Two poems

Jose Luis Pablo

Forgiveness at Tegenungan Waterfall

 The money changer’s magic trick 
was to use his foreign smile & sleight
of hand to pocket a bouquet of my bills.
Too late the realization. Too late,
the ramshackle stall indistinguishable
in the ruckus of the marketplace
& dark chasm of regret.
I took my place behind my lover.
He said nothing, only drove
our motorcycle farther from
the offending memory, the site
where he tore down my monument
in his mind. The charlatan’s final spell
was to turn me into a hollowed egg
left to brace itself against 
the sputtering rocks & engine
& risk cracking whatever was left
of me, for an hour of silence
allotted to tally the mistakes
of a tourist’s trust in strangers.
At the end of a long dirt road
rose the giant wall of water
& a single line of rope for safety
from the greedy grasp
of the downstream.
The atmosphere was thick
with the awe of spectators
& a suspended storm.
No casual dip was allowed here;
the descending water forced any wader
to cling onto the literal lifeline,
for to let go meant to vanish. 
Half-naked, my lover & I
thrust our heads into the deep, 
& let the surge lift our bodies
in horizontals. We feigned death
in parallel lines to catch its taste
 in a noiseless scream. All sound
wiped out in a roar. Water pounded
against our ribs. With every beat,
an apology & its acceptance.
Because, imagine: two small
specks not washed away,
blurred when submerged, but
buoyed stubbornly in belief,
saying, We are here. We are still
here.

— —

Greedy Heart, Stubborn Heart

The corpse of a love song floats
in the water, mouth skyward.
The suffocated lyrics declared:
‘Loving you is everything.’

My heart stays anchored to the shore
even as it grows like a monster.
My heart, now the eye of a cavern
for shadow play of infidelities,
little lives lit in
celluloid synapse flash.

Its greed is stirred by passing things –
to feel the muscular crush, to roll
in the stickiness of fresh wine,
to slake daily thirst.

My heart unmoved even as my gaze
is yanked by the hooks slung
by promises of new touch,
the untasted cup, rim curve
to the lips, glittering them golden.

My heart, the talisman against
the death that is unfeeling. Even
if it drums its treacherous beat
for another, for one dirty second,

its feet will never leave the coast.
It believes the floating corpse
will sing again. It will listen.