REMEMBRANCE

Passport to freedom, remembrance of Him.
Left in my desk under documents for men,
I, laden with baggage of anguish and rage,
Scramble to the corridor to the Curer's Store.

The burdens will not fit through the door.
I sit delirious among shrapnel, low jargon,
Bits of gossip and bungled memories--
My treasured bygones--these wounds
That make me feel human and alone.

Like a sleuth, I search through the mounds
Layered in the desk: the self-portrait with a twisted lip,
Chipped fetishes of adolescent adventures,
Lost chess pieces, fragments of fragrant letters,
Records of unpaid debts, the envelope that contains
Foreign stamps and a beaded necklace.

Under this I see the book of mystery
With cover worn and pages stained,
That conceals the elusive key.

Humbled and abashed,
I slowly turn the page
    and find His Remembrance.

                --  CS Cholas undated

 

 

 

 By the Sea of Galilee

Father, son, and daughter
Sit by water; the Sea of Galilee.
She strains her father's string of thought
With talk of agorot.

And though the dad gives him
His last shekel,
The son still wants to heckle.

Palms by the sea
Calm the sight with tranquility
As shadows cross the Golan heights.

Gulls escort the boat to shore.
For mere morsels
They show off for
Tourists who gladly give them more.

                        C.S. Cholas, March 17, 1996

 

 

 

Swimming in Streams of (Un)Consciousness

"Don't be dead or asleep or awake.
Don't be anything.
What you most want,
What you travel around wishing to find,
Lose yourself as lovers lose themselves,
And you'll be that." – Attar

 

 

We follow words down daydreams’ rivers
Laud the scope of their meaning
Yet remain aliens banned from their realms.

We track their sounds
Laughing at our insignificance.
Our persistent howls, unchaste and crude,
Echo through the halls of their castles
Of winding clauses, verbs of dance,
Nouns of steel, pauses with commas,
The Landlord tends to pots of speech yet to be spoken.
By chance, outsiders that we are, we beg
The Landlord, if we can, to borrow a dipper and sip
A few words to lure Undines* to change water into life.

-          C. S. Cholas, Sept 20, 2020 Arizona

 

*Undines:  Elemental beings associated with water, first named in the alchemical writings of Paracelsus. Spirits of the water world

 

 

Death in Grenada

                       -- from a street corner in
                          Castries, St. Lucia, Oct. 20, 1983

Today everything stopped.
The ground thumped
followed by a hard knot
on every street corner.

We crowded around our radios
for news of blood
unsettled confusion,
uncertain downfall
a touch
of every command being tested.

Man creates vacuums in paradise.
He divides all the trees
into splinters
and lets the fruit rot.

And death filled Grenada,
red scare,
on the day we remembered
the Birth of the Primal Point
in rarefied air
in prayer for the living
and for the dead.

                -- C.S. Cholas 

 

 

The Tumble

 

He replayed the descent repeatedly:

   the footpath that gave way under foot,

   the tumble upon the rocks.

   the gashes they left in his heart.

 

                              C. S. Cholas
                                     Edinburg, TX 1996

 

Reflection

He had (every) reason to be angry
And yet no reason at all;
Betrayed by love, by friends,
By superiors, yet
Befriended by the poor and lowly
Of the town.

Told to take a Hard look at himself,
He went to a nearby pond
Stared at his face in the subtle ripples
The distorted bending of his features,
‘til he threw not a pebble,
But a sizeable rock in the middle
Of his watery reflection and watched
His face explode into numberless bits
Of light, color and shadows on the surface.

It felt good to see his own form eventually
Come back together on the pond,
Gently wavering, slowly simmering
Into a clearer picture of who he was.

        C. S. Cholas, undated

 

                                ZARAGOSA VILLAGERS

                                    These flowers, when touched,

                                    Close up, and only slowly

                                    Show themselves again.

 

                                    How dry the roads here!

                                    Vendors plod home with their carts.

                                    Coins clink as they walk.

 

                                    Paths have long shadows.

                                    Fishermen wet with their catch;

                                    Youth dressed up for town.

 

                                    I know by your eyes

                                    That you've seen whales in the bay--

                                    So filled with wonder!

 

                                            -- C.S. Cholas   March 31, 1984 
                                            Loreto, Baja California Sur, Mexico

 

Freelance Dancer at the Plaza Bar in Veracruz

Dressed in gaiety, eyes ecstatic and face aflame
in sullied pants and the shine of black skin,
a sun bleached playera and sandals with torn straps,
you seek a brief escape from a melancholy heart.

Here in the festive plaza filled with movement and music
tempered by the sporadic round of church bells
on the far side of the fountain where the faithful sit
on stone benches amongst lovers and the homeless.

You dance alone, your hips and arms move,
twirling a red pañuela above your head.  Alone,
your body mimics the Latin beat and marimba groove,
as patrons sit sipping fermented spirits in sedentary peace.

You dance alone, half man, half ghost, between the band
and the end of the universe beyond the outdoor bar.

This is your uninvited chance to fit in
for a passing song on a makeshift stage
to tell the loved and self-assured that you are here;
your loneliness disguised in the sway of marimba and drums.

Do you hope that the band will play forever
dreadful of the empty night that will lurk
later in the dark street waiting to rob you once again?

The Caribbean melody nears it final refrain.                                                                                        As church bells remind the fearful                                                                                                            not to forget that hell is near,                                                                                                                you, the solitary dancer, lose yourself, even as a clown,
in the syncopated rhythm of the tropical night,                                                                              your pañuela whirls to celebrate a moment of mad freedom                                                          as the patrons of the bar applaud the band.

      -- C.S. Cholas                                                                                                                                                               Veracruz, Mexico, 18 June, 1995

 

Presidio–Ojinaga International Bridge, February 1984 

I came from the southwest by bus
I came from Chihuahua in the winter cold,
I came to Ojinaga to look around
I carried a list of friends to find. I did not know them.
The list was from someone else I knew who tried to live here once.
I found no one on the list and headed for the bridge to Presidio.

The narrow lane between fences crosses the river.
On this side the river is called Rio Bravo.
Once across it becomes the Rio Grande.

On this border only cold winds or hot sun greet the crosser.
This is the rule here. Today it is cold winds.
In a few months it will be hot sun.
I stand for a moment in freedom
At the midpoint on the bridge.
I am in the neutral zone that the river is allowed to own.

The river below, which seems neither great nor brave,
Long ago wearied of such childishness.
It has its own life to live: a course it has to follow
With its own limits and secret places.

Strange, that without its consent,
This thin, ugly thread of brown water
Should be used to divide so many lives
And test them in ways capricious and unfair.

         C. S. Cholas, February 1984