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