Between these Rhythms: Bone & Ash

BETWEEN
THESE
RHYTHMS:
BONE & ASH

Felino A. Soriano

2 | Between these Rhythms: Bone & Ash

BETWEEN
THESE

RHYTHMS:
BONE & ASH
Felino A. Soriano

3 | Between these Rhythms: Bone & Ash

Between these Rhythms: Bone & Ash
©MMXVI Felino A. Soriano, All Rights Reserved.
Published by Fowlpox Press
ISBN: 978-1-927593-59-2

4 | Between these Rhythms: Bone & Ash

to the whole memory of my father,
Felino Willie Soriano
(1944 – 2016)
I miss you, Dad

5 | Between these Rhythms: Bone & Ash

Table of Contents

Introduction........................................................................................................................8

Prologue: an advent I never wanted to discover...............................................10

Subsequent to the final exhalation.........................................................................11

Dazed..................................................................................................................................13

Self-discovery..................................................................................................................14

Un-certainty.....................................................................................................................15

a formulation...................................................................................................................16

Burden................................................................................................................................17

A seasonal disregard....................................................................................................18

With.....................................................................................................................................20

Now.....................................................................................................................................21

When the prayer is still too dim...............................................................................22

Synonym for a stagnant realization........................................................................23

Seesaw Contemplation................................................................................................24

Old box find.....................................................................................................................25

Not yet...............................................................................................................................26

Prose & the function of mirrors...............................................................................27

Down as the spiral inheriting what is missing....................................................28

Systematic paradigm....................................................................................................29

Uncertain...........................................................................................................................30

Origami remake..............................................................................................................31

Shift......................................................................................................................................32

Why......................................................................................................................................33

8 21 16...........................................................................................................................34

I explain..............................................................................................................................35

EIGHT TWENTYTHREE.......................................................................................36

EIGHT TWENTYFIVE............................................................................................37

EIGHT TWENTYSIX...............................................................................................38

Elegy in a Darkened Key...............................................................................................40

Epilogue: devotion will continue...............................................................................42

6 | Between these Rhythms: Bone & Ash

“Life is for the living.
Death is for the dead.
Let life be like music.
And death a note unsaid.”

―Langston Hughes

7 | Between these Rhythms: Bone & Ash

introduction: empathy within I part of my life following my
the logos of improvisation spiritual, familial and
“...I did not prepare the importance of balance and
how to generate power from professional endeavors. For
anything; because as his son, I the stability and torque of my
would never want to prepare body’s center. At the age of my dad, music was also an
to live a life without my dad...” seven, I joined the same
I spoke those words at my martial arts school of which he aspectual foundation of his life,
dad’s memorial service. Other was a part. These memories
than the elegy I wrote for him, are significant because what for many, many years. When I
I purposely did not prepare a martial arts represented to our
speech because of the reason family: a lifelong tradition of was a young boy, I recall him
indicated in the above devotion to learning, training, singing in various bands, which
quotation. Instead, during the practicing, enveloping, and
service, I improvised my challenging ourselves to the consisted of various covers of
message; I improvised stories mind’s capabilities.
about my dad, —I improvised soul, R&B, and funk records.
some jokes to demonstrate a For people that know me
part of my dad’s influence on on a personal level, as well as He often sang, —he sang in
me: humor. I improvised those that are familiar with my
because two of the imperative poetry, a factual realization the car, at home, while grocery
and dominant aspects about about my life is my adoration
my dad that will never subside for jazz music. It’s been shopping, while watching TV,
within me were music and documented many times that while doing most things. As
martial arts. Both of these jazz has been an imperative
endeavors, although often aspect of my intellectual and we often learn and are shaped
communicated within the creative development since
confines of planned, 2000. I discovered in 2006 that by environment—having
physiological the music alters my perception
demonstrations—also posit while listening when writing, music’s presence around me
creativity in the beauty of what and an ensuing revelation
they can and do represent—in occurred in that my poetic so often, I feel, absolutely
the moment creative language changed as well.
intentions/inventions, within transferred to me and is now a
their communicative advances. Not much parallels music’s causational reason for me
importance in my life. My
My dad started teaching me spiritual and familial and becoming somewhat obsessive
martial arts when I was five professional responsibilities
years old. We’d often drive to edge out music in their about it.
a nearby park, and he would grandness within my life; but I miss my dad, much. I miss
teach me how to throw various music, in addition to writing
kicks and strikes; he’d show me poetry and studying, is the our conversations, his
trilogy of passions that
encompasses the remaining consistent teaching, and I miss

the freedom he always

displayed amid him living an
authentic life. This is the type
of life I strive to live, one that is

pronounced solely from the

autonomy of my individualized

realizations. My dad was

always respectful and was

always able to speak his
internal truth, regardless of

how someone interpreted and

reacted to his statements. I

work on this. I work on these
statements from both verbal

and physiological perspectives.

8 | Between these Rhythms: Bone & Ash

And for these unique extraordinarily difficult life after I miss his brilliance and wise
his passing is. My dad gave disposition, —too, I miss his
perspectives, I am thankful to me the greatest compliment brevity of speech and prideful
about my poetry I ever ways in which he spoke about
him, both in loving and my received: “Felino’s poetry looks my brother and me. I will
like jazz.” I never told him endeavor to continue to make
continuing, devotional about how much I adored that him proud, in all aspects in
gratitude. comment, and he summed up which my existence takes
my cultivated endeavors about shape.
This collection of poetry my poetry in that brief
statement. Felino A. Soriano
was extremely difficult to write.

The difficulty stemmed from

knowing he will not be able to

read how profoundly he has
affected my life, and how

9 | Between these Rhythms: Bone & Ash

Prologue: an advent I never wanted to discover

because these tattered weeks have taught
me absence

is a language of inventing voice

I will daily hear you teaching me;

let this absence
not take your place

but create steps near me

comforting &
telling me

this silence is an emblem your suffering has dissipated

wholly

10 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

Subsequent to the final exhalation fermented

these syllabic is how this memory begins
devotions

bone-hard why the purpose unzipped,
queried in blued excitation

buried into
my

intellect
-ual

understanding—
purpose, again, farther than what my
hands & desired halo can

hold

& because we’re no longer tandem, |cyclic reciprocation / tenacity in the tongue of
mobile interaction / conversational diagrams of __________|

—in the teeming brand of stubborn

reflectional systems its patina, unsmooth
the compass of what shows me,

leads me now nowhere & what I’m finding is music
-less inventions

that of which only serenades the
dead in obligatory observation: this music, dad

I do not

enjoy, its

11 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

fingering of pain within my need to let go

holds no melody no more than a wounded tongue does into a microphone’s

obscured alteration—

12 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

Dazed

now, why the clarity no
longer speaking in the tongue

I ascertain. Said of
what my missing your

presence does:

nuanced blades
—insertion levels vary on

tone & momentary
silences of the realized
absence.
To breathe is
what I only
do from the numerical memory
of muscle & open-mouth
sequences explanation. Burden
doesn’t stay still. Obese
certainty this
weight expands
to obtain what the absence
says in
this strange
deliberate
function of imbalanced
truncated

language

13 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

Self-discovery

all of the here of where we once breathed
is no longer represented outside the
language my memory sometimes
misremembers

14 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

Un-
certainty

compass,
my directional faith (healing):

what my finding here
says

absence, the He-strength of
attempted alteration: re

pl
ac
em e
nt theory of Mindset’s alternate fathering emblem—

__________
my direction is missing specified

aim & totality of what
Purpose organizes in

language of the burgeoning tongue
__________

: what is reflection now

now then now when
what saw me hides within the darkened

contour

away from
what hands shape in
warmth & continual

devotional
meaning

15 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

a formulation

dad,

inventing you from absence now—

partial
presence in the immediate
presentation of your last breath’s
twirl then

hospital room

escape—

all of the fathoms, unanswered now

will ever materialize shows us its strong-hand
creating eventual
turquoise rust
of patina’s age & rotating,
beautified angles from when Light

artistry—

I invent you to maintain what was taught to my hearing,

to involve your in
what decisions mention

among the rarity of Sleep’s nighttime visitation—

16 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

Burden
in what does not
bury well, beyond
body & designated
theory, you and what
future means no longer
shows praise in the
purpose of communicating
devotion. I cannot, any
longer. Nor would want
show its physical shadow.
Too much gray is what
outlines an hour’s
spatial need to injure.

17 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

A seasonal disregard

a boat, say, you’ve become, —boat
become because of these
ornamental hands
shifting in
what was given to them

in how it leaves one
visitor, of why it

leaves, the watcher
confides

in surrounding silence
its devotion to hanker
toward Inclusion’s italicized
importance

__________ sound—
summertime, dad, now will
no longer be welcome: your death
three days following the usual
celebration of
my birth,
will remind me of
how your eyes
will never
collaborate with
shape to identify
our father|son immersion in

__________

too, again, I am finding sound in
this silence,

angered by
the thorns that have
outlived the roses’ scent
—becoming reminder
of innocence

18 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

losing its direction
toward a home no

longer in existence

19 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

With

With mom, dad. Again. With mom, dad,
because need fits into the

legacy of continuity.

We talk about Rain’s many languages. As with the

language of your death, the distance

between dialects
the body pronounces

in angular

philosophy demonstrates hierarchy of physical anguish, imbalance.

When here we

look into your

photos’ rectangular reflections: hallowed
momentums heirlooms

given before

designated breath
drifted in an absence of

your interior

articulation

20 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

Now
Fathoms have forgotten my name.
Have me in fractioned reflections.
My name is different now: halved son, with mom presiding over what my syllables spell
in leftover tangents.
Intuition is but alternate diagrams of trusting memories’ shortest route to understanding.
I still misunderstand this death.
The speed in which your body altered is a speed I cannot comprehend or delve into whole.
Begging has not worked; nor has the melody of childhood memoirs writing prose into these hours’
devoted contemplation.
Splayed renditions these abstract injuries.
By what dreams do, do I follow behind you slowly now.
This language of death not only haunts, —it desires my tongue recall best when this night will
evaporate into memorized freedoms.

21 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

When the prayer is still too dim

On canvas now, dad. My
painting is smeared, fractioned

as in the silhouette’s
version of personal

representation. These
metaphysics challenge
me, make my mouth

stretch things not
before leaping from

the tongue of my
birth’s

premature sunrise. This is what
Holy is when my prayer

only reaches half
way up

the longitude of
sorrow. Though I am

reaching for the elevation healing
wears, my body is still too

warm from the constant
embrace this

grief provides. Versions
of me are dead, too. When we’d

travel the arm’s length
when my youth was

a decade to come,
I cannot recall now

the whole distance
we’d become. This is what

Death does when the body
misinterprets

obsession with Detail’s
focal dexterity or

obtuse
space within a moment’s
dedicated longing.

22 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

Synonym for a stagnant realization

my eyes are stuck
on the street of my sole

walking what was an original

frequency of visited / renown /

intuition

: the parenting you

said I would
walk into well-alert & undivided—

those are the miracles of dissipating theory

taught into how I learned

in the language of unknowing

desolation

23 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

Seesaw contemplation
Do I deserve this fatherless mirror?

If | when the answer unfastens
may my own death
be the reflection
of cyclic devotion to
understanding this
intuitive search for
foundational missing.

24 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

Old box find
Before I got here
something invited
me to view a memory
deep into an angle
I’d forgotten. A
photograph, a smiling
distance. A laughter
on the hum of a dragonfly’s
enunciating wing.

25 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

Not yet

by now, I am
still not acclimated:

in the warmth of missing,
the hanker uses your voice
to soothe, then

discards its own sound a forsaking occurs,
calm then

not, or was it
detonated in the sum

of what instilled
this massive memory? but when

will acclimation view

my identity through
the clear lens of

inclusion? but will it or by when?

by now, I’ve known you & by now, these moments
and fail to when occurrences endear me to decipher
tell me to recall where your
kaleidoscopic heirlooms
hovering has ended left to me
to wear or
hold, to

configure in my reinvented

meaning

26 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

Prose & the function of mirrors further toward appealing

these old
books contain my attention—

built-in semblances
find my recognizing them
as the day you gifted
them into my palms’

oscillating watching

your notes decorate
the margins, &

the improvised
language has trained
my eye to hear much fuller & stranger sounds

than what would occur across
achromatic architectural prose:

long ago when winter was playful then
too cold to inherit happiness

a divided purpose
was to hold my attention paused,

playful as when
our younger

selves drew distant
mirrors for my current &

portending minutes to
wrap hope around the echoes’

continuous & ornamental

halos

27 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

Down as the spiral inheriting what is missing
toward this or pluralized
languages; I detonate now
with effort only needed if,

measured in years rather than temperament—
a toddler’s learning to unbuckle into walking—
something otherwise has become or replaced
me; the handheld mirror is a constant fog, a
declared inversion searching the interior of
multilayered, unfixed wounds

28 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

Systematic paradigm expectations, dad,
with these these
vocal
synonyms for here and attentive—missing—
broken English I, instead, find absence and
broken bone
and advents of an ankle’s uninteresting ways to understand
causational limp into my speaking into silence is
night’s oval encompass

29 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

Uncertain

what
is spiritual
in what’s occurred

within the eyes
of your closed-mouth

inventions?

30 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

Origami remake what I purchased, I (song & melody death rewrote)
returned

or I’ve absquatulated
what was given in

the halo of a holy encounter (birthmonth interruption)
within vacant

participation

—I know what it was

wearing my language all these years,
I did not mention to you enough

what the shadow of your speaking

whispered to me most in sentimental
prosodic

elements, with music

as noted,

music rises from the key of invented architecture,

from the path I invent to

evade personal history, too &I music’s dissipated—

cannot fathom

rhythm

31 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

Shift

syllables contain what never will be said

in the fathomed way death does or when
fury inserts what a song could’ve

made without echoes of
built-in devotion

__________ is neither promise
but, what is now or

pulse
__________

friction of what these hands devote
to what I build now with only mom or Darius

watching—

I choose to continue to wait naiveté

embraces me when silence
is the teaching construct

deliberate enough to

inherit the heaviness of
denied portending

32 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

Why

why the world is like this;
residue cannot now satin
unveil a subsequent
waxy

exhale onto what movement
means now;

sag

now, in the foundation of it,
the body
is stagnant in the

language used to generate warmth—

this is what winter does to
the landscapes of skeletons

awaiting dust to invent their
combined mathematical

infatuation

& with a certain absence summer is an
advent toward interpreting

miracles

33 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

8 21 16

frigid mayhem, yet
with calm on the canvas, ready not ready, your eyes when

dad, we said

we need you to keep fighting &
be strong... we will be back soon— this pluralized
function from the tongues of our devotion
& then

individually we said goodbye intertwined
with an indication of love
from the sadness of the slide awaiting our bodies’
travel back to

life’s waiting momentum—

your eyes now
haunt with the clarity of fear’s silent articulation,

their build new

within the neoteric

speed of knowing this day was the last I’d see your eyes

open in all contemporary

contexts—

34 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

I explain
to myself
daily, with a lean toward
Hope’s organized devotion—
language in my body will
begin to heal, then echo
in that purpose to contin-
ue for the sake of who’s
momentum mirrors
mine

35 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

EIGHT TWENTYTHREE

today, dad, my birthday— awkward, in how
your voice could not decorate

any of these

24 hours :your body too silent now in

its attempt to remove what damage

has built into
the circumference of your
broken

autonomy

; cyclic devotional emblems &

model sadness sits with my non-

celebratory mood heaving what
happiness is

supposed to represent

into

a disparate fathom of wanting your body to return to this day one year

earlier

36 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

EIGHT TWENTYFIVE

Mia dad
asked about your silence today

is grandpa Willie still sick, daddy? I’ve learned
not to wish within guarded faith upon unknowing
options & my hardened answer

was gilded to

engage her on this day, her
4th birthday functioning without your voice
ornamenting

your typical augmented smile toward her waiting jubilation—

in my telling her yes, you were still not feeling well a saddened confusion dressed her
facial concern

& we stood embracing & my wonder
threw my memories
back toward
when our embraces

could ignite into a momentum of elongated

exultation

37 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

EIGHT TWENTYSIX

this dreaded day, an etched tattoo a new fear a proclamation
mom’s early morning call
of durable loss : told me before my voice reached

toward the hand of her softened cry your final moments are arriving
are
conjuring unravel of 71 years a life demonstrating family is
what waits with you

in a hurried panic, clarity enough though to drive with
hoping to see you alive
italicized purpose

but when
hearing your last breath twirled the hospital room

before I could reach warmth & unfasten goodbye
around your body’s recent deterioration

|in the car tears began their solo along the contoured reaction

of each neoteric moment hitherto unwanted within thought &

corporeal fermentation too, within a wing of escape
I imagined what occurred as fiction as
belief was only fragments of the memory’s
intuitive shaping from hands and theory their scope too large

to imagine in whole

variable

interpretations|

this life now with
-out the jazz of

everything, every
thing thinning into dissip-

ated song, from which voices

38 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

too hoarse to amount themselves
in beauty and anointed blessings,

bargaining to still be heard
though the screams of internal

fathoms are accelerating with
the heart’s rhythms’ expedited function—

knowing I could not reach the warmth of your final exhalation, my
anger, a sustained key of on pitch, devotional acceleration,

my agitation, a suitable reactionary interpreted numbness—
accessory around the neck

or wrist of capitalized queries

& in my waiting amid what halted my presence
into yours I
invented a harp to soothe or attempt to
invest energy toward an otherness of connecting to what

awaited my personal discovery—

& the way my body now is left

wearing heritage and culture across my forehead’s theory of becoming present

& within this type of aloneness waiting for my full entrance I

promise to formulate language amid a warming contribution &

wrap mom within these moving sanctities

now & when my mirror needs a self absent from my whole

function of disbelief’s architectural

reminders
39 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

Elegy in a Darkened Key
—In the memory of Willie Soriano 1944 - 2016

The way your eyes drew their strong I listened—
shadows in the language of our conversations
I listened because I learned what rhythm was
in the music of your parenting. Your teaching.

Your teaching drew the paths
my body would learn to navigate. Your body
much stronger than mine, & when
a boy, I would emulate the
wind your kicks & punches
built into the legacy of what
our family moved toward.

I listened—
I listened because your stares could
instruct me to fly could create wing and
ability in the praise of your
proud mouth proclaiming
devotion to your sons.

Now, with your body
unlike it was before, I hear
what the music has done
to me: these melodies
conjure the voice of our
interactions, sometimes
short & shaved into an aim
of always pointing upward—

or, of the philosophy of jazz, our
improvised dialogues lasting over
lunch or when you watched
your granddaughter twirl & laugh,
your face writing prose of an inexpressible
devotion. & in this hour

the pain has layered into my bones, but I
will continue to listen for the rhythms—

40 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

I will listen because the hours of this elongated night
will subside into the reveal of entire memories
opening into wisdom.

9/1/16

41 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h

Epilogue: devotion will continue
Dad, I miss you. As does Darius, as does mom,
as does all your family.
We will hold onto the center you helped create,
and not travel into a distance where we become
unfastened or fractioned in the sadness your absence
has created.

42 | B e t w e e n t h e s e R h y t h m s : B o n e & A s h