№ 821. The Odyssey

rahalarts

 

№ 471. Time

"You would measure time the measureless and the immeasurable.
You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons.
Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing.
Yet the timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness,
And knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.
And that that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space." --- Kahlil Gibran

№ 459. The Guest House

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

---Rumi

№ 458. Manila Extract 2 (ECQ)

Gutenberg

You are rabid.
Fugitives spilled from lockdowns
streaming on my walls.

You are febrile.
A torrid kiss
left by the contagion on my lips

You are Manila.
A hunter kindled by plague
stirring rust in my blood.

№ 390. V for Vicissitudes 2

№ 378. Adverse Words

Reflections
Antonia Pozzi

№ 366. I Told You So

If I Could Tell You
WH Auden


Time will say nothing but I told you so
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

№ 364. Falling Asleep at 2 AM

I Listen; I Dream
(Counting Sheep at 2 am)

I listen to the Mamas and Papas
While I count, dreaming
Of blue benches tucked in sunken gardens.

№ 311. Woody Allen Sunday

Lazy Sunday

№ 279. Stay

Yoko Ono

It burns beneath
the boundaries of your skin
lined against mine.

№ 278. Mad World

From An Atlas of the Difficult World
Adrienne Rich

I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains’ enormous spaces around you.

Atlas of Prejudice

№ 270. Mt. Inarii

"Myths are like a reservoir containing every story there is." - Haruki Murakami

Old LPs & Keystones 

Here we stand: Backpack
Stuffed with metaphors;

Talismans to ward

№ 268. Workdesk Weather Station

Don't rob me of my darkness.
My shadows orient
Me towards the light's nourishment.

Pinterest

№ 267. Crucify Your Mind

Was it a huntsman or a player
That made you pay the cost
That now assumes relaxed positions

And prostitutes your loss?
Were you tortured by your own thirst
In those pleasures that you seek
That made you Tom the curious
That makes you James the weak?

№ 266. Kiss

“Have you ever lost yourself in a kiss? I mean pure psychedelic inebriation. Not just lustful petting but transcendental metamorphosis when you became aware that the greatness of this being was breathing into you. Licking the sides and corners of your mouth, like sealing a thousand fleshy envelopes filled with the essence of your passionate being and then opened by the same mouth and delivered back to you, over and over again - the first kiss of the rest of your life. A kiss that confirms that the universe is aligned, that the world's greatest resource is love, and maybe even that God is a woman. With or without a belief in God, all kisses are metaphors decipherable by allocations of time, circumstance, and understanding”--- Saul Williams

№ 244. I Prefer

I prefer
to breathe ungoverned
like the furnaces
contained yet defiant against EDSA's clots.

I prefer
to move unobserved
like the strays
stalking a wounded maya.

Poets in the Wild NYC

№ 239. Heaven—Haven

Heaven—Haven

Remembering those who passed in 2015

A nun takes the veil


I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.

And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89)

№ 238. Advent

The advent of grace
And death permeates
Existence like light to panes.

Details of Pope John Paul II's miraculous chair
exhibited at the UST Museum

№ 233. For K, on your Eighth

National Museum

When you turn eight,
Why, names sprout from
Under the sleeves
Of school-worn days.

№ 232. Evil is Ordinary

Every Angel is terror. And yet,
ah, knowing you, I invoke you, almost deadly
birds of the soul.
Where are the days of Tobias,
when one of the most radiant of you stood at the simple threshold,
disguised somewhat for the journey and already no longer awesome
(Like a youth, to the youth looking out curiously).
Let the Archangel now, the dangerous one, from behind the stars,
take a single step down and toward us: our own heart,
beating on high would beat us down. What are you?
(from The Second Elegy, The Duino Elegies, Rainer Maria Rilke)



Bento Box:

That image of a concert venue turned slaughterhouse on Friday, Nov. 13, in the storied capital of France, captures the random carnage that was the primary objective of the terrorists. It could only have been terrorism—the concept of asymmetrical warfare is only analytical, the framework of an anti-Western backlash mostly rhetorical. Above all, the declaration of an Islamic holy struggle is a perversion of religion.