Here I Rest My All - Gedartes

 I included this poem in my book as a response to your poem. Some folks got curious about you and margarete so i showed your book and read your interview online.

I wrote this poem as an antiphon to your poem at the religious congress in Anaheim. It was raining that night.

So first i read tennyson to my family

Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies, I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower—but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is.

Ged sent Yesterday at 20:43

Then your poem

Ged sent Yesterday at 20:43

I read neruda

Ged sent Yesterday at 20:43

Then your poems

Then i showed them the paintings of kandinsky and had some comparative amateur analysis with some of your poems.

You know what. This world this time is different. I don’t think I’m crazy to say your writing is far superior than the usuals. I personally admire your works more than Nerudas. I love Neruda but sounds cheesy when I translate his poems in Filipino—it’s like watching a telenovela.

Ged sent Yesterday at 21:20

Subjective yes one may say but hey it’s a matter of aesthetic sense.

That can happen again and again; but who can argue with the finished work? Looking back at the lives of the greats who weren’t widely acknowledged in their time, you begin to think what’s for the masses. Should I give in and compromise the language? When Beethoven was asked why symphony no.7 is more famous than the 8th, Beethoven said because 8th is better. Don’t know if that is true but same goes with other artists—in music arts literature etc.

You sent Yesterday at 21:26

Ged sent Yesterday at 21:28

When I read your book I thought I was in a time machine or inside an old camera.

Ged sent Yesterday at 21:28

A different lens

HERE I REST MY ALL

-Gedartes

Here I rest my all

in some bread

across the sacred;

in some solitudes passing

through your skin.

Here I rest my heart in midnight rain

as you fall asleep;

your dreams- my songs

in ripples and sloping winds;

your arms- a flock of sheep;

unfenced;

like mists in the landscape,

like landscapes in the mist;

and your eyes closed,

and I remain

dripping- a phrase

of shutters and gutters.

Consider this as a prayer,

if you must,

and I will end it

with a dance.

Ganap Na Loob - Gedartes

 Ganap Na Loob is essentially a poetry book, but it also includes notes and journals about creative and spiritual experiences; dreams and memories; philosophies and theological stirrings. The book posts the question of authentic presencing in the light of never ending events in ordinary time. Through the relational event between the reader and the poem, one will experience each creative moment to contemplate and awaken the inner self in a prayerful atmosphere. Ganap Na Loob, as a method of theology, is an affirmation of God’s spontaneous and creative way of communicating His Divinity and Humanity to each of us towards a deeper love and communion.

Bird Fanciers' Lung...

 

The doctors of Luckycola were overrun with nervous mothers and their asthmatic school children, their breathing thinned and made ragged by the fine feathers that fell hourly, forming
drifts of down against buildings and light-posts. That winter,
when thousands of elderly men and women succumbed to a
pernicious type of pneumonia, the crisis was attributed to a rare
respiratory condition, known euphemistically to specialists as
Bird Fanciers’ Lung.

At the height of the pneumonia epidemic, President Ongresowa had stood in a white drift on the steps outside the Sunshine Circus and had spoken to the people of Incognita. It had
always been thus, the President had pointed out. The country of
Incognita had always been at risk of being over-run by migratory
birds. The last of the gaps in the great wall would finally be
filled in, he told the people, and a million square metres of
flight-proof netting would temporarily protect the eastern seaboard from the plague of predatory birds.

WIRTSCHAFTSWUNDER DAY, an excerpt...

 

The President practiced his speech one last time, while
watching his reflection in the double doors that would soon
open for him to proceed onto the steps of the Sunshine Circus.
Peeping through a gap in the drapes, President Ongresowa saw
that the citizens of Luckycola were gathered expectantly in the
square. Pulling his stomach in and tightening his belt, he stepped
out through the double doors, followed by the Parliamentarians
and the upper echelons of the military. He lifted his right arm to
quell a wave of murmuring and whispering that suddenly rushed
through the crowd.

‘People of the country of Incognita,’ he began. High above
the square, Berisha Begari looked down from his perch two
hundred metres above the cupola of the Sunshine Circus.
‘People of Incognita,’ the President repeated, suddenly made
uneasy by the eerie stillness that now emanated from the 

enormous crowd.
‘I am your father,’ the President proceeded, suddenly unable
to remember his prepared speech. ‘You are my children, and,
like a good father, it is my sacred duty to protect my family
from the Outsiders.’
The President stopped and waited. Usually, the word ‘Outsiders’ 

was a trigger for uproarious cheering and applause. This

year, the President found himself gulping and running a finger
around inside his collar, which suddenly felt too tight. The
President cleared his throat.
‘ . . . from the Outsiders,’ he repeated.
At last, someone in the front of the crowd raised an arm, and
the President prepared himself for a cry of patriotism and
nationalistic punching of the air. However, the cry that issued
from the citizen was not Hurray for the President!, but a timid
Boo! that echoed from one side of the square to the other, and
was accompanied by the unexpected landing of an ovoid missile
at the President’s feet.
Before the Riot Police could intervene, an avalanche of offensive 

missiles had been launched from the sleeves and the pockets
of the people of Incognita. The crowd surged forward as one,
and the Riot Police ordered their Border Monkeys to disperse
the yelling and enraged crowd. However, the Border Monkeys
would not move, transfixed, as they were, by a white gorilla that
had waddled to the steps of the Sunshine Circus and shoved the
President out of centre stage.
No one knew what language it was that Snowflake the White
Gorilla spoke to the Border Monkeys. Some said, later, that he
had spoken to them of the dignity and pride in being a wild
monkey, and the shame and despair of being man’s servant.
Whatever it was that the white gorilla said, it was enough to
persuade the Border Monkeys to restrain their partners from
intervening in the mêlée. Just when the President thought that
the situation could not get worse, two or three hundred Outsiders 

marched on the square, followed by thousands of limping
ranks of geese, ducks, hens and turkeys. 

 

Feedback from Pete Hay in response to my poem, Drum...

 I think this is beautiful. It captures the 'love it and hate it' confusion even we fiercest of island patriots possess. And as for the power in the closing stanzas - absolutely unforgettable.

DRUM

These are my familiars:

a white gum veiled in a weaving of shadow,

stringy trunks leaning, one hip pushed to the side

as though an infant might be perched on each bulge.

*

I have lived here, in another lifetime.

Anorexic gums line the road,

reminding me of strangers’ funerals

when I was young.

*

Wattles have cropped up like weeds, as they always do.

A young pine forest, three power lines, arsenic posts.

Someone has written DRUM on the Pass Cyclists Safely sign,

and a No Trespassing addendum warns of 24 hour surveillance-

*

it is like a post-modern Lord’s Prayer.

I once camped in bush like this, but can’t imagine,

these days, setting up a tent amongst the trees.

I was twenty. Such things were possible- though,

*

even then, a murderer lurked behind every tree.

I wonder if newcomers sense it? the murderous intent?

the psycho-pathology of barbed wire fences?

the inanity of graffiti’d messages that mean nothing?

*

Clouds trundle overhead,

closing in the afternoon.

There is something sinister in this island.

We don’t belong.

Note: Pete Hay: These days, [though], Hay prefers to write in more creative modes. He has published six volumes of poetry; one of these as editor, and one, Last Days of the Mill, in collaboration with a visual artist (this book won the People’s Choice Award at the 2013 Tasmanian Book Prize). His most recent books of poetry are Girl Reading Lorca (Picaro, 2015) and Physick (Shoestring, 3016). He also writes personal essays (collected in 2002 as Vandiemonian Essays, with a second volume planned for 2017), commentary (including a stint as a newspaper columnist), and history.