Rina Angela Corpus

This business of words
can make you either
prosperous or bankrupt
depending
on the purpose
with which you propel
the weight of your investment.

First, lay out to yourself
your portfolio of intentions:
the wish to use your gift
to open paths beyond your own gain
that they may moor
your world
to some state more secure
invested in eternal currencies
of truth, benevolence and high-
mindedness.

Choose to eschew
the handling of your assets
with uncaring self-
interest. Learn
from past deficits
how mindless speculation
is like throwing seeds
on famished ground.

Know how words are not just
discardable appellations,

how they thrive munificently
in clearest,
purposeful minds.

Here, ready this space.

Unclutter minds
deliriously engaged in such
habits cacophonous.

Disarm men of the weight
of their noxious weapons
of anger and distrust.

Unlock doors long latched in the clasp
of sorrow and unforgiving.

Begin to sing to them this song
soundless yet euphonious,
this language innate
to God and the angels.

Unfurl with your gaze, gentlest,
this message unflinching
of every soul’s native dignity.

Teach them finally how to sit
above themselves and return
to our shared place of origin
in peace, in stillness.

(New Year’s Day 2013)

The air is stripped of inanities tonight
and I grow breathless seeing
an apparition of the city sky, revealing
a golden host aureoled in light.

From my window, I decipher
the profile of a man’s face
etched on her cheek.
But the towering condominiums,
now mushrooming the city,
pitifully diminish her royalty
into a minute disc.

I go to sleep and memorize
the image of her in mind:
infinitesimal like the tiny point of light
now resting
behind these eyes.

Our mouths used to choke
with cries
to a god
we called father

Such helpless-
ness is hard to spell
spoken best in silence
as the priests’ voices

rise in sermons
to punctuate each syllable
of our scripted faith

where He is
the One holy man
while we are
unsaid silences
disciplined consciences aside

heeding Him, praising Him
until we grow
weary of litanies
to opulent phalluses,
cold Caucasian saints

until we learn to beseech salvation
from within us
our m/other gods.

We now learn to invoke souls
long gone
out of His cathedrals
ornate erections all
that we now castrate

as we ritualize our refusal
to choke ourselves with cries
and call god father.