(Below is a Fiber-Glass artwork "PLAY-TIME WITH MIRO'" that I happen to have made and fortunately exhibited at Green Belt 3, Makati City as a finalist at the Instituto Cervantes "Letras Y Figuras" Art Competition 2004)





STAINED-GLASS EYES

By: Gerry N. Peralta


First the mind’s a frame

Of black curves and dark designs


Twisting and conjoining steel

To form the image of immanent glass


Then Aztec gold is slowly laved,

Here, and Mandarin orange,

There, royal blue beside emerald green,

Deep purple conniving

With amber


Slot by slot-

Till the whole is a class act


Of light dazzling through matter

In a ménage a trois with color.


But everything is a play on the eye-

Like a slide on television


HXK-2, the chemical for ice boxes

And bathtubs, is stirred

With a dollop of hardener,


Then poured quickly on glass fibers,

That tighten instantly

Into pure plastic!


No matter-


The Sunday churchgoer

Looks up and beholds

What he believes in


Heaven, the saints and angels,

Garden of Eden, creation!


The word made glass-


Stained by his own eyes!






SANS PINCE-NEZ

By Gerry Peralta

I remove, when I write,
My reading glasses
The more to blur the edges
So words take on a shade
All their own

Darker, than the ribbon
In my typewriter
Softer, than onion skin paper

Then the dot in “icon” becomes
A halo, the “H” in Hell
Grows horns
In mantra the “a's” develop an aura
And the “o” in God
Becomes a heavenly host!

Even the haha in brouhaha goes
“hahaha”!

Then when I put my glasses back on
The words take on-
A glaring clarity
Meant more for my proof reader and/or
Editor

Go ahead, read again this poem
Sans pince-nez

See for yourself!

DALI’S ‘SLEEP’

By: Gerry N. Peralta


He winks in his dream

The nose proud even in sleep

And though absent

I see a mustachio

Waxed and curled to the tip

Like eyes on a peacock feather


I wouldn’t be surprised if he slept

With the other eye wide open

For he saw the innermost dreams


Of Narcissus waking from water

Of a man cradled in crucifixion

Of time melting into stupor

Or the eye itself encrusted with jewels

Or sticking out of a walking stick

Or glaring at the projected light of film


I guess his ego never slept

I imagine it as an eyeball

Caroming and careening

In the vast spaces of his works



I hear it as thunder

That is in fact laughter

Masquerading as a snore


But what are these thin sticks

That prop his face, his sleep?

These miniature creatures

Whose eyes one couldn’t even glimpse


Are they how he saw himself?

TA'PIES

Ano ini, Ta'pies, tapuyas

Na sa lanob nag-dudumig?

O suka, bai baya, o sagmaw

Na initsa kan pirot na katabang?


O bangraw na nalipudan

Kan dampog asin dagang nag-sasangaw?


O bangraw daw

Na nag-kukurahaw nin kamurawayan

Na natamu'rakan kan nag-iitom

Na bulan?


O suka na nagsusuriyaw

Nin anggot na napupuot

Na sa tulak dai natutunaw?


Bul-bul na nagbubulos paitaas?


Dugi' na may dugi o

Daga' na may daga,


Bako daw?


Nudi ini gayod lanob man sana

Na saaga pipinturahan na

Nin pink asin blue

Kan MMDA,

Ay isus.


(June 21 2010)

MIRO'


The beams floating effortlessly

in mid-air, turn into mobiles

of equation

bobbing up and down into

see-saws of equanimity

in an equality of the senses,

a sense of completeness

and clean-ness,

that only marbles of glass

and stainless steel rods

possess, yet is possessed

by a liquidness of lines,

straight lines that, when ogled

with keen interest, ripple with pleasure

sometimes the triangle visits

with curvature, grace under

curvature, that bends into micro-organisms

of sheer delight, geometric yogurt

that blend, equally, joy and math

in an equalness the universe only

knows.

(6/20/10)

WARMTH OF PUREST WEAVE

WEAVE

By: Gerry Peralta


How I slept, cried and crawled
By your leg, feet and thigh

On your newly woven mat

As the light of the moon
And the heat of the sun

Crept in and out
Of the bamboo window's
Criss-crossed frames

And the Northerly and Easterly
Blew over and under
The floor slats

As your fingers pushed the straw
With just the right tightness
And softness

I remember as warmth
Of purest weave

Now that I myself sit
On the newly woven mat

With a child beside me
Sound asleep.






GOOGLE EARTH


(For Jun Orense- Oct. 22, 2009)

By: Bob Peralta


When you passed on to the other world,
I Google Earthed- 'Albay Cemetery',
Swooping down Mayon volcano as the lens
zoomed in to a funeral procession
in my realm of mind

But I could not go as low as the streets,
The way I could in the States,
To Arlington perhaps or where Michael Jackson
Now lies; or to where the 'Imagine' circle is-
in Central Park.

All for the better.

Because when I saw Mayon straight down
without any of its cracks, making it perfect
The way it was when we were kids,

I saw you also with your young face-
Perfect in its apparition of reality

Then a segue of sepias blooming
Penaranda Park, by way of
mudflow gully, where we used to play,

Zentro, where we used to drink
The night into yet another evening
Your piano fingers tinkling the days
into bright smiling teeth

Thankful that I was far away
And that no satellite
Need bring me any closer
To the truth
That you will always be there

Where no Google Earth
Could ever snoop
Or follow....

SI MAMAY

Ni: Gerardo N. Peralta


Si Mamay kong Mayon
Nagmamamá na naman
Namumula-pula an ngudoy
Nagdudugo-dugo an liwuy
Atyan káyan makuspa ka na naman
Sa panginuron!

Ata hari bayá magparamamá
Abó na ning saimong abo
Pagtugá baya na dai ka na matuga
Pundo na ning saimong bisyo!

Nudi kun paghorop-horopon
Kun an saimong dai pagtuga
Senyas na kan saimong kagadanun
Hala sige na lugod Mamay kong Mayon
Pagmamá na lugod gilayon!

May 15 2010
THERMOMETER
By: Gerry Peralta


Still as a thermometer
That remembers your last fever
Forever at 40
The mercury is unmercurial
In its silvery sleep
I whip it and whip it again
Hoping for normal at 37,
But it remains un-wakened
From deep slumber


So I whip it,and whip it again
Shake it and shake, whip it and whip
Till its scales shatter
Into a thousand globules
Of silver...

Silent, in slo-mo, I try to grasp
One last glob in the air,
But it slips from my fingers and breaks
Into still a thousand pin-points
Of light..

Never again to be 37
Or 40.





PEPE
(SMITH’S SOLILOQUY)


I am mummified!

Dead to the world!


My esophagus, a sarcophagus

Limned with the secret recipes

Of the afterworld


My voice- a pharaoh’s pharynx

Ever rising like the phoenix

Now a larynx

Long as the Nile

Gone dry


My skin- precarious as papyrus

Or rolling paper entombed in a wallet

For over half a century

Crackling

Before being lit


They want me tame and silent

As a sphinx!

But they cannot scoop out

My heart of song,

Our song, ‘Ang Himig Natin’

My gift of living tongue

To a people who only sang

My last name’s tunes


They cannot embalm the soul

Of rock, try as they might

To squeeze it dry

Of it’s labyrinthine juices


Nor can they severe or cut

My guts- to go the distance

Of the solitary path

And deliver the mall rats

Like the sixties rat packs


Out of slavery!





CLOCKS


By our midnight

When we all become clocks

The long hand ticking in reverse

Racing the shorter other

To who knows where


We suddenly feel counterclockwise

Our springs and gears

Rusting spontaneously

The invisible space

Between battery and coil

Oxidizing a shade brown

Reversing its polarity


Our self worth becoming a pendulum

That at one high point refuses

To swing back

Or does so longingly, grudgingly,

Slow as time unwinding

Ever wider, ever slower


In the end we will all cease

To tick

Analogue or digital

No exceptions

Not even the person

Who invented the clock

Whoever he was, bless his soul

Or discovered time

From infinite non-existence

BALAG-BLOG

BALAGBAG- Bicol word for something lying perpendicular to and on the street. Blocking passage, a physical nuisance or irritation to passersby.

That's what this blog will be, virtually, a BALAG-BLOG. An irritating nuisance. Shout-out in your face blog.

Nah! maybe ten years ago, when I was 20 years younger.

Now its just going to be an arthritic piece of wood too early for treat or trickin'.