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Walang Masabi

I started this in November of 2007, and though I spent a full year singing the first four stanzas and two choruses to myself—at all hours—the rest just didn’t come to mind until over a year later.

Walang Masabi

I felt you breathing in my thoughts
a breath as subtle as the whisper of spring.
And though I couldn’t begin to guess your name,
I sensed you were out there, somewhere.

For years I struggled with a sense of you.
I searched the eyes of every face for a clue,
but no-one looked at me the way I knew
would leave me lost for what to say.

    chorus 1:

    walang masabi
      nothing than words can say
    walang masabi
      take my breath away
    walang masabi
      more than words can share
    walang masabi
      something’s in the air
      something’s in the air
      something’s in the air
        oh in the air
    walang masabi

In time I courted solitude,
prepared to walk the long remainder of life
without the comfort of companionship,
and yet I felt strangely at ease.

Then like the rising of a tropical sun
you rose illuminating all of my dreams,
a gift beyond the spectrum of my hopes
that left me lost for what to say.

    chorus 2:

    walang masabi
      more than words can share
    walang masabi
      something’s in the air
    walang masabi
      nothing words can say
    walang masabi
      take my breath away
      take my breath away
      take my breath away
        oh away
    walang masabi

I saw the blank unwritten years
stretching white into a life alone,
meditating in the silence of
a still and unusual peace.

But now I’ll journey through the days ahead
with promise written onto every page,
a sense of joy I never knew before
you left me lost for what to say.

    chorus 3:

    walang masabi
      more than words can say
    walang masabi
      take my breath away
    walang masabi
      nothing words can share
    walang masabi
      something’s in the air
      something’s in the air
      something’s in the air
        oh in the air
    walang masabi

Now let us join and fix our eyes
upon the blue horizon of our life
and venture all undaunted through the years
believing in our path together.

For you, mahal ko, are my utmost heart,
a mystery beyond imagination.
I never felt my spirit pulse before
you left me lost for what to say.

    chorus 4:

    walang masabi
        nothing words can share
    walang masabi
      something’s in the air
    walang masabi
      more than words can say
    walang masabi
      take my breath away
      take my breath away
      take my breath away
        oh away
    walang masabi

Walang masabi is a Tagalog (Filipino) expression that means something along the lines of “beyond words” or “nothing”, in the sense that it’s nothing words can express. Mahal ko is Tagalog for “My Love”.

This was written for my wife, then my fiance. I sing it a capella, though not very well. If I ever manage a decent recording, I’ll Youtube it and post a link here. The refrains are repeated all four times because the wording changes slightly each time around.

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“He loves me.”

As I got to know my future wife long distance, I found myself wanting to assure her that my love for and dedication to her will never change.

“He loves me.”

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.
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from here

Most Tuesday nights I meet with some people to play go at a Perko’s cafe in Willits, 25 minutes north of where I live in Ukiah. Last Tuesday, as I finished my last game for the evening, I overheard one of the waitresses talking with some customers—people she clearly knew—about problems with her daughter. As I left I got curious and asked her about it, and she laid out the story for me.

Years ago, when her daughter was very young, she was addicted to drugs. Her judgment impaired, she sometimes left her daughter with baby sitters of questionable character. Something happened during this time that she to this day has no knowledge of, because her daughter won’t open up about it to anyone. But there’s enough behavioral evidence to suggest she was molested, or worse.

In recovery now from the drug abuse, she strives to make up for her past neglect. But the damage is done, and she struggles to raise an extremely intelligent, angry, resentful nine year old who seems to be developing sociopathic tendencies. As I drove home, potential lines began to manifest to mind in relation, which later built upon themselves to metamorphose into this poem.

from here

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.
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Her Best

My first poem for 2008. A good friend wanted me to write a poem for his fiance, and here’s what I came up with. Think he’ll like? Think she’ll like?

Her Best

She calls me your very best for her—
I only ask that you mean it so.
And if there’s a doubt in your starry mind,
dear god I ask that you lay me low.

Lay me low in the moldering clay,
if one harsh look or a bitter word
exists deep down in this heart of mine,
so that it may never be seen nor heard,

so that she may live the span of her years
believing the absolute best of me,
trusting forever the love she holds
is the love I keep till she follows me.

But if you look and you see the man
she thanks you for each day of her life,
then please dear god will you guide my will
so I never bring her a moment’s strife?

Will you teach me all that I need to know
to be that childlike soul she sees,
tender as dew on the bamboo’s leaf,
gentle as hope on the slightest breeze?

Will you grant me health and the quiet strength
to stand with compassion at her side
for however long we both may live,
whatever fates roll in with the tide?

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promise

During my trip to Vermont in July/August, I visited the Devil’s Tower, where I had an experience that changed not only the course of my life, but the shape of my past. The details of this experience will remain with me, within me, to be buried with my bones and passed only to the heart of what posterity visits my grave. I will pass it then, the whole promise of it, one All Soul’s Eve, and so will the Promised.

For even then will we be side by side.

promise

from the moment i looked up and saw
just over my head your memory
draped off the stub remains of
a ponderosa’s lower branch

from the moment i felt lightning flash
through my mortal form till numb
my fingers tingled the beginnings of
an electric understanding

from the moment my eyes took in
the simple shape of your past hung
to the south of the bear-scratched tower
bleached white with unshed tears

from the moment i realized i stood
where grief-struck eyes set your spirit free
held hands and prayed for your hope
overlooking a plain of creeping thunder

from the moment you reached out and touched
my song with hidden fingers and embraced
my heart my mind my long forgotten dreams
with all the love you gave in life

oh my god i knew you then clear
as the cobalt sky that shook over dark
rumbling clouds suspended far
far in the distance

and from that moment i’ve carried
the shimmering whisper of your ghost in my
bones my joints my manhood like a promise
tangible as the stars themselves

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Gleam

You won’t guess it. You won’t conceptualize it. You won’t expect it. You won’t doubt or be convinced of it. You won’t have any idea it even existed. But, suddenly it may be upon you, and in that moment you will realize it was always there—that you were never apart from it for an instant.

Gleam

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.
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Projections

This might go some small distance to answer a question posed concerning my previous post, “Ode for Joy“.

Projections

We are small yellow suns
suspended together in space
plasmic arms entangled
in mutual relativity

Our avatars roam galaxies
seeking to see touch share
what momentary forms we
manifest in the tracts of time
remembering if but a sense
of our ancient dance

For how long have we caressed
our tandem orbits bathed
in the other’s light
For how long have we warmed the face
of myriad worlds and moons spun
round the plane of our equator

Here on a rock called Earth
warmed by a kindred’s rays
we have met once again
to joy in the spectral hues
we have loved an eternity

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Ode for Joy

My first synthetic ode. This form hybridizes the near-original Grecian ode form of Pindar and the dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. I will eventually write an article about this form and what I hope to accomplish through its exploration. For the time being, I hope you’ll find this an enjoyable, or at least interesting, read.

      Ode for Joy

      I

  Her eye was caught by a distant name,
    unfamiliar and yet not quite.
  Inspired, she followed a dream that came
    from somewhere deep in her quiet heart,
a link that led to an unexpected hope,
      born of intuitive sense
      cradled in bamboo song,
confirmed by a kindred voice that helped console
      the reign of a keen unrest
      that troubled her, unconfessed.
   Canticles from another time
         settled near
      in the curve of her ear,
   bringing a dark horizon light,
         raising the sun
      where a half-moon hung,
until her soul, embraced by vibrant hues
of promise, once again became her cherished home.
 

      II

  He felt the touch of a silken tongue
    brush his mind from across the world
  with observations and thoughts, half sung
    in accents cast from a dreamtime mold.
Intrigued, he listened to every tuneful word
      whispered with delicate breath
      soft as a moonstone breeze,
expressed from a place of enigmatic birth,
      where steady Pacific rains
      sang life in refined refrains
   straight to his heart through lays unknown
         to his ear,
      just abolishing fear,
   welcoming home forgotten hopes
         faded within,
      but arisen again
like morning rays on cloudscapes scattered far,
igniting new horizons to vibrant shades of faith.
 

      III

   Their pasts unravel thread
         into a bright new tapestry.
   They’re both reborn and dead
         to what was once and what will be.
      Visions leap before their view,
            revealing possibilities,
      and each is clear on what to do
            to make them actualities.
                     And so begins
                  the recreation of their lives
               as deep within
            a transformation of their minds
         reveals the way
      to stand forever side by side.
        The best thread of their days is used
             in the shuttle of their unity
        to weave a scene they know by trust
             on a loom of shared serenity.

Joy is my fiance, whom I met online purely by chance. She, from her life in the Philippines, one day stumbled across a poem I had posted elsewhere, “Perfect Silence”, and found herself researching its author. On one profile she found my Yahoo Instant Messenger ID, and on another she read that I work with children but don’t want to have any. Then she popped me a message out of the blue, “How could you work with children and yet not want to have any of your own?”

Needless to say, I was puzzled by this note from a complete stranger. I responded with one word, “Overpopulation”. This sparked a conversation—or perhaps debate—that lasted four hours. The next day we talked on the phone. The day after that, Skype. And we’ve been talking-talking ever since.

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contrition

There are many reasons behind an individual’s behaviors. We are complex creatures, conditioned by complex histories. So complex, in fact, that we rarely understand ourselves what motivates us. But it is worthwhile to try to gain insight into and an understanding of those motivations. These insights and understandings can guide a process of change and personal growth, and an honest contrition for past behaviors that may have caused harm to others, and ourselves.

contrition

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.
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just a sigh

They are out there, those rare beings. But, for the most part, they are best left where you find them, like a snake in the wild.

just a sigh

if only
            your eyes would swim to me
      rest in the cup of my gaze
even for a moment

i would never
            snatch you from your world but
      merely marvel in the light sensation
of your shimmering presence

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note to soul mate

For those of us who are for some reason pre-conditioned to seek out our “other half”—our “soul-mate”—such that we are lonely and miserable without her or him, there is a great and sudden freedom that comes from just letting go of the entire soul-mate paradigm, and all the festering desires and expectations that infest it. The moment you realize and accept that some magical other is not actually the answer to solving the problem of an ever crushing loneliness, you become open to finding other ways to deal with and address it.

This happened for me the night I left the Devil’s Tower National Monument on my way to Vermont as I camped off the beaten path alone in the last range of mountains before dropping down into and across the Great Plains of South Dakota. I have no idea why it happened, it just did. And so I wrote this small note.

note to soul mate

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

Well, from Evanston, WY, where I posted my previous entry, I went east on I80 to Rock Springs. Then I went north on Hwy 191 to SR (State Route) 28, north east to Hwy 287, north through Lander to SR 798, north east through Riverton up Hwy 26 through Shoshoni, north on Hwy 20 a few miles to Boysen State Park, where I slept the night five feet from the windy waters of Boysen Reservoir.

In the morning I woke and continued up Hwy 20 through Worland, east on Hwy 16 through Buffalo onto I90, east to Hwy 14, north to SR 24, then north a handful of miles to Wyoming’s Devil’s Tower National Monument. Here I walked around the tower, an impressive site, and played my bansuri atop a hill on each side of the tower, facing the four winds, and then at the west facing bouldered base of the tower itself.

Though the park and trail were riddled with tourists, I found myself feeling secluded through my own process. On the east of the tower I played my bansuri in the woods, just out of site of the trail. I tried to play the wind, the trees, the environment. A new song came to me and I’ve been playing with it. I looked up to discover two teenage girls standing six feet from me. They had gone searching through the woods for the source of the music they heard. Faces bright and full of song, they shyly complimented my playing. They seemed to want to stay and talk to me, to find out what sort of creature walks into the woods with a bamboo flute to play for the spirits, but they couldn’t help looking over their shoulders after the sound of their names. And, after some hesitant smiling and wringing of hands, they returned to the trail.

The area was full of lava boulders that had eroded from the tower through the ages. I bounded along them like a mountain goat until I found each of the five spots that seemed right to me, then played for twenty or so minutes. South of the tower I played on a ridge top, standing on a boulder beneath a pine. In the distance a thunderstorm passed an occasional lightning bolt to the earth in complete silence. About when I was ready to leave, I looked up to notice an undecorated leather medicine bag hung from the tree I was under, just over my head. Upon seeing it I felt a tingle run through my body, head to foot. This felt significant.

With an hour of sunlight to spare I left the park and continued north on SR 24 past Hulett where it turned east, looking for a road into the national park there where I could pitch my tent for the night. I found a spot, beautiful, green, peaceful, bustling with insect and animal life. I knew that I’d find nothing of the sort the next day as I went east across South Dakota, so I relished this lush haven.

Before the sun broke free of the ridge top I had my tent collapsed and everything ready to go, and I got back to SR 24 and continued east into South Dakota to Hwy 85, a couple of miles through to the north side of Belle Fourche, where I got a truck stop shower. From here I went east on Hwy 212 through Faith, to Gettysburg, where I stopped to get something to eat. The café owners informed me that Hwy 212 was closed further east, and that there was a 45 minute detour around it. I found a 20 minute detour option. At Lebanon I went north on SR 47 to SR 20, east to SR 37, south back down to Hwy 212 at Dolland. Then east to within 5 miles of Watertown where I camped at Sandy Shore State Recreation Area, a thin strip of campsites hardly off the road.

This morning I woke just as the sun peaked over the flat horizon, large and orange, and packed up to continue my venture, east on Hwy 212 into Minnesota to Montevideo, east on SR 7 over to SR 23, and north to Paynesville, where I found a coffee house to type and post this.

I have an idea where I’ll be going tonight before I camp again, but I’d rather not say. I never know until I go. The road unfolds as I drive, and I choose my way moment by moment. Detailed plans are for people who have no faith in adventure.