VOCABULARY

amity - a feeling of friendship

rendezvous - a meeting with someone that is arranged
for a particular time and place that is often
secret
swig - to drink quickly and in large amounts.
renew - to make something new, fresh or strong
again
foreign - relating to or dealing with other nations
ALFRED YUSON

He is a poet from Dumaguete City, Negros

Oriental. He is also a filmmaker,
scriptwriter, and editor. He has received
numerous literary distinctions locally and
internationally.
 KNIFE IN ADRIATIC
Slept part of the night in Yugoslovia.
Rose at dead of four a.m local time
to rousing breeze from black Adriatic.
Swig of Paddy’s Irish bought in a quick
stopover at Dubai-distance repeating
snapshots of passage in the dream.
Rested now, homing in to welcome
of foreign dawn. Another swig. Gut
adapts sooner than a flick of fool
and ancient rendezvous. Hotel room’s lamp’s
a ghost driven back by moves in town,
Old loves padding out into the balcony.
There it is cold in the version of February
looking blindly down upon the conifers
and hearing the hiss of sea beyond.
Pushed back by Italy’s winds. Pee and pull
the metal chain, drown the quiet with shock
of toilet roar. More and more it’s alien
and familiar. Now seek intimacy out the door
past the hall down the flights across empty
lobby and sliding glass into vast dark world
of different air. New and renewed, lost
in shadowy stumble to heedless water.
It is there. Faint light approaches the surf
Knife weighed in the palm of distant arrival.
Blade opened and thrust into amity of spirits.
In an hour gulls and kindness of sunrise.
 Last night I dreamnt of a knife
I had bought for my son. Of
rare design.
It went cheaply for its worth-
short dagger
with fancily rounded pommel
and a wooden sheath
DREAM OF KNIVES
which miraculously revealed
other miniature blades.
Oh how pleased he would be
upon my return
from this journey, I thought.
What rapture
will surely adorn his ten-year
princeling’s face
when he draws the gift the
first time. What quivering
pleasure will most certainly
be unleashed.
When woke, there was no return,
no journey,
no gift and no son beside me.
Where do I search
for this knife then, and when
do I begin to draw
happiness from reality, and
why do I bleed so
from such points of
dreams?