Oranges - by Gary Soto

The first time I walked
With a girl, I was twelve,
Cold, and weighted down
With two oranges in my jacket.
December. Frost cracking
Beneath my steps, my breath
Before me, then gone, 
As I walked toward
Her house, the one whose 
Porch light burned yellow
Night and day, in any weather.
A dog barked at me, until
She came out pulling 
At her gloves, face bright
With rouge. I smiled,
Touched her shoulder, and led 
Her down the street, across
A used car lot and a line 
Of newly planted trees,
Until we were breathing
Before a drugstore. We
Entered, the tiny bell
Bringing a saleslady
Down a narrow aisle of goods.
I turned to the candies
Tiered like bleachers,
And asked what she wanted–
Light in her eyes, a smile
Starting at the corners
Of her mouth. I fingered
A nickel in my pocket,
And when she lifted a chocolate
That cost a dime,
I didn’t say anything.
I took the nickel from 
My pocket, then an orange,
And set them quickly on 
The counter. When I looked up,
The lady’s eyes met mine, 
And held them, knowing 
Very well what it was all 
About.
Outside,
A few cars hissing past,
Fog hanging like old
Coats between the trees.
I took my girl’s hand
In mine for two blocks,
Then released it to let
Her unwrap the chocolate.
I peeled my orange
That was so bright against
The gray of December
That, from some distance,
Someone might have thought
I was making a fire in my hands.

-Gary Soto

http://matthewkaberline.blogspot.com/2008/04/gary-soto-oranges.html

The painful beauty of empathy...

As Dreamers do

Snow no more, it will soon.

Someone will walk, drag their weary body yet

From a mid-May springtime, to a scorching June

Where the blundering, mystifying, greening rains

Light up hearts with a thousand colors –

In a land where it snows not.

Come February, and fist-sized Sambal

Shall paint the dried up, mist-borne landscape –

A flaming rouge…

Someone will pause, pause amidst the splendor

And smile for snowflakes

Those tiny memoirs of a cold cold warmth.

Dreamers shall weave newer dreams yet,

With their novel amalgamated palette –

Blending the light of longed-for sun-rays

Into the magical romance of soul-drenching rains.

Sun and rain –

Rainbows, myriads of splinters of color

Shall burst forth from a frail presence.

Someone will have the leisure,

The leisure and the heart –

To twirl a thought in their fingers

Just long enough

To paint a canvas yet.

More verses shall be written yet.

Feb 13^th, 2011.

Buffalo's Skyline from my Window

So what are the things buffalonians could spot?

1.St. Ann's Church 
2. St. Stanislaus Bishop & Martyr Church
3. The not-yet-risen Sun
4. Clouds - the weavers of magic
5. Countless windmills in the land far far away...


Hmmm... will have to inquire for more :)

There was a time... We were beautiful

Beautifully magical poetry (by Ahmed Shameem) sung by one of the loveliest of voices (Nayyara Noor):

Once... We were beautiful

Here follows an effort at translation that cannot do justice, but the colors seem to shine through even in a different language.

Note: "Us" and "We" are sometimes used in urdu as slightly impersonal substitutes for "Me" and "I". In this poem they seem kindof an effort to divert attention and sound less narcisstic, thought the use can have many meanings depending on context.

Once... We were beautiful

There was a time... We were beautiful

There was a time... We were beautiful

Like the lasting scent settled in oft-read books

Our breaths were hushed.

With the palette of a myriad unsaid words,

We used to paint murals.

On the wings of warblers, we'd carve poems

And sing them... to nestlers on far-off lakes...

Who lived far far from us...

yet were so near our hearts...

When labors of another day

Alighted in our garden, with the light of dawn

We used to say:

"Mama! these butterflies have such pretty wings".

Oh dear, kiss us...

Kiss us on the forehead

For we long to soar to the lands of

Butterflies,

Fireflies...

For rainbow fireflies,

Butterflies of light... beckon us thither...

Labors of another day mingle

With gentle breeze drenched in color

And beckon us through the window...

Oh dear, kiss us...

Kiss us on the forehead

Kiss us on the forehead...

Nothing

Borrowed from http://rukhiya.blogspot.com/2010/08/nothing.html ... where thousands of miles away, the quivering tenderness of a woman's pint of murmuring blood resonates with the epileptic beating of my own diffident, too easily trusting, hopelessly dreamy heart:

[ Stumbled upon this one. Written not too long ago, I think ]
Now. This moment here. I want to write.Writing mustn't be a want, it must be natural, but I am unsure of using the word 'mustn't'. Must and must-not are just too exhausting to peg onto my fingertips. My thoughts, my only constant companions were waiting, floating like huge gas filled balloons on a lake, and now that I wish to rescue them they have streaked out into their original darker colors. Sometimes I can't draw comparisions and my metaphors and similies are absurd.

I've been thinking of many things, new and old. Several words have redefined their tight meanings and settled in new voluminous formless clouds. Several people have come and left, and some keep coming and going. Each time, they alter something, misplace a thought or two and in the end I am comfortable about gaining on more misplaced thoughts. One more feeling which will perhaps make the knowledge of myself more understandable. I've been thinking of you and I don't fear reading this a little later in my life. You could become more than you are by then or become several times lesser. Who's to say. I couldn't believe myself though it was me and entirely me who froze in time and then one day wore summer on her sleeves. I outshone my own dullness and thus proved that I can let things go.Of course I have you. You, who seem everything. I do not see you yet, as a God. I see your absence, like a crater in my soul. Like something that grew on the surface of my soul has been removed.

But then, there is hope. Hope, is so new, so surprising in its magnitude. The moment it stepped into me, it paralysed several doubts. Hope itself, is so scary though. Why do we have a word like blind-hope, isn't all hope blind or isn't it hope that blinds a person? I am yet to know if my hope can see. I am on the course. The course which is blind, uncertain. Things I love must guide me.

Then there is courage, another word that is acting strange. I had known it, yes. I have called myself courageous on several occasions. This time though it seems to empower me, silent. I feel strong, and it has got nothing to do with muscles and their girth. I am returning to the words you said, Hope. Yes, leave that to me. Rather, let me have a share of it. I might as well hope. I do not see anything from here. Several years hence I do not know what this will looked upon as. If you read this now, I do not know how I will be looked upon. Perhaps, it'll fall as a pebble in a sleeping lake, or perhaps it'll come as a tide. Somehow I think the world must've been upturned. I think we might be hanging from the ground and water too hangs from the sea-bed, perhaps the air around us is thick oil and it lets us be. I cannot justify it though.

I now think of countries, warring, divisions. I think of living in a country that is not mine.I think of you outside your country and I do not like it. I think of us, in a room and getting bored of each other yet I long for your presence. [What is getting bored of each other? We might not talk too much but too much is what makes things boring.] Imagination or hallucination or whatever they call it is wonderfully spacious. It is never too small to hold the zillion figments of my future, the real and the unreal one. I claim that I never write what I do not see. But I do, I fear I will today too. Since I have some invisible part of me stay with you and it tells me the experience. And it scares me that I've given my senses, my perceptions to you, to stay with you, to be guided by you.I cannot, though, give myself entirely, or so I tell to give my unseen ego a temporary pleasure. I can see it smile from a nook, seems more like a mock. On a nice winter day when it can't snow since I live on the uncomfortable latitude it rains and that brings enough pleasant weather to me. I have been willing to continue but I fear I might recourse it, lest I say too much. I have quite forgotten the repercussions that follow a fountain of speech. I look at myself near a fountain, gathering the sprinkling water. I would like that. I might strike out or go back on a word or two. I might write an opaque poem. I might stop a rain. I might stop the Earth from turning. I might want you. In acknowledgement of the calmth you've brought to me. The calmth that envelopes all the words I have dug up from the mud. Beauty is too heavy and pompous a word to convey the subtlety. I wish to live.Like the passing of a night, I wish to die.

Winter in Buffalo

[Random images transliterated into rhyme
Splatter, like midgets, on the windshield of an eye,
An observant, memorizing, recollecting eye.]

Snow -
Falling muffled, like a thick, plush curtain
Or frail, in a walled alcove, like rain
Snowflakes -
Jubilantly whirling around streetlights
A swarm of middle-aged, wayward locusts
Snow dust -
Rippling, like wind-borne mist on asphalt
Interplay of its waves, paused to a halt
between random tracks of dogs, men and rust...

In a purple twilight land,
Where darkness descends at tea-time
Like a flooded, impatient waterfall
on a beach of dark white sand.

Dec 7th & 11th, 2010.

Under the White Moon’s Shadow

Under the shadow of a white, waxing, mammoth moon,
Looming over distant square edifices,
Fall has creeped onto the shoulders of leaves,
Peeling away green,
Revealing petulant yellows
Mortified by licks of rouge.

The slanting sun rains down
The last of its light
Taming the breeze, brimful
Of the first real chill of the season.

A lone white toy glider
Somersaults,
Owning the blue endlessness
Of fall’s cloud-less evening.

Swaying alone among the sea of grass,
I christen it the ‘Soli-tree’
As the yolk of october sun recedes,
Behind it, through it.

Flamboyant dawns etch images
Permanently,
On pixels – that struggle to diminish
Noise, in ruby rainbows at dusk.

Sometimes, after one has been,
Places where one has to be,
Joy and peace in life, cease being a measure
Of what will life be like, a year thenceforth.

Sometimes, after one has done,
Things that one has to do,
Wayward wind wafts a random fountain’s spray
Painting partial rainbows where one ambles onward.

Sep 21st & Oct 17th, 2010.

High-Pass Filter

Dates.
Does it matter much if you can’t recall ‘em?
That day, when clouds painted the sky in odd patches,
Faint drizzle sharpened the fall foliage,
Grumbling drivers huddled in their hatchbacks.

Names.
Does it matter much if you can’t recall ‘em?
That noon, when an odd girl in cowboy boots, hair flowing,
Walked into this lunch café, unsure of the menu,
Wanting to be, somewhere she could slurp.

Clothes.
Does it matter much if you can’t recall ‘em?
All those times, when your eyes rested softly instead
On curling hair, on an unusual dirt-less sole,
On the lilting strings of a fluted conversation.

Receipts.
Does it matter much if you didn’t keep ‘em?
The first this and the final that,
The day you couldn’t find the way back,
The post card that never reached you...
.
.
.

Leaps.
Does it not matter much if you still feel them?
A certain song bringing your heart to your mouth,
A memory twinkling embers into oft-brooding eyes,
A goodbye coursing like blood through your veins.


Sep 27th & Oct 10th, 2010.

The Lost Voice

I must pull it out,
From the maze of scattered answers
Interspersed with cluttered questions.
My singing voice has been hiding,
Its timid tales untold.

So much has been,
From that purple-pink pre-dawn
To the raging rising of a warm fall sun.
From the jagged cracks on the flat river
Where the sun,
Slicing slick shafts through multi-tiered clouds
Painted the water iridescent green
And somber blue…
To the sand, creeping into hang-nails
With the intimidating rise of oceanic waves
Smelling of distant, day-old crabs.

Meanderings have recycled my being,
Afresh, to the last sedate molecule.

I now dream... despair not.

Sep 14th, 2010.

Stories of a Day

Souls are like lone pebbles,
Oval, batardish, mud-swept.
Or a week old motley bruise,
Blue, burgundy, sickly yellow.

Sometimes, the dark night,
Casting shadows into uninhabited rooms
Smiles
Like a perfectly curled white lily.

A silent, abashed, sorry tear,
Rolls down with a gleam –
The gleam that is signature –
Of pearls,
Of soap bubbles,
Of patience.

Slow breeze whisks away,
An unasked question –
And sprinkles it on the stars,
On the distant, half-hearted moon.

Insomnia explains itself –
Quietly, effortlessly,
With an imperceptible smile
Lingering into dawn.

Manifold voices -
Of a color-splashed day;
Smells of helpless longing –
Punctuating a pair of pupils;
Fall –
On an attentive eye,
And are serenely dismissed.

Crude earthiness wins,
Hands down
Over patient dignity.

Misgivings vanish like smoke
The air blooms with laughter.

Answers are rolled up
Like tongues,
And swallowed.

Among so many stories told,
So much randomness said,
Flirting is overlooked,
Confessions are lost in translations.

One whimsical heart continues,
Its tipped preference
Awaiting a better day.

July 11, 2010.

Epiphany

There is this unusual moment,
When acuity of perceptions epitomizes
And oft-read verses, never really understood,
Breathe their many legends
Like permeating whiffs of stardust
Entering my being through my ears.

The scent on an infant's breath,
The crinkled eyes on an honest smile,
Melting inebriety of dark chocolate...
All - moments of pure unadulterated beauty.

And history, with its many deceptive twists and turns,
and countless revisions and derisions,
Seems suddenly stripped of all gaudy apparel.
Everything makes sense, every single thing,
Each fabricated lie, each untold truth,
Poignant joy of stringed instruments,
Infinity of the universe,
Secrets of life...

I even know,
[Unseeing]
How metallically liquid,
The brown of my eye looks,
Serenely flowing and filling
The dark depths of my pupils.

June 22, 2010.

Trust

What makes the old wiser,
Isn’t so much the things that happen,
But those, that halt short of just happening.
Those disturbing lines we save as quotes,
Come not so much from backpacks filled with memories,
But from piled platters of putrid promises; unkept undertakings; unfulfilled pledges.

The slick edge in a precocious gaze,
Sometimes,
Cuts deeper than blades of gray hair,
Leaves you more exposed than a cackle of ridicule.

You perhaps wish you could un-know –
That it wasn’t the guy who brought you cookies to make you smile,
But he, who never wrote back when you reached out -
That taught you of the hurtfully feminine vulnerability... of trust.

A shy corner in my hollow chest quivers,
[still tenderly trembles when it thinks of you]
Disseminating shivers of baffled goose-bumps…
You cross my mind in rainbow hues –
Pacing though the mist,
Eerily like a chameleon.

June 22, 2010.

A Place called Home

Memory lunged into me,
Like a sweeping gust of west wind,
Memory of the slow scent of skin,
The liquid comfort of a once omnipresent embrace.

The beeping crowds in the square are stilled,
The commotion of day, for a brief span, stalled,
I am left suddenly void, vacated –
Ghosts of things lost have me moth-eaten.

In this consuming terror of desolation,
I wish I could hide again, cocooned,
Like the infant I once was,
In your belly, your arms…
.
.
…O Mama!

June 7, 2010.

You

There are certain spaces,
Certain empty vacuous corners,
That reek of ‘something-missing’.

Drowning dark of night,
Dreary dearth of light,
Scarcity of laughter,
Paucity of beauty,
Chewy blandness of old bread –
All,
Worm into me,
And I am left – a rotting guava.

In absence of rhyme,
In brokenness of speech,
In wide-eyed uncertainty,
In silence,
Knowing, unknowing…

I long,
For the 'something-missing'
That I hope
Is you.

May 24, 2010.

Discontent

[A strange morning, with strange beginnings and folded-put-away remembrances.]

Spirits, out of Pandora’s Box,
Have slowly, softly,
Fluttered back –
Perch on my arm,
Rest on my nose,
Nestle in my hay-laden heart.

Spirit of disappointment,
Spirit of disillusionment,
Spirit of being-wronged,
Spirit of feeling of being wronged…
Spirit of sorrow,
Spirit of forced meaning,
Spirit of utter loneliness…

The calm and composed,
The serene and content,
The peaceful and poised,
The happy…
Where are they?
People of the Promised Land…
What color are their eyes?
Question-colored? No.
Beaded, glazed, stoned? Of course not…

How amazing is childhood,
[How amazing ignorance]
Full of so-much-to-be,
Impossible possibility –
Laughter,
Joy,
Love infinitely…

May 11, 2010.