My photo
ALBERT B. CASUGA, a Philippine-born writer, lives in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, where he continues to write poetry, fiction, and criticism after his retirement from teaching and serving as an elected member of his region's school board. He was nominated to the Mississauga Arts Council Literary Awards in 2007. A graduate of the Royal and Pontifical University of St. Thomas (now University of Santo Tomas, Manila. Literature and English, magna cum laude), he taught English and Literature (Criticism, Theory, and Creative Writing) at the Philippines' De La Salle University and San Beda College. He has authored books of poetry, short stories, literary theory and criticism. He has won awards for his works in Canada, the U.S.A., and the Philippines. His latest work, A Theory of Echoes and Other Poems was published February 2009 by the University of Santo Tomas Publishing House. His fiction and poetry were published by online literary journals Asia Writes and Coastal Poems recently. He was a Fellow at the 1972 Silliman University Writers Workshop, Philippines. As a journalist, he worked with the United Press International and wrote an art column for the defunct Philippines Herald.

Monday, August 30, 2010

FICTION MID-YEAR HARVEST (May to August 2010)

A Short Story


SONS AND FATHERS

1.

Are you ready for your morning stroll, Mr. T? In a minute, he bristled unable to get his arm into his heavy cardigan.

It’s not that cold, you know, the Filipina caregiver reminded the harrumphing octogenarian.

He was in the process of making a 180-degree turn, trying to fix the pictures atop his credenza while he struggled with his sweater.

Did anybody move these pictures around, Luisa? Er, Maria, is it?

Dolly, Mr. T, she introduced herself as she does every morning now, her conches-like eyes widening in a bit of apprehension; he did not particularly like these pictures rearranged. That would ruin his day. He would have to be re-oriented to the east-west-north-south co-ordinates of his room. He was a “topgun” fighter pilot in WWII in the Pacific war, in Corregeedoor. You know, in your country. He never tires of reminding her or any of her Filipina compatriots who work at Erin Mills Lodge for Seniors.

I particularly like the picture of my late wife on this spot, Luisa, uh, Maria, or whatever you called yourself --- sorry --- It points me to where I get my underwear. You know -- undies? He tried to smile the scowl from his face away.

She’s just taken over. The nurse from Trinidad just upped and went complaining loudly that she’s sick and tired of being groped by demented perverts who should stop hoping they could still do it.

Dolly, Mr. T. And by the way, your walking partner, Mr. Alex, called while you were in the washroom. Said he will wait for you at the lobby. He said the sooner you get out today, the more sunshine you both would get. You’d have to get back quickly for a late breakfast.

Thanks for letting me know, Luisa. He must have something going for that name Luisa, she figured. But always a gentleman, he would say thanks for anything helpful coming his way. After a fashion, though. This is a community of civilized old farts, he would say.

Alex is always late anyway. His cane trips him up when I tell him to walk a bit faster. Between us we’ve got six feet, you know. Four crumbling ones and two wooden ones. Get it?

She laughed, relieved that he had been distracted away from the misplaced picture. She’s pretty, she remarked, by way of thanking him for not exploding. My son says, I use it to scare the mice away, he giggled.

At the lobby, that morning, his buddy and next door neighbour, and fellow three-legger, waited with a pained look on his face.

Got boils on your derriere while waiting, Alex? What’s with the face?

Don’t even go there, Teague, the bent, scowling man sprawled on the lobby steps snapped.

It can’t be that bad, old chap.

My son did not pop up again. He’s got this wife problem, my daughter says. It’s been two months now. He’s still in the Philippines, you know. Teaching at that protestant university in the southern Philippines. Dumaguete.

He could pronounce Philippine words better than his buddy --– he’s been there, too, in Corregidor, in Bataan, the last stand of General MacArthur. They were GI soldiers from Michigan. Both immigrated to Canada after WWII (so that their sons would not have to go to war -- Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and all that s....)

Yeah? I have a son there, too. Teaching fine arts, painting, you know.

Of course, he got my son in there, too. Reverse brain drain. Canadians teaching the little brown people. Remember? Oh, no, you don’t. It figures.

Let’s walk. Oh, wait. Here’s the slow mailman. Doesn’t he look like Robert De Niro?

The ambling postie greeted the gentlemen with canes, and said he’s got only one letter for youse, gents. For you, Mr. Teague, sir. Urgent. Express Post. From the Philippines. The last syllable pronounced like “pines”. Paayns.

Teague knew it must have come from his son, the painter in the Silliman University school of fine arts. He cracked it open. He fell silent.

I’m going upstairs, he said.

What about our walk?

I’m going to my room.

Wait up, Teague. What’s wrong?

Dolly was still there when he got back. Please leave me alone, Luisa.

What’s wrong, Mr. T?

He sobbed into his pillow as his panting partner ambled into his room.

Did we have to take separate elevators, Teague?

He showed the half-crumpled letter.

God, no! Alex grimaced and fell silent. I’m going back to my room, Teague. You don’t need me here now.


2.

Both men stayed up that night. They did not answer calls.

The following day, at the breakfast table, they exchanged envelopes.

Read it before your nap, they almost simultaneously prescribed.

When Alex opened his envelope, he read:





Mr. Teague of Siquijor

Teague’s sandbox at Lo-oc beach spills
over to the slopes of Siquijor –
a kind of walking out on infancy
or bright courage, the carcass marching
nude to humour a carrion God
astride Siquijor’s dark mountain loins.
“O, when will the lad get out of his sandbox
to walk towards the mountain slopes?”

By the way, Dad. This is goodbye. I wanted to end the poem this way, but what the hell. I did not want to end things this way, either. But what the hell. Again.

“By the way, Teague’s body was fished out
of Lo-oc the other day, near Siquijor.”

But just read the news from the PI. I am a bit of an art celebrity here. Am friends with the likes of Imelda, art patron, and Sionil Jose, National Artist. Yes, my obituary will be full of their praising shit.

Love,
Little Teague


It is a poem and a note from my son. Teague signed his single-sentence note.

In his room, Teague used a magnifying glass to read Alex’s note. A former CanLit professor, his partner wrote:


The Habit of Mountains: A Dirge

It was his grief pursued the habit of mountains:
It moved the world with quietness. Quietness moved them.
No dearer madness there is than which he died for:
A will to perish in time and manner he chose.
It could not have been any kinder than this falling,
A manner of bargaining one’s way
Into a choice between a kind of dying and feeling dead---
No option for us who learn, too early perhaps,
That death prorogues a dream of fancy
Or a prayer of willing our pain stay
The ramrod poised to rend out days descending
Foglike upon us decreeing silence for our bed.


* * *


Earlier that day, Alex received a call from his son in the Philippines, a colleague of Teague’s son at the Silliman University. Dad, Teague Junior committed suicide the other day.

Why? Asked his buddy that evening. There was just the two of them like crumpled shadows beneath the dining room light.



He could not abide his being different. He went away, as far away as he could from me. He was gay, Alex. He promised he was going to see me here before accepting that teaching job in Mexico. He said he will exhibit his paintings here at the Lodge.

Nuts.

He fell in love with one of his male students. There was a case filed against him. Corruption of a minor. Not one of his big friends wanted to be around him since then.

They don’t have same sex marriages in the Philippines, do they?

Nope.


3.

Alex postponed taking his painkillers that night. It made him drowsy quickly. He fished out his Reminder Note from his hip pocket: Write Junior. Check his e-mail address. Last time he wrote was eons ago, I don’t know if I saved it. I hope Mary has them just in case. He mumbled to himself. He started whacking away on the keyboard, and even imagined he was still desking at the United Press International newsroom in Manila.

Dear Junior,

Teague was a wreck today. Could not even complete our walk. Little Teague killed himself over another guy? Was he gay, too? The guy? Hey, there’s talk here that Teague himself is like that. Now, I get a lot of ribbing because he is my best buddy. I wrote you about our routine here. You did not write me back. Mary visits me every time she could escape from his over-sexed husband. He is still trying to get her pregnant. No grand kid here. Which reminds me. How’s Chloe? How tall has she become? Is she in high school yet?

I will be off my rocker if I lose Teague over this. Nobody visits him. He is 83, you know. I know that he is doesn’t have all his marbles in his nut. But I can talk to him. About poetry even. The last time I lost a friend was when Cao Tran left the lodge to live with a daughter on Robin Drive. Nguyen Bao died; you know his little wife; just snored aloud one night and died in her sleep. 75. I wrote a poem for Cao Tran, you know. Got it published in Walrus last year. Did you read that? Here it is anyway, just in case it will be worth big money some day. Dad is going to be famous yet, eh wot? Nuts, Chloe thought I had so many big words, and your wife thought they were million-dollar words worth a pittance. How is she anyway? What’s this I hear that you are splitting up. About a man? About a woman? What? Been there, done that. Not good for Chloe, son. I never ever want to see tears in those lindisima eyes. Oh yeah, the poem.


CUP ON THE BENCH

“Favorite spot,” Nguyen Cao Tran pointed
To the bench on Lincoln Green before
He waved me bonjour the Montreal way.

“Favorite spot for wife and me…drink
Tim Horton Coffee from across,” he winked,
Now unafraid his accent might betray

A Viet Minh rasp from Saigon days,
A shrapnel buried on his nape: “Still smoke
Camel sticks from GI Joe friend in Frisco.”

He looked away when I remembered to ask
About Nguyen Bao. “Isn’t she walking
With you this morning? It’s spring, mon vieux!

He mumbled: “She gone…far away now,”
And shuffled away, his knapsack slung
Like a rifle crooked on his flaccid hand.

A single cup of Roll-up-the-Rim teetered
On the bench the next day while I waited.
No cups on the ground, the bench was naked.


I miss Chloe. When are you folks going to visit me here at the Lodge? You know, I am part of the socials committee here. I have Friday readings. Poetry and fiction. I don’t know if these zombies here understand what the heck I am intoning ala Dylan Thomas or even Richard Burton (remember Nono in "The Night of the Iguana"?) There was that poem I wrote last week which got Teague and some of our old fart residents here crying. Want it? Could be another winner, you know. Here it is. (By the way, and I refuse to write BTW), do you still read anything literary? What do you teach there? Oh, yeah, the poem:


WINDOW GAZERS

Sitting on her Florentine chair
Atop the red-tiled stairs, the sirocco
Breeze playing with her ivory hair,
She awaits her turn to say hello:
A caudillo-like half-raised wave
And a schoolmarm’s smile on her
Waxen face, a smirk at times to save
Her some chagrin falling off a chair
While she wags childlike to say:
Blow a kiss to your window-waving
Girl, say au revoir for now, and pray
That as they grow, won’t stop loving,
And they do grow and go away,
And you’d be left sitting on a chair
Wondering why they have flown
Like swallows, and hope would care
To come back and perch at sundown.

I wrote it to remember a girlfriend by. She was 90 when I would pass by her house on Robin Drive on my 30-minute constitutionals. I also knew a little girl who would wave at me whenever I pass by before noontime. Then my nonagenarian babushka (my daughter told me she was Ukrainian) would await her turn to say hello. Just smiles. Didn’t even know her name. But she told me how old she was. Did not want to be seen like I was lusting after her, you know. Boy, at 77, I am still all right. What about you? You must never be too busy to do it, and do not forget the pillow talk. Mary says you seem to be getting older, and your wife getting younger. What gives?


Dang! I am suddenly sleepy. Must be the wine. Teague brought out his 300-dollar bottle finally. He got really drunk tonight. It’s Father’s Day this Sunday, and it makes me furious how it has been commercialized. It’s all what Dads want today from Walmart and Marks and Spencers. Nothing is sacred anymore. I remember Father. He would write those Spanish poems. I love to recite them to entertain guests. He wrote a poem for his Mother whom he had not seen for the longest time, because she did not want to migrate to Barcelona. He missed her. You know, just like your Mom did not want to live in the PI when you asked her to go back there while you taught at that Southern Philippines university. It is just as well. Your wife might not have liked her around. Oh yeah, the poem. You translate it yourself. Don’t write me for one. You remember the language still, eh?

EL NIDO DESOLADO

(Para mi Madre)

Los pajaritos están dejando su nido;
el invierno de su vida ha venido
tan muy temprano!

Mira! Mira! Madre mía.

Tan fuerte ahora, sus pájaros
están volando a puertas desconocidas;
están volando tan lejos para que

nunca jamás devolver y quedar en la casa
de corazón triste, ahora casa abandonada,
nida desolada, madre mía.

O mi madre querida!


Do you think he was better in these darn things, poetry, than I? If you think so, I will concede that. That will be my Father’s Day gift for him. Wherever he has landed. Do you think St. Peter will want to drink a pint with me when I kick the bucket?

Write me, Junior. Off to sleep. Missing your Mother. Omni Soli Semper. (Enrol Chloe in some Latin classes, will you?)

Con amor duradero,
DAD, Papa, Pops, Dada, Old Man, Mon Vieux, or whatever you want to call me these days. Kiss Chloe for me. Lots.



4.

Teague roused Alex, the next day.

I owe you a stroll, old chap.

How are you feeling, Teague?

Okey-dokey, I think.

Who’s sending Little Teague’s body here? No relatives in the Philippines to take care of that, are there?

What body? What relatives? What’s the story, this time, yarn spinner?

Oh, Teague.

Alex sat on the foyer bench, fumbled through his pocket, and fished out a poem for the Saturday Review.

Here. Read it later.

Who’s Lucy, Alex? Why does it say: “Lucy Does Not Live Here Anymore?”

Nobody you know, Teague. Let’s walk.

Alex kicked an empty Tim Horton coffee cup on their way out of the Lodge.


-30-

ALBERT B. CASUGA

Sons and Fathers was published by Asia Writes as its featured story in June. The first part was a separate standing story on senior citizens written in 2009. The story was rewritten to include some of the poems in "Poems to Grow Old By" (see Poetry Harvest)

A 4-in-1 story on fathers and sons, it is a harvest, as it were, of four short stories condensed into an offering for Father's Day. Authors have always used poems to move stories through multi-layered plots, among them the late Philippine National Artist Nick Joaquin (whose old picture is used here as one of the illustrations). It is an old tool, this fiction-cum-poetry, but it still works.


August 30, 2010
Mississauga

Saturday, August 28, 2010

A MID-YEAR POETRY HARVEST (MAY TO AUGUST 2010)

A MID-YEAR HARVEST OF POEMS (MAY TO AUGUST, 2010)



FEELING FANCY FREE:
A LOVE POEM



There is nothing but trees for miles from where Allen and Margaret Berrington’s silver Chrysler Sebring was found on Wednesday afternoon. . . .A pair of dirtbikers found the Sebring, out of gas, and Margaret, 91, deceased, three kilometres down the road. . . .Mounties later found the body of Allen, 90, nearby, concealed by a small embankment. How they got there, and why, is a mystery. - - - Kevin Libin, National Post, Friday, June 4, 2010




Something about the spring sun slicing through
Shadows of maple and birches cuddling the road,
Their branches creaking like stretched backs do
When pulled erect from a burden of stoop, load
Of the years fallen off as derelict leaves gone
With the lashing wind, roiled into an uproar
Of rain and foliage --- something about the sun
Caught in her ruddy blush and now gossamer hair
Has sprung a sprightly pull on his flaccid arms
And he was going to enfold her again, trolling
Their road song again: O leggy Peggy in my arms,
O lovely Peggy in my arms! And hear her trilling
Again: Al of my dreams, I love you, honest I do;
Oh, what can I do, I love you so. I love you so.
But something about the spring sun on their faces
Was all he could recall, the sky, and empty spaces.

June 23, 2010


And these few precious days, I'll spend with you....these golden days, I'll spend with you. ---September Song

FIVE POEMS TO GROW
OLD BY: WHERE THE
FINAL WEAPON IS A
CHAIR NOT LOVE

Ah, to be old and a mariner come upon that restful cove,/ Where the final weapon is a chair not love;/ To be old, cher ami, is a gallant slouching on that chair/ Some porch of the heart grown insensitive to care ---
--- “Houses are Better Off Without Porches Here”,
From A Theory of Echoes (Selected Poems)



CUP ON THE BENCH


“Favorite spot,” Nguyen Cao Tran pointed
To the bench on Lincoln Green before
He waved me bonjour the Montreal way.

“Favorite spot for wife and me…drink
Tim Horton Coffee from across,” he winked,
Now unafraid his accent might betray

A Viet Minh rasp from Saigon days,
A shrapnel buried on his nape: “Still smoke
Camel sticks from GI Joe friend in Frisco.”

He looked away when I remembered to ask
About Nguyen Bao. “Isn’t she walking
With you this morning? It’s spring, mon vieux!

He mumbled: “She gone…far away now,”
And shuffled away, his knapsack slung
Like a rifle crooked on his flaccid hand.

A single cup of Roll-up-the-Rim teetered
On the bench the next day while I waited.
No cups on the ground, the bench was naked.



LUCY DOES NOT
LIVE HERE ANYMORE


Caminnare. Fare una passeggiata.
Eh, come stai? She shot back looking askance.
Perched birdlike on her stroller, she inched
Her way to the middle of the cul de sac ---
Where I tarried, a wide wave our ritual,
I called out, Come va, Nonna?
Her andador tilted off the cobbled strada,
She stared blankly, but smiled nonetheless
In the courtly manner she never failed to show
To neighbours and strangers alike.

Her sallow skin becomes her regal face,
I thought, but the same face furrowed,
Her eyebrows arched impatiently then;
She demanded: Are you the police?
Or are you my son with a Florida tan
Hiding as usual from me? I called them
From 2441 because I could not find
My house, nor my keys. Was just walking,
Was just enjoying the sun for once.
Crazy Calabria weather. Rain. Sun. Wind.
Sun. Snow. Cold. Hot. Aiee... who are you?

“2441 is your house, Nonna. And you have
A daughter who will be here tomorrow.
And this is Mississauga. I am Alberto
With the nipotes Chloe and Louie at 2330.”

Aieee...dolce angelo! My angels.
How are they? E come va, amore mio?
Caminare. Fare una passeggiata.
O, com `e bello, O sole bello!
But you will help me find my home,
Won’t you? Won’t you? Amore?
A lilt on her voice, she flirted rather coyly.


WINDOW GAZERS


Sitting on her Florentine chair
Atop the red-tiled stairs, the sirocco
Breeze playing with her ivory hair,
She awaits her turn to say hello:
A caudillo-like half-raised wave
And a schoolmarm’s smile on her
Waxen face, a smirk at times to save
Her some chagrin falling off a chair
While she wags childlike to say:
Blow a kiss to your window-waving
Girl, say au revoir for now, and pray
That as they grow, won’t stop loving,
And they do grow and go away,
And you’d be left sitting on a chair
Wondering why they have flown
Like swallows, and hope would care
To come back and perch at sundown.



EL NIDO DESOLADO


(Para mi Madre)


Los pajaritos están dejando su nido;
el invierno de su vida ha venido
tan muy temprano!

Mira! Mira! Madre mía.

Tan fuerte ahora, sus pájaros
están volando a puertas desconocidas;
están volando tan lejos para que
nunca jamás devolver y quedar en la casa
de corazón triste, ahora casa abandonada,
nida desolada, madre mía.

O mi madre querida!


OMNI SOLI SEMPER*


“I just wish your Father would come and take me soon. I am tired,” Mother said and closed her eyes. --- From a Visit to Poro Point, Writer’s Notebook, 2009


The flannel blanket was an armour:
it shielded me through nights I needed you
to defend me against the onslaught of day
when I had to rise to know
that the children were all in bed last night
dreaming their dreams or fleeing nightmares
where flailing they fall from precipices
and you were no longer there to catch them
nor were they there to fall in your arms.

Even the sunrise assails me.

I beg for sunsets now and nights to hide me
from the rush of day when finally I ache to see
them home and you beside me asking
how I made it through my day.

When will you come to take me home?

The flannels have shrunk and, threadbare,
They could no longer keep the intruding light away.

----------

*All alone, always




ALL IN A DAY’S WORK:
GARMENTS DYED ON
WASHLINES IN DHAKA








1. Impressions Dyed in Red


Swatting flies off the sahib's table,
Slapping bloodsuckers off the soft skin
Of money changers in the Dhaka alleys,
Dumping discarded foetuses in rivers
Curdled with carcasses and dung:
All in a day’s work of a boy in Bangladesh.

Beating dread into brittle skeletal backs
Of scampering beggars, howling slumdogs
Praying for mercy while batons are rained
On loins to supplant the eked out alms
That could have bought this lad’s repast
Coming out of sweatshops drenched
With dye that reeked with bodes of dying:
All in a day’s work for the Rajah’s riot police.

Impressions swathed on mud-splattered
Garments strung in shanty town washlines
Wound tightly on gnarled branches of trees
That will not grow beyond this lad’s height
When he creeps out in the night toward
The hills these armed bastards have driven
Him to, and he will come down a grown man
Of wraith-like limbs and dark sunken eyes
Burning with wrath and towering anger.


2. Looking Back in Anger

Decapitating the governor and his paramour,
He lisps: All in a day’s work for the child-slave
Who prayed for them to stop dumping batons
On his mother’s back: “Hit me! Beat me instead!”
They spared the splayed old woman grovelling
Atop a mound of scavenged used diapers
But did not think the better of him that time,
This waif, this little boy, running through
The streets begging for a little more rupiah,
A little more dried squid or corn for siblings
Around his table. The riot police jeered:
Eat shit, you little shit. Eat this rattan stick!

All in a day’s work for police and lads in Dhaka,
The proud city of Bangladesh, where label
Shirts of Tommy Hilfiger, Grenadier, Chaps,
Yves St. Laurent and Ralph Lauren are made.
---ALBERT B. CASUGA
July 3, 2010, Mississauga



BIENVENUE, ANNABELLE


(For Alain and Anik)



NOTICE/AVIS/NOTIFICATION


Know by all these present: that after leafing through the folds of the Earth, l’ monde de joie et crainte, wherever their hearts saw them against the imperatives of the Law, La Loi, et Le Droit and its claim on their lives, minds, hopes and dreams, that --- enfin --- M. Roussy et Mlle. Lalonde, Barristers, have found what they have always been searching for: l’amour pur, the purest of them all, that man can ever find or offer: une belle bébé, Annabelle, for whom they will cease their exploration because they have by noble covenant found the root of the rainbow, their l’amour pur, Annabelle Jeanne, the beginning of their days, the sundown of their eves, now the life of their lives.


BIENVENUE

Bienvenue, Annabelle chère.
However fearful or fearsome
You will find this old old place
Amidst its temblors, fiery blazes,
Cloying floods, endless disasters,
Deceits and wounding betrayals,
This is still l’monde de amour,
Et vraiment la place unique,
The only place for love.



RAIN ON THE TRAIL

There is a scampering of grace/In the dry woods/ And a pulse upon some soliloquy: / It is the rain come as a lace/ Smooth and forbidding upon the cup/ Of the dead and dying weather!
--- “Fugue in Narra’s Rain”, Narra Poems and Others, 1968





Something about running naked in the rain
recalls some lost decades withered now in
a fading trail hallooing with surprised laughter
tickled out of our backs by sudden pellets of rain.

The river! The river! Chanted my little lass

Skipping to the tempo of scampering rain:
Let’s swim there, abuelo! Let’s dance in the river!
Brown and slithering over scraped-clean rocks,
the river meanders sans snails, eels, or crayfish,

Now emptied of carp, catfish, small-mouth bass.

O, how we could have raucously scared the wren
with catcalls while mounting a wading caribou,
but those were noises of our lost years when
naked lads swam with dung and water buffalo.

We can’t swim here, hija mia, City Hall says clean
rivers are for clean table fish. We do have our rain.

--- A. B. Casuga
August 22, 2010, Mississauga


THE WORLD
HIS OYSTER



He would not take a proffered
hand to cross the street:
"I'm not a baby anymore.
I will wait, abuelo."

But he will not wait.

No, he cannot wait for the world
to pass him by: no cars nor wars,
landlslides or fires, floods of blood,
or trembling babies wetting sheet
will stop him. Across the street
is a pizza parlour.

He will not wait.

--- A. B. Casuga
August 24, 2010




SENTRY

The stool stood sentry to a darkened room where
she said she would wait if it took forever and it did.

The stool will outlast the stonewalls, rotting doors,
loosened bricks, dust, and bramble. It will be there.

Waiting.

A.B. Casuga
---August 19, 2010





THE WRATH OF DAYS DESCENDING


Last June, Coastal Poems and Asia Writes published my Earth Poems, an unlikely Cassandra of disasters plaguing the planet. In this week's dailies, news about subsequent disasters all over the globe seemed to have validated fears of the true wrath of days descending on man.

The floods in Pakistan, the infernal temperature rise and resultant forest fires in Russia, the floods, fires, and mud slides in China, the temblors in unpredicted points, the outcrop of drug-resistant viruses, microbes, and diseases compounding these disasters were capped by news that the glaciers on Earth's poles are melting and ocean waters are threatening to reclaim terra firma.
I rewrote the Earth Poems to update on these calamities, but I am not laying claim on prophetic powers nor putting one over Nostradamus. I almost want to derive so much wicked delight over the realisation that I could say at this point, "I told you so," but I would rather not. It is not funny, you know.

I clip with this revision the week's disaster news.





IT’S WHEN I AM WEARY
OF CONSIDERATIONS:
(A MOTHER’S WRATH,
EARTH POEMS, AND DISASTERS)





It’s when I’m weary of considerations,/ And life is too much like a pathless wood.../ I’d like to get away from earth a while/ And then come back to it and begin over.../...Earth’s the right place for love:/ I don’t know where it’s likely to go better. --- Robert Frost, Birches


1. IF: COUNTERPOINTS

If you marvelled at the dance of the Northern Lights
Counterpointing the smouldering plumes of ashen smoke
Billowing out of an Eyjafjallajokull cradled by melting glacier,

Or quietly scanned the opal horizons of Banda Aceh swathed
In a glorious sunset chiaroscuro before the waves claimed
Atolls and infants back into the rip tide roar of that tsunami;

If you were ambushed by an unforgiving temblor that rocked
Haiti out of its romping in reggae regaled beaches turned
Into common graveyards of carrion crushed under rubble;

If you have walked through cherry-blossom-strewn streets
And smiled at strangers’ hallooing: How about this spring?
Before rampaging twister funnels crushed hearths and homes;

If you have strolled and danced ragtime beat on Orleans’
Roadhouses rocking rampant with rap and razzmatazz
Before Katrina’s wrath wreaked hell’s hurricane havoc;

If you still marvel at forest flowers as God’s fingers
And espy sandpipers bolt through thicket cramping marsh
Before infernal flames crackle through Santa Barbara’s hills;

If you have stolen kisses and felt purloined embraces
In the limpid ripples of Cancun’s caressingly undulant seas
Before the onset of the curdling spill on the playa negra;

If you braved the stygian stink of Ilog Pasig and sang songs
While harvesting floating tulips, debris, or stray crayfish
For some foregone repast before it turned into River Styx;

If you have lived through these and now blow fanfare
For Earth’s being the right place for love or maybe care,
You might yet begin to accept that Mother’s lullabies were
Also her gnashing of teeth when you wailed through nights
When slumber would have allowed her love not tantrums
Of infants grown now and “quartered in the hands of war”:


2. WRATH OF DAYS


How else explain the wrath of days descending
not into quietness but pain? Has she not kept her anger
in check for all the tantrums of the Ages: Thermopylae,
Masada, Ilium, Pompeii? Hiroshima, Auschwitz, Nagasaki?
Stalin’s pogroms? The death chambers and Holocaust trains?
Polpot’s killing fields in Kampuchea? Rwanda’s genocide?

Before it lured tourist trekkers, the verboten Walls of China?
The Berlin Wall? The Gaza Wall? Fences of n.i.m.b.y.
neighbours: India and Pakistan, Iran and Iraq, splintered
Korea, the Irelands shorn of the emerald isles, the fractured
United Kingdom where the sun has finally set on its Empire,
the still haemorrhaging American southern states crippled
and still unyoked from black history but seething now
from the African-American’s irascible entitlement ---

With Zimbabwe’s apartheid, Congo’s rapes, Ethiopia’s
hunger, Sudan’s ceaseless putsch tango, Somalia’s piracy
trade, tribal wars in Uganda, Namibia, Botswana, Kenya,
will blacks overcome someday, soon? Only if they, too,
would get munitions from Venezuela’s bottomless vaults
gurgling with black gold, aceite y petroleo, and Oil of Ages.
Lubricator of the war and killing machines, in Oil we Trust.


3. A RIGHT PLACE FOR LOVE, YOU SAY?

Has it gone any better? Love on this piece of terra infirma?
The man crucified on Golgotha preached love,
And he got killed.
Free the enslaved black man, he cried in Gettysburg,
And he got killed.
The loincloth-clad man asked for non-violent resistance,
And he got killed.
Another Gandhi later, the distaff side, asked for peace,
And she got killed.
The man got his people to the moon, and said:
Ask not what your country can do for you;
Ask what you can do for your country.
And he got killed.
I have a dream. He said that equality of races will ring true,
And he got killed.
Exiled and returning to forge a conscience for his people,
He said the “Filipino is worth dying for”.
And he got killed.


4. THE NEWS THIS TIME


Guam gets rattled with its strongest quake yet, sunken atolls
In the Philippines, Indonesia, New Zealand become sea again.
Landslide carnavals in Brazil? Uganda, too? Chile quakes 8.2.
Russia’s galloping inferno will reach Chernobyl in no time.
Radioactive fallouts imminent; its reach unimaginable.
What’s 14 million homeless like in Pakistan’s deluge?
Wait till China registers its numbers after floods, forest fires,
Mud and muck will roll out its carrion in denuded hills
Like stuck-up slaloms sloshing down where snow will soon
Cover all – not grass on knolls – just searing deserts. Gobi.

“An earthquake is expected on the fault lines between Israel
And Palestine”, the breaking news announces another temblor.
Nazareth shrines will be closed to pilgrims. And Jerusalem?
Closed. Gaza? Construction abandoned. Problems solved.
Like the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo drove the Ugly American
From the Philippine’s Clark Base where the legions
Of armed rebels, limp politicos, and clap-infected whores
Could not. Tomorrow, then, the Ring of Fire.


5. THE SPILL AND FALL


Has it gone any better? Love on this piece of terra incognita?
That’s when Mother shushed you back to sleep,
An impatient rhythm clipping away what should have been
A gently lulling melody from the Song of Ages:
Rock-a-bye, baby on the treetop; when the wind blows,
The cradle will rock. When the bough breaks, the cradle
Will fall; and down will come baby, cradle, and all.
The bough breaks, and you scream. Too late for that.
This is not a dream. The freefall is Mother’s little slip
When she could no longer hold you still, somnolence
Finally taking over, and your cri d’couer, a scream,
For help, for caress, for all the love gone from an empty room.
The cradle falls, she can’t pick it up. Exhausted and utterly
Spent, she mutters in her sleep: Spare the rod, spoil the child.

Tomorrow, if it comes, Mother will prop up --- backaches
Assault her waking days now --- will step into her plimsoll
As she would her dancing pumps, oil-soaked slippers.
She will slip and fall before anyone else wakes up.
She will yell: “Damn it, who spilled oil on the floor this time?”


--- ALBERT B. CASUGA
Earth Poems, Revised from Asia Writes release, August 14, 2010

 
 
--- ALBERT B. CASUGA
August 28, 2010

Thursday, August 26, 2010

POEMS FROM THE BAUL BY JASON MONTANA

BONDING


For Cita, newly wed


Event of choice and chance
For celebration and learning
Is the manner of her union

Wherein she receives the man she loves
As power of flesh the blood of word
In landborn winds of islands


The way forest canopy covers her
Like a sevenfold benediction
And streams flow around like an oath

For self-understanding and assurance
To release her newly wed as dreams
To the struggle of shores and tide

Wherein two mountains are transformed
Into a sanctum of revolution and
Trees are candelabra of blazing orchids

And Everything is assumed by unseen
Heaven into the largeness of life
To which she and the revolution aspire

Beyond the 24th year of a civil war
Beyond waverings of proletarian leadership
At the threshold of larger unities

The manner be hours of steadfastness
To consume her stance and invention
And own surer ground of meaning

A clearer sky of purpose




SIERRA MADRE MANRISE

At 5:26 a.m. en punto
Just as the summer
Sun
Began
To release me
Poised
On awakened
Shores and
To breeze and soft
Skylights
Pale orange and silver
Gray fusions
Of my making
Suddenly he came
Undefined unnamed
In the distance
Amazing my mind
Heart spirit awed
This Red Fighter
Standing on water
Gazing at horizon
Meeting
Of ocean and sky
Alone
Gun slung on shoulder
Silent as
The Sierra Madre
Behind him
That birthed him
That owned him
That loved him
Tall and ranging
Blue and confident
Before my
Rise

--- JASON MONTANA*
 
* Jason Montana is the nom d'guerre of a Filipino Benedictine monk who took to the hills during the Martial Law regime of the military government established by the Philippine government at that time (ca. 1970s).
 
This blog has published earlier (See April 8, 2009 post) some of his Sierra Madre Poems, some of them bemoaning his disenchantment with the revolution forgotten by the Filipino people in their haste to settle down from the explosion of "people power" that toppled the martial law government.
 
Bonding celebrates a wedding in the hills, for these things happen there, too --- a balm against loneliness and the heart being a "lonely hunter". Some of these marriages in the bivouacs have been blessed by enduring bonds that even more prominent "returnees" from the hills find it compelling to express pride and gratitude for those bonds that were forged in the heat of war against social injustice and the poverty of the Filipino soul.
 
Jason Montana remains to be a hawk-like eye watching after God's children, praying, hoping that the People's Revolution will finally find its plenitude in a similar revolution waged ages ago by the Man from Galilee who marched into Israel to "free his people" that they may gain ascendancy over their lives in the City of God.
 
Jason Montana, like guerrilla poets before him, honour the memories of poets Emmanuel Lacaba,+ Carlos Tayag, Che Guevarra+, Yevgeny Yevtushenko+, Ding Fernandez+,  Jose Burgos+, Mila D. Aguilar, Rita Gadi, Edicio de la Torre and countless others who came down from the hills with their rifles wrapped with sheets and sheets of poetry to last the ages.
 
We will cherish our own "Sierra Madres" in our lifetime. Mabuhay ka, Ka Jason Montana.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

BIENVENUE



BIENVENUE

(For Annabelle Jeanne Lalonde-Roussy, August 23, 2010)



This form, this face, this life/ Living to live in a world of time beyond me: let me/ Resign my life for this life, my speech for that unspoken, / The awakened, lips parted, the hope, the new ships.
What seas what shores what granite islands towards my timbers/ And woodthrush calling through the fog/ My daughter.
--- T. S. Eliot, “Marina”, Collected Poems 1909-1935






Know by all these present:
that after leafing through
the folds of the Earth,
l’ monde de joie et crainte,
wherever their hearts saw
them against the imperatives
of the Law, La Loi, et Le Droit
and its claim on their lives,
minds, hopes and dreams,
that --- enfin --- M. Roussy
et Mlle. Lalonde, Barristers,
have found what they have always
been searching for: l’amour pur,
the purest of them all, that
man can ever find or offer:
une belle bébé, Annabelle,
for whom they will cease
their exploration because
they have by noble covenant
found the root of the rainbow,
their l’amour pur, Annabelle,
the beginning of their days,
the sundown of their eves,
now the life of their lives:

Bienvenue, Annabelle chère.
However fearful or fearsome
You will find this old old place
Amidst its temblors, fiery blazes,
Cloying floods, endless disasters,
Deceits and wounding betrayals,
This is still l’monde de amour,
Et vraiment la place unique,
The only place for love.


--- A. B. Casuga
Mississauga, August 24, 2010




A Revision\August 26, 2010




(For Alain and Anik)

NOTICE/AVIS/NOTIFICATION

Know by all these present: that after leafing through the folds of the Earth, l’ monde de joie et crainte, wherever their hearts saw them against the imperatives of the Law, La Loi, et Le Droit and its claim on their lives, minds, hopes and dreams, that --- enfin --- M. Roussy et Mlle. Lalonde, Barristers, have found what they have always been searching for: l’amour pur, the purest of them all, that man can ever find or offer: une belle bébé, Annabelle, for whom they will cease their exploration because they have by noble covenant found the root of the rainbow, their l’amour pur, Annabelle Jeanne, the beginning of their days, the sundown of their eves, now the life of their lives.



BIENVENUE



Bienvenue, Annabelle chère.
However fearful or fearsome
You will find this old old place
Amidst its temblors, fiery blazes,
Cloying floods, endless disasters,
Deceits and wounding betrayals,
This is still l’monde de amour,
Et vraiment la place unique,
The only place for love.


--- A. B. Casuga

Sunday, August 22, 2010

HALLOOING IN THE RAIN (POEM 3 --- JUMPS OUT OF QUATRAINS)



RAIN ON THE TRAIL


There is a scampering of grace/In the dry woods/ And a pulse upon some soliloquy: / It is the rain come as a lace/ Smooth and forbidding upon the cup/ Of the dead and dying weather!
--- Fugue in Narra’s Rain, Narra Poems and Others, 1968





Something about running naked in the rain
recalls some lost decades withered now in
a fading trail hallooing with surprised laughter
tickled out of our backs by sudden pellets of rain.

The river! The river! Chanted my little lass

Skipping to the tempo of scampering rain:
Let’s swim there, abuelo! Let’s dance in the river!
Brown and slithering over scraped-clean rocks,
the river meanders sans snails, eels, or crayfish,

Now emptied of carp, catfish, small-mouth bass.

O, how we could have raucously scared the wren
with catcalls while mounting a wading caribou,
but those were noises of our lost years when
naked lads swam with dung and water buffalo.

We can’t swim here, hija mia, City Hall says clean
rivers are for clean table fish. We do have our rain.


--- A. B. Casuga
August 22, 2010, Mississauga

Friday, August 20, 2010

NO, HE WILL NOT WAIT. (Poem 2 --- A Jump Out of a Quatrain)

THE WORLD HIS OYSTER

He would not take a  proffered hand to cross the street:
"I'm not a baby anymore. I will wait, abuelo." But he will not wait.

No, he cannot wait for the world to pass him by: no cars nor wars,
landlslides or fires, floods of blood, or trembling babies wetting sheet

Will stop him. Across the street is a pizza parlour. He will not wait.


A. B. Casuga
Mississauga, August 20, 2010




(Louie Martin on a downtown sidewalk.)




A Revision
August 24, 2010

THE WORLD HIS OYSTER



He would not take a proffered hand
to cross the street:
"I'm not a baby anymore.
I will wait, abuelo."

But he will not wait.

No, he cannot wait for the world
to pass him by: no cars nor wars,
landlslides or fires, floods of blood,
or trembling babies wetting sheet

Will stop him. Across the street
is a pizza parlour.

He will not wait.

--- A. B. Casuga

ALBERT B. CASUGA: WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE PHILIPPINES? AN ESSAY BY BENIGNO AQUINO JR. (+August 21, 1983)

ALBERT B. CASUGA: WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE PHILIPPINES? AN ESSAY BY BENIGNO AQUINO JR. (+August 21, 1983)

Thursday, August 19, 2010

WAITING (Poem 1 --- A Jump Out of a Quatrain)


SENTRY

The stool stood sentry to a darkened room where
she said she would wait if it took forever and it did.

The stool will outlast the stonewalls, rotting doors,
loosened bricks, dust, and bramble. It will be there.

Waiting.


 A.B. Casuga
---August 19, 2010
Mississauga







Saturday, August 14, 2010

THE WRATH OF DAYS DESCENDING: REVISED POEM


THE WRATH OF DAYS DESCENDING

Last June, Coastal Poems and Asia Writes published my Earth Poems, an unlikely Cassandra of disasters plaguing the planet. In this week's dailies, news about subsequent disasters all over the globe seemed to have validated fears of the true wrath of days descending on man.

The floods in Pakistan, the infernal temperature rise and resultant forest fires in Russia, the floods, fires, and mud slides in China, the temblors in unpredicted points, the outcrop of drug-resistant viruses, microbes, and diseases compounding these disasters were capped by news that the glaciers on Earth's poles are melting and ocean waters are threatening to reclaim terra firma.

I rewrote the Earth Poems to update on these calamities, but I am not laying claim on prophetic powers nor putting one over Nostradamus. I almost want to derive so much wicked delight over the realisation that I could say at this point, "I told you so," but I would rather not. It is not funny, you know.

I clip with this revision the week's disaster news.

(Please click on the image to zoom in on the text and pictures.)








IT’S WHEN I AM WEARY OF CONSIDERATIONS:
(A MOTHER’S WRATH, EARTH POEMS, AND DISASTERS)

It’s when I’m weary of considerations,/ And life is too much like a pathless wood.../ I’d like to get away from earth a while/ And then come back to it and begin over.../...Earth’s the right place for love:/ I don’t know where it’s likely to go better. --- Robert Frost, Birches


1. IF: COUNTERPOINTS

If you marvelled at the dance of the Northern Lights
Counterpointing the smouldering plumes of ashen smoke
Billowing out of an Eyjafjallajokull cradled by melting glacier,

Or quietly scanned the opal horizons of Banda Aceh swathed
In a glorious sunset chiaroscuro before the waves claimed
Atolls and infants back into the rip tide roar of that tsunami;

If you were ambushed by an unforgiving temblor that rocked
Haiti out of its romping in reggae regaled beaches turned
Into common graveyards of carrion crushed under rubble;

If you have walked through cherry-blossom-strewn streets
And smiled at strangers’ hallooing: How about this spring?
Before rampaging twister funnels crushed hearths and homes;

If you have strolled and danced ragtime beat on Orleans’
Roadhouses rocking rampant with rap and razzmatazz
Before Katrina’s wrath wreaked hell’s hurricane havoc;

If you still marvel at forest flowers as God’s fingers
And espy sandpipers bolt through thicket cramping marsh
Before infernal flames crackle through Santa Barbara’s hills;

If you have stolen kisses and felt purloined embraces
In the limpid ripples of Cancun’s caressingly undulant seas
Before the onset of the curdling spill on the playa negra;

If you braved the stygian stink of Ilog Pasig and sang songs
While harvesting floating tulips, debris, or stray crayfish
For some foregone repast before it turned into River Styx;

If you have lived through these and now blow fanfare
For Earth’s being the right place for love or maybe care,
You might yet begin to accept that Mother’s lullabies were
Also her gnashing of teeth when you wailed through nights
When slumber would have allowed her love not tantrums
Of infants grown now and “quartered in the hands of war”:



2. WRATH OF DAYS

How else explain the wrath of days descending
not into quietness but pain? Has she not kept her anger
in check for all the tantrums of the Ages: Thermopylae,
Masada, Ilium, Pompeii? Hiroshima, Auschwitz, Nagasaki?
Stalin’s pogroms? The death chambers and Holocaust trains?
Polpot’s killing fields in Kampuchea? Rwanda’s genocide?

Before it lured tourist trekkers, the verboten Walls of China?
The Berlin Wall? The Gaza Wall? Fences of n.i.m.b.y.
neighbours: India and Pakistan, Iran and Iraq, splintered
Korea, the Irelands shorn of the emerald isles, the fractured
United Kingdom where the sun has finally set on its Empire,
the still haemorrhaging American southern states crippled
and still unyoked from black history but seething now
from the African-American’s irascible entitlement ---

With Zimbabwe’s apartheid, Congo’s rapes, Ethiopia’s
hunger, Sudan’s ceaseless putsch tango, Somalia’s piracy
trade, tribal wars in Uganda, Namibia, Botswana, Kenya,
will blacks overcome someday, soon? Only if they, too,
would get munitions from Venezuela’s bottomless vaults
gurgling with black gold, aceite y petroleo, and Oil of Ages.
Lubricator of the war and killing machines, in Oil we Trust.


3. A RIGHT PLACE FOR LOVE, YOU SAY?

Has it gone any better? Love on this piece of terra infirma?
The man crucified on Golgotha preached love,
And he got killed.
Free the enslaved black man, he cried in Gettysburg,
And he got killed.
The loincloth-clad man asked for non-violent resistance,
And he got killed.
Another Gandhi later, the distaff side, asked for peace,
And she got killed.
The man got his people to the moon, and said:
Ask not what your country can do for you;
Ask what you can do for your country.
And he got killed.
I have a dream. He said that equality of races will ring true,
And he got killed.
Exiled and returning to forge a conscience for his people,
He said the “Filipino is worth dying for”.
And he got killed.


4. THE NEWS THIS TIME

Guam gets rattled with its strongest quake yet, sunken atolls
In the Philippines, Indonesia, New Zealand become sea again.
Landslide carnavals in Brazil? Uganda, too? Chile quakes 8.2.
Russia’s galloping inferno will reach Chernobyl in no time.
Radioactive fallouts imminent; its reach unimaginable.
What’s 14 million homeless like in Pakistan’s deluge?
Wait till China registers its numbers after floods, forest fires,
Mud and muck will roll out its carrion in denuded hills
Like stuck-up slaloms sloshing down where snow will soon
Cover all – not grass on knolls – just searing deserts. Gobi.
“An earthquake is expected on the fault lines between Israel
And Palestine”, the breaking news announces another temblor.
Nazareth shrines will be closed to pilgrims. And Jerusalem?
Closed. Gaza? Construction abandoned. Problems solved.
Like the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo drove the Ugly American
From the Philippine’s Clark Base where the legions
Of armed rebels, limp politicos, and clap-infected whores
Could not. Tomorrow, then, the Ring of Fire.


5. THE SPILL AND FALL

Has it gone any better? Love on this piece of terra incognita?
That’s when Mother shushed you back to sleep,
An impatient rhythm clipping away what should have been
A gently lulling melody from the Song of Ages:
Rock-a-bye, baby on the treetop; when the wind blows,
The cradle will rock. When the bough breaks, the cradle
Will fall; and down will come baby, cradle, and all.
The bough breaks, and you scream. Too late for that.
This is not a dream. The freefall is Mother’s little slip
When she could no longer hold you still, somnolence
Finally taking over, and your cri d’couer, a scream,
For help, for caress, for all the love gone from an empty room.
The cradle falls, she can’t pick it up. Exhausted and utterly
Spent, she mutters in her sleep: Spare the rod, spoil the child.

Tomorrow, if it comes, Mother will prop up --- backaches
Assault her waking days now --- will step into her plimsoll
As she would her dancing pumps, oil-soaked slippers.
She will slip and fall before anyone else wakes up.
She will yell: “Damn it, who spilled oil on the floor this time?”


--- ALBERT B. CASUGA
Earth Poems, Revised from Asia Writes release, August 14, 2010

Monday, August 9, 2010

PHILIPPINE MEDIA ALIVE AND WELL IN LAS VEGAS OR A DISGUISE TITLE FOR A BLOG


BACK FROM A WEEK IN SODOM AND GOMORRAH.

A good thing to note: The Philippine print media thrive well in Las Vegas, as they do in Toronto. Here are some of the newspapers one can pick up free in any of those myriad Filipino restaurants and grocery stores. (Chow King, Seafood City, and Jolibee on Maryland Parkway in Las Vegas City, Nevada).

Saw paisanos there, read Philippine events while eating favorite Philippine victual, and talked to some of them who would no longer want to go back. "Um, maybe for a visit, a brief vacation at some Philippine resorts. Nah, it's good in the States."

(Click on image to zoom in on text.)





The week of sweltering heat (108F is normal), reminded us of a modern Sodom and Gomorrah in a desert city that could well be man's idea of happiness bought with the almighty dollar. Sensitive to the suffering of the rest of the starving world? Do not go to Las Vegas.

But "heaven is the vision of fulfilled desire/ and hell the shadow of a soul on fire." You can get both in Las Vegas. City of lights and overbearing and profligate use of energy. Oil spills in Louisiana, the gulf of Mexico, and China notwithstanding.

This time around, we went to visit the new Westgate Planet Hollywood where we bought vacation time, to escape Disney in Florida and the Caribbean cruises now and then. What's new? A huge wall-to-all screen covering the picture window that doubles as a ridiculously gigantic television. The grandchildren loved it. But if I spent a week watching the idiot box, I really did not have to leave home, did I?
(Oh, they've got everything in the buidling: a resort-like pool and cabanas, spas, a mile-long maze of boutiques, restaurants, theatres, peepshows, strip joints, name-it-they've-got-it-you-need-not-burn-yourself-under-that-infernal-sun traversing the Las Vegas Strip.)
Beats curling with a book under a shadetree in the beaches of San Fabian, Boracay, Pagudpud, Bauang, Palawan, Bohol, all paradises in the Philippines?

I can sleep better at home. But for retired senior citizens, the gambling casino is where one finds the Filipino nonagenarian staring blankly at a slotmachine hoping to be jolted by the cacophonic charivari of a jackpot on these one-armed bandits. Beats trying to sleep when one just could not -- TV or boring book to boot. Hope springs eternal? Nah, beats waiting in a dark room to die.