MOON OF MY HEART

 

"...my living is like chasing
after my own shadow,
I catch it only when the moon
of my heart eclipses
the sum of my minds..." 

THE PATIENT ANSWERS

  

THE PATIENT ANSWERS

THE PATIENT ANSWERS

“We learn the social map / fast. Beneath the ordinary chat, / jokes, kindnesses, we’re scavengers, / gnawing at each other’s histories / for scraps of hope.”
From “Knowing Our Place” by Carole Satyamurti


House Officer, “Tell me, what is the pain like?”

Yes, I will tell you, I will tell
you, I will paint it, sometimes
it is a black hole
in the canvas of a midnight
sky, sometimes a fresh carpet
of snow unmarked by animal
tracks. Sometimes an abstract
explosion of Mesopotamia colours,
cubist images of fallen soldiers,
poisoned oases, in the war-torn
canvas of my desert heart!


Oncologist, “The primary is in the lung. The secondaries are in the liver.”

But the pain is the greater
cancer, it spreads not into adjacent
organs but metastasizes by jumping
across chasms, from body to mind,
the secondaries in the psyche
causing the greater distress.


Nursing Sister, “Good night!”

What’s so good when the silence
at night is a gramophone loudspeaking
my pains, its slow hours the needle
stuck in the groove of my long-
playing record?


Visitor,”Here’s an Agatha Christie, to keep you occupied…”

But I’m occupied, counting
my pain. Every unit of pain
is the many digits of fresh
pain multiplied by the power
of the remembered pains.
The numerator of its waxing
is an astronomy number.
The denominator of its waning
is the logarithm of morphine.


Church member, “God does hear your cries of pain..”

Do you not hear them too?
The sigh of a hospital-pale
bouquet as it sheds tears
of petals. The high strung
weeping of morphine as it travels
a plastic route from bottle
to body. The sobbing of the cardiac
monitor as the screen numbers
the minutes of a fluttering
heart. The groans of the trolley
wheeling in the many last
suppers……………………………


Pastor, “I will pray for you, God will surely heal…”

I wish you could submerge
me in the disturbed waters
of the pool at Bethesda,
prove God true or that even
an erect man can drown
when the water is an inch
of platitudes…….
.

WHISPERS OF SILENCE

 
old men playing chess
games are won and lost
without the creasing of brows

in tousled garden
where tall lalang runs amok
petite bonsai blooms

last call to board plane
at the back of jostling crowd
nun without luggage 

A SABBATH

 
an armchair cradle
a ceiling fan lullaby
the milk of a poem 

THE QUIET HEART

 
dark clouds in the sky
the washing on laundry line
is unflappable

footprints run away
waves scamper to horizon
driftwood, unmoving

in the crowded park
enjoying the strange quiet
man without cell phone 

PEACE THAT PASSES UNDERSTANDING

 

man kneels in chapel
sudden breeze snuffs out candle
shadows disappear

in quiet waters
perfectly poised on surface
the statue insect

watching live football
old man fingers rosary
counting nearer goals 

I N F I N I T Y

 
Infinity

You cannot multiply, add
to or subtract
from Him. The science
of mathematics cannot help us
reach Him but the abacus
of love compute otherwise. Take
His love for you and divide
it by your love
for Him, the answer is that
which makes Infinity the calculable
distance from your seat
of unbelief to His Throne
on the Cross. 

F A I T H

 

Walking on water
requires sinews of faith
that can be developed
only through the daily exercise
of walking the second
mile! 

C A M E L

 
Try threading your life
through the eye
of a needle, you discover
you need to be single-
standed, unknotted! 

H I G H-K U

 

the highest mountain
you can climb lies in your heart
everest of self 

DAVID VERSUS GOLIATH

 

A strategy that is not out-
dated, fight fire with fire,
the bigger doused
by the smaller, like the forest
fire kindled by an untamed
tongue snuffed out by the tongue
of fire so small it sits
on my head without singeing
my hair. 

PILLAR OF FIRE

 

When it is night, you imagine
every star to be a pillar
of fire. When it is day, the column
of cloud is mistaken
for a mirage. 

SUMMON A GENIE

 

Religion is like a lamp,
some of us rub a lamp
to summon a genie, others
trim a lamp to await
the bridegroom. 

THE UNHALLOWED GROUND

 

There are no bushfires
in New York, only Twin Towering
fires and religion the unhallowed
ground on which terrorist boots
stomped. 

TO SEE BUSHFIRES

 

To See Bushfires
If you want to see bush-
fires on the hillsides of your hearts
you must move away
from malls and close your eyes
on the tinsel lights of christmas
trees. 

LAMP TO LIGHT

 

Lamp To Light

Some use the lamp to light
the Way they're taking,
others use the lamp to light
themselves up so the world
may see they're on the Way. 

THE OTHER FIRE

 

The Other Fire

There is a fire that will
burn away the chaff
and there is the other fire
whose one constant fuel
is the chaff. 

EASTER SONG

  

EASTER SONG

Easter Song


“Well, it’s in poetry that I find that that sense of the mystery of creation is at its most intense and most immediately palpable. It’s like I wrote it, but it wasn’t all of me that wrote it either. It is like something in me wrote it, which I don’t consciously control 100 percent.” Lee Tzu Pheng

I want to write a poem
where butterflies play hide and seek
in the garden. Where Lepidoptera words
flitting from flower scent to sunshine
sheen of tousled leaves coquettishly lead
you to a mandala of the mind.
Where winged images peep from behind
leaves to surprise you with more
than colors. Where wings beating
in the air is a metaphor
for chrysalis silence. Where the caterpillar’s
wriggling is a native samba.
Where the sunlight combing the shadows
discovers the newborn, poised to break
free from the cocoon, meditative antennae
catching for the first time the music
that has metamorphosed from silence.
Where winged creatures are not formalin-
preserved specimens in museums of natural
history but are framed by the mind, exhibited
in a gallery and viewed each time memory
walks through the door. Where I’m butterfly
feasting on a King’s supper, sleeping
the Sabbath quiet and waking each day
to a Easter Morning Song, which although
inaudible to others, is to me an anthem
that will last for eternity