Splendour

a poem by Roger B Rueda

You hold the world in cupped hands, its silence
pierces finger tips. Your eye embraces -
turns out to be the sun. You as onlooker.
Sleeping in the silvery house is splendour -
she is harmony. Her gown grown alive
each ethereal thread a life; the lifeless plucked
by a harpist, dishevelled like the crow’s nest
with things gleaming and piercing entombed
in a bramble - a grove grown wild and wicked
that enfolds  the house long gone dark.
You don’t know how it came about, or why,
this apparent  eternal slumber. Where is
the one, you wonder? The peck, the realisation?
You as the one; - all God's creatures in your hands.

Earthbound

a poem by Roger B Rueda

It isn’t miserable not to be human nor is living utterly
within the earth condescending or void:
it is the nature of the mind to shield
its prominence, as it is the nature of those
who walk on the top to fear the depths
of despair –
one’s point fixes one’s feelings.
And yet to stride over a thing
is not to pull it off –
it is more the antithesis, a masquerading need,
by which the dogsbody completes the peer of the realm.
Similarly the mind disdains what it can’t control,
which will in turn quash it.
It is not excruciating to return
without semantics or visualisation: if,
like buddhas, one declines to leave
rolls of the sense of self,
one emerges in a cosmos  the mind
cannot think of, being completely corporeal, not
allegorical. What’s your term for it?
Infinitude, meaning that which cannot be honourable.

Pin Your Ears Back

a poem by Roger B Rueda

Pat yourself: how it speaks to you in lines
that are not lines, the way
the sound  of rushing rainwater
finds the ear of the shoreline,
or a cast of narra leaves taps
against the silence
of the coppices. In a jiffy, your rump
is conversing quietly
about the curvatures  and crests
of a Kenneth Cobonpue.
Your shoulders tauten and release,
as they whirr about the tiff
you had after lunch.
And the back
of your foot is becoming friends
with those bits of grits  that tripped
inside your Rusty Lopez.
Pick up the singings
in turn, or pull their tongues
together like the rant
of a pathway. This time,
I’ll be silent, so you can pin your ears back.

Transience

a poem by Roger B Rueda

I found the avocado one on the base of the birdcage,
lifeless in the way that simply feathered friends
can be, a feathered integument. It weighed no
more than the reminiscence of a modest time.
I might have had it on a strand, an embellishment
of blue and unhappy bent feet. Effects croak. We’re
such unnoticed foundlings, reflexions at best.
Our antiquities are hardly rises on the earth’s
irrepressible rear. Our fictions find no bookworms.
The nights devour the mind, the immensity
of carcase, the light that somebody might have
prised. We are handfuls of plumages, so
slight we fear the current of air and the press
of manoeuvres. It’d take so little for us to tumble,
to be enfolded  in a piece of connexion with only
an idea of avocado to mark an aeon once was alar.

Cobweb

a poem by Roger B Rueda

from other ways the thread
look thin, but not
from the spider’s, relentlessly
hauling rough riggings,
tethering strips to the best
poles possible. it’s unwieldy
work wherever, fighting
fall, heaving up give.
it isn’t always elusive to live.

Under An Umbrella Tree

a poem by Roger B Rueda

my heart rhythms like a snare drum
in flames my body is
smoulder that liquesces
into you the sky is a famished
mouth that moans the misgivings
through dog's oesophagus
stars shriek as they descent
to sands the colour of rancour
& on the walls of the museum
our shadows wind & twist
like two serpents twirling to the death

The Moon Purrs the Peak

a poem by Roger B Rueda

down to the deep as the sun stoles itself round the skyline.
The wind goes like a big hand frivolously
across the body.
Singings spin like sounds coming back
in a wisp of rolling tongues.
We trace the descent
of dragonflies
flicking through the water,
their watermark light as cinders.
We clasp pod
with its fragrant pulp,
sweet sheath
fitting the palm perfectly.
And it is time to snog the soil
and count freshly painted stars
running oceanwards
here where there is
only peace my love.
I wish upon you this magic
the moon still blossoming
as we exchange watery looks,
time, tranquil and buoyant, and, ooh,
to get up stark-naked in the hedging
and fall in love yet again, definitely, so certainly.

Early Death

a poem by Roger B Rueda

You are the parched fields surrendered to fire,
the entwined trundles
of all that you've thought - gone
to flare. Warmth bleeding
from the desperate melody
still thriving inside your body,
its longing
still beating in waves above you,
as if the blue was holding
your last breath.
And hope is missing
somewhere looking
through the smoulder
thinking what a waste it is
to miss this,
to send it all back
into the earth-cindered,
with all of the wrath
we were scared stiff
to touch, to see
where it once was fold
after fold of anticipation,
with roughness
and countenance
like sallow grain,
and never leaving, - never growing old.

Invitee

a poem by Roger  B Rueda

I am fantasising of a flat just like this one
but finer and opener to the saplings,
nighter than day and greater
than midday, and you,
visiting, knocking to climb on,
hoping for iced tea or Earl Grey
from Coffeebreak
or whatever it is you like.
For each nightfall is a long drink
in a short goblet.
A drink of black water, such a rush
and fall of lonesome no form
can hold it.
And if it isn’t night yet,
though I seem to
recall that it is, then it is not for everyone.
Did you get my invite? It is not
for every man jack.
Please come to my flat
lit by leaf light. It’s like a hardcover with sunny
leaves filled with herds and dells
and copses
and overlooked by Faunus, that seductive lover
in whom the fish is also cooked.
A hardcover that
took too long to read but minutes to unread -
that is -
to forget.
Outlandish are the sheets
thus. Nothing but the hope of company.
I made too much pie in expectation. I was
hoping to sit down with you in a tree house
in a negligée in a real way.
Did you get
my invite? Inscribed hastily,
before leaf blinked out,
before the idea effusively formed.
An inkling like a storm cloud
that does not spill
or arrive but moves soundlessly
in a direction.
Like an obscure hardcover
in a long lifecycle with a nebulous
faith in a wood house with an open door.

Sight Unseen

a poem by Roger B Rueda

My cat in her second kittenhood
excitedly licks
the floor for titbits
that are not there,
the drive to live
pushes her focussed physique
from stove to sink to slab.
She is trying to taste
the vague being
from the flooring
as she slumps from space
to space
before her warped limbs
give out.
I pick her up
so she is able to subsist,
unconscious, as the life trickles
out of her bemused body
that I fondle
every night
and the first thing at cockcrow.

Face

a poem by Roger B Rueda

It’s hard being whacked, your face afire
and enflamed, the sky a grey falling.
Bucketing your way through life
there is the discolouration, avocado and pink
with childhood aches, everyone
lashing and receding, all the swings
landing square on the maxilla. And it is
like smokes, white,
beautiful -
human ire and seeing the world
as a famished child, a crack-addicted
mother, yellow-eyed, skull-faced
before the looking glass and everything
there in the blame. And ooh to be
justified in our mirrored selves,
everyone trying to claim virtue
up their sleeves,
gods telling us
to obey the rules, and we cannot do it,
until the final spank comes and we
in all our mortal fragility strike back -
Until then, we may think the saw
a caw, an anecdote, a despair, a welcome
rug for the world’s malice.
And only then can one see the work,
the labour of the hands
the only true revenge.
A small peace like sky and star or moon.
It sounds so artless,
until the world is so deep,
a triggered lightning rod
through the depth.
All the hurt in life culminating
in the explosion
of our aloneness. My own fist
sore from the swing.  What a reeking bore -
this fascination with mirrors.
And there my face
a sceptical mirth.
The consideration a gauntlet,
a sparring loop, and tolerance,
is not something
easy for the colonised.
It’s like counting
stars after being hit hard.
The enormity
of our smallness a drizzle.
And ooh, to forgive
and forget is too challenging, but it is needed.
Otherwise, this pale bony cheek
is faded further
into the insignificance of indignation.
So, the world is unfair, and there isn’t
a man who has not felt the definitive sting
of this. Death coming.
Mangoes, unpicked
fallen on the dry grass, rot.
This is the
story of loss. It is a thoughtful tale of living.
Who can tell the inconsequential shades
of unstated fury?
Everywhere quivering
with grudging eyelashes, pouty lips,
hands on hips -
everyone wanting the world
to give them something
back for their travail, and it never comes -
life is suffering and suffering life,
only the relief,
the resolution, the return.
Beauty.
Everything retrievable
and death’s mantle
always white like clouds.
Here is my round
face world; it is well-nourished,
and my battle-lust
with this mirror begins again, but at best,
for once, I see, it is but an image.
There is nothing there,
personality
an imitation, a slack lilt
of idyllic tune,
travelling into the vacuity all about.
Here is a poem, for the lost angers,
the unrecompensed,
those who walk bearing the whinges
of vengeance, a sucker’s sunhat for the making.

Askals

a poem by Roger B Rueda

Two askals are mating outside my window
in the lavender lantanas
and the rain.
It's 6 AM, the clouds
falling down in the side garden,
dark as drizzly dusk.
They have a smooth brown coat, his face
behind and above her face,
a conjoined image. His claws
clutch her backend.
She yelps. He bears down.
He'll keep her where he's caught her
between the umbrella tree
and the green bamboo fence
until it's done.
I am drawn to them
as to something sacred.
I put Bugoy Drilon’s
‘Nang Dahil sa Pag-ibig’
on the CD player
and begin keeping in shape. They have
keen ears,
but I have vanished in their perseverance.
One last sharp scream from her
and I see him moseying
towards the bougainvillea
pruned and thorny
against the back hedge.
She is nowhere to be seen.
The lavender lantanas
have just begun
to blossom sending a sweet scent out
through all the greens of the neighbourhood.

Words

a poem by Roger B Rueda

For he could not verbalise the words
they turned into water,
trees,
constellations;
and when he did not
verbalise them
they came to be a picket
onto the prominences;
for the light is
always
and the way
that twilights come about.

7.30 AM Downtown

a poem by Roger B Rueda

Suspended like vanes flung
at a verge,
uncalled-for,
friable
with a splendour
that standstills,
sparrows soar
on black wings
refined and cultured
to a silent
shine, shrill
shadows stuck to a samey sky.

The Other Night

a poem by Roger B Rueda

On the side, my mate lighted
a candle.
Fireflies balled
beside the fire,
pricking the black
about us.
From each end
of the shrubbery,
crickets whirred the warm,
slick air.
I thought of those who have
loved me,
gone like summer drupes
plumped from leaves;
their shadows
followed me
into the house. Now,
by the moon, a fading star.