Eileen Tabios

a poem

~*~

from “EVERYONE TOUCHED BY / LIGHT BECOMES / SAINT”
(—after David Baptiste-Chirot’s “After Rimbaud’s Illuminations”)

 

1.

After thick rain. 
Mud boiling
in

the dirt roads,
old logging
roads

leading uphill. Shattered
trunks. And
trees

still standing are
thin.  Early
evening.

We are drinking
cheap wine. 
If

the police find
us, we
can

say we’re drinking
not high
on

drugs. Not that
the police
come

up here anyway.
This, just
excuse

we use for
drinking.  This
cheap

shit we’re drinking—
you better
have

a good excuse for bad taste.

 

3.

Very dusty evening
at train
station. 

A hot wind
and lurid
sun

make the air
feel on
fire.

Standing waiting—long
line of
North-bound

Arab workers in
cheap suits
attached

to small bundles. 
Some Spaniards
stand

barefoot, craning necks
to peer
into

the incendiary distance. 
Station master
wears

long dirty mustache. 
Women in
Bright

robes with heads
covered hold
noisy

small children.  Some
young couples
locked

in embraces.  One
man has
hand

up his girl's
dress, and
she

her hand down
his pants. 
A

mother jerks a
gaping child
away. 

Some men laugh
while drinking
wine

sharing a large
wicker encased
bottle.

Light to the
East shimmers
gold. 

Everyone touched by
Light becomes
Saint

in an icon
in this
moment

in time.  From
the fiery
West

the train is approaching.  Soon all hell will let loose.

    
5.

We are trying
to sleep
on

a traffic island
on a
highway

somewhere near Lyon. 
There is
a

small roof for
some reason
here

that we have
crawled under. 
Raining

heavily.  So heavily
we can
barely

hear the sounds
of trucks
rushing

past.  We pull
out some
smokes

and bread.  My
friend is
crying. 

I can't cry
because I
am

older than him. 
I lie
back

and smoke.  The
smoke is
curling

and crashing against
this concrete
covering. 

Our world is going up in smoke and coming down like rain.

 

6.

This is a
very strange
place.

I am sitting
on the
edge

of a bed
looking out
the

window at a
small yard
flanked

by extensions of
this building
I

seem to be
in.  A
laundry

line hangs limp. 
A picnic
table

with a crow
perched on
it. 

The only sound
I hear
is

someone yelling loudly
over and
over

motherfucking motherfucker.  Light
contains a
yellow

tinge.  It slants
and makes
a

line separating light
from shadow
on

a building opposite. 
There’s an
alley,

narrow and partly
made of
bricks. 

A cat moves
slowly along
it.

The rest of
the area
is

brown and yellow
short grass
in

mud.  A man
is suddenly
here

looking at me. 
His face
is

quiet and his
eyes are
encyclopedias. 

You got time
to get
used

to it bro. 
The best
part

is when the cat chases the birds.

 

~*~

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