INDONESIA

jpenha@cbn.net.id 

Moon Beach
Lombok Island, Indonesia

I have lived a moonless life
one so electrified
by the generation around me
by the night dome twinkling with stars
in homage to technicolor stars the size of a parthenon,
myths that recur every two hours until the earth
itself is converted,
Diana has never heard
me pray to her.

I have sung in tracks,
lived in zooms and pans;
I have thought 
montage; I loved
on cue
on screen.

Yet on this beach
islanders find
me each night
of the full moon
in light plashed
sun to son
without interposition
of celluloid
painted under arcs and chips
and sprockets.

If I were who I was
I’d be a wolf
or a vampire
or a taxidriver in town
but this movie must be mine
now that you face me here
in the moonlight
expecting no plot
to thicken.

Heir Today

so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
--Elizabeth Bishop

I wait for my mother’s demise as
if it were no disaster, no
end but so natural
and assuredly supernatural

for her who has the faith I lack
though no fingers that can dial for help
or time or grip life like 
I do a handphone against loss or disconnection.

So I feel certainty
inevitably for her.
And I expect to see it
through to my own next day.

The selfish gene survives because
its matter matters more than hers
who gave it.

Ode On A Night Flight

To thy high requiem become a sod.

And so Keats becomes me
now I’m twice his age
and half the man
(less the poet) but
my era of his obsessions
lately has begun:
the delicacy of the lift and the turbulence,
the confidence that this flight
will end
in a stall soon or in a blast
or quietly as scheduled
from the moment of departure.
Land we will,
are. But the future of these images
is not so certain surely
and thus the hope in uncertainty
keeps us aloft.

© Copyright, James Penha.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.