poetry

wordswords
by Ramil Digal Gulle

i. house of language

Living in a house of language
is not the same

as sleeping, eating, or going to
the toilet in a paper house.

The differences are not subtle
at all––but you have to learn to care,
make them matter, realized from
the suite of appearances fanning out

walls, holo-cascades of sigils, pre-
lingual speech before words
awaken, bright, self-referent. Constant,

the necessary map-work
aligns vanishing points,
linearity breaks off
into luminous stellae,

vari-vectored flight paths: I make my
maps––my own way out––how about you?

My maps grow breath by breath, bird by bird
across lamellar resistance;
a white owl of thought
haunted the night, shook
these shadow-branches, monster finger-bones.

ii. something about birds

about the way they navigate
about their hollow bones, their heads
a-buzz with the Earth’s magnetic field

––or if they find their way star by star,
by land mass or sea-breeze, by angle of sun––
something

about their wings, a furious sound
attending their seeming transcendence,
a freedom. The silence of gravity drops away.

Class, have we discovered

this flight of craft
,yet?

iii. who else is game

everything is movement
even meaning changes its

place, sits
uneasily @ techtonic speed
God only
knows
What Brian Wilson Said

popping a classic in your ear
you try to right a sonnet
plant your faith
in a pentametric universe––such
goes

the measure of your soul overrun
by iambs. Mary had a little iamb
its fleas so fat
they glowed. in time truths age
into falsehoods,

always there are
rules greater than the rules
we learnt. the game changes not
only the stakes grow

the field of play exponentials
beyond the imagined. Who else
is game?

iv. we advance

to advance,
some kind of mind
must fall
off, some kind of precipice. must

move, assume the altitude

kill the familiar and place

one fool’s foot
on the abstract, the reed mat
––breath freed, ready

a dojo stance, emptyhand

strike, enlightened fistblow: haiku!

v. pentacular

The Gnown and the Ungnown.

When I say. “I am filled with emptiness.”

When I say. “No word really means
what we want it to say.”

I mean, these words are by accident
not around.

You can’t take back the portion of your life
spent here >>> on this imaginary page

Reading. Looking
for a listening ground.

Understand our truce in these terms:

when words are broken,
where meaning is fled,

Do you trust the poet,
Or yourself?

first published in The Philippines Free Press

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