Becoming Dead

(Benito Agrela, 15, of Miami, Florida gave up on life, feeling so sick
of the anti-rejection drug he had to take for a transplanted liver.
At his last he hugged his mother, smiled and died.)

'Twas past midnight, lying in bed
but sleepless I chanced to read
of your wondrous becoming dead.

I mean no insult, Ben but awe
which bids me praise your gesture so
sacramental, with grace to bestow.

One cannot simply say: c'est la vie.
'Twas not that so to me.
There's heart in that dark mystery.

Yeah, we do, are going to, will expire.
Brief time's passing may just require
sour, lame, languid spirits at the bier.

We may be mere vessels of mortal clay
that form and grow and then decay:
ashes to ashes is nature's way.

Yet, Ben. You must now know:
something in, of us survives to show
that which your gesture was--

the way to go.

This morning after

This morning after
a deep dreamless sleep
brings no sunlight east

yet

behind the raincloud scrim
its warm face glows

as in mine, dearheart,
you do

Puzzlement

'The mind has mountains,
cliffs of fall,
sheer no-man-fathomed...'

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Some lives are ended, others just end.

Some deaths make sense; others stun reason

and make minds bend.

Death's a dark gate somewhere unseen

which springs shocking surprise when sudden

but which, when bidden,

delivers definite deletion.

Of the latter the sense lies

in the mercy sought or

in the justice demanded:

a plea for rescue from unacceptable pain

or a rage to remove intolerable evil.

It's when death's gate opens unbidden

when one is caught in the clutch of chance

('accident') that death offends,

morphing from mercy to menace.

In such a death the mind gropes

for meaning, flings grappling hooks

up sheer cliffs one is desperate

to climb up out of.

Deep down its crater

the heart calls out but

no answers come,

only echoes of the cry.

Bereft, what is one to do?

Speak out now, let loose rage

lest it churns currents in caverns

inside the self? before sorrow floods

the basin and burst its chambers?

Or just sit still and be,

aware and wakeful, holding steady,

girded and all for this

dark night's journey of the soul?

Will the time come for answers

to fill the void and bring to heart

love's peace and to mind

its calming balm?

Isn't there a nagging doubt

that all this is but wishful thought,

casting about, seeking anchors afloat

after a loved one's life, sorry to say,

comes to naught?

A senseless death stirs these questions.

The heart is hurt, the mind muddled:

A beloved presence is gone;

a life's work's undone.

One strives to bury griefs;

remembrance is a pledge.

That one will understand and accept

who is to tell, who the sage?

Old prophet Job, you were buffeted too.

What say you of this damn, dumb

puzzlement?

The Bard's Call

Will the Bard, my mentor, sends this invite:
Awake, arise! 'tis midsummer night!


From day long sleep's stupor, I stutter my answer:
Er, What? Yes, no dream this! Wits to gather.


Eyes dazed by diurnal drudge's noonday sun,
Now open lids to welcome the night's moon.


Limbs, once yeomen to practical pursuits,
Grow supple, lithe: sprouts wings of thoughts.

Craving

No fakir he but who submits

to lie naked

on piercing bits

 

Sweet pleasures of neural itch

he surrenders

so love can reach

 

What Francis sought

upon the snow,

banking fire river's flow,

 

Spurning the gift

of vital glow,

 

To burn anew:

the divine to know

 

 

A Poem Speaks

(before your tutored eyes
by habit taught decode
this script so swiftly would)

Read me with your lips
as child's tongue licks syllables
to melt away into
its core of sense.

As written I am silent, history.
As spoken I happen, an event.

Whose words I am beg entry
thru your whorled gate, to be
the wind's song in chambers
of who sent me,

as echoes in your mind
of the geste.

An Impression

"On some spiritual quest, we often deny surfaces, decide they are something to move beyond, across, behind, a mask for a motive force. Yet they are our interface. We search endlessly behind things, as if that desire were all, to be sublimated. These are the spaces moved through by Willy Chica’s poetry. Each poem is a gentle fold, a reverential offering to the pyre of ‘becoming’.

In this digital world of poetry sharing, what is unseen is the corporeal self. These are poems of yearning, ambiguous, yet with constant reference to the absent body, the other, woven, “in loomlike bed/ inserting, in pulling/ inlaying, a crafting” Here is a face, a hand, a You, all this reverence, for what is unseen, all this self –unsettling, these strange coils of matter, we see briefly, through tiny word-like portals.

Unified interiors, infinite exteriors, this “Private Sea” the title, quoted from Thoreau, expansive and incomplete, is glimpsed in flashes which punctuate these precisely worded (inter)expressions.

Will’s poems are sensual, a strong chiaroscuro encounter with light and shadow, which shows where the body lays, where the experience is revealed and obscured. They resonate with an affection we cannot help but imagine into, reanimated by our own imaginations, by our own love."

Amanda Joy