Jim Pascual Agustin's Blog, page 4

Only for a day – Salon Hecate / Noordhoek Art Gallery

From Bloodred Dragonflies (Deep South, Makhanda 2022)

The Path of the Wind

for Margie

I have seen days when the wind

weighs so heavy on trees, they bend

close to breaking. A limb

with the greenest leaves

or weakened by age would have to give in.

The trunk may have to learn a new angle

sunward. Less apparent is the path

the wind must make. It has to unravel,

splitting itself into countless strands

to navigate between each leaf, each branch.

-o-

After the First Monsoon Rain

Doors along the narrow line of houses

emptied out with children,

banana leaves bend to drop

the last beads of rain down their palms.

He is among them, this boy

with the breath of summer.

The scent of earth roused by rain

fills his lungs.

He runs in zigzags to his friends,

making sure to hit every puddle

with every leap. The louder

the splash, the better.

-o-

Introduction – This poem was inspired by the paintings by Celeste Lecaroz of women in clothes dating back to Spanish rule. Sungka is a game played on a boat-shaped board that has seven holes on either side, each filled with seven shells (seeds or stones may also do), and two big holes on each end which serve as respective “homes” for each player. It is a game of speed and mathematical calculation.

Quiet Light

You can almost hear them bridging breaths

between whispers, stifling joy on the verge

of laughter to keep in time with quiet light.

Though they are framed in the regions

of almost-forgetting, there is a muted

throbbing in what they touch: a trinket box,

the tips of flowers and leaves, a letter suffused

with light and secrets, hand-polished shells

nestled in the hollows of a paused game of sungka.

You can almost touch the embroidery

on their clothes, kindred spirits

taking their time in passing.

-o-

Citizens Military Training

Hand-me-down boots

deep jungle green

a size too big, reeking of memories

of someone else’s feet.

Another Saturday morning wasted

pretending to stand at attention

while being spat on

by kitchen-ranked officers.

Suddenly felt something squirm

under my left foot, something under

the thick black sock I had

doubled over to make the boot fit.

This thing resisted the weight

of my toes, pierced through

my sock as if with needles,

made me jump out of line and curse.

Punishment: four hours in full sun.

At long last the stroke of noon,

the relief of loosening laces,

shaking free the boot.

Just then tumbled out, exoskeleton

popped open, a muffled hissing,

a sizzle, a twitch which grew still:

my tormentor, an American cockroach.

-o-

Galing Ingglatera

Nagbabasa ako ng aklat

galing Ingglatera

nang tila may lumagutok

sa bintana. Salagubang.

Bahagyang nakalantad

ang kulay tsokolateng pakpak,

nangungunyapit sa pari-parisukat

ng iskrin. Paglapit ko

Marahan niyang ikinubli

ang mga pakpak, parang lihim.

Kumibut-kibot ang kanyang

katawan, hingal marahil

Matapos ang malayong paglalakbay.

Himala ng baha-bahagdang karupukan

ng laman. Ilang parisukat

ang kanyang inakyat

Bago huminto at tila

tumitig sa akin at sa hawak

kong aklat galing Ingglatera.

Sandaling pagkatagal-tagal

Pakiramdam ko’y lumulutang

ang sahig, ang bintana,

ang buong silid sa loob

ng kanyang sinaunang titig.

Pagkibot niya’y nanlamig

ang aking kamay.

Humakbang ako palabas

ng silid at dagling pinatay

Ang ilaw at ipininid

ang kulay lupang pinto.

Naupo ako sa ibang panig

ng bahay, sa sala yata

O sa kusina. Pilit

nagbasa muli

habang alam kong

walang tinag

Siyang nag-aabang

sa aking pagbalik.

-o-

Salagubang

I was reading a book

from England

when something rattled

on the window. Salagubang.

Its chocolate-coloured wings

partly showing, it clung

to the tiny squares

of the screen. The moment

I came close, it slowly hid

its wings, like a secret.

Its body quivered,

as if panting

after a long journey.

Miracle of terraced fragility,

it climbed up

a few squares

before it ceased

and seemed to stare

at me and the book

in my hand.

The floor, the window,

the whole room, everything

was floating

in this ancient stare.

-o-

From Waking Up to the Pattern Left by a Snail Overnight (Gaudy Boy, New York 2023)

My Mother Had a Concrete Garden

Pots she gathered of different shapes

and state, some cracked, some battered,

all unwanted. And past the concrete

roads, far from where the government

stabbed the names of politicians in poles,

she found soil that could hold

young shoots begging

to be nurtured. And this she did

in silence, people thought she was mute.

But she hummed in the absence

of an audience, in the hope a single leaf

would push out of handfuls of soil.

I was too impatient and missed

when light green unexpectedly

made her gasp.

-o-

Containing Light

“I want a simple coffin.”

—Desmond Tutu

1

Science and commerce keep trying to find ways

to contain light, measure its immensity, trace

its trajectories and many lives. To capture it

as if it were a beast, harness its mysteries

like any other commodity.

They would do well to ask trees.

2

What is a simple wooden coffin but the body

of a tree reduced to panels of measured dimensions?

Skinned and stripped, it bears little resemblance

to what it was when life pulsed through its core,

running from limb to limb, all the way

to the slenderest roots and most ragged ends

of leaves.

It is easy to forget how trees,

with murmuring fingers,

gather light and water to the deep darkness

of their cores. Silently they perform

what in another realm

would be called magic.

-o-

Ant Garden

Pincers measure shards of leaves

licked and laid in layers, a living bed

of cut emeralds. Here they gather seeds

of epiphytes that may one day unfurl

their scents like invisible banners.

Ant antennae of different species gather,

waving in communion, forgetting all enmity.

With murmurs, they coax slender roots

to wrap around the host tree,

nurture young sprouts to rise sunward.

With limbs thin as needles, they resist

the drag of wind and rain. As one,

they weave leaf by leaf a symphony

of whispers high up in the trees,

a garden of secret hymns.

-o-

From How to Make a Salagubang Helicopter (San Anselmo Press, Manila 2019)

From Afterword by the Author

section 3

Have you ever looked at ants marching in line? Watched as they appear to take forever to cover distances the length of your arm? How the path they follow bends more than it stays straight. Soon you might feel a little lost, unable to keep track of a single ant, or remember where they’ve been and where they’re headed. They seem to be going back and forth all the time. Each ant begins to appear very much like another.

But if you try your best to look at just one ant, as close as possible, maybe even isolate it from the others, you might begin to notice how it turns its head and pauses as if in wonder. How its antennae wave about or remain still for a moment, trying to trace a familiar scent. You might even be able to see its fine hairs on skin that looks almost metallic. In a similar way, you might see more things when you look deeper at a photograph. You begin to imagine lives and moments before that very instant. You could predict trajectories far different from that one moment framed by the click of a shutter.

-o-

Naartjie

Skin

winter sunset

with cloud.

Globe

fits

a child’s hand

Thumbs

uncork

summer.

-o-

Light and Rain

The mountain, a shape suddenly darker

than the skies that mask the time of day.

It would be so much easier to surrender

the mind to the limits of the body,

let frustration rub

against the nearest stranger.

But then a giggle from a little girl

pricks my ears. I turn to her.

“Mama, look at the lights!” She is tugging

at a woman who has fallen close to sleep.

An orange globe rests in the girl’s

left hand as she points with her right.

The woman shifts out of slumber.

“The lights are clinging to the windows!

They look like my naartjie!” Laughing,

the girl digs her thumbs into the fruit,

releases in such a small and crowded space

more than just a scent.

-o-

Bugs, gardens and everything in between

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14th of October Central Library in Cape Town

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So… Embarking on a semi-solo flight.

If you or anyone you know will be in Cape Town on the 14th of October, please do join me.

I’ll be reading /launching the four books released in the past two years:

BLOODRED DRAGONFLIES

WAKING UP TO THE PATTERN LEFT BY A SNAIL OVERNIGHT

CROCODILES IN BELFAST (South African edition)

SOUND BEFORE WATER (South African edition)

2 October 2023 reading at Salon Hecate /North Point Art gallery!

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21 on Shiny Metallic Paper

Last night I was cutting up 21 on shiny metallic paper – freehand, mind you haha, hence the imperfections my mom would have picked up instantly – as I always do each year. We’d stick them around the dining room walls for each birthday of our kids. Today we had a small birthday breakfast at home with them. Simple, not quite vegetarian. My wife works so hard for them, she’s a super mom and highly creative, too! More about how she whips up amazing things with her super powers one day – if I’m permitted to share them. We’re all very shy folks.

When my wife was pregnant with our twin daughters, the gynaecologist asked us when we’d prefer to have them delivered. In South Africa, private hospitals highly advise families expecting twins and multiples to go for a caesarian operation. They are probably scared of possible complications, or perhaps it’s easier for them to “manage” such births.
We were shown dates when the doctor would be available. We chose Heritage Day, 24 September 2002. I still remember that day, driving on the N1 before dawn, the highway nearly empty as it was a holiday. I’ll spare the details of the ordeal of waiting, and what I wish could have gone better (I wrote a few poems years ago about the experience). Not everything went smoothly, but everyone was safe and fine afterwards.

Medical aid only covered three days’ stay in the hospital, so I drove us all back home to our house about 32 kilometres away from our closest relatives in Cape Town. My wife sat in the back, still in a state that needed a lot of care, holding two bundles of new life, each barely bigger than two hands spread out.

We were both unsure we’d be able to take care of them by ourselves. We had hired a nanny just for a few hours a day of the week, but she wouldn’t be seeing us until after the holidays.
My memory goes blurry pretty much from that point on. Zombie state on auto mode took over after many sleepless nights. I vaguely recall how on that first night I had to deal with the incessant crying until the first light of dawn crept in.

Flash forward to today. Heritage Day in Cape Town. The Springboks had just lost to Ireland at the Rugby World Cup. It’s a gloomy, wet and cold day. No one can braai outdoors in this mood, in this weather. We ourselves don’t braai as often as most South Africans. Semi-vegetarians have mixed feelings about braais.

So our twin daughters turned 21 today. It seemed to go so fast, the years, but also oddly took forever. I guess that’s how memories work on you and your sense of things, of time and space.

I won’t tell you in detail my intention to write a series of essays – bit by bit, in my battered notebook, on my secondhand laptop, on my secondhand phone, on scraps of paper I hope not to lose. But this, recognising the unique heritage my small family shares, will hopefully be part of it.

My Canadian-born wife with a Scottish mother and a Greek father, my twin daughters born in Cape Town, half a world from where I was born – we’re all part of this country as much as it is part of us. The world is so much more bigger and yet also smaller at the same time.

Poetry Africa 2022 marked an amazing year for me

I never thought I’d ever be invited, after trying to get their attention for years. And then it just happened. I was on a plane to Durban about to meet up with people who would take me in as one of their own.

One day I hope to write properly about the experience. It topped the weird and astounding 2022 for me. I just got reminded now as they welcome poets to 2023 Poetry Africa.

Yesterday I was pointed to a bionote page for me that I didn’t even know existed. That gravely serious self portrait! Hahahaha!

https://poetryafrica.ukzn.ac.za/map-location/jim-pascual-agustin/?mpfy-pin=13241

Owning Greed

“Some of these people who are claiming to be human rights victims
have never been victims except (of) their own greed.”
— Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

In altered light anything can look grossly
different from what it is. A shell
becomes a haunted bone crawling with ants,
a feather a dagger dripping with blood.

The son and the father may share a name
by chance. It takes choice to follow
long gone footsteps into the dark,
ignore even as you trace

with your own fingers
frozen faces protruding on the walls,
glimmer ribs lining the ceilings,
shattered hands on the uneven floor.

-o-

21 September remains a dark day to remember in my country of birth. We shall never forget.

Even as the lies about the Marcos regime are resurrected and remixed to death and back again by David Byrne’s awful and lazy concept album turned into a stage musical for the easily deceived, “Here Lies Love.”

I’ve been meaning to put out a free chapbook that tries to counter Byrne’s milking cow (I’m betting it’s big money for him, no matter what happens), but time and other real world constraints keep getting in the way.

So here’s one of the poems that’s supposed to be part of that chapbook. One day, these Marcos thieves and historical distortionists shall pay.

Work from BLOODRED DRAGONFLIES gets featured

An interesting website featured some of my poetry and prose from BLOODRED DRAGONFLIES and previous work.

Click HERE to get to Knapp.

Lament of Mountain Spirits

Apologies for the absence. Too many things have been happening on all fronts. I’ll share the news when it becomes official.

For now, let me share this link (and hope that I haven’t actually shared it before here) to a poem which appeared last year on THE AVBOB Poetry website, “Lament of Mountain Spirits.”

Here is the LINK.

BLOODRED DRAGONFLIES gets reviewed by Sihle Ntuli on Botsotso

I should have shared this review as soon as it came out. But it was an insane year for me, 2022, and I’m just slowly catching up with what struck me then while still trying to chart an already halfway 2023.

Poet Sihle Ntuli wrote a generous review and I have no way of thanking him enough. Please click THIS LINK to read the entire review.

Here is a screenshot from Botsotso.