Money Dance

another money poetry dance photo

2005-10-11T23:56:00.000-07:00

Us coming off the dance floor. You can see the poems printed on paper with blue ribbon attached to them so they can be pinned.

money dance picture

2005-10-11T14:35:00.000-07:00

Here's one with me dancing with my cousin. You can see one of Nick's vispos on the front of my malong.

213 by Jose Garcia Villa

2005-10-04T02:04:00.000-07:00

from the Anchored Angel edited by Eileen Tabios

     I demand brilliance and
Consecration.  Because of a star.
How beautiful is the light like
Grass!  Love is not far
Nor your hand.
                       This being so
Love me well, love me well.
Because what Love is
I saw
           I saw Love well:
Love tied a bell
To your heart. Love said, Kiss
Him and let your heart ring.
And this is the thing.

moon and mountain

2005-10-02T10:03:00.000-07:00

Jean sent this visual poem that reminded me of the moon rising over a California ridge. Made out of our very own invitation envelope at that!

Radiance

2005-09-30T15:58:00.000-07:00

RADIANCE (Footnote # 72)

Tell me more of the unending radiance
your eyes discovered when pressed

against the hole into a honeycomb.
Say turquoise. Say my uncut hair

coiling around your eyes. Say berry.
Say your finger circled hard around

my toe. Tell me more of the unending
radiance erupting when eyes pressed

against honeyed wombs. Say my name.
You don't know my name? Make it

up. Then say my name. Tell me more
of the unending radiance of honeyed eyes.

------
from Eileen Tabios' I TAKE THEE, ENGLISH, FOR MY BELOVED (Marsh Hawk Press, New York, 2005)

The Cinnamon Peeler and the Pope

2005-09-21T23:53:00.000-07:00

Two poems contributed by Bec. Thanks, Bec! Keep sending those poems in, I've got 30 plus tables to fill, plus reading poetry at this late stage in the game is comforting and relieves me of my fret and stress I feel sometimes creeping into my body.

The Cinnamon Peeler by Michale Ondaatje

If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bard dust
on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you would never walk through markets
with the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
through you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbor to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
-- your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers...

When we swam once
I touched you in water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said

        this is how you touch other women
the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume

                  and knew

        what good is it
to be the lime burner's daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in the act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.

You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler's wife. Smell me.

Abyss by Karol Wojtyla
Abyssus abyssum invocat (Deep calleth on deep - Psalm 41)

You always see it as space
filled with cascades of air
where glass splinters reflect and glitter
like seeds planted in distant stones.

Now observe the abyss that glitters
in the eye's reflection.
We all bear it in us.
When men are gathered together
they shift the abyss like a boat
on their shoulder.

Nothing to bypass in this commotion.
Take a ray from the eye and write
your sign.
Though you see no abyss in the mind
don't imagine that it is not there.
Light may not reach your sight, but the boat
shifts on to your shoulders;
the abyss is clothed in flesh,
become Fact
in all men.

Carbonator Cash

2005-09-16T09:11:00.000-07:00

Nick is sending Carbonator Cash for the money/poetry dance! yay!

Release the Wheel by Wei-Ming Dariotis

2005-09-14T14:24:00.000-07:00

Release the Wheel

Confessions of longing are inappropriate between friends
When, within reach is a diagonal,
a Market Street,
a slicing between things north and south.
Contours used to delineate the boundaries I’ve crossed:
I’ve left my own neighborhood
to get here.

Which is a moment of yielding, so I beg you,
“Gesture, something, anything; suggest
something.” Regret everything and forget
the directions
I gave you.

There are too many
one ways
with you strapped
in over there
and me in the driver seat
over here.

On the one side, there is a downtown
on the other, an
inability
to breathe.
I feel each cell
in my body like seeing stars
shimmer in cold air.
I concentrate on the Pleiades.

They are my heart, my Noe Valley,
Just concentrate;
One breath in, one breath
Out.

Don’t make any mistakes.

On one side is what
must be said. On the other
everything
I wish could be communicated.

Just let me drive you through
the City; let’s cruise the China
Basin, hit
Twin Peaks in a snowstorm
and we would find ourselves. One
breath in, one out,
and my hand, slowly
releasing

two haikus by Tina Bartolome

2005-09-11T21:05:00.000-07:00

Love
Lifts some scar in us
put there by someone we don’t
even remember

Kiss Muna
Our lips pull the tide
Into a full moon kiss then
Push back out to sea

Trill & Mordent

2005-09-08T00:53:00.000-07:00

From Luisa Igloria's soon to be released, "Trill & Mordent" WordTech Editions, September 2005; 2004 Editions Poetry Prize Runner-up.

IF THE POEM WERE GLASS

Kung kristal ang tula, manginginig akong hawakan.
(If the poem were glass, I would tremble from merely holding, from being held.)
- Rebecca Añonuevo

Who was it said each thing that meets
the other meets itself ? Meeting what quickens
though is tinged with regret, I am the face
that floats beneath the water of itself,
that counts the passing stars and branches
overhead, wanting to attend to their beauty
before their waning, wanting to forestall
the eventual farewell for as long as the world
grants pardon. If I close my eyes the faraway
mountains return: their outlines of pine, each
outcropping of rock etched against the silence
which holds what cannot unburden its heart
completely to language, to falling leaves,
to water. Thin flute of crystal—If nothing else,
at least the gift of being seen, especially before
the pour of amber. Taste of the fermented
grape, preserved, transformed: extracted wealth
that might have never been, that slides from one
scale now to the other— from glass to tipped-back
throat so only warmth remains, as in that rim
that flushes at the border of night and day. Before
the world is flooded with plainness, before the vines
return to their patient work among the trellises.
Before the careful hand rinses the glass and returns it to
the paneled cabinet, where other fragile vessels
rest in attention— aware of how the slightest motion
could set the whole transparent shelf to ringing.

BRAID

Bound like a double helix, two strands embrace
a life of thirds. What separates, what brings together?

I'm bound to the summons of everyday: each graveled surface, its
raised letters. Slivers escape between windows shuttered together,

unable to hold back a spill of light. Closer to their source, could I
not want for more. Shards picked from the beach, singly or together—

pages of sand, dense novels with tiny print. Even the bottle's discarded cork,
sliced thin, reveals hives and cellular structures, complex ties alive together

with already disintegrating matter. In the end, a simple picture: shadow of a curve,
gray diffraction photograph where strands have overlapped and together,

form an x. I read there are atoms which like to sit next to each
other. Only a life, narrow as a grosgrain ribbon; its moments together

answering another. Surely a generosity absolves;
evidence grows richer by the hour, the crystallized forms together

with undiscovered parts of more mysterious nature. New
knowledge supplants old, in science and history together

with all the arts which hollow out this space— How it enfolds
all that's been given, how it revises. What design? Together

in the same crucible, the heat beneath the glass; quick melting
mercury. The iron ball and feather dropped from a tower, together

gathering speed— O, but I recognize that careening, the equal effects of
the heart's turning toward the same gravity, that spiraling and marvelous together.

Then the suffeRING

2005-09-07T14:58:00.000-07:00

From Leny:

FOR MICHELLE AND RHETT ---

First the engagement ring,
Then the wedding ring,
Then the suffer-ing.

This is Lolo’s blessing.

Wise and sentient,
He reminds the couple:
Ecstasy will pass.

Life is suffering.
May your wedding
Provide the core,

Heart and soul
Making Suffering
Sweet and bearable.

The Diamond Trading Company - Just Glittering with Feminism

2005-09-07T14:56:00.000-07:00

THE DIAMOND TRADING COMPANY-
JUST GLITTERING WITH FEMINISM!!

YOUR LEFT HAND SAYS YOU'RE TAKEN. YOUR
RIGHT HAND SAYS YOU CAN TAKE OVER.
YOUR LEFT HAND CELEBRATES THE DAY
YOU WERE MARRIED. YOUR RIGHT HAND
CELEBRATES THE DAY YOU WERE BORN. WOMEN
OF THE WORLD, RAISE YOUR RIGHT HAND.

__________________
Poem is written with the text of an advertisement by the Diamond Trading Company.
First published in Eileen Tabios' poetry collection POST BLING BLING (Moria Books, Chicago, 2005)

from my Honors Spanish 3 teacher

2005-08-17T00:37:00.000-07:00

A note that came with her RSVP:

Michelle: Here are 2 very special poems that I teach in Honors Spanish 3 (did I have you in that class?) If so, you may remember them. Randy will.) Becquer is the Spanish equivalent of the English Romantics Keats, Byron, and Shelley. If you like then, you can use one or both. I took the liberty of translating them so you can use the English only if you wish. As always, there is a bit lost in the translation.

[poems by Gustavo Adolfo Béquer. translations by Betsy Norris]

Rima X

  Los invisibles átomos del aire
En derredor palpitan y se inflaman;
El cielo se deshace en rayos de oro;
La tierra se estremece alborozada;
Oigo flotando en olas de armonía
Rumor de besos y batir de alas;
Mis párpados se cierran...¿Qué sucede?
--¡Es el amor que pasa!

Rhyme X

  Invisible atoms of the air
Throb and burst into flame everywhere;
The sky unfolds in rays of gold;
The earth trembles joyfully;
I hear floating in waves of harmony
The murmur of kisses and beating of wings;
My eyes close...What is happening?
--It is love passing by!

Rima XXI

  ¿Qué es poesía? dices mientras clavas
En mi pupila tu pupila azul;
  ¿Qué es poesía? ¿Y tu me lo preguntas?
        Poesía...eres tú.

Rhyme XXI
  What is poetry? you say as you gaze
In my pupil your blue pupil;
  What is poetry? And you ask me?
        Poetry...is you.

[I don't even remember if I was in Honors Spanish 3, though I do remember taking some kind of Spanish 3 class my senior year. Then again, I missed every Friday class (for good reasons!) And for people who need those special accented characters and upside down question marks, Go here.]

I'll take two

2005-08-16T00:08:00.000-07:00

I'm going to agree with Sister Mary in liking Pablo Neruda. I think I'll use the first two for the poetic money dance. "The Slip" is feeling a bit too dark for a wedding.

Pear by Ivy Alvarez

2005-08-11T14:55:00.000-07:00

Here's a delicious excerpt of Ivy Alvarez's Pear:

As the pear ripens into its blush
and, once teeth bites its rough circle, rusts,
so does my gaze comfortably rest
on yours, and resting feels lush,

----

and here's wishing her good publishing vibes for the rest of the poem!

Full Moon

2005-07-19T23:33:00.000-07:00

Had to grab a poem by the Fiance:

Full Moon

when
the fullness
of the moon

strikes
the color
of my skin

my
mind reverberates
back to beginning

Rosalie Zerrudo

2005-07-14T23:41:00.000-07:00

I'm also flipping through my collection of books for poems and other pieces to use in the money dance. Alot of wedding couples distribute a CD of their favorite love songs, why can't we distribute our favorite poems?

These are by Rosalie Zerrudo who was my gracious hostess when I stayed in Camiguin, Mindanao, Philippines for a week and arranged for me to have that most memorable experience of teaching kali to locals there. She manages Tarzan's Nest, a delightful treehouse resort.

Alchemy of Love

Like the falling leaf
touching the lily in a pond
destiny brought me back
to your hand
Just as the tarot card
revealed the unknkown
we were gently guided and blessed
by the omens of a storm
the volcanic hot spring
favored our shivering skin
while we listened to the sweet
tete-a-tete at the foot
of a mountain
The Jedi's fearless, uncompromising
heart is rare
so free, that even the loneliest
woman is not free spared
let this alchemy teach me more
to free myself
from the fear of losing
and the dangers of owning
and when some other day
you choose to deserve me
please come early,
so in this lifetime
together we can share
more love, music, and tea...
--from "Poems of Selfhood" Road Map Series, Vol 3 No 2. Davao City, Philippines. 2003

The Awakening

Awakening

Emanating clear sky
Touches a deep blue ocean
Downpour of sweet rain
Song of a swan

Lotus flower unfolding
Earth flower everywhere
Butterflies hovering
Each one has a place

Everything has a purpose
Everyone has a role to play
The master is the self
The heart, the soul
The truth is "I"

The soul shines
My life is here and now
This is a reality
I deserve to live
An even happy life
--from "Poems for Daydreamers, Moonbathers, Stargazers, Mountain Climbers, Lovers" Road Map Series, Vol 2 No 27, Davao City, Philippines. Revised Reprint 2003

; Hope for Enchantment

2005-07-13T13:16:00.000-07:00

Submitted by Eileen. First published in The Hamilton Stone Review.

; HOPE FOR ENCHANTMENT
by Eileen Tabios

; the redhead during Verdi

; solitary breakfasts persisting to form such a long row

; rain, then a dangerous happiness

; her gown extends her skin

; you bookstopping a row of muddied dreams

; clarity - the wake of a bold breeze

; bells

where I thought the quote came from

2005-07-13T13:15:00.000-07:00

I thought the quote my sister submitted was the Lisa Ann Womack song, "I hope you dance". I don't know if this will fit on the piece of paper.

Here are the song's lyrics:

I hope you never lose your sense of wonder,
You get your fill to eat but always keep that hunger,
May you never take one single breath for granted,
GOD forbid love ever leave you empty handed,
I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean,
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens,
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.

I hope you dance....I hope you dance.

I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance,
Never settle for the path of least resistance,
Livin' might mean takin' chances but they're worth takin',
Lovin' might be a mistake but it's worth makin',
Don't let some hell bent heart leave you bitter,
When you come close to sellin' out reconsider,
Give the heavens above more than just a passing glance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.

I hope you dance....I hope you dance.
I hope you dance....I hope you dance.
(Time is a wheel in constant motion always rolling us along,
Tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder where those years have gone.)

I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean,
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens,
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.

Dance....I hope you dance.
I hope you dance....I hope you dance.
I hope you dance....I hope you dance..
(Time is a wheel in constant motion always rolling us along,
Tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder where those years have gone.)

Anonymous

2005-07-13T13:13:00.000-07:00

My sister's favorite:

"Life may not be the party we hoped for... but while
we are here we might as well dance." - Unknown Author

If anyone knows where this quote really originated from, let me know!

Shall we Dance?

2005-07-12T13:41:00.000-07:00

I'm going to use this blog to post the various poetic currency that is coming our way for our wedding. Here's the post from my other blog:

Monday, July 11, 2005

money money money

One of the things the Fiance is looking forward to is the money dance. Who can blame him? He's getting paid to dance with all these lovely women. Now of course the idea of the money dance is to start the newlyweds on a positive cash flow note.

Now a couple of years ago, Eileen did the 6 directions exhibit where she requested poems from all over the world to pin on her original wedding dress, because well, she was getting married to poetry gourd head and all. And ever since then, I've thought about this idea of pinning poetry onto wedding dresses, because frankly, money is nice, but I could use a romantic verse or two. And as we plan this wedding we are trying to integrate and incorporate the important areas of each other's life into the ceremony and reception. I liked Eileen's so much, I'm going to steal it for my own wedding.

SO, after getting approval from the Fiance, here's the plan:

Send us your poems or exerpts of your poems or quote your favorite poem, provided the text fits onto a piece of paper 2.5"x 6" or 6" x 2.5" (the size of a dollar bill) to michelleandrhett (at) gmail (dot) com. Send text files, word files, jpgs, however you'd like to embellish this size of paper. AND on the day of the wedding, we will distribute these poems amongst the guest's tables for them to pin on us, the bride and groom, with or without money or if they like it so much, they can keep the poems. Our wedding date is the 2nd Saturday in October, so if you get it in before September 15, I probably have enough time to print it out without my life getting too crazy.

The poems can actually be on just about anything. But ideally they deal with the kinds of things that are needed in a marriage: commitment, love, laughter, etc. or whatever else you think.

And yes, I'm serious. Poetry doesn't pay the rent, but I need a downpayment on my soul.
posted by Gura @ 11:01 PM
1 Comments:

EILEEN said...
YaY!!! Six Directions continues to expand!!!!
12:58 AM