Dad Talks: Beside Sleeping Biboy

One day, you just dropped your toys,
stuffed them in old bags,
and threw them in the attic.

My childhood, too.

No more silly talks
and adventures in lost worlds;
no more tickles and soft cheeks to kiss.

No more childhood;
no more best friends
in Navy costumes and weird hats;
just plain dangerous adulthood.

An Icy Bag of Trinkets || John Pesebre

Take me to an ice-covered mountain
From where snowballs roll down
To a frozen lake below, like a set of
Marbles in the hand of a dead child.

Where the chill of the morning fog
Burns my skin, and freezes my tears
Like funny dew drops falling from
The roof sills down to a frigid earth.

There where no vultures stake out
And no bear lies in wait to ambush --
Just me and these little trinkets of pain
Rattling with the howling Siberian wind.

Sandburg's Fog || John Pesebre

"The fog comes
on little cat feet."

It touches your face
With its downy paw --
A tiny cool to your soul
Like the face of a sleeping child;
Then it moves on.

An Icy Bag of Trinkets || John Pesebre

Take me to an ice-covered mountain
From where snowballs roll down
To a frozen lake below, like a set of
Marbles in the hand of a dead child.
Where the chill of the morning fog
Burns my skin, and freezes my tears
Like funny dew drops falling from
The roof sills down to a frigid earth.
There where no vultures stake out
And no bear lies in wait to ambush --
Just me and these little trinkets of pain
Rattling with the howling Siberian wind.

A Poem of Headless Cockroach in Schopenhauer's Home || John Pesebre

Just so you know
I can't weep
I can't groan
I can't hear a thing
Coz I'm a headless roach
Scornful, stinky and stuck
In this dark and damp drawer
Waiting for nothing
Hoping for nothing
But because I'm a roach
Headless at that
I cannot go to nausea
Coz I was already nausea
Before I lost my head.

For Biboy (February 21, 2014) || John Pesebre

Press your downy cheeks
On my chest
And rest
Till I have gained something
From this small harvest
Of pain and hope

The worst foes || John Pesebre

(Credit)

too many beaches
too many trenches
too many bandages
a plot you recount
only to blow yourself up
inside a foxhole

the worst foes are those
that fight with you in the foxhole
who wreck your gun
and pull the pin on you

Pesebre: a poem || John Pesebre

(Credit)

a dawn of tears melts me
and i see the the sun tarry
to look at a world of pain
and unrequited love

a world that is awake with tears
and asleep in threat of bad dreams
from freaks, ogres & incubi
no rest for the weary

as that li'l babe in the manger
came to this world as King
yet laid not in wool, but hay
asleep not in a crib, but a trough

He came into this world
but His own knew Him not
accustomed to pain, He labored
to call His own with tears and blood.

-----
* Lucas 2:16 "Así que fueron de prisa y encontraron a María y a José, y al niño que estaba acostado en el PESEBRE."

Upon reading Andrew Sullivan's "I Used to be a Human Being" || John Pesebre

The first thing I did
after reading Sully's NYmag piece
was go to our fridge
and take out everything
esp those pieces of cereal
stuck inside the fridge drawer;
then I got a good cloth
and scrubbed the hell out of it,

until the fridge was as dead silent

and clean.

Then I picked all the real food
and slowly put them in
making a mental note where
a potato for example
would direct me to
gratitude


read Andrew Sullivan's "I Used to be a Human Being".

The outcast: epilogue to Sibbes' Bruised Reed

(Credit)

Some of us don't get far
Coz we just get tired;
But we don't coz we can't.
We are not big trees;
We are seeds
Stuck in a plaid of earth
With no grand tales,
Seem cursed and wan.
And as the great oaks
Ache to touch the sky,
We seeds stretch to tear
Our skin and bleed
For the first leaf to sprout
Weak and pale to look up,
To start a life of grief
and of pain and then

Gain.

We go on and do great things
With the li'l that we have.