Papa Osmubal
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Papa Osmubal "Poverty"
I saw a handful of dead cockroaches/ on the floor this morning./ You must have filled the house/ with your endless litany of dammits’ and ‘bullshits’/ while chasing them with last week’s paper/ you borrowed next door for the purpose.
Sophia Kidd "dance a line"
i get stuck thinkin' of words/ and meanings of you and of him/ the smell of leaf/ on dirt
Kenneth Mulvey "Contagion necessaries: sensorial numb"
reach into pocket/ for a light/ to find I pissed/ myself again
James Dilworth "Pamela in the Spring"I can't talk in the human way, I tried to learn without success. I could only watch her day after day, as the seasons began to change and the world grew colder.
Andy Riverbed "The lost art of visualization"
Now that I think about it;/ I’ve realized I don’t like poetry/ and I don’t like literature; I/ hate movies and music is nauseating;/ my job is a boring mind-/ numb.
Cecelia Chapman "Dream"
A short movie
A TRIP TO CHUNG SHAN, GUANGDONG
My wife said her grandfather, Nei Yi Ong, knows
when one will die, using an abacus.
Give him one’s birthday
and the time of one’s birth, she said,
and he can calculate one’s life’s longevity
and can know when one is going to go.
I laughed so loud
my guffaw annoyed my in-laws.
We were on our way to my wife’s town, Chung San,
the famed birthplace of Dr. Sun Yat Sen,
the man whose birth and death
made China the way it is now.
After the interruption caused by my laughter,
my wife enthusiastically continued.
By the way, she said, the old man can’t exactly tell
the time of one’s death, but he can exactly tell
what day, date, and what part of the day one exits.
I laughed again.
This time it was louder than the first one.
This time my hee-haw
was a thunder in the summer sky.
At the dinner we ran out of things to talk about;
Nei Yi Ong wanted to do what he does best:
he asked me my birthday.
I did not answer.
I swallowed my saliva.
Then I swallowed a big portion of my sticky rice
and said, “Hou hou mei, ni ti pak fan.”
This white rice is so nice.
A-Wo, my brother-in-law, handed me a cup
of warm tea, but I did not take it.
Sweating, I was clasping the cup
while absentmindedly staring at the my plate.
VOLCANO ERUPTION: PINATUBO , PHILIPPINES 1991
We did not know the mountain would shoo us away
like its bitterly mortal enemies it can never forgive.
Its fire reminded us of the fist and eyes of God
rebuking Adam and Eve, sending them out His domain.
The wind and birds did not have trees to perch on:
a sudden desert, a canvas of stillness and death.
This town is not ours anymore: its dreams and its streets
that we erected and named disappeared in the ashes.
A MAN AT NAM VAN LAKE , MACAO
Nam Van or South Lake is an artificial lake in Macao that has been always used as the sites for festivities and cultural performances.
He picks a stone
and feels it in his hand.
He lifts his head
and faces the wind.
Then he throws
the stone into the water.
His reflection is carried away by tiny ripples.
Waiting for the water to settleand for his reflection and the fish
to come back, he drinks his Tsingtao beer.
POVERTY
I saw a handful of dead cockroaches
on the floor this morning.
You must have filled the house
with your endless litany of ‘dammits’ and ‘bullshits’
while chasing them with last week’s paper
you borrowed next door for the purpose.
Write a letter to the editors
mentioning their paper’s use in your life;
and beg God to stop this endless plague.
You are doing your role well,
but do not nag me
for not buying buckets yet
for the coming rainy days.
KULAS
So, he is back from his usual watery adventure.
The sun is up and Kulas, the fisher, is home.
Kulas prepares his meal fit only for kings and fishers like him.
The aromatic smoke from Kulas’s intrudes my room.
The smoke sends the sea and its magic in my home.
The smoke smells of the bounty of the waters and salt.
The smoke sails me to the places known only to Kulas and the moon.
The smoke sails me to the sea and the lands it touches.
The smoke sails me to where I’ve never been because Kulas is home.
Kulas, the fisher, is home because the sun is up.
Kulas is home and it is time to contemplate the kindness of the winds.
