the blackbird metaphor

the Beatles had it
as the struggle for freedom of the blacks
that blackbird singing in the dark
wanting to be free

the Americans
had that blackbird swirling in Vietnam
that chopper that saved lives
that war that caused them humiliation
in the world's opinion
that lie of Nixon

Steven Wallace had eight ways of seeing
that blackbird
Noah sent that blackbird
that did not come back since it was happy
picking on the rotten flesh
of the remains of the dead
the ninth way
of seeing
disobedience

One writes again about the blackbird
that lives singing the songs of neurosis
in his mind
at winter time
The poet commits suicide
His colleagues bury him
with eulogies and " what ifs"

One sleeps with a blackbird
The other sings with a blackbird
Someone flew away with a blackbird
and did not come back
since then
So many stories
So many poems are written

Now i have to write about this blackbird too
But there shall be no disturbance
No unhappy ending
I swear to you.

shadows

shadows
exist only with light,
the darkness
however are their
homes
there in the silence
of the walls of
despair
they keep
waiting

tomorrow is always
another day
the sun whispers
at the break of
day

shadows wake up
copying always what you
will be.

haiti

tears fall from
the weary eyes of the world
as its million ears
hear the chant
and songs of the
strong people
of Haiti

God is with them
always
with its billion hands
ready
for a trillion cares
the zillion touches
& living thoughts.

sunday

time to be alone
on a bench under the trees

time to see how leaves fall
silently on the grass

as the world watches us
in mutual
idleness

this is what lazy Sunday is all about
doing nothing

reconstructing the pieces of
the past week.

soliloquy 4

so i may not be flushed out from the system
like any fecal matter
i comply with what you ask of me
i am now a flower
and behind me are blue clouds
and on my stalks
are leaves

no thorns, no worms
for you do not like them

now it is your time to love me and keep me
forever
you must pretend that you are not a worm
that you are not a relative of the thorn

now it is your time to become a bee
now you must buzz around this garden in our minds
now you must pollinate me

it is all in the imagination
imaginary bee imaginary flower
how perfect can our imaginary world become!

kiss me in my imagination
shape your thoughts like the lips of a lover
now all too hungry for my love

soliloquy #3, on imagination

so i may not be flushed out from the system
like any fecal matter
i comply with what you ask of me
i am now a flower
and behind me are blue clouds
and on my stalks
are leaves

no thorns, no worms
for you do not like them

now it is your time to love me and keep me
forever
you must pretend that you are not a worm
that you are not a relative of the thorn

now it is your time to become a bee
now you must buzz around this garden in our minds
now you must pollinate me

it is all in the imagination
imaginary bee imaginary flower
how perfect can our imaginary world become!

kiss me in my imagination
shape your thoughts like the lips of a lover
now all too hungry for my love

the misery that seeks company

when failures
fall down
they decide not to rise
from the place of
their perdition

from where i fall
hardly surviving
on hands grappling
and breaths grasping

they simply sit there
silently
looking for
more of their kin and kind

like some kind of
bus passengers waiting
for their trip
to nowhere

soliloquy

in prison
am i
inside the mystery
of your arms

i lose myself
and i tremble

i search for my soul
it is nowhere

not knowing what to do
to regain who i am

i explore the labyrinths
of your heart

every chamber and corner
and passage

there is that exit
of familiarity

outside i see nothing
but contempt of you

in the world of lies, life is fair

accept the fact that sometimes we say things
that we do not mean, that sometimes we burst in anger
and we hurt and then we apologize that we do not really mean to hurt

sometimes we show feelings too that we do not really want to express.
sometime we say 'i love you' and yet we are just compelled to do so

someone is dying and he needs you badly at the end of her day.
sometimes, accept the fact, that time strains us and we become

the liars, the hypocrites, the fraud, and the swindler.
and most of all, we keep it for a time, making some stares straight in the eye.

accept this fact, we are humans and in some harsh times
we decide, to survive, at all costs, no matter what.

now, we shall talk, and you shall listen and i shall write about the truth
of this fact. we are us conjoined twins in the art of deception.

lie to me as i lie to you and then we accept this fact: life is fair.

the one winged butterfly

in the slow history of the river flowing
she wants to mark her own name with her fingers

religiously she goes there on a ritual of her own
naked she dips her skin on the water

so soft are her feet on the bed of pebbles
deep down the fishes ask for more of her toes

touched the river begins to sing a song for her
the bamboo leaves keep watching what happens next

will love dance on the surface of flimsy reasons?
will passion appear and last forever?

the banks want to close in on them: the river and her
the sun is worried what will happen next


it did end, but it was sad, as sad as the butterfly that lost one of its wings.
the river loses its name as she plunges deep to the tight arms of death.

home again to the arms of despair

the waves are bigger in the middle of the ocean of my dreams
i sit on the sandy shore waiting
here is distance unfolding
coming and leaving at the same time
the hands are powerless in this
no amount of concerns connects us
once again
even if i surrender to the grips of the night
even if the moon swears
to shine till dawn breaks

you come like a shadow of an afternoon Sunday
broad and firm and strong as you claim yourself
in a name carved in stone
you're marvelous like a comet at noonday

it is late and i am weak
my knees are bent to the ground of worthlessness

you run to the sea and plunge yourself
you wave your hand before that
dissolution or that diffusion into the forgetting

i am looking at the horizon
it is as straight as life wants itself to be
who wants to break the silence of a line falling
out of a page? the smoothness of an edge
finally denying an importance

and then the sunset completes itself
with your silence
in that single splash
as you gasp for the last single breath
of hope
there is no stranger coming as
a survival
there is no new born child to revive
despair

i think it is horrible but on the other hand
it is divine
i remember that stair into heaven
rosary beads they imagine
hurled by our Mother

i cannot remember how that Sunday ends
i will again say it ends with the splash and then the edifying silence
the rising of the clouds
the resurrection of the dimming light
in the middle of grief
when handkerchief begins to show a face
of thorns

let me stop and think awhile, a moment of silence
please, drink this cup of silence with me
this blood of wine

how can i tell you that there is this deleted version of the story
in trembling i arrive home and then i scream
that was at first
and i realize the windows are closed like a man without ears
there is no use for doors and doorsteps
the stairs have long been broken

a deduction

the ordinary person that you meet
in our town
you do not even know my real name
other than Hey mister
but i do not really mind
i like it that way
just being another ordinary person
the one that smiles when you smile
at me
as i pass by you and you too pass by me
i do not stare
not that it is unethical but because i have my own thoughts
to ponder for the day

how i live my life in privacy
away from the mob
the wisdom of the crowd
the many
the extraordinary demands of the society
like how the ocean dissolves me
like a drop
in anonymity

i like just being myself
a glistening dew on the petal of a rose
that i put on the glass vase
all alone on the table

yes alone but not really lonely
just being special
to myself

this solitude
regaining strength from the past,

those old days
when my mind was murdered
because i did not bother to guard it
from the multitude
from them
not me

a loves story retold

i: seed sprouts, a head cover removed
detached

he recalls an island and two shadows entwined
under the spell of the full moon
mesmerized, exhausted, dreaming,
sweet sleep, lovers passionate about
sweat and tight flesh

she remembers
the embers and the cold darkness
the emptiness filled by his moans
and the quivers of her desires
silenced
all her senses awakening to the wonders
of togetherness and wanton
touches
lips upon lips
weight upon her
helplessness amidst the ruins
of her seduction

ii: time flies as a swift bird
stones covered with dust and humus

he said she was part of his past
now that he is old
and ugly
and helpless in poverty
with a young, native woman
caring for him

he remembers something sad
as separation of two intimacies
a distance of two words
opposed meanings

she said she had forgotten him
her first love
she said she lives alone in the land of many winters
and knows how to take care of herself
she said she is happy
and now so free
she says the apple trees in time shall bloom
a daughter sits under it and she takes her picture


iii: the sun rises in the east, that is a fact
the storm subsides, one gropes for therapeutic metaphors
along the silent nooks of the shores
and then the reunion of clauses and phrases
wanting to have complete thoughts

he told her things may be lost and people may be hurt
but chances are
there are rainbows sometimes that reconnect hearts
bridges that dissolves distances

he told her that some missing pieces are found
some chains of love become a necklace of reunions
and reconciliations

he did not tell her though because it is so hurting
that
he did not really love her that whole enough
when he made love to her on that island of desire
he was thinking of another one
his true love
that once broke his heart many years ago
when once he
was whole and true and young and
honest and real
when he met her
he did not tell her he was such a shattered glass
with splinters all spread
on the bottom of the ocean floor

true or false

either you become true
or you become false

if you are true
there is only pain

truth does not offer you
happiness

if you keep on hoping
no one comes

if you become false
a platter of joys is served

that is how they work here
falsity has rewards

truth's place is elsewhere
it can be eternal

but when is such a question
that demands a quick answer

truth does not guarantee
temporary solutions to your grief

falsities are here
and if you do not dance

you will be a wallflower
& i know you will not like it.

to understand you

it is like i am studying a new subject matter
to teach for another semester because that old professor died
cancer of the prostate and i am the substitute,
it is time consuming, but for lack of will to refuse
i am back again to something that i hate,
to begin, to read what i have long forgotten,
remembering is always painful, there were less happy days to reckon with,

you, i have long dropped the idea of this dead tree
growing leaves again, roots not deeply rooted, the bark coming out,
but this is an obligation, to be with

you, again, to live in a house where life nests
time, where the ought becomes a code,
as i open the pages for my study, i stopped and think of other ways to really understand

you, i gazed at the ceiling and then shifted my strategy to the floor,
something flashes,
i must start at the end, and then go back
to that previous poem.

what makes us alive really

there is this sense of rottenness
we keep it
but we do not want to be outdone by it,
it stinks deep within us
but we keep always believing
that this cannot harm us
we go on
day by day on the common routine
the ways that make us
livable in the house of our heart

there are nails of the past
and the hammer that keeps on
bogging
we are never destroyed somehow
but like stairs
we are built and heightened
to become a big house
where others too live

there is this sense of brokenness
somehow
we start from there
and on and on the casualness
the smile that you see
every morning that we meet
we keep telling
i am alive and i am still intact

discarding

inside my mind are the stories they all related to me
when i was small, mama, what i like about mama,
was her story about the elastic man, who saved his
woman of affection from the deep well by simply
extending his rubber hands.
papa cannot be outdone, who with his reserved silence,
when we rode horses, and checked the tenants of the land,
told about the story of the emperor who had no clothes,
my son be always aware that people cannot be trusted
verify, check, counter check, do not believe outright.

there were myths, and parables, there are theories
so many reminders about survival kits,
about being calm and reasonable, there is no rush,
time heals, people forget, sins are forgiven, matters of
the heart must be kept inside the chest, and the family
must always be the first to consider, less travels, save money,
keep secrets, everything in moderation, keep the readings,
donate to the church, be friendly with the powers that be,
compromise with the communists, give in to what you cannot
control, save the house, remember friends, be kind to animals,

i am sculpted. I am like a stone shaped by the rain and
the air. I am tired. But i am not giving up. I like to be a new
house, not the renovated ancestral one.
I like to be in a strange place. I am going away then.

at the top of the mountain alone, (and powerful) where i
can think more, discard all my built-in beliefs, i carry nothing.
i talk to the wind. I look over the plain.

I sit alone and watch
the moon.

ritual

when i wake up this early morning
she was not already beside me.

i do not want to rise and fold the blanket
and go somewhere else.

or read the papers, or sip coffee, there is
this laziness that infects my bones, a disease

of meaning, another slow day, the routine is
eating me, and i behave

in a manner that i am like a lame duck being
aimed at by all the bystanders

i am opening my eyes, and the ceiling is off
white, it has been that way ever since i got married,

why did i leave it that way? i have the money to have
it painted pure white, like a very clean slate where

i can write what i must mean, but i didn't, i let things
that way they are from the beginning, and perhaps

they will still be at the end. This is what i do next,
always always i do this: i rise from my bed, go to my

circular mirror and look at my face, they also do it,
and then i touch my cheeks and chin,feeling the roughness

of the beard, how they have grown long and so untidy,
the razor is ready, and the soap and water, but this time

i will do what i cannot do the other days of my life,
i will not trim the unruly ones, i will not wash my face,

i may slap myself, and then i give the mirror the grin
of the man that is used to all these doubts and shame.

i will tell it, i am now myself.And then i will the bathroom
another tune for my whistle, nobody, nobody but me.

contrasting sounds of a sunday morning

rain is pit pattering
on the roof

the wind is as gentle
as a whisper
of a new lover

when the rain stops
the footfalls pass by

the church bell rings
on a call to prayer

the sound of motorcycles
get louder towards the flea market

the cock crows and
jumps to the ground from a tree

here i am
writing another poem for you

it is the sound of silence again
words hugging like a friend's reunion

vicarious

you're off to Mindoro
on a night flight

from Davao
to Manila

i am bound for Manila
on an early morning flight
for a conference
in Faura

we're heading finally to
a new direction in our lives
to start this new year
with a lot of missions

you go for the smile
i will try, but for the meantime i keep
my mouth shut

i like you (i doubt if this is
love, it is just a very sensitive issue)
i may follow you
and pursue you (till the end of my
life, but when? and where?)

the hands of morality grip me by the throat
giving me the signals
that it really means what it says

you know what i mean.
i still have fences to mend.

there will be a nice hello.
hot and sizzling barbecue.

the goodbye will be as cold as
frozen meat
who knows, i will eat it raw.

forbearance

as i eat

my breakfast and you
start telling me about something that
makes me boil (a new debt incurred
or another lousy party for friends
or your way of clumsily handling your
private affairs
how can i be so interested in you?)

(honestly i want to scream for you to
shut up, but i keep my
cool head)

i continue eating and i pretend i like
the food that much
and then i chew my food longer this time
and tell you

'you look so beautiful today, my dear'
(you witch! my crazy mind insists, but
honestly, you have done more good than
evil, and i weigh them all in the scale and
i begin to have regrets, and i wipe my
mouth with a tissue paper and)

' i love you honey', (without really looking at
her in the eye)

the world out there is too wide
for narrow differences. (i am human and i
must be considerate)

' i love you too' (oh this crazy world! what is
it really that is bogging her innocent mind?)

life is so beautiful

i step out as the door opens
the rain just stop its downpour
it is cold and the flowers are wet
and the grass glisten with drops
of water

on its blade
the red rooster jumps from a tree
and flirts

with a gray hen
i look to the sky and then
around the nearby hills
some birds fly towards the trees
a carabao grazes on the plain
deep within me i still want
more years, more years.

what cannot be said directly

so you are in that stage of
having to dive like Adrienne
in the ocean
finding the wreck,

more interpretations about reality.

you climb the ladder and see
another world,

and here you have written another story
about something that you cannot say directly

the mermaid and the jellyfish
the hands of the merman stronger than yours

and the death of one
the name of whom is not written elsewhere

the sand, the sun, and the silence of your
deepest wreck.

the reason why one resorts to poetry

imagine you have a world
a government
a neighbor,

the world too cruel for you and you want to hurt it too
but you cannot,
the government that makes you poorer and deceives you
and persecutes you and you want to be one of those rebels
but you cannot
a neighbor that closes its door and talks against you
and makes higher fences
and yet you cannot complain because
you have no power
weak and helpless and you too
lost in the labyrinths of a complex lifestyle
no direction, no vision, no hope nothing to lean upon
or hold unto

those are the reasons why you go inside your room too
and begin to write, and somehow, you say

i am free, i am happy, i am living,
and my house is not burning.

disrespect/ignorance

that early morning i take a walk
on the path beside a ricefield

on the other side about ten meters away
a man is spraying the ricefield with
pesticides

the birds are too innocent for poison
and begin to eat all the worms that fall
from the leaves of riceplants

i am breathing poison but the man on the other side
does not really know what he is doing

the air cannot complain, i could, i know,
but i am too busy about a lot of things and thoughts

the birds are feasting on the dead
worms, and
i left the place at once.

this we have to know

we sow seeds
but we never come back
for the future fruits,

that is not the reason
for our sowing
we sow the seeds
as we travel along
the paths of our pains

we may have sown
the confusion and those
that follow us always wonder
where we are heeding

we are heeding to a place
we have never been to
so how can we ever know
oh, we too follow

the beatings of our heart
as we fall part by part
as we keep on the start
always carrying that dart

to start with

you get a handful of mud
add a little rain
and then you begin shaping
a face

carefully you put some
tenderness
shaping forgiveness and
mold integrity

you stop for a while
figuring out what is missing

your heart is heavy
filled with the usual burden
of love

you pour love
a basin of water
to a thirsty ground

something is broken
and you finally regret
what you have been doing

yet you begin anew
on a handful of mud
reshaping regret
forming another face

this time
more beautiful
it has hope & courage

in your world

in your world i descended
like a star i fall down
crush to the
ground and
take all the
pain,

you laugh
about this star that wants
to feel the
stone

too much humiliation
yet

time comes to redeem
what godly material was there
to make the
brightest sun

a heavy sigh under the stars

too many people to love
too short a time.....

yes, it is another year

another mountain to climb
from this valley where we sit for the meantime
under a tree where we get our drink
of the the mist
dew-like sustenance

it is another year on this cliff
we thought this is all there is
an edge
where there is no pushing anymore
another shadow comes
and becomes visible as a hill
then a peak
and then a tip of the high mountain
becomes another target
of this unending struggle to be
on top
of our worlds

sisyphus is with us and
we look at those backlog of years
a flood of tears
a harrowing furrowed existence
broken selves bones reunited
flesh mending like torn pieces of
letters
the contents of which you prefer
to forget

the routine

the routine is the path to
a prejudice
the stones there becomes our ordinary stones
the colors are the same everyday
and stopping becomes a stranger
the world rotates upon itself
and there are no questions addressed
to the passing wind
and even the fire that puts itself off
without your asking

time drags and routine does not mind

a man, and something within

a man cannot say about

what he sees , sometimes, he merely

gazes at it, and then

either he stays or leaves,

he touches the hand of the wind

and does not tell you

what he feels, his mouth is dry

and his hair follows where the wind goes

he keeps a lot of somethings inside,

one that makes

him feel a stone

nothing drips, nothing flowing

steady as a post

without light

during the night, without fear

he expels shame

and then he goes back

takes that.... something

and does not say

at all anything

the shallow waters

on an afternoon
you swear you want something light this time
you want to be like some clouds
those happy ones
those that change faces and shapes and
colors every second
something slippery to our senses
you dislike permanence
and stability
you opt for the floating flimsy things
a leaf floating on the water
a boy wading on the shore afraid of the
depths like the way his mother watches over him
you say
you are tired of these philosophical pursuits
as though thinking hurts
as though every word becomes an argument
you like something fashionable like gowns
and the latest creations of
some gay designers
i am firm and i stay
on the depths of my thoughts
and i am drowning and as you well see
i do not need your help
i like this pain of fathoming
whatever is there
is mine alone and now
step out from the yard of my life
get out of my fence
i live here and this is my territory
this is my loneliness
and i am proud of it.

what is it that you like?

don't you like this sweetness
of my words?
you are bored with this sugar
and honey
and cream?
you are afraid you have become
sick of such
sweet tongue
such sweet indulgence?
oh, you want something bitter
something sour now?
some bitter herbs some sour
species of green lemons?
try me,
i am a bitter person
i am the latest delicacy of
all that is sour
and
decomposing.

as we talk

time goes so fast
as we talk my mind whirls
and ideas are sucked
and then buried
within my
dark bottoms

keep on talking
i am a barrel that is so empty
it will take you long to fill me up
and you see
i am never filled up with water
or stone
or even air, i am always empty
and i am emptying still
whatever i hold
inside my mouth
i keep on spitting
but you have no time noticing it
not even my pain
i know how to hide things even when
i was still so small
to the eyes of my mother
even when i was just
a corpuscle of blood to her vein
i already hide
my own emotions
as we talk i always
fly away
there is nothing here
that is worth keeping
you think i am listening
i give you that impression
you have my body
excuse me
i do not have any soul
anymore

to the woman who is always asking for cybersex

i am tired
on this virtual reality,
the truth is
i do not ejaculate
with words and images
we can do it somewhere
where we meet
and do the thing
but sorry
i never love you
and even if you think of me
as nothing
but a condom
i also know
that beyond all these things that
we never do
there lies this space
beyond eroticism

you have never been there
that's why.

to Ms. S

Do i have to step down
and use your
language of abuse
so that i can
understand your world?

I may have been
air
you may not have felt
yet my
water
you have not yet
landed to
my island
yet this does not give
you the power
over my soul
and call me just like
any person that
you have conquered
by putting
them within the confines
of your
being the worst idiot
i have ever met

i am sorry too
for having met first
the devil in you

pain has always been poetic

everyday
pain is poetry
please do
not demote it
to your
layman's prose
do not degrade
it to your
language of
abuse
let it stay
beautiful in our
hearts
we need it
to be that
way in order
to survive

the barking dog in your mind

it must be noisy inside your mind as you complain about the barking dog barking all day long in your lifetime, and it must be also unfair if as you feel it, you are always the wrong tree being barked at, so you are the tree wronged and i, this human being writing some lines for a conversation, shall always be that barking dog inside your mind. let us talk let us exchange places, or let us settle for a little compromise, there is no dog, and there is no wrong tree, onthe very first day next year at the very first hour, let us talk, as new friends, let us begin again as strangers in a new place wanting to know what each street is named after.

poem 2

the little black bird goes home in a cave just below her belly between her legs it sings about love that she always kills for nothing before midnight the blackbird flies seeking the warmth of other blackbird it is cold and dying in her keeping now she sings alone like a blackbird cursing the trees and the flowers she wants to disown the blackbird in exchange for the earthworm she likes it that way wriggling without any feet at all pointed and penetrating the curse continues it can never be hers and the blackbird keeps coming back mocking her like an old man

my love is ambitious like air

wanting to fill
every emptiness
like air
filling every
space
my love fits
in and takes
the shape
of you

writing poems

it takes a lot of
frustrations,
a little inspiration
but more
of melancholic
clamor
for someone like
you to write
a poem
sometimes only
once a year
or nothing at all
not a poem
even
when they read it
or when
you read it
yourself

it is a matter
of just
surviving
less the poems
which you
could have
written

everyday in your
life.

irreconciliable at last

this is the story
you meet someone whom you think is very interesting
and you go to a busy place
buy beer and talk a while
the usual get to know scripts

more bottles to make
a certain familiarity
more words
and less periods
less question marks now
more of introspection
and then
all the questions are erased
the answers are too much to take
the conversations drag
and contempt comes at the last drink
'one for the road' the other says

you leave and you realize
home is always sweeter even without
anyone whom you at first think is very interesting.

reading you

let me read you that was the beginning
of this all
i was pleading then like a suitor of wisdom
to a goddess
who is blind, and deaf and mute
and so cruel
to reject my prayers

i was stranded in an island and i was very lonely
but no one knew
not one of them has gone there
only the waves from far that touched the sands
and then leave without taking any news from me

i was murmuring
there were times that i was hysterical
but no one hears for there was no one there
not even a crab

or a rat

let me read you once again
let me hear you like a page of a book
like a song of a leaf

you look at me with disdain as though asking
who are you? you have no name to woe me into submission

i resigned and dumbfounded
i begin being myself believing that i too have something to say
though different from yours

heartfelt and deeply wounded
i begin to hear my words
soothing like a balm of my clean conscience
freeing like my hands opening and letting go
from the past with you.

As The Sparrow

To give life you must take life, and as our grief falls flat and hollow upon the billion-blooded sea I pass upon serious inward-breaking shoals rimmed with white-legged, white-bellied rotting creatures lengthily dead and rioting against surrounding scenes. Dear child, I only did to you what the sparrow did to you; I am old when it is fashionable to be young; I cry when it is fashionable to laugh. I hated you when it would have taken less courage to love. Charles Bukowski -

There Are Those Who Love To Get Dirty

There are those who love to get dirty and fix things. They drink coffee at dawn, beer after work, And those who stay clean, just appreciate things, At breakfast they have milk and juice at night. There are those who do both, they drink tea. Gary Snyder -

Bluebird

there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too tough for him, I say, stay in there, I'm not going to let anybody see you. there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I pur whiskey on him and inhale cigarette smoke and the whores and the bartenders and the grocery clerks never know that he's in there. there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too tough for him, I say, stay down, do you want to mess me up? you want to screw up the works? you want to blow my book sales in Europe? there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too clever, I only let him out at night sometimes when everybody's asleep. I say, I know that you're there, so don't be sad. then I put him back, but he's singing a little in there, I haven't quite let him die and we sleep together like that with our secret pact and it's nice enough to make a man weep, but I don't weep, do you? Charles Bukowski -

Hidden

If you place a fern under a stone the next day it will be nearly invisible as if the stone has swallowed it. If you tuck the name of a loved one under your tongue too long without speaking it it becomes blood sigh the little sucked-in breath of air hiding everywhere beneath your words. No one sees the fuel that feeds you. Naomi Shihab Nye -

Whatif

-

Last night, while I lay thinking here, some Whatifs crawled inside my ear and pranced and partied all night long and sang their same old Whatif song: Whatif I'm dumb in school? Whatif they've closed the swimming pool? Whatif I get beat up? Whatif there's poison in my cup? Whatif I start to cry? Whatif I get sick and die? Whatif I flunk that test? Whatif green hair grows on my chest? Whatif nobody likes me? Whatif a bolt of lightning strikes me? Whatif I don't grow taller? Whatif my head starts getting smaller? Whatif the fish won't bite? Whatif the wind tears up my kite? Whatif they start a war? Whatif my parents get divorced? Whatif the bus is late? Whatif my teeth don't grow in straight? Whatif I tear my pants? Whatif I never learn to dance? Everything seems well, and then the nighttime Whatifs strike again! Shel Silverstein

if you like my poems let them

if you like my poems let them walk in the evening,a little behind you then people will say "Along this road i saw a princess pass on her way to meet her lover(it was toward nightfall)with tall and ignorant servants." e.e. cummings -

Seeker Of Truth

seeker of truth follow no path all paths lead where truth is here e.e. cummings -

Sex Without Love

How do they do it, the ones who make love without love? Beautiful as dancers, gliding over each other like ice-skaters over the ice, fingers hooked inside each other's bodies, faces red as steak, wine, wet as the children at birth whose mothers are going to give them away. How do they come to the come to the come to the God come to the still waters, and not love the one who came there with them, light rising slowly as steam off their joined skin? These are the true religious, the purists, the pros, the ones who will not accept a false Messiah, love the priest instead of the God. They do not mistake the lover for their own pleasure, they are like great runners: they know they are alone with the road surface, the cold, the wind, the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio- vascular health--just factors, like the partner in the bed, and not the truth, which is the single body alone in the universe against its own best time. Sharon Olds -

this peace and quiet

the stones learn the language of the moss
in harmony with the stillness of the clear water of the pond
the grasses and the marshes mark their boundaries
the fog is a white blanket on the foot of the cold hills
the clouds are watching with awe
this peace and quiet

amor vincit omnia

conquer me

love

conquer me

for i am the lonely child

the father of all lonely men

in an island of the lighthouse

in an island of the lighthouse
many have been saved
and well guided

but no one stays here
they all returned home
and no one comes back
to say thanks

virtue

unsaid but well done.

felt and gone.

a friend in chicago is in a relationship finally

on a cold winter
a friend in Chicago finally
opens up like
a clam and grabs
a sand that pricks
his tongue
so he can make a
pearl
this Christmas

i ask two questions
which i think are
intrusions to his
privacy

honestly, i am not
interested
he's happy and it is
enough to know
that

what i realize is that
he is happy and he is
no longer interested
about what i ask
or what i say

i quit.

she is alone in the room fast asleep

i cannot dictate
what he must want

that will be too personal
and cruel

when he says
that there are still gods among
men
it is sad to admit that
i am not
one of them

i was born a man
lives and shall die
as one.

meanwhile he takes
photographs
of those
that keep themselves
comfortable
in winter.

time runs so swiftly

i wake up
at 3 a.m.
symptomatic
of old age
and i open the
PC and start
scribbling
whatever comes
to my mind
a memory
a plan a
stream of
consciousness
that i simply
let go
like a flow
of an idea like
an electricity
running inside
my veins

three poems
and then
i stretch my
legs and
wriggle my
hands and
blink my eyes
grasping for
something new

now it is
4: 42 a.m.

how fast time can
run
to a man as slow
as i am.

my wishes for you

i wish that you finally decide to choose
a poem

and make it a poem
in your lifetime
the one that is ugly at first
but which does not give up to search for ways to become
another beautiful poem
i wish that you finally give up
on being a doubter
and simply be an ordinary wanderer
not thinking of anything else
but wonder
the one whose innocence is always a blank wall
and free to the ways of the confetti
one who looks up to the heavens and says
how beautiful are the stars!
even if there are none

my new jockey

IT FEELS so smooth on my skin
deep down under my
thighs i feel like a
god

my inner glands
are so curious about something
smooth and new
and tickling
like your feather dusters

and i like you looking at me
like i am a
born-again christian

on the other hand what really matters
is not this satin jockey
it is still what is bobbing inside
that really counts

feel it like your
throbbing heart

talk to the cat, i am away

just in case
you come home
and i am not around
sit on the
porch and call the
orange cat with one eye
and talk to it
it is not as insensitive
as you.

somewhere somehow

carry this dream:
someday somewhere something which is best for your life will happen
the windows

shall open and the doors too
without your hands touching them
the hearts of your loved ones shall open and give you another room
they will all welcome you and embrace you
and you shall have tears
of joy
so much joy that you cannot hold with your fingers
all the dreams you have shall come true

that one evening
the sky shall part and you slip through it
into a world that you have never seen

on my own

when i leave here, i leave without regret, i do not come from here and i have
nothing in mind that suggests that this is the place i am meant to be,
you know that, and so i go, and when i go, i wed possibilities
which are never in my mind, i alliterate, i swallow my pride, i have fluent lungs,
i listen, i move fast, i slow down, i exhale air, and take back land, i belong
to the untied, maybe always less, but i am prepared,
i fall on quicksands, and i am still.

i may come later. No one saves me anyhow.
except my own
self.

surviving the odds

slowly
they burn
little things
at night
to build
a fire

you know
what they
are really
doing?

they are
gathering
little things
to keep
the fire
alive

and they
keep telling
stories
to keep
themselves
intact.

switching to the ordinary lifestyle

the big typhoon
has left us.

we do not ask
any questions

for instance
why are we born?
where do we go
from here?

you just had
the uncertainty
and you demand
nothing more
nothing less
explanations do not
work anymore
justifications are
not teasers

the possibilities are
what we do everyday

cleaning the yard
sweeping the debris
burning the leaves
making firewood
dusting chairs


there is no need for so much
talk
one mouth is never enough
in this world

after all
we can always live
without ideas
no arguments
can appease us
not even answers
from them
damn experts
and psychics

we can read
Ulysses
we can imagine
another war
in Troy
or another Samson
betrayed

we can switch
to soap operas
and just be
nothing but
ordinary tearjerkers.

our own ethics

it's not at all shameful to text the
island

of mist

it's not an embarrassment to say
that you hear a red voice

if you are feeling uneasy
well, it is not at all surprising if
at the last hour
we choose to live by our own
understanding

our own set of ethics
our own way of life

the ending

always i check
if i have
my cellphone in my
front shirt
pocket
my pen and my
small white
stationery

something to
write
just in case a new
idea comes
along

neat and clean
and ready always
for an
emergency

all the days of my life
i think my life should be that way

except perhaps
the unhappy ending

the hell of my driver

at long distance travels
i get this hell kind of a private driver
who does not care if he dies
or i die
as though life in this instance
has no meaning
at all

recklessly, i say no word
and he says no word
perhaps we feel the same thing
when we left
home.

at the beach this early morning

i see indifferent soft sands
i feel the fineness of their being in my palm

i bury my thoughts there
my hands holding on
to what is falling out of my grasp

the waves murmur
so envious about my silence.