nothing and he will go away. But he’s not leaving.

Tell me you love me because you know you do.
I love you. And I love you too.

A basket of orchids and a poem,
not mine someone else’s words
who can honor you the way I wish I could.
Too afraid to say how I feel.

A long basket from home,
to carry three stems of cymbidium
the most fragrant I could afford.

Whispers as you stroll through the large halls
with your basket now covered
no one carries baskets anymore.

But risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, and is nothing.
They may avoid suffering and sorrow, but they cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love, live.
Chained by their certitudes, they are a slave: they have forfeited their freedom.

Only a person who risks is truly free.

– Anonymous (?)

I got this poem the summer of ’93 I believe, a turning point Summer for me when I also went to the Philippines for the first time since immigrating to the US in 1981. Paper is neat, I still have my original print out from way back then.