Marginal Bliss

Tim Duncan Hams It Up For Crowd By Arching Left Eyebrow Slightly

SAN ANTONIO—Spurs forward Tim Duncan engaged in a rare display of showmanship during Tuesday's win over the Thunder, punctuating a 10-foot jumper with a nearly imperceptible upward motion of his left eyebrow. "I saw him do it, and I was like, 'What! What was that?'" said teammate Michael Finley, who compared the display to a 2006 game in which Duncan gave the crowd an unexpected and nearly flamboyant thumbs-up. "We were playing pretty flat, but Timmy flickered his eyebrow like that and it energized the whole team. Everyone thinks he's so stoic, but he knows how to have a good time. Once, in the locker room, he almost winked. Wild." When asked about this display, Tim Duncan denied any intent to show anyone up and personally called every member of the Thunder organization to apologize.

from The Onion

Renga # 11

This day begins like most days

a sun in the sky, weeds in the garden

the scent of morning quickly turning noon

then afternoon, then the musk

of dusk and evening mourning.

And tomorrow, now,

an annual, unusual day

slowly ascending.

keith, ramblingsoul

Kyrie Eleison

A Moment

I'm walking on the slope of a hill newly green.
Grass, small flowers in the grass,
just as in a children's book.
Hazy sky, already turning blue.
A view of other hills spreads out in silence.

As if there had been no Cambrians or Siluries here,
rocks growling at one another,
upthrust abysses,
no fiery nights
nor days in clouds of darkness.

As if no plains had moved through here
in feverish delirium,
in icy shivers.

As if only elsewhere had the seas been churning,
tearing apart the edges of the horizon.

It is nine-thirty local time.
Everything is in its place and in genial accord.
In the valley, the small stream as a small stream.
The path as a path from always to ever.

Woods in the guise of woods world without end amen,
and on high, birds in flight as birds in flight.

As far as the eye can see a moment reigns here.
One of those earthly moments
implored to linger.

WISŁAWA SZYMBORSKA
translated from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak

New Ohio Review
Spring 2009

from Poetry Daily

Renga # 10

Have you given up your gut

lately, he said

with kind, piercing eyes.

Have you given up your life?

And the wind entered caves

and windows and the sky

readily reddened

for the big sleep.

Tell me what it really takes

to utter those last words,

to forgive moments.

And to forgive forever.

the curator, ramblingsoul, panch

Marginalized=0 Fringed=15

J.J. Abrams' Fringe is back ("Inner Child" Episode 15)! Wasak! Let's continue looking for Fringe/Lost connection Easter Eggs.

Renga # 9

The crow is sitting on the gatepost that is your eye.

And your tongue crawls like a maggot across my flesh.

Clean it all and bleach it;

My bones will burn in sunlight.

leaving traces of roads
unfamiliar and scattered
like hair falling on the floor.

ken, panch

Marginalized My Butt!

Injured Manu Ginobili Only Flopping At 85%

SAN ANTONIO—Having returned Tuesday after missing 19 games with an ankle injury, Spurs guard Manu Ginobili expressed frustration with his level of play, saying that his ability to draw offensive fouls by flopping to the floor with little or no provocation was still only at "about 85 percent." "The ankle is healthy, but my flailing and splaying still aren't where they need to be," said Ginobili, who has begun to practice windmilling his arms and falling backward during shoot-arounds. "I'm used to throwing myself 10, sometimes 12 feet down court. At this point, I'm lucky if I'm getting 8 on a good flop. My wailing is good, but I need to be hitting the floor a lot harder than the guy hit me, if I was hit. I can't catch myself with my hands like I did in the second quarter tonight. That was bush league." Ginobili then flung himself out of the locker room, slid backward onto a bus, and tumbled wildly into his suburban home.

from The Onion

Renga # 8

I refuse to bathe today. The water is too cold.

Wika ni Elsa.

Na nasa Amerika. Pero elsewhere

"Je refuse aujourd'hui de se baigner," wika
ni Elsa.
"El agua está demasiado fría," wika ni Elsa.

Paisa-isang nauubos

ang wika ni Elsa. At ang budget

para sa heater. At ang perang

pangtawag sa 'Pinas.

“Comment allez-vous?” tanong
ni Elsa.

"Domo Arigato." wika ni Elsa. "Moshi Moshi Ano ne."

Ang kanyang sagot sa pag-angat ng teleponong nag-ring.

Walang nagsasalita. Prank call?

O tawag ni Celso? Kailangan tiyakin natin.

corin, emong, ramblingsoul, kuwabatake, glenn

A Small Elegy

My friends have left. Far away, my darling is asleep.

Outside, it's as dark as pitch.

I'm saying words to myself, words that are white

in the lamplight and when I'm half-asleep I begin

to think about my mother. Autumnal recollection.

Really, under the cover of winter, it's as if I know

everything--even what my mother is doing now.

She's at home, in the kitchen. She has a small child's stove

toward which the wooden rocking horse can trot,

she has a small child's stove, the sort nobody uses today, but

she basks in its heat. Mother. My diminutive mom.

She sits quietly, hands folded, and thinks about my father,

who died years ago.

And then she is skinning fruit for me. I am in

the room. Sitting right next to her. You've got to see us,

God, you bully, who took so much. How

dark it is outside! What was I going to say?

Oh, yes, now I remember. Because

of all those hours I slept soundly, through calm

nights, because of all those loved ones who are deep

in dreams--Now, when everything's running short,

I can't stand being here by myself. The lamplight's too strong.

I am sowing grain on the headland.

I will not live long.

-- Jiri Orten

Rest in Peace, Je Bautista +++

Renga # 7

Thing is, what's on fire

is the fire

extinguisher.

I wish I was born a Pole.

Or a Filipina. Oh wait -

Filipinas are not born, they are

maid. Victims who come in small packages.

Oooh! What slippery things!

gelo, yol, the curator

Happy Mondays L

featured readers for the 50th installment of the bi-weekly Happy Mondays Poetry Nights @ mag:net cafe Katipunan TONIGHT, April 6, @mag:net cafe Katipunan are as follows:

1. Allan Pastrana

2. Al Leonidas

3. Panch Alvarez

4. JR Moll

5. Pocholo Goitia

6. Glenn Atanacio

7. Eric Melendez

8. Ken Ishikawa

9. Mikael Co

10. Angelo Suarez

11. Pancho Villanueva

12. Wincy Ong

13. Totel De Jesus

*plus other regular and surprise guest readers.

*readings start promptly at 730 pm followed by the Open Mic sessions @ 930pm-10pm.

*for those interested in reading during the open mic, we will leave a sign-up sheet with Rogel, the bar tender of mag:net cafe. please feel free to sign up and read your work. :)

10pm onwards, Happy Mondays BayawAkouztikZoundz featuring:

1. Easy Fagela

2. Roberto Nicolas

3. Johnoy Danao

FREE ADMISSION the whole evening. Kitakits po tayo. :)

Renga # 6

I was born in the eighties. My fists were clenched

even before i learned how to cry.

Because anger arrived before sadness,

and bountiful rations of revolutions.

Used brass knuckles for teethers,

had a gun for a friend, and some nuclear stockpile

in my head. And I remember the robots. Music

turning into lasers. Trees of technology emerging

from cold war escaped, dismantling to extinguish

more cities yet again: spark, tinder, black vapor, ash.

I'm the horseman wearing keds,

he who comes to your doorstep with a boombox blaring:

“I just died in your arms tonight.

It must have been something you said”

Ambababuy niyo.

Not many people have sex—

agenarian.

I wonder now how

I will die. So much anger,

And all I have to show for it is

A bruising that lever left the skin,

an aversion to all things glinting,

say, a cheek softening upon contact.

And moisture.

I am twenty seven years-old. I still wish

my father was Dr. Armstrong,

Wishing everything can be broken

into cartoon cells.

Into weak words that fall into curses,

a trap for our desires.

An awakening. A slumber.

2009. We never thought we’d make it,

Our hands are now open.

waps, joel, ken, corin, adam david, ricky torre., kael, sasha, yol, j.r. moll, glenn, panch, pancho

IntPoWriMo: Day 5

Not Easily

When we get beyond beauty and pleasure,
to the other side of the heart (but short
of the spirit), we are confused about what
to do next. It is too easy to say arriving
is enough. To pretend the music
of the mountain needs only to be heard.
That the dance is known by the dancing,
and the lasagne is realized by eating it.
Not in this place on the other side
of desire. We can swim in the Aegean,
but we can't take it home. A man finds
a melon by the road and continues up
the hill thinking it is the warm melon
that will remain after he has forgotten
the ruins and sea of the summer. He tells
himself this even as the idea of the taste
is replacing what the melon tasted like.

JACK GILBERT

The Dance Most of All
Alfred A. Knopf

from Poetry Daily

Renga # 5

Houses read marvelously, spurned lovers, probability clouds,

and a field left to itself.

The book is closed, the windows.

On the glass starkly, someone's misted breath lifts,

and lifts, and lifts until I'm reminded of economy of expression.

And there slips in a thin wire

of sunlight, transient as a knock

on the door. Again, there is no one

there. The evening is gathering, asking,

how was your day?

Fine,

thank,

it is you.

emong, ramblingsoul, kuwabatake

Basagan ng Mukha!

Crows Zero (2007)

panoorin n'yo yan, mga bayaw. wasak!

Loud Squawking Crow Forces FAA To Ground All Flights Indefinitely

WASHINGTON—Thousands were left stranded at airports nationwide Tuesday, when the Federal Aviation Administration grounded all commercial flights due to the harsh, discordant squawks emitted by a nearby crow. "We apologize to all passengers affected by the cancellations, but he sounds really close," acting FAA administrator Robert Sturgell said at a press conference, adding that the nation's airport security officials have determined that the crow is in either a tree somewhere close by or possibly on a roof. "Flights across the Eastern Seaboard will resume just as soon as we can shoo it away." In the wake of these recent air traffic delays, President Obama has earmarked $3 billion from the bailout budget to finance the construction of a national scarecrow.

from the Onion

Renga # 4

Down by the waterfall she

often waits to catch me.

But there are angels

instead, ecstatic for contact,

the ripples expanding like

misshapen haloes. There

is a slim chance for surfacing.

Yet she waits like water, is water,

waiting among the corrals.

kamatayan, ramblingsoul

The New Higher

You meant more than life to me. I lived through
you not knowing, not knowing I was living.
I learned that you called for me. I came to where
you were living, up a stair. There was no one there.
No one to appreciate me. The legality of it
upset a chair. Many times to celebrate
we were called together and where
we had been there was nothing there,
nothing that is anywhere. We passed obliquely,
leaving no stare. When the sun was done muttering,
in an optimistic way, it was time to leave that there.

Blithely passing in and out of where, blushing shyly
at the tag on the overcoat near the window where
the outside crept away, I put aside the there and now.
Now it was time to stumble anew,
blacking out when time came in the window.
There was not much of it left.
I laughed and put my hands shyly
across your eyes. Can you see now?
Yes I can see I am only in the where
where the blossoming stream takes off, under your window.
Go presently you said. Go from my window.
I am in love with your window I cannot undermine
it, I said.

-- John Ashbery

Renga # 3

Slug of my silver afternoons, where

another gilded sunset inches

out of sight, leaving bursting blues

of pigments like eyes

of blind dogs

waiting to be shot

and bleed cherry blossoms.

gelo, ramblingsoul, panch, kuwabatake

Blue Fire

Blue tarp, blue form

synthetic but beautifully
perfect in its blue, torn
to tatters by the wind.

Wear and
tear.

The more pieces freed
from the whole, the more
the wind licks the blue
into flames. Serrated

flames,
blue fire.

EDWARD NOBLES

Colorado Review
Spring 2009

from Poetry Daily

someone else kindly start. use the comment box, please. :)

Renga # 2

Sculpt the breath withdrawn

From within, polish the curves

And croak that whisper, utter

The guttural push,

Split the spittle from spirit

And body, and gushing forth now

The exhalation. So speak it, speak

of it: the eking of the ache,

this woe we plough upon,

the rich loam which sometimes

blossoms into heart, or a yield

of voices.

kuwabatake, ramblingsoul

April: IntPoWriMo

it's the beginning of the international poetry month (i'd like to think the US has no monopoly on this). can we do it again this year? a poem a day is the idea, but since that's really a herculean task to do individually, maybe we can instead begin an elaborate Renga and contribute a few lines which we can then collate and put together for posting in this blog at the end of each day? for those interested, just put your lines in the comment box and i'll post the full Renga at the end of the day.

so who's with me? :)

*many thanks to Ivy Alvarez and Maureen Thorson who are the original proponents of this project.

"Poems present their testimony as circumstantial evidences, not as closing argument." -- Denise Levertov

Renga # 1

Then sorrow settles in, like dust gathering

on a table in an old house. It makes perfect

sense: in this silent space stillness,

with the memory of movement made.

I do not know what sorrow looks like, only

that is sounds like a hummingbird

fluttering inside my heavy heart.

Loud and restless and insistent.

Flicker books of incidents and slow flow.

Home is a pulse.

ramblingsoul, brands, mariga, waps, gerald, the curator