Woodlore

By John Carlo Retutas

"Here comes the songs of the Mother, earthbound melodies woven

together like a storm in spring.

Hear them-the storytelling trees, the struggling soil of old, the

loving leaves above the breaking branches, and the wailing creeks

that dried its throat out of grief.

See them, in this parade they made for you.

The

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ukiyoto Publishing
• Release date: Jul 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9789361721236

Book preview

Woodlore

John Carlo Retutas

Ukiyoto Publishing

All global publishing rights are held by

Ukiyoto Publishing

Published in 2023

Content Copyright © John Carlo Retutas

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated, without the publisher’s prior consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.

www.ukiyoto.com

To Ahpoy, and to everything that he is, he is not, and he is trying to be.

Contents

The Trees

The Story Heard

Woodlore: Ballads Without Melodies

Waves of Balayan Bay

The Beggar that I Became

Running Deep

Manila Creeks

The Witch and the Wolves

Troth

Halcyon

Emerald Ash Borer

Maybe I'm Mad

Today is My Birthday

Once the Winter Knocks

As Big as this Universe

Keys

IYSDKWTD

Wails in the Bus

Chemtrails the Color of Ink

The Roof that Held the Sky

Don't Meet Me at Letting Go

Stages of this Feeling

Birds of Night

How?

L.O.V.E.L.E.S.S.

Our Floor of Beating, Beaten,

and Beatless Hearts

Drunk by My Tears

A Dream from Alaska

Hands Like These

A Thousand Century

The Soil

The Story Seen

Flowers and Thorns

The Only Piece of Heaven I Used to See (Was the One in Your Eyes)

A Crown of Seasons

Songs of the Woods

The Courage of the Leaves

WDWFANDJFTA?

This Dream

Sleeplessness

Philippine Sea

Endless River

Slipping, Falling, Flying

Dying Twice

Feathers of Ibong Adarna

Sunday Shopping

Love is Not Blind After All (Just Busy)

Our Midnights

Riding a Tiger

Corazon

The Scent of Crying Candles

Core

The Mirrors

The Scent of Crying Candles II (November's Embers)

Familiarities of Childhood

Not 7 Anymore

Songs We Should Sing Together

To the Boy I Dreamt of Having

50 Things I Lost Last Winter

I Am

The Leaves

The Story Extended

Mount Piz Bernina

A Love Letter for Love

Here

My Sea

Maple

Birch

Cherry

Dogwood

Oak

Narcissuses

Black Dahlias

The Primrose Path

Bells of Ireland

Poppies on My Door

Fern

Nasturtium

Red Camellias

Bouquet of Withered Flowers

Butterfly Weed

Black Poetry

5 Months

Midnight Clock

Wooden Ribs

The Sun and the Moon

Something's Wrong with Him

5 Months (Part II)

Erythrocytes

Indeed

The Branches

The Story Falling

Him

Interstellar

72nd, 3314th, 2021

Tracks of Love

7 Years + 1 Day of Forgetting

Like You Haven't Done It Already

The Archer and the Prey

Children of Midas

Never Not

The Polar Bear Star

The Hanging Ghost

Winterwood

Wars Outside

Now That I Know Your Name

Faces in the Calendar

A Frozen River

Youth & Recklessness

Prayers + Boiling the Ocean

Loving Andre

Lullabies

If I'll Die Young

The Lady with the Axe

If I'll Die Old

Running

Without You

My Last Misery

There Goes the Greatest Storyteller (This World Had Ever Known)

Even if I Went Home

The Creeks

The Story Ending

I Wished That Santa Claus

Was Somehow There

I, You, We

Pain City

The Rain That Lasted a Thousand Years

By Fire, nor His Story

Delicate Heads

To All of the Boys

Lemonade

Eternal Rainbow over Your

Storm-prone Head

Folksongs of the Folkways

Lenses

Mahogany Symphony

Expectations

The Guardians

Rainbows Among Thunderclouds

Kissing the Sun

The Longest Seasons

As Red As Guilt

Secrets (of the Rocks)

Ouroboros

Solar Veil Above a Sun-forged, Daydreams-based Ring

In the End

The Sun is White from Here

White Lady

Protacio

Diyan Masalanta

Words from a Grieving Heart

The Longest Poem I've Ever Written is the Shortest Thing You've Ever Read

About the Author

The Trees

Let the words be heard,

let the fingers of the mind draw,

follow the song the woods is singing,

let it be morn or eventide,

ready your tongue to pass,

your mind to remember

                  for the trees that whispered folklores.

The Story Heard

Our hamlet was a wooded

hive buzzing with hearsays and

whispers of curiosities hungrier

than the nightfall that

swallowed the roofs where

the words lingered and added

fingers to the clock, lighting the

glass-eyed mouths of the

silent prisons and their little white men who wore

fire in their heads, to

last until midnight.

Hearing the stories rolling

like stones in the river, shifting versions in

everyone's saliva—

a man who reigns in the woodlands

as king of shadows and closed books,

father of serpents and rider

of a burning nightingale and bats

with wings of scarlet night.

"Listen, he is the words in every

song sung at sundown,

the sacred stones in a Queen's crown.

Defined in slenderness,

beauteousness in every curve of

silvern bark baked in

moonlight and millennium.

Hear, his eyes are marbles

of blue asbestos,

and yours are too plain to see,

so hear it instead."

It was a wrong decision on a wrong day,

venturing off with loneliness

into the woods that hugged, into the forest.

On a twilit, scattered spectacle of

white jasmines and yews,

their body parts that

peppered the place, the palpitations unspoken;

lightnings cracked and thunders boomed,

and he appeared a shadow

born from the swords of light;

a faceless ghost of fog.

He strode around the frozen post,

smiling at the image of a

scared little woman.

Looking like a woeful man.

Fireflies swirling and beaming,

something splendid

flew too close to miss.

The story heard is true;

the prince who made a deal

with ancient demons

is now in blues

with only heart to feel,

and lives he can spend in millions.

But I don't understand,

why he's looking at me now.

Maybe it's my violent dancer hands,

or my eyes in awe.

Woodlore: Ballads Without Melodies

What do you know of the woods,

of the dreams that hatched beneath the rocks,

of the sun that cracked peeking on the horizon?

Drummers of wooden palms yodeled songs lost and found,

lyricists and poets warred for the unblemished story of the great timberland.

Over a thousand eons and a thousand again,

rivers let drought kiss their length but not their anamneses,

ebonies will darken yet again, this time from the fire of a summer feared.

Because asked go give the answer,

all that you know of the land shelled with living evergreen woods.

Let your mind brave the unknown,

let your eyes close their lids and welcome the dawn after the umbra.

Afterglow would be the only heart in your lantern,

dried dahlias the floor in your wake.

Safe and sound would be your voyage to a nearby wonder.

When tales and truths and love and pain and mourning yielded the answer take it,

illustrate something clear to remind you

that woods are riches that crowned the Earth,

holder of the verities buried by Kings and Queens,

of hairy-chested guitarists and a dapper songstress who didn't paused even in their graves,

under their worn-out cabins and shacks,

tumultuous words spoken but not heard, released but not free, colored but not celebrated.

May a deer shine like a beacon, along with a bird flying restlessly to guide you from above.

Evermore is your time to frame the answer, to learn your lessons, to gather your knowledge,

labyrinths would line before your steps, beware and be equipped.

Out there in the squalling storm,

dying visions and a blurring sight might pester your quest.

I can only ask you the question.

Even if I know the answer, the moon would be thirteen before I would tell you my woodlore.

So take the door now; they are waiting.

Waves of Balayan Bay

Tanda don't need no car,

the woods is an old friend from childhood,

finding the way,

under the smiling moon,

finding the bay

over there, mute and waveless in darkness.

Ghostly snakes of red and blue in the air

trying to scare her,

trying to intimidate;

sirens singing but not from their waters.

But they don't know the lands as much;

nor the nocturnal monsters

beneath their feet and above their hair.

The shadow-eaten trees watches her,

no judgement at all, all with muteness.

They see, and she see them without lips.

Owls and foxes took flight and run with her,

running from their own apex predators.

And there, in Balayan Bay,

She dumped the weight to the open mouth of rotten waves,

she dumped the stains and refused the cliff

when it invited her to jump along to wash a deeper soul,

oblivious of the indelibility she's donning.

The skin, that is lighter than

the knife that tore its oneness,

and the bones, that is paler than

the eyes that watched it sink and sink.

Come morning, the sand will know,

and will promise not to tell.

The waves of Balayan Bay goes,

hiding what's now lost;

morality, sanity—disappointing the ghost.

The Beggar that I Became

You had proclaimed your love

in all finality, "Bhiksu, I love you. Bhiksu,

do you?"

and now watch

and hear

the beggar that I became.

Begging for a finished storyline,

arcs and dynamics;

begging for it to live like a clock.

Then and then...

      begging.....

Mr.,          that everyday, you will say

              "I love