I slept with her, my rapacious pen, took me in quiet vengeance in
full on conjugation

raken and taken, me,
her overlording me now, her authorship, so long held
in my maledom abeyance,
a kept imprisonment, unleashing at last, a tongue lashing~leashing,
de-spite my un-desirous craven lying supplications,
excuses of innocence and accident, coincidence and conflation,
ashes, ashes, denials incinerated, all fall down

she wrote/stabbed upon my heartless chest,
in the cheap crudités colors of a prisoner’s inking,
“user of words mine, all mine”

gathered up my innards of loose words,
speculative notes & titles yet to be,
born and kept hid in password protected silent back labor files,
now hers, leaving me sputtering, unable to create,
a homeless mute citizen, possession-less,
helplessly hoping her hovering harlequin might relent,
without any shelter, even a glimmering, a single aleph or bet

she celebratory cackled and clawed,
professed her reclamation ownership of all my poems predecessors,
zola j’accusing that I, ripped from her forcibly,
with no granted permission, her womanly touché of my scribing,
warning of no more global warming for my unprivileged hands,
daren’t try for pretenses of stolen legal guardianship,
warning of a new, forced caining inscription,
a tattooing of  “thief” upon my 5 knuckled right ******,
“plagiarist” boldly inked in back & blue upon my left palm

I, predator,
she, victim,
of my now self-professed, admitted confess,
she, my single victim,
of a decade long serializing criminal coverup

her parting poem a threatening,
herein issued in this very verse,
damning all who would falsely credit themselves,
to suffer shame and an unimaginable curse,
this, the newborn eleventh of ten commandments

parting, she kissing my lips, even my emptied apertures,
with warning bitings,
she knew all my
my numerous noms de guerre,
no dead scrolls caves to hid in, and to be discovered some future day,
and if ever marked as copyrighted,
’twas no tunneling escape,
the exposed truth to be over-stamped
upon all, upon each, in every language,

”copied right from the tongue of a woman!”


and she would be wright...

I am here, waiting patiently for her,
though long time no see
like in ever, like in never,
my absentia, dementia,
both critiques of self-censure,
here, then, my cadenza,
dedicated solely soulfully for you:

as the sabbath sun rises over the East River,
saying, mocking, laughing upon me,
“still here, though long time no see,”
for though I cannot never look upon her as well,
my sun, my sun,
yet she, too is everywhere-inside of me,
woman-sun, both warmly illuminating my muddled mind

Walking,
My body weaves,
Arms hang,
Pinned to shoulders
Loose as string.
The hard walkway,
Through cracked plimsolls,
Transmits,
To creaky hips,
My material faults,
In uneven steps.

The eye
Inward stares,
And at every step:
Those fears,
That I kept at bay
As I strayed,
Claw at my walls.

Now,
I must attend
To the piteous whimpers,
The cringing whines,
And frantic scratching.

And force myself
From running,
As I would,
To escape the pleading:
The howls,
Of that inner dog,
Tied to a post.

East...and west, are we?
north, and south?.....maybe...
we were nurtured with love,
our eyes and our minds opened
to different isms that helped shape our
values...we were brought up, bearing our
folks' customs, traditions and principles...
we have different faiths...some practice...some
don't...some, don't even subscribe, yet, survive.

we have dry and monsoon season...in
other parts, pleasant weather, cold winds,
and in some parts, snow.....turning to ice

we are  a mix of white skin, seeking for a tan,
and brown-skin, hiding from the sun;
one's night, is the other's day,
there are surfers among us, playing with the waves,
there at the cusp...gambling...daring fate...
there are those who hide from silent freezing winters,
finding warmth and comfort in long hot summers...

countless points of comparison,  
yet, we've something beautiful in common,
a connection of feelings, of words...our poetry,
flowing like blood, through our veins...endlessly
feeding, fueling our hearts and minds, with classy,
themes....sometimes bold, mushy, or....sassy...
no set skeds...we do it even through adversity...

we write......

we tell about our escape from life's banalities,
mindscapes, landscapes immersed in frivolities

yet, we await the marvels of each  morning we wake,
remembering gratitude, in every breath we take...

years have passed us by,
still, plays this soft music that mollifies
and inspires......heard only by you and i
prodding us, through hours, of day or night

while you exist in your own part of the world,
as i, in my hot, humid cosmos, long for cold.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::


Sally


© Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
    May, 19, 2019

~for better days for the poet betterdays~

mournful tunes play silently, but still too often,
eyes wet but in corners kept, recurring then the
memories, keepsakes, letters, books, small trinkets,
not dusty, but dusky, resting on in-between ledge of a
mountain-sized twilight of well lit shadowy haziness,
edgy dark brilliance, a comprehensible contrast non-comprehendible

tunes that bless with equal measures of grief,
comforting, by memorable card flashes of good relief,
a dividing line, hazy and frequented crossed, a sort of path,
with no destination signaled, as if the path itself was an end,
to a meaning, a solution, with no clarity divined, a division
of sight and insight, providing an ill fitting reconciliation

mourning is electric, morning is electric,
letters, words bottled up in evaporating perfume bottles,
seeking the comfort of dissipation unto a larger atmosphere,
the scent in everything tangible, stronger still yet, in intangibles
that can erode but never ever fail to return instantly when voked,
by vision, odor, a particular child’s smile, line in a poem volunteered

recovered, uncovered, a post first writ to be written, discovered,
when time and place coincidentally breathe together, at last,
beckoning you to places where memory serves only as a pleasuring,
upright mind marker, decorated in chains perpetual reforging,
absent pain, gleaming dreamings full-replacing longings for pasts,
new verses composed, passing, a grand addition to a child’s legacy