Touch

A mahogany of lost leaden high
The namesake kept its promise
The turbulence of sea horse runner
The silver disk is a little low tonight
For Baroque's touch of medias res
The high strung of novelty
The joyous currents of sea beds
Leaves me open stranded 
In an Island of Mediterranean blue
I sing and hum the national green 
The olive touch of Texas to Britain
Ghettos land in the islands of poverty
I skimmed a solistic touch. 

Muskrats in their Daily Work

When you moved from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles all those years ago, you didn’t know that you were losing your relationship with muskrats, and now watching one building his lodge in the stream and culvert out behind the restroom of a rest stop in Missouri, you realize that you missed them. He is getting ready for winter, and the water has just partially frozen. He’s down there diving and building, swimming under the ice. The ice is clear, and he swims with his back against it so you can watch his progress.

“There you are,” Ellen says, coming up behind you. “I came back to the car and wondered where you’d wandered off to.”

You point down to the little creature and say, “Check that out.”

Ellen, who has lived in Los Angeles her whole life, watches it for a moment and asks, “What is that?”

 “A muskrat,” you say.

“God, it looks so,” she takes a breath, trying to find the word, “odd.”

Of course, you realize that it is strange to her who has never watched muskrats in their daily chores, but you and your grandfather used to walk down to the creek and watch them at work, and he used to tell you how muskrats and beavers shared their lodges with each other. He used to tell you that they were two of a kind and shared everything, the way that he and you were two of a kind. He used to paint word pictures about the happy lives that beavers and muskrats lived during winter.

And if it is alien to Ellen, it’s like coming home for you. What has been alien for you all these years in Los Angeles has been coyotes walking the streets at night and lizards crawling up through gutter spouts and across the pavement of parking lots. Something in your body tells you you’re getting closer to being back where you belong.

You think about an ex who you thought that maybe you were going to marry, and then she found out that you liked baseball, and you found out that she was into bondage, and these discoveries were too much for either of you, and then there was no more talk about marriage and soon enough you just weren’t calling each other, and come to think of it, you never even really broke up because some things are just so obvious that they don’t need to be spoken. Maybe the way you relate to muskrats is as big as that. Maybe there’s no coming back from something as fundamental as the fact that you don’t both love muskrats. Or maybe you spend far too much time in your own head.

You ask, “Do you think that you’d ever want to live anywhere but LA?” It’s the kind of thing you’re starting to talk about, where you both want to live. This big trip you’re taking is a kind of test, you understand, to see if you might want to share a home some day.

She exhales a laugh, “And leave the sacred soil? You must be joking.” She punches you on the shoulder, and you know that she does think you’re joking, that the idea of leaving Los Angeles is so foreign to her that no one would ever talk about it seriously. This is, you understand, another test for the two of you, one that you didn’t know you were taking.

If you are to stay together, one of you has to live in a place that feels alien. One of you has to feel out of step for the rest of your life. You suppose that your grandfather would say that you and she are simply not two of a kind. She takes you by the hand and pulls you away. “Come on,” she says. “It’s cold out here.”

It is cold, you suppose, but you like the Autumnal chill. Back in LA the Santa Ana winds have started up again, and you know it’s hot. You wonder if Ellen misses it, and you suppose she does. In the decades you lived there, you never once got used to it. You wonder if maybe you already know the answer to this test. You suppose that you probably do.

Yearning

We are beating emotions, 
And because we are this
And names that breath
We want to rent the earth 
And air without 
Being choked by stares.

We pray that the colours
That wound round our skin
Tire of inheriting us
The prods of goads
And ta-ta-tas of stones.

Or is it you
Who must cease
Travelling down that bumpy road?

Hate is free
But that cruel master
Turns eyes into
Prowling and prancing slaves
Seeking hurt and prey.

So you can cease,
Cease travelling along
The path that splinters
And burns
And you can choose
The other road that says
We are all priceless. 

Then we all can live
As the wind
Not teetering on
Extinction’s face.

We want to belong
To the night as the day
Safe on silent streets
With distant stars
And scanty lamps
Hurt and the terror of it,
Absent as breath from corpses.


Origins

The earth bled out
Untainted & undeveloped tongues,
Interacting with the gift of mime,
They learnt the truth,
Good & evil, order & chaos.

They grew to the circumference of the earth,
Their blood remained red
But they sprouted languages & skin colours
Denying the roots of their birth.

The beating of their soft instruments sculpted into stone
Tumbling, crushing and falling upon the other
Each claiming a preminence of his own
That above his god & empire was the testimony of no other.

Yet, time has possessed a greater testimony, 
For do not most facts in their history,
Sleep underneath sepulchres
Of legends & myths & mystery?

Victor Ogan is a writer whose works focus on existential themes.

You Left Us for the Vast Worlds

Why did you leave us behind,
And leave my eyes tearful, confined?
We stayed behind, crying your name,
For you left us, untamed by the frame of this world.

By your side, I used to play,
I cherished you more every day.
You were like a father to me,
Yet you left, unbounded, for eternity.

If only there were a cure for death,
If only we could hold back its breath,
A soul like yours we would keep,
And not weep in sorrow so deep.
Oh, my uncle, unmatched and kind,
You left us, beyond the world's bind.

Green Engines 

Where data rings around the poisoned
fruit coiled like the

Original sin bacillus but we're not quite
dreaded out 

Yet, foiled the plans of egomaniac
gods with blackened

Wings flapping like a cyborg fan-machine-man
over the 

Tweaked and roiling
abyss of

Scissors, there remains
a system of drillbit girls with heads like

Hammerhead sharks wearing
Polynesian skirts around the issue of 

Unholy orders, fringed, frayed, stripped
Boredom town 

Cross-hatchings in an 
addled adult 

Comic type
Stripped to 

Ill 

Turning 75 Three Times

	1-
Self-portraits by Picasso:
elbows where the head
should be, mouth and eyes
randomly scattered,
a mass of color; 
body parts trying to connect

	2-
Novels in three lines
like Japanese death poems:
a few words summing up life-
more than enough

	3-
Remembering morning at
a still lake: false dawn 
suggesting light with a
persistence of fog refusing
to lift-lines written in lieu
of mourning. 


White Noise Twice

	1-
Woman in white-
pale skin and alabaster
eyes, a white room
wraith, a scatter of
dried flowers, herbs; 
Emily Dickinson dreaming

	2-
Open Mic with thunderstorm
with unexpected static, 
dimming house lights
then total darkness;
an apology for reading
a war poem that ends
in thunder


Kawabata Six Times

	1-
At peace pagoda-
wrought iron character
for peace. At dusk
a bell rings

	2-
Clear summer night.
Where are the fireflies?

	3-
Still Life with Flower
Arrangement- 

single long stem Iris
in clear glass vase.
Shadows cast on
white interior wall;
perfect symmetries

	4-
Still Life with Waterfalls-

Summer drought reduces
flow. At the crest,
sleek stepping stones-
still a long way down

	5-
A trick of light
on lake reflects
flocks of birds

	6-
Folding origami cranes
for peace and releasing 
them into rivers, ponds,
lakes- a thousand is
never enough


Flood Tides Five Times

	1-
Cornfields on a flood
plain-only the tops
of stalks visible

	2-
Light through spider’s
web between two trees;
a world about to end

	3-
Found, barely visible
in receding tidal pool,
between a scatter of rocks,
a whale’s rib

	4-
After the flood,
gray morning sky;
a broken tree limb
with one bird on it

	5-
Weeks of rain then clear
and warm. The sun feels
strange, out of place

Seeing Sleep Four Times

	1-
Looking up from under
water, the movement
of clouds

	2-
Sleep-letting go
of the body,
the mind moves on

	3-
Light through gaps
between broken trees.
New day colors-
blue sky and rising sun,
almost liquids

	4-
Bone white trees-
moon shadows on
still water.
Nothing moves


White Symphony Three Times
	
	1-
Young woman in white
gazing into a mirror-
reflection in half tones
and light

	2-
Woman seated on piano
bench facing away from keys,
an annotated score open
to a piece for four hands,
two hands missing

	3-
Dreaming woman sleepwalking
in white, silk kimono empty
tea cups in each limp hand;
rice paper walls dissolve
around her.


Tone Poems Three Times

	1-
Outdoor concert at
night, Les Preludes
with moonglow and
meteor showers; a tone
poem with stars in it

	2-
November evening
with freezing rain

Cars sliding
on black ice

Inside a Schubert trio;
safe at home at last

	3-
Stained glass sonata:
musical notes as pure
as light through
colored glass

Time

Little girl, why the sad pout

What is there to worry about

Life may slide from North to South

And cries be held tight in your mouth

But time flies quickly from East to West

Clock ticking continuously without rest

Soon you will be leaving your nest

To face challenges of nature’s test.

Release all the burdens of your heart

Painful though it is, let go of the hurt

Waste not every breathe, for it is short

Learn and live fullest, of all that it’s worth.

Faith

What is Faith?

A belief that goes beyond what senses perceive

A belief that goes beyond what our instincts gives

A belief that goes beyond confusions that deceives

Yet, is Faith enough?

To accept the time to be born and die

To accept that fate and faith is but one

To accept a predestined destiny is done

To accept that a path is an inflexible sky

Then why is there Life?

Should life be spent by being immobile

Should one sit, silently wait in self exile

Should one watch others the world defile

As hunger, anger, greed and violence pile

Then why is there Free Will?

A choice to leash or let go one’s desire

A choice to create or destroy with fire

A choice to reject or sing along with choir

A choice to lead or be led by thorny wire

What is Faith?

Is Faith a strength to empower an action

Is Faith a comfort for failure’s depression

Is Faith a guide to worthwhile destination

Is Faith a motivation to lead one’s passion

What is the benefit of Faith in one’s belief?

What is the benefit of Faith in acceptance?

What is the benefit of Faith in one’s choice?

What is the benefit of Faith in one’s life?

With Faith, there is Trust,

Yet Trust with Wisdom,

Wisdom with Humility,

Humility with Confidence,

Confidence with Compassion.

Faith must not be blind,

For a Blind Faith is a Dead Faith;

Faith must be Alive with Free will,

Freewill needs to make wise Choices.

Lilian Dipasupil Kunimasa was born January 14, 1965, in Manila Philippines. She has worked as a retired Language Instructor, interpreter, caregiver, secretary, product promotion employee, and private therapeutic masseur. Her works have been published as poems and short story anthologies in several language translations for e-magazines, monthly magazines, and books; poems for cause anthologies in a Zimbabwean newspaper; a feature article in a Philippine newspaper; and had her works posted on different poetry web and blog sites. She has been writing poems since childhood but started on Facebook only in 2014. For her, Poetry is life and life is poetry.

Lilian Kunimasa considers herself a student/teacher with the duty to learn, inspire, guide, and motivate others to contribute to changing what is seen as normal into a better world than when she steps into it. She has always considered life as an endless journey, searching for new goals, and challenges and how she can in small ways make a difference in every path she takes. She sees humanity as one family where each one must support the other and considers poets as a voice for Truth in pursuit of Equality and proper Stewardship of nature despite the hindrances of distorted information and traditions.