PIECES OF VINYL DREAMS
"Little boy lost
in search
Of little boy
found..."
emits from my father's LP player, Jack Jones Sings Michael Legrand,
vinyl record spinning "'Round... 'round..."
Pieces of dreams, lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman
one of my first skills, my mother told me, (even before I could talk), was operating the turntable:
gently placing the needle
on spinning vinyl,
spinning "wondering wandering stumbling tumbling"
and perhaps, pre-speech, inaudibly, approximately, singing:
"When will you find
What's on the tip of your mind
Why are you blind
To all you ever were
Never were
Really are
Nearly are."
And soon,
"Meet the morn
Look and see
Can you be
Faaaaaaaar froooom hooooooooommmmme."
--- bzzzzzzzzzz ---
"Round, like a circle in a spiral...
Quezon City, 2015
LIGHT AND SHADE
(Midnight, on a hilltop; 1 stands, 2 sits on the grass.)
1:
We
who surrendered
immortality, as we’ve always
known it, were not
fools
for
desiring
the
kind
that
only
death
could
render.
2:
Leave me alone where even shadows dare not fall,
or where darkness claws at light and shreds it to pieces!
1:
Ah, the many ways night inflicts itself upon us…
2:
Now I’m left dissecting, plucking, my shed wings…
Chorus:
Last night, we witnessed a comet
streak down, plummet
without its tail!
1:
The night sky is bright in its blackness, but tomorrow
the sun shall rise…
2:
…with our feet planted on the ground!
Chorus:
Last night, we witnessed a comet
streak down, plummet
without its tail!
2:
sky, skin, dark.
moon, pus, bright.
1 (quotes Homer):
“The gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal,
because any moment may be our last.
Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed.
You will never be lovelier than you are now.
We will never be here again.”
2:
…
Quezon City, 2016
SOMEWHERE IN QUEZON CITY, TUESDAY, 5:00 PM
Broken, and as if this procession of words
is a running stitch back to wholeness.
“It need not be an underground drag race;
it can be a mere spit race duel
down a car’s windshield
on any given rainy day
in a parking lot.”
(And the neophytes disagree.)
Stand fan blows and the yellow paper
quivers, lithe and light, under
the strokes of my pen.
(I sneeze and glare at myself in the mirror
with pandemic disgust.)
The neighbors terrorize with their videoke again.
Their choice of songs, I like;
how they sing them
is another story.
(Most of us Filipinos are good singers;
my neighbors are the few exceptions.)
A flight of famished doves convinces me
that we’re in the midst of a famine.
(But my eyesight is poor;
my vision, worse.)
Earlier, I discovered that the smartphone allows you
to talk to someone while another rings you up.
(Now how can I talk to two people at the same time?
Soon, the ringing stopped and the other caller
didn’t bother to call again.)
Finally, on YouTube, Karen Carpenter sings beautifully
(unlike my neighbors), post-mortem,
“We’ve only just begun.”
Quezon City, 2020
Karlo Sevilla of Quezon City, Philippines is the author of the full-length poetry collection “Metro Manila Mammal” (Some Publishing, 2018) and the chapbook “You” (Origami Poems Project, 2017). Recognized among The Best of Kitaab 2018 and nominated twice for the Best of the Net, his poems appear in Philippines Graphic, Radius, Unlikely Stories Mark V, Collective Unrest, Poets Reading The News, Poetry24, Line Rider Press, I am not a silent poet, Tuck Magazine, and elsewhere. He is also a contributor to “Pandemic: A Community Poem,” Muse-Pie Press’s nominated poem for the 2020 Pushcart Prize. In his spare time, he volunteers for the Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (Solidarity of Filipino Workers).
https://karlosevillaofquezoncity.blogspot.com/2016/10/s-list-of-published-poems-all-with-links.html
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