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Posted on by Dave Bonta

Psychologically ultimate seashore

Up very betimes, and angry with Will that he made no more haste to rise after I called him. So to my office, and all the morning there. At noon to the Exchange, and so home to dinner, where I found my wife had been with Ashwell to La Roche’s to have her tooth drawn, which it seems aches much, but my wife could not get her to be contented to have it drawn after the first twich, but would let it alone, and so they came home with it undone, which made my wife and me good sport.
After dinner to the office, where Sir J. Minnes did make a great complaint to me alone, how my clerk Mr. Hater had entered in one of the Sea books a ticket to have been signed by him before it had been examined, which makes the old fool mad almost, though there was upon enquiry the greatest reason in the world for it. Which though it vexes me, yet it is most to see from day to day what a coxcomb he is, and that so great a trust should lie in the hands of such a fool.
We sat all the afternoon, and I late at my office, it being post night, and so home to supper, my father being come again to my house, and after supper to bed, and after some talk to sleep.

angry as a noon toothache
raw and alone

the sea books a ticket
to my sleep


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 7 April 1663. The post title is a reference to the original ambient sound LP—see “The Man Who Recorded, Tamed and Then Sold Nature Sounds to America.” This erasure was made while listening to that recording on YouTube.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Have They Run Out of Tasteless White Yet?

Have they run out of tasteless white yet?
Looks like they haven’t, so we’ve reason to fret.
Long ago, they started a trend: statues in alabaster.
(Long ago, we thought this was just about marble.)
But then they stole to stuff their museums with our artifacts.
Brass Buddhas, bulols, black Venuses: filched, no contract.
With not so much as a by-your-leave, they set up camp
on our shores. Took our women, flogged our men, looked askance
but secretly salivated at dishes made by the kitchen slaves.
Pigafetta (another kind of white) wrote in his journals
with a certain type of disgust that the natives were not normal:
they wore next to nothing on their skin and ate things
fished from the swamp with bare hands. It’s why the white man brings
this gift called civilization. Cloth and cutlery, its own style of chow.
But on weekends they’ll make exceptions and head to Judy’s for the Xiao Long Bao.
Perhaps week after week of white Wonder Bread does things to the psyche—
already burdened with historical conflict, how to admit one’s curious about lychee?
So fascinating… but what’s beneath the crimson of those dragon-like scales?
They’ll wait for the food review, even knowing “epicures” eat things like snails.
From LA to New York, they read that Filipino food is the next big thing,
plus some others— too many to name. Like how at Panda Express, Beijing
Beef Bowl rates as actually good. But I’m so tired
of these cycles of bashing and reappropriation, tired
of the lame defenses of those who, let’s face it,
have no respect for either a spring roll or a tit.
We come from places with catalogs of jewel-colored rice
and more than a hundred names for moss, rain, spice.
We come from places where universities were founded
before their Ivy Leagues. Their lies about us, unfounded,
have glibly masqueraded as history, geography, poetry—
We can’t let them continue with such tasteless bigotries.

 

In response to Have They Run Out of Provinces Yet?.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Harboring

Up very betimes and to my office, and there made an end of reading my book that I have of Mr. Barlow’s of the Journal of the Commissioners of the Navy, who begun to act in the year 1628 and continued six years, wherein is fine observations and precedents out of which I do purpose to make a good collection.
By and by, much against my will, being twice sent for, to Sir G. Carteret’s to pass his accounts there, upon which Sir J. Minnes, Sir W. Batten, Sir W. Pen, and myself all the morning, and again after dinner to it, being vexed at my heart to see a thing of that importance done so slightly and with that neglect for which God pardon us, and I would I could mend it. Thence leaving them I made an excuse and away home, and took my wife by coach and left her at Madam Clerk’s, to make a visit there, and I to the Committee of Tangier, where I found, to my great joy, my Lord Sandwich, the first time I have seen him abroad these some months, and by and by he rose and took leave, being, it seems, this night to go to Kensington or Chelsey, where he hath taken a lodging for a while to take the ayre.
We staid, and after business done I got Mr. Coventry into the Matted Gallery and told him my whole mind concerning matters of our office, all my discontent to see things of so great trust carried so neglectfully, and what pitiful service the Controller and Surveyor make of their duties, and I disburdened my mind wholly to him and he to me his own, many things, telling me that he is much discouraged by seeing things not to grow better and better as he did well hope they would have done. Upon the whole, after a full hour’s private discourse, telling one another our minds, we with great content parted, and with very great satisfaction for my thus cleared my conscience, went to Dr. Clerk’s and thence fetched my wife, and by coach home. To my office a little to set things in order, and so home to supper and to bed.

I have a journal of observations
of the morning port

where I go to take the air
content to rust

my mind is a hole
full of little things


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 6 April 1663.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Lumad

Lumad – native or indigenous

“…news here …signifies little
but to say that something comes” ~ D. Bonta

This means to know

a chant for putting in the seed
a liniment for aching bones

This means to sew

a constellation of beads on dark woven ground
an intricate braid of horsehair for a collar

This means to coax

a lash of fibers stripped by hand from reeds
a rope to fix broad screens of leaves to house posts

This means to hum

a low supplication when crossing the plains
a prayer to ward off the evil ones and hurricanes

This means

a ritual for the birth of the child
a sacrifice of animals for the ones who have died (so many)

This means

a lake in the hinterland bordered by plantations
among them Dole Del Monte Unifrutti Sumifro

This means

a harvest of riches they’re told they do not own
a tube of sugarcane Cavendish bananas palm oil cacao rubber

This means

among the rare flora and fauna at daybreak
a priestess touches her forehead to the water and the earth

This means

a palm criss-crossed by marks and the labor of years
a child’s hand leathered like an ancient’s

This means

a type of plant whose flowers open their throats only at night
and the song of a mythical bird that could turn you to stone

This means

a stranger crossing into their villages eats of their food
and in this way wears their mantle of protection

This means

a five-note warble high in the trees
another one for coming danger

This means

a space grows wider every day from constant erasure
a memory collapses from its magnitude when there are no vessels left

 

In response to Via Negativa: In Cuba.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Born again

(Lord’s day). Up and spent the morning, till the Barber came, in reading in my chamber part of Osborne’s Advice to his Son (which I shall not never enough admire for sense and language), and being by and by trimmed, to Church, myself, wife, Ashwell, &c. Home to dinner, it raining, while that was prepared to my office to read over my vows with great affection and to very good purpose. So to dinner, and very well pleased with it.
Then to church again, where a simple bawling young Scot preached.
So home to my office alone till dark, reading some papers of my old navy precedents, and so home to supper, and, after some pleasant talk, my wife, Ashwell, and I to bed.

born to no language
in church we are again

a simple bawling ache
of dark precedents


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 5 April 1663.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

In Kidapawan

In these islands the light begins
to burn hottest toward noon.

A drought since January, which further
parched the land and thinned the crops.

Farmers, the poor; lumad, or
indigenes— One could not really tell.

And how does it really matter?
In another life these could have been

the people a few history books say
may have eaten from plates of beaten brass,

may have borne ingots of gold on their chests
when foreign ships slid into these inlets.

Most of the land is taken, and the air
is stale as the chemicals in the sea.

What’s brought them here: their hunger
and despair. I’ve never understood the logic

that goes by the name of protocol— We’re told
when police fired guns to disperse them,

they went on their knees in the street
to illustrate the weight of their need.

Calamity funds & 15,000 sacks of rice,
safe in some government warehouse.

At weddings, it used to be that one
would throw handfuls of rice

at the laughing pair emerging from
the church. But now that’s considered

wasteful. Soap bubbles are blown instead,
or confetti showered on their heads.

Bullets have the elongated shape of rice
grains; they explode but will never expand

on contact with bodies made of 73% water.
A grain of rice expands to 3 or 4 times

its volume. 2 cups of rice, according to some
conversion tables, could feed a family of 6.

 

In response to 1 killed, 13 wounded in farmers' protest in Kidapawan.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Fast food

Up betimes and to my office. By and by to Lombard street by appointment to meet Mr. Moore, but the business not being ready I returned to the office, where we sat a while, and, being sent for, I returned to him and there signed to some papers in the conveying of some lands mortgaged by Sir Rob. Parkhurst in my name to my Lord Sandwich, which I having done I returned home to dinner.
Whither by and by comes Roger Pepys, Mrs. Turner her daughter, Joyce Norton, and a young lady, a daughter of Coll. Cockes, my uncle Wight, his wife and Mrs. Anne Wight. This being my feast, in lieu of what I should have had a few days ago for my cutting of the stone, for which the Lord make me truly thankful.
Very merry at, before, and after dinner, and the more for that my dinner was great, and most neatly dressed by our own only maid. We had a fricasee of rabbits and chickens, a leg of mutton boiled, three carps in a dish, a great dish of a side of lamb, a dish of roasted pigeons, a dish of four lobsters, three tarts, a lamprey pie (a most rare pie), a dish of anchovies, good wine of several sorts, and all things mighty noble and to my great content.
After dinner to Hide Park; my aunt, Mrs. Wight and I in one coach, and all the rest of the women in Mrs. Turner’s; Roger being gone in haste to the Parliament about the carrying this business of the Papists, in which it seems there is great contest on both sides, and my uncle and father staying together behind. At the Park was the King, and in another coach my Lady Castlemaine, they greeting one another at every tour. Here about an hour, and so leaving all by the way we home and found the house as clean as if nothing had been done there to-day from top to bottom, which made us give the cook 12d. a piece, each of us.
So to my office about writing letters by the post, one to my brother John at Brampton telling him (hoping to work a good effect by it upon my mother) how melancholy my father is, and bidding him use all means to get my mother to live peaceably and quietly, which I am sure she neither do nor I fear can ever do, but frightening her with his coming down no more, and the danger of her condition if he should die I trust may do good.
So home and to bed.

a sandwich for dinner
in a car park

there is a test every day
of how to live


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 4 April 1663.

Posted on by Laura M Kaminski

Poem with lines from John Donne’s “Meditation XVII”

I.

I walk through the corridors of my self, tricked
out in ego uniform. I trail the end of a night-

stick along the vertical bars separating me into
isolated cells to contain my many selves I have

judged unready to be seen in public, ones rumored
to have erred, others likely to appear inadequate.

In order to keep so many confined here to my own
private Alcatraz, the ego-guard in charge of them

can also never be off-duty, never has permission
to take a break, to rest, relax the tense knots,

the kinks that over-vigilance works into muscles,
into sentences, into nights that might otherwise

hold sleep and starlit dreams. I have lost track
which of my voices was confined to isolation when,

how long each has been down here, and for what
offense against the relentless despot in my head.

II.

And here the despot comes! Flanked by pretensions,
he descends partway down the metal stairs into

the darkness of the prison, come to announce his
latest plans for all the inmates, how they might

earn the right to see the light of day and breathe
fresh air again. But first, they must make their

obeisance and express their willingness to work
as conscript labor on the despot’s latest project.

III.

The nightstick dragging on the bars is a mallet
pounding on a xylophone. Taken alone, each note

is sharp and harsh, but as each one hangs sullen
in the air, other notes gather near it until

the tones are stacked and sandwiched like shades
of colored light, a chord of rainbow, sundogs.

“…one chapter is not torn out of the book,
but translated into a better language; and every

chapter must be so translated…” Slowly, one
after the other, the inner inmates turn their

faces toward the despot. His mouth still shapes
commands, but any sound he makes is drowned by

these new harmonies blending from the cell-bar
xylophone notes. The air begins to vibrate with

hope, tones soften from xylophone to marimba,
are sustained in shimmers, promises, and inner

whispers that race from cell to cell until all
voices in me are raised in affirmation: there

are no mistakes and no mis-givings, and nothing
but nothing only nothing remains hidden forever.


In response to Joseph Lisowski’s “Shadow Self/Dante Dream 10-13” and Dave Bonta’s “Surveillance Society,” with help from John Donne.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

In Cuba

Waked betimes and talked half an hour with my father, and so I rose and to my office, and about 9 o’clock by water from the Old Swan to White Hall and to chappell, which being most monstrous full, I could not go into my pew, but sat among the quire. Dr. Creeton, the Scotchman, preached a most admirable, good, learned, honest and most severe sermon, yet comicall, upon the words of the woman concerning the Virgin, “Blessed is the womb that bare thee (meaning Christ) and the paps that gave thee suck; and he answered, Nay; rather is he blessed that heareth the word of God, and keepeth it.”
He railed bitterly ever and anon against John Calvin, and his brood, the Presbyterians, and against the present term, now in use, of “tender consciences.” He ripped up Hugh Peters (calling him the execrable skellum), his preaching and stirring up the maids of the city to bring in their bodkins and thimbles.
Thence going out of White Hall, I met Captain Grove, who did give me a letter directed to myself from himself. I discerned money to be in it, and took it, knowing, as I found it to be, the proceed of the place I have got him to be, the taking up of vessels for Tangier. But I did not open it till I came home to my office, and there I broke it open, not looking into it till all the money was out, that I might say I saw no money in the paper, if ever I should be questioned about it. There was a piece in gold and 4l. in silver.
So home to dinner with my father and wife, and after dinner up to my tryangle, where I found that above my expectation Ashwell has very good principles of musique and can take out a lesson herself with very little pains, at which I am very glad. Thence away back again by water to Whitehall, and there to the Tangier Committee, where we find ourselves at a great stand; the establishment being but 70,000l. per annum, and the forces to be kept in the town at the least estimate that my Lord Rutherford can be got to bring it is 53,000l.. The charge of this year’s work of the Mole will be 13,000l.; besides 1000l. a-year to my Lord Peterborough as a pension, and the fortifications and contingencys, which puts us to a great stand, and so unsettled what to do therein we rose, and I to see my Lord Sandwich, whom I found merry at cards, and so by coach home, and after supper a little to my office and so home and to bed.
I find at Court that there is some bad news from Ireland of an insurrection of the Catholiques there, which puts them into an alarm.
I hear also in the City that for certain there is an embargo upon all our ships in Spayne, upon this action of my Lord Windsor’s at Cuba, which signifies little or nothing, but only he hath a mind to say that he hath done something before he comes back again.
Late tonight I sent to invite my uncle Wight and aunt with Mrs. Turner to-morrow.

the old monstrous god
of bodkin and thimble

broke open till all was out
I saw no paper question it

as silver as music
the water here

we find the town beside the fort
a contingency unsettled in sand

news here in Cuba signifies little
but to say that something comes


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 3 April 1663.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Night Feeding

This entry is part 6 of 15 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Spring 2016

Last night I woke again
from fitful sleep and heard
the wind’s high whistling—

white-throated, mouth pursed
on its way from one end of that
unimaginable island called infinity

to the other. Which is to say,
I’ve heard before this song
it sings, always an octave higher

than the notes I ping on the rim of my
dented cup. And if it is indeed infinity
that feeds this cycle of wailing, this

song conjuring elegy upon elegy,
where does it learn to make things up?
Night opens its caves of hungry cries

in search of any warm breast
to drink from— With effort I remind
myself I’m not being called by name.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.