9 20th-Century Poems

Illustration from loonybinart.wordpress.com.

Time to dig up some chestnuts from my personal oak chest. I may just be tired of coming up with new poems for this blog or I love reading old stuff. Whatever the reason, here are a couple of verses of mine printed in the defunct Focus magazine. If I remember right, this was the first time I got published in a national mag. You will also notice that at the time, I detested punctuation. Except for some tweaking, this is how they appeared in Focus, in this order. PJT

For A Chink In The Index

How I tried to imitate your shrewdness
Evident in a one-hit parchment
The wit snatched from tight crannies
Jolting my silent mile walk
The pleading of fading nature
Of rain from lips
And clouds from eyes
But when I saw your visage
Without baroque carvings
Almost a blank
I was almost convinced
The most ordinary-looking
Befriend the extraordinary, coming easily
Your number is in the book
Only the finger is reluctant to call
Nowadays you may be teaching
Same as what you once were
I am still being taught


The Absentee

At the appointed time
You did not come
It was foolish
I waited
Knowing well
Even your shadow is timorous
Of voices in the hallway
I trusted hope
On a passing cloud
With flowers jutting out
But it just passed by
I knew you hid in it


Plea And Pleasure

Please take away
The splinter from my eye
I cannot do it myself
For I’m blind in the other
Be gentle, be delicate
My eyelashes are raring for war
Your petal fingers they can pierce
A pond of blood
Pretend to be a heartless surgeon
For a moment
(Make an impartial choice)
Orbs are starting to mesh
Into a solid mass
Inside a wooden ball
Be quick with it
I’m losing patience
Doing all the talking
While you gape
With a dry tongue
If you hate all the sticky trouble
Do it now
Be done


She, The Devil I Love

Raving mad because she eloped
With my basketball
Instead of my soccer ball
She’s going to invent sports
In the middle of the street
Remembering her confession
When she was a child
She dreamed always
Of a big blue screen changing shades
She was also blind then
Success she’ll find
In her scheming and dealing
I have prepared a valley
To bury her soul when she dies
Lucky for the farmer
Who finds her skin still taut
Dry as the stone, her heart
There is wealth in breaking
Her bones to oil


Life Tales

Those were the days quite carefree
Love was a non-existent word
It lived only in the act
Barely making ends meet
We survived but didn’t mind
When everything isn’t everything
Without noticing the second hand
Running out of a fixed orbit
Looking down at the floorless pit
Swallowing every available passage
Yet every dark hole
Is a rainbow in disguise
It takes but a little patience to brow-raise
Maidens simple and fair
Ponies and mares
Cavorting in one playground
Skies run aground
Finding songs in a splatter of tears
God’s fingernails edged
Are discovered the stairway to His heart
Why does supremacy
Set booby traps of tests
Taxing indeed
Maybe that is why
I am getting better at getting bitter


Imaging A Plot in Compostela

Under the shade of Sapodillas
Blotting out all colors
Allowing light in unnoticed cracks
Why should I always wonder
About internals and externals?
When only the ground trembles
In its own chill
Then you appear
From out of a wink
With arms outstretched
You glow from within
Pointing to a grassy trail
Which leads to a house made of wood
I know I built it dreaming
But I am awake now
And without a will of my own


Lines Wayward

Slam the drawer silently
Lest you disturb
The stolid pictures on the desk
Imprisoned by a glass pane
Open the other boxes of dust and rags
Flying fleeing poems of moths
May you discover anthologies
The world will never know and savor
If you yourself would escape
Spider-web traps set up for adventurers
Kiss my elbow in farewell
Leave your lips
A memento


Meandering

Open the door at the fool path’s end
Someone told us home would be within
Breathe in the dust for old time’s sake
This emotion we both grasp
Is painted with hatred and forgiveness
The first to choose the latter as a weapon
Will look noble to other lovers


Journey Of Lovers

Trekking together to my refuge
A couple of kilometers away
The wheels under us are full of eyes
Knowing you are deathly afraid
That the closing of the century
May come too close, too soon
You wonder then why all stares
Have broken into slits of smiles
Your blue skin can feel
The sea and the passengers are one
In wishing both of us
Good luck