Poem: The Fool

The fool cocoons himself
letting the moulting decide his fate.

In the garden, others
clink their glasses and lightly
laugh with the wind.
Butterflies of different colors, they spar
their loftiness under the sun.
Temperament weather, it hovers
like a cautious calamity over everyone.

I know why I'm seeing this, why
I'm here, but I'm not with them
like the fool, oblivious, blessedly
a fool. Or probably it pained him
to learn how late it has been
to understand the atmosphere,
he weaves himself a veritable coffin
spun with strands of decisions
and indecisions, compacted
by sticky filaments of miscalculations -
big words, all his, genuinely
his, nobody else's.

I try nudging him to wake, tell
the iridiscent things i caught
from the flaps of their dresses
and coattails, but he doesn't slip
from the pattern of stars bursting
brightly in his dreams.

I know why I'm seeing this. I'm awake
and resolved to the fate of seeing
others rescued by what they have known.
Or probably it pains me more not having
another fool to be with, while around
the branches, nibbling the greens
and some little specks of sun,
my dream still crawls.

RANT: Yet another poem

I remember writing this out of memory. It happened before I graduated. I recalled the image of that day and tried to stay true to it. The things that happened afterwards, well that's the story i'm sharing to make me less bitter :-)


Breakwaters - March, 1999

The time we tried to escape the world
for water and endless skies,
I stood behind the knee-high wall
by the city's side.

You were by the bay's. "Come over here
near the waves. We came to feel the splash,"
you reminded behind your courage.
What I did not understand held my feet.
The seafoams laughed at the few inches
my face could have felt the spray.

Years later, I got a mail from where
your chasing the horizon has brought you,
the blue ink telling me about the lonely
golden spruce you saw glowing
in the middle of a forest,
or that the rainbows were different
than the ones here at home, wish I was there.
We came to feel the splash, you remind me again
handwritten on powdery-white paper.

Tell me how are our lives now different?
How does light flow in your part of the world?
Is it glum, a subdued white, and flickering
like mine's - deplete of vibrance, struggling
to be relevant before it is swallowed
entirely by the dark?
The seafoams are laughing again
from a flash of memory snapped by my mind.
I can still taste what I did not taste -
the salts of their infinite fingers.

Beetles

leftover tracks of bark beetles, from wikipedia.org

They know their lumber very well
in the forest, they leave trails of themselves.
Some other days, you're sure they were there
carrying specks of light their wings can bear.
What you're not sure is where they are now:
little friends of your polaroid and introspection.
Creatures of this earth, conspicuous and minute,
have a way of moving under the sky.
You're lucky if you know their secrets.
Being left alone - some of them want it.
Hiding is a game they play with a watchful sun.
Wondering where they are sprout like mushrooms
from time to time, in your mind.