when the feather does not tickle you anymore
it ceases to be that feather in your heart
whatever life it has in you is gone
you change
the feather remains to be a feather
and it becomes more what it is
nothing but a filament
a chicken's part which it discards
from time to time
because it has no need of it

now you find disgust in it
and you let it go and
it does not delight you
it does not bother you
you realize so much time has been wasted
and you were such a hard-headed fool
when it is finally gone
and you are back alone with
nothing too
you miss
that delight which foolishness
once gave you

we did not chase the words for it
because it came first
the way we feel it is
and then the words begin to shape themselves
to fit
when we are filled to the brim we say the words
again and again
like the way rain is teaching us how to speak
about the sound and color of sorrow

those who hear us think that we are trained
for years and having done so
we have become some kind of rhetoric from books
but that is not so as we try to convince them
but they shake their heads and leave us
from where we started
we were paddles and then we become boats
and then we do not really know where to go
the land seems a miracle of a mirage
and then the words become us
now truer to their senses as we have learned
to speak the truth

she'll take your money
and your car
she will find
another joy somewhere

and you're yachting
in the Pacific
doing it with another
gin and lemon
frankfurters and beer
friends and laughter
love and lovers
and sexiness all over
it's summer still
you drink
and then be crazy
dancing
merrymaking till dawn
on another night like this
tomorrow you will
be sober
and think some more
if luxury is
still the solution
for your
sorrow and if
somewhat comes
absolution

once you accept that
there can be no freedom
that those who say they serve you
actually suck you
till you get cold and dead
on the floor of your
beliefs

my dear
that is the only way to be free
be honest, be candid,
be real
there is so such thing
as benevolence
no such thing as
freedom fighters
there is only you
the individual trying to live your life alone
but happy
un-expecting

a swim in Dakak
dining in singapore
a little snow in Switzerland
a stroll in vienna
marmalade in spain
a taste of Italy
a gondola ride in venice
a deep breath in beijing
shopping in hongkong
sushi in tokyo
and then back home
a poem for you.

i know you want more
just testing you somehow.

this morning
the clouds are white and low on the horizon
like a mountain range of
cottons as i walk alone listening to the songs of the wind
wanting to forget
what the night has denied
us.

i like the way the clouds want to appease us
beautiful doubts
trying to protect us
from the harm of
clarity.

we were not born to be trees
staying put
fixed like a nail on sandal wood
we were not born with wings like
birds
for a reason
our minds are wings and we always journey
far from what we lay our feet upon
we have accepted this fate
to live is always walk away
and sometimes to perfect this trait
one never comes back

two people talk about the stars at night
what they keep
they keep for themselves out of respect
for whatever they are

how bright are the stars tonight
how golden is the moon
lighting the darkness of the city
how wonderful we feel when we keep away
from our secret selves
avoiding what hurts
what leaves the shame
two people talk about what is far away
leaving sacred what is painful and real
what cannot be touched by the nearness of our hands
what cannot be spoken by the candidness of our lips

on a lazy afternoon the chairs in our
beach are like blank minds
no one sits there and talks and shares what
beauty is there left in the
gardens of our minds

one however begins to talk about a house of stone
a cloud of sour cream
a bridge that resembles the rainbow a promise never to
destroy again
what illusions we have
one interferes and describes an island shaped like a heart
a seaweed of nerves
as the current reverses itself
for a story of love
but sad and sadder still
unrequited
a little boy asks about how a blue mermaid cries
dives into the depths and was never seen again
by a naive lover.

to a far place they go
and when they arrive there
one cuts the tall grasses
on the shore

while the other gets naked
and swims to the sea

beside his bed is an empty chair
for years
always and always reserved for
her,

when will this warm pillow be replaced?
when will it be her ?
when will his bathroom have a love song?
when will she shave his beard again?
when will his room smell of her perfume?
when will his arms be perfect?
when will all these cockroaches leave?
when will the floors be swept?
when?

how you have learned from the rain
like the way you spread drops from hills to valleys to sea
how each felt?
same thing they say
just drops of water, bland, and so ordinary
and yet
if they only care enough
so life-giving
but how would they notice the taste of your rain?
understand it
there are just too many and too frequent
like days and hours
and you know very well what happens
as rain is almost daily
it has become too ordinary
hence,
taken for granted but just the same
keep on pouring
as an act of self-giving
a ritual for your own
perfection.

you have loved much
what is clear and open
clear as a morning view from a mountain top
everything from the eyes of a new born kid from melanoma

open as sky
impenetrable blue
frightening whiteness
unfathomed
you detest doubt
avoid an uncertainty
well, it is what we call
reality's failures.

such an endless quest for a cure
of this lonesome disease
when will you ever know that it is
not a disease after all?

.and then i notice that i have forgotten
those houses on stilts,
the world of water,
and those children that amaze me
since they run on those planks of wood
with spaces wider than their feet
and that idea that they may fall is still on my mind
that anticipation of death
and the mourning that
follows every
thrill,

i have become more of
an individual who has thrived on the power
of my own freedom
and who has become merely a set of eyes gazing
on the world without my head
my ears becoming annexes
to a book
my mouth a piece of round
cotton that they
put on the mouths of the
dead
where did i bury my hands and
when did i exchange my feet for some
gossamer wings
of a dragonfly?
the deep well is telling me that
i have become like its hole
keeping an echo and reverberating same sounds
of emptiness
each day
i see only an aliquot
sky.
At night i keep saying that there is only one star
a scar of
light
It is sad but it is enough for me.
I have discarded the need for some more
and i keep telling
"who cares i do not need any".
i am whole now.Closed like
a sea
urchin

i think of you when i
write this and then i keep on writing and too keep on thinking still about you
what we did and what we did not finish doing and what i think about what you think when you were doing it to me.
there is this orchid with white petal on the bark of a narra tree and there is this caterpillar lost upon the luscious leaves and i understand perfectly that a home can be a consumption

that relationships are rituals of a feast on something so delectable and delicious within the mantel of our beings
did you know that we were like eating our souls together and that we like the food that we serve upon each other that we forget that we are half consumed and about to be gone into nothing?
i keep on thinking of you and then i was eating you like bread to my mouth
like ice to my tongue and
then it was sort of late for me to know
when i have already consumed you
and then you have become nothing to me.
at the time when my mouth
closed like a door at the end
of the happy hour
and that is the time that i tell myself
i have forgotten you.
Like food in those cheap eateries,
the taste no longer teases me.
So why should i think about you?

i understand your predicament
the house is as spacious as the whole sky
and there are no stars in there
i heard once when you speak and there were echoes
bouncing from wall to wall and when it arrives to me
its only message is ennui,

do you want me to tell her that there is a rope in the house
which is posing a threat to your existence and that night after night you fear yourself for an inhuman possibility?
that big screen in your living room will not work,
i tell you,
that menagerie of hummers will have no way of appeasing
your hunger for affection,
the garden of bamboos are neuters
all you ask is the human element
the one that gives you a glass of beer while you
plunge yourself in the sea
the one that gives you springtime
the one that affirms for once that you are
a breather
i will tell her that before the next war
erupts
before we are all destroyed by this
incoming chaos
i just hope that she will be alive when
i tell her this.

a beautiful conversation is like a chain of flowers
from my hand to yours
it does not just arrive at a dead end street
where all of us want to go back home
it simply goes on and on for hours and hours
and we who are into it do not notice the monotonous
circling of time moving on the same face of the clock
and for sometime we move like caterpillars upon same leaf
that we tread upon and then eat.