Three Poems

ALLEGIANCE

It takes patience
to live with an octogenarian—

would have been simpler
to drop her
at Fairway Gardens
or Coronation Lodge,
let her see out her days

playing bowls,
watching matinees,
bingo on Tuesdays.

But our Filipino roots

would not allow it—

our customs,

chromosomes,

deoxyribonucleic acid;

retirement villages

with contrived names,

resident evenings

and chair yoga
unusual in Southeast Asia.

You must understand
I cherish my mother.
I want to look out for her,

to be her protector.
I don’t want
her to slip and fall,
to be sucked in
by a scammer,
to be treated
like a silly little old lady.

Here with us
she still makes dishes

from back home,

adobo, lumpia,

leche flan, halo-halo.

She still sings

love songs in Tagalog,

‘Dahil Sa Iyo’

and ‘Sampaguita’,

forever a romantic.

She still plays her ukelele

like there’s a fiesta
in our living room,
but sometimes I forget

the food, dance,

songs, laughs,
especially when I’m tired

and she asks me
to sort out problems

with her cell phone.

WHILE WALKING

I am not ready to leave my life, when that day arrives, I wish there was more talk about it, I know it is morbid but we tend to avoid it, I  have no God to give me solace, He was put forward when I was a  girl,  his white linen robe,  his leather sandals,  his long grey beard,  but I could not accept what those Irish nuns tried to teach me  and no one has convinced me since,  not Allah,  Yahweh, Vishnu,  Shiva,  I will  miss my sons,  my dogs,  my random thoughts,  my books,  my  friends,  my evening walks,  I am bummed to think a day will come when there will be just the shell of  me, no more  seeing  with  these eyes,  hearing with  these ears,  touching with  these hands, I will say it again, I do not believe I will meet my maker, the only Nirvana I know for sure hailed from Seattle, the great grunge band with lead  singer Kurt, I cannot recall his surname, he was young when he died,  a prodigious musician,  a husband, a father, did Kurt imagine he would meet God I wonder, oh now I remember, his last name was Cobain. 

NOT WHAT YOU WANTED

I could have been your Boadicea,
your blossoming lavender in July,
your secret treehouse, your starfish in a rock pool,
I could have been your dirty girl who did all the things you wanted,

whenever you wanted.
I could have been your underwater cave, your shy muse,
a sweet voice singing in the distance,
or a red helium balloon with “I Love You” written on it.
I could have been leaves doing amber backflips in the wind for you

or an abstract painting hanging on your wall.
I could have been your Azure Window,
your lighthouse, your pyramid, your temple,
maybe even your very own Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

Instead I was a meerkat hiding in a burrow, an insomniac,

a lover of benzodiazepines and Scrabble.
I was a dense thicket, a message in a bottle,
a rusty device with missing instructions,

a thrashing epileptic, a tea party for one,
a rock crab scuttling across the shore,
a signpost written in a foreign language.
I was a frantic pacer walking up and down,
an unlikely prophet who predicted terrible things

which came true.

But most of all I was midden,
animal bones, ash, mollusc shells,
glass shards, broken tools and fish hooks.