A Lousy Mirror, Part 3

A Lousy Mirror

a depository of poetry, art, haibun, photography

and haiga by robert d. wilson

what did she

dream as a child

the carrion 

scented woman

across from me?

        shantytown . . . 

playing in a typhoon's 

afterbirth

orphan 

annie-eyed and dead

the gray haired

beggar laying in the

stairway gulping blanks

 wading through

the palengke . . .  

heavy rain 

we don't

waste rice she said

between bites

with a coolness i

hadn't seen before

twilight. . .

lapping winter with

the dogs

     giving birth . . . 

the spent look in

her face

sowing stars from

a far away field

            twilight dawn . . .  . . . 

pouring vinegar in

plastic bags

lola sleeps 

on the sidewalk in 

a cardboard

coffin waiting for 

the night to eat her

seeing you

without make-up . . . 

morning glory 

    a long day . . . 

field laborers 

fasten stars

to the under belly of

a snail shaped moon

        night blossoms . . . 

watching a bargirl 

undress

a part of

the fly, my eyes,

scouring

darkness for

pockets of mist

soldiers clutch

stillness in an elephant 

grass whisper

my friend's spouse

goes out for a smoke

the moment 

she was told their 

baby has down's syndrome

a mad woman

teasing vendors on the

back of a giraffe!

hydrangea

talk to one another

on the 

shoreline like women

in a public restroom

try another

song, cicada,

punk rock's out!

this is heat

when rivers become

tiny strings

wrapped around a

an old man's waist
-------------

The Palengke
A haibun

late noon . . .
brother rat gives thanks to
god for the
meal many people
here can't afford

 

The Palengke (open wet market) is the hub of the shantytown I lived in for over a year in Metro Manila. Dozens of people looking for the best fruit, the cheapest price, the right cut of this or that . . . a circus without benches

It's always summer here, hot and humid, refrigeration, a rich man's dream. Nothing stays fresh for long. Live fish die, their odor, rancid. Beef, chicken, and pork go bad.

late night . . .
the charcoal seller,
a starless sky

The palengke's cement slab floors are covered with fish scales, blood, meat drippings, signaling rats and stray cats to make their moves

I lived in and most Filipinos live in poverty without flush toilets and sewage; the water, thick with ecoli . . .The smell of disease staggering like a monitor lizard after swallowing a small cat.

Poverty has taught Filipinos to eat every part of an animal, including the blood of the carabao and cows, which they use to make an ink black entree called blood stew (dinagong).

Our unborn
baby, a dream she
will erase . . .
her dress sewn from
shattered mirrors

When it rains, it rains. Last year, during a typhoon, my mother in-law's shanty was flooded with three feet of putrid smelling water that ruined her furniture. When the average income here is approximately $75 - $100 monthly, replenishing furniture can take years.

Living in a shanty town is like living in a dream Dali couldn't conceive of, or a Hell Dante would be unable to describe. . . a hell Rosa Parks, Mother Theresa, Allen Ginsberg, Charles Bukowski, the survivors of the genocide of Serbians by American supported troops, and the refugees from Africa's Congo region know too well . . .

a plastic
manger set on fire
by circus
clowns in SM's
mall of asia

 Children here die from sicknesses easily curable in Western Europe and North America. Old women without relatives, sleep on sidewalks like winos on skid row, and students in school, if they can afford a uniform, stare at the lucky ones during noon break who can afford to eat a lunch.

the island
i've exiled myself on
a pyre
fueled by coconut husks
and hand carved gods

Overdose on LSD, experience hallucinations that talk, scream, taunt and echo . . . a world where your sense of reality is turned inside out. Sleep with cockroaches and rats, wake up to dengue carrying mosquito bites spread over your arms and legs . . . babies having babies, people dying in their fifties and sixties, dreams confined to television sets that families in the slums share; 17 to 18 year old daughters selling their souls to overweight, demanding white men aged 50, 60, and over 70, to support their families . . . many never seeing their homeland again.

Jimi, play
a concerto for me . . .
dry leaves

"Take me for a trip upon your magic sailing ship, " sang the Byrds in the 60's, but please, not to a Hell the press or the church wont talk about for fear of embarrassing corrupt politicians, the rich who buy them off, and the lazy, graft loving police (pulis) who tell motorists to pay them a bribe or lose their license.

death poem?
add it to a pile
of leaves

---------------------------

without his

plumes, the peacock

too would sleep 

alone in a

bed above the mud

   eternity . . . 

the distance between

two mirrors

she weaves

anger into

her headband

jousting clouds and

paper dragons

      high noon . . . 

a peacock passing

wind 

my lithe wife . . . 

what does this tell 

me about 

the buddha's broom?

twilight autumn

would moths chase

you, moon, if the light

you sing . . .  

fell short of syllables 

and night became day?

in the space

between moons, a 

shadow tracing stars

the fly who 

thinks she's a carabao

nibbles 

on the roses placed

above my headstone

The following is a haibun excerpted
from my chapbook, Tanka Fields, 
about one of the most poignant 
moments in my life, the day I left
for Vietnam.

she whispers to me,

this winter night,

from sallow pools

left on the runway of that

could have been

I’ll never forget the first time I saw my mother 

cry. I’d received orders to fly to Saigon, the 

capital city of the Republic of South Vietnam.

My tour of duty was for one year. I would be

in the heart of the war that was sending sol-

diers home in pine boxes on a daily basis.

Some of them we knew. In January of 1968,

I boarded a commuter plane in Long Beach,

California, near where I’d lived most of my

life, on the first leg of the journey. I turned 

around to wave to my mother. She was 

standing on the runway, weeping, wav-

ing halfheartedly, hoping and praying that I

would come back to her alive in one piece. I

never doubted my mother’s love from that

day on. When she passed away in 1997, at 

the age of 70, I was holding her hand,

returning the tears.

Dedicated to my mother, 

Mrs. Barbara Helaine Wilson

he lays in

his own vomit, dead 

to the world 

he thought he could 

paint with closed eyes

robert d. wilson

©2010