DUMB & DULL

going back to
old places is depressing

your childhood friend
is dead
and the river where you
bathed
has become another
foul smelling canal

you walk some more
and no one remembers you
anymore

the woman who cooked for
the family
died as a spinster

the church is still alive
but the bell has been changed

the one you can hear now
is pretty
dumb and dull
sounding like you
who insists that
there is something
there still worth
coming back

Billy (Collins) & Alfredo (Navarro Salanga)

sitting here
i am reading Billy's
silence

superb, i say
that silence of the belt before it hit the boy in me,

too much drama i suppose
i do not need it for now
i like to live and so i
objectify
and ask the help of
the saving arms of
reason

with it i remember Alfredo today
he died when i first studied
metaphors in college

in the dark where he first read his poetry to us
he talked about the rain
there is no rain but i felt the chilling rain
inside my brain

rain is cool but that time
it wasn't
it felt like i could vomit
on the tiled floors of the hall
i did not finish
hearing him
i was shivering
in the cold that i only could imagine

he died young and he was so fat that he was having
a hard time carrying his body to the lecture hall
my professor

i wonder why he gained weight
despite the knowledge that it could kill him
he was not dumb

now i finished Billy
and i think Alfredo padded weight after weight
like layers and layers of club sandwich
for the simple reason
that after all he had no more valid reason to live
and the only option is
death.

BEGGING FOR AFFECTION

people will hate me if i go from one door to another begging for affection

they will ask, " does he have a mother?"

i did have a mother. "Where is his father?"

same answer. " Does he have a wife?"

that is the hard question now, because the answer is "yes"

but it will be a long story, and many will be asking more questions from me

when what i need is only a little rest and a variation of my life

by looking at the door of their houses and then after a few minutes i move away

like a cat and never like a rat that takes away

some of their trash.

and so i learned my lesson now

i dislike other people houses' doors

keep my own soft feet and just take my leisure at the park

where people like my sensitivity

simply move away and never stay.

every moment every color

i can be another person
through you
with your eyes as
mine
i can forget what
i have seen
from mine

will i be happier with what
i see?

i can always be a prism or
you can be mine

i look at you and pass through you
and then
the colors come and i shall love
it

every moment every color

but for how long? i am called by
by the voice of the wind
to be myself again

my eyes are tired but they are mine
this is home of age,
the house of debacle,
which i cannot piece out anymore
which is the door
and which is the floor

from where i come i shall return
for surely death is still the sweetest home

mourn for me
exude all the colors
my prism..

the truth always comes out

sometimes, two people live in the same house
and they behave like posts
always stoical in their maintained distances
just to make the house stand just to make
others who are there
live.

what the passersby hear are the sounds of
children chasing themselves in a game of chances
sometimes there is strumming of a guitar
but it is dark there and you cannot see someone singing

what you will hear are merely speculations of the song
the shadows on the walls also peep at you by the window
and they know that you are confused too
wanting to find out what is really going on in there

"there is a happy couple there making love perhaps"
that is what you suspect and since the house is always
closed and you hear the singing of some voices
in the dark, you often make the conclusion that
"they must be happy, they must be happy"
and happy people have a world of their own
always to the exclusion of other

you feel you are an exclusion, but don't you worry
the truth always comes out, and whatever that is, i am
telling you
"it is beautiful" always beautiful like what you can
always be

if you just believe it.

like a jar in a vacuum.

the words link us
and shadows begin to take the gestures of hands
opening into some tributaries of fingers
wanting to clasp the essence of water

the river is murky at first but the swimmers do not mind
it is summer and the sun is trying to kill us and so we like
to drift on the salt of our lost thoughts

but words as you know are always empty like jackets
hanging on the railings of the stairs
soon they fall and we want for more

"we shall meet sometime" we are meeting at this converging
wish, "there is an island and i have a house there where the flowers are dying"
you say sadly about how you miss a home

" i will travel for seven nights and days, just to see those dying flowers"
i responded
and " i will bring water" my heart is whispering

if this is true then this can be the beginning of a changed world for me
" i will wait", your voice is weak

for nights i've been thinking
i am hurt and the world is prepared for more dosage of pain
i know, when i will be there in that island

the flowers must have already died
and the cottage will be mute like a jar in a vacuum.

a door closed

that door closed
upon me and i am left out
with no one

i bleed but soon
this will stop
for i shall not die
or if i die
i must carry that
meaning
with me

i left the place
carrying nothing &
i am going somewhere

where i can be another
interesting
virgin again

i am human and i am king

i sometimes think that the tree loves me
i look at the leaves
find hope in its buds, until all these
leaves, buds,
die,
until all the leaves fall and scatter all its dead self
on the ground
where the roots have no reaction at all,
until the buds are nipped and
the world speaks nothing about it,
since, destruction and death are nothing but
normal occurrences somehow
that everything around it, the air included,
has nothing to express,
i listen, i scrutinize what is happening to me
thinking that this tree which has no preoccupation but to grow taller
and look for sunlight
is in love with me,
this mind that makes inventions, that fabricates things that
must make it a survivor,
oh well, i can think i want and leave this tree upon its
mindless existence,
after all, i am human and i am king.

the window that finally blinks

there is something in me that wants to be true
like a window that stares to a road where women pass by
covering their mouths from a dusty road
there is no blinking
every detail about the color of each woman's scarf is duly taken

but there is a boy who comes from the bushes and carries a brown ball
and throws it at me and then i close this window in me and i turn into myself
coiling like a wounded snake

that snake within us
it does not hiss anymore but in this hurting hours our eyes are like lamps glaring in the dark
thirsting for vengeance

the hurt is long and winding like a road to the cliff
and it has no ending except an abyss

from then on
one takes the truth lightly like a feather plucked from a hen
twisting a neck and planning for a fried dinner

from hence
i laugh
i laugh out loudly so that you can hear and think finally that i am all right
and that i have survived
you.

11:26

when i tell you that i have loved you since i first saw you,
i know what you will give me: a quizzical look, a sense of disbelief,
it will be milder, but i expect greater than that: that shock in war,
that vomit in gluttony, that feeling of having a snake in your bed,
i must have overate this, but i know what consequences are there:
like a mother you will cut an umbilical cord that connects me to you,
i am that helpless premature baby inside your womb,
i will die and you will like seeing that slow death like a boa
constricting my body,

i can imagine the horror of the vietnam war, the massacre of
innocent lives, blood is the river, bodies rotting on the banks,
worms everywhere, a no man's island,

you will laugh, and you will see the frankenstein in me loving
screws and bolts, and junks and rusts and useless parts

i always look at myself in the mirror of your eyes, i see that i am
a gentle moon traversing the placid lake of our junctures,

i do not wish to disturb the peace between our two countries,
i remain a diplomat in my own chosen field of silence.

soft winds blowing the reeds upon the Nile
shadows of pyramids fading with the sun and now embracing the golden
like of the moon
a bedouin riding on his camel still dreaming of a home
of oasis in the desert of his
unrequited love, an emptiness unfilled, a self unrealized
agonizing in the silence of the tumor
that keeps growing inside his head.
 

11:12

inside our pockets
is the privacy of our own stones

outside our faces are the familiarities of
our traditions

when we party
we say the same words actually
we fear
other people's anger
we cannot afford to disappoint the
visitors of our
common faith

the usual mess will be there
part of the party you know
sometimes we let go
we let loose what is too tight in our necks
we spit what is bitter outside the windows of our
tongues

there is always time for restraint in a few glasses of
alcohol
there is a time to make our mouths shut up
tying our tongues like ropes on
the railings of the house
of civility

personally i do not like this party where we become
decent fools
choosing the words
afraid of the truth
always fearing that we should have broken some rules
of engagements

most of the time we deny what our hearts are looking for
cold hands hold another set of cold hands
empty heads bang with other empty heads
on hollow sounds of flattery

one time i left the room where the party is going on
it is 11:10 in the evening and it has become too intolerable

i need to be alone inorder to be free
i imagine you and i love this atonement when you still do not mind
how i feel

i am complicating it so much restraint
because even if i am now outside everybody
i still retain
the decency of what is right and wrong which i always
carry around.

11:04

there is a coat
that covers a seed

it is thick
and dry and the seed is
safe inside it

the seasons are
inviting
one time, there is so much
rain

and it would have been a good time
to throw the seed and let
it grow

but you have decided not to

it is not the kind of seed that they know
by tradition

it did not come from their
own familiar farms established with
strict adherence to rules
and penalties

you keep the seed as a symbol of
your
eternal restraint

you are a good man
and they think of you and will always do
until you die

the seed is in your body
swallowed
like your pride in self-denial

because you will always be a good man
until they die.

10:56

you brag that life is not complicated
everything is simple

like, baring yourself, nothing hidden,
speaking, shying away from silence
because silence is strange
it is not named specifically like
a goat with horns,  a bird with claws
a fish with fins,

you speak your mind,
a square is a square
a spade is a spade
not a thing is the same,
everything unique
simplify, simplify, is that a hard
thing to do? i say it is not.

you grow, you experience pain,
you shed tears on people they do not really
consider important

time and pressure are two twins now
you like to die, you once tell me
as candid as tomorrow you will take your like away

like jumping from the 12th floor or
simply, as you put, withholding breath
or pulling the trigger
"bang!" is that complicated? i say it is not
since life, your life, is always your hands


there is meaning to all these, i tell you,
you look for it like standing by and looking at the faces of people
who suffer like us,

then life unfolds with so many petals,
it becomes a tree with so many rings worn inside its body
so many twigs, branching out as though it is following an edict

you follow the veins of a dried leaf
or listen to the stories of the child
you begin to count the stars in the dark skies
or lull yourself with the eternal numbers that the waves of the sea
are carrying to the shore

endless, moon to moon, sun to sun, horizons that tire your eyes
deserts that make you feel the thirst
numerous deaths, births and rebirths of thoughts and
memories of windchimes

it is now simple to accept, sometimes one cannot tell a person that
you love and that your love is something that you cannot really grasp
beyond speech,
beyond hold,
beyond feeling, it is what you see at noon when you stare at the sun

hurting, you cannot attack that long,
lest you get blinded by so much light

now i know how is it to write to someone and you try hard that you cannot be understood
because

life is not simple, and saying i love you is not just to utter the word and then
everything turns to be alright

it is more than that
honestly, until now, i cannot say it, or if i say it, until now i have never understood it

do not attempt to understand what i too have not understood
it is like this: when i tell you that i love you, everything in me vanishes
day turns to night, and i will be lost forever
denying what i am
destroying what i have built from the beginning

my love is a nihilist.
you, as always, can be my sun, without you
feeling it.

10:39

imagine a face
a silhouette of nose and eyelashes and forehead
black shadow against the afternoon sun
dark orange turning into
black
a journey towards a night

all the birds in your hair have gone
they are all home now
in the place that you want to remember
but you
just can't

because the word departure which was once too painful
has been erased in the glossary of your memories

but you remember
as always home

arms, and breasts and the silence of
togetherness
because you are home now and it is as always
sweet and
peaceful

10:32

i've read your poem.
had a hard time understanding it.
 i feel like wasting my time.
perhaps i am too shallow
i do not have your depth.
you are deep and i do not
have those gears and
other props
or perhaps i am just too
lazy to jump into your
water
or perhaps i just want to
have fun
reading

the words you use are
bellicose, too much
blood in there, the scenes
are deadly
so many are drowning,
and no help is coming

getting to know you
is cumbersome
you are trying to confuse
my state of hibernation
am but a simple
catfish frozen in mud
it is drought time here
and everybody is
leaving

i do not have your feet
i have my own fins
caught in suspension
i feel like a block of
soil, pushed and
abandoned

i may envy you but
i do not understand why

you are new, and original
i am old and wobbled
i am frozen in my own
hibernating world of
a block of soil, solidified
petrified, but in peace.

revenge

i am indifferent
greater than that i am angry
but nothing in my face shall show it
this anger that
spreads inside like a polluted
mining pool
to the river
this stored fear
like yeast in poisoned bread
which soon
you all shall
eat

fast, and flashing

for those that i have not
spoken
they shall continue to be
so

the bus is coming and it
will not make any difference
whether i
come in or jump out

you will wave your hand
someone will remove his hat as a gesture of honor
i like to think that i shall take a look
but it will not matter

i am inside this bus and
it is
fast and everything flashes
like
drawings erased
on that
blackboard

my promise

i promised myself
i speak what i want to say
relentlessly

even if it should result in my own
alienation

i will be free as a fallen leaf
surrendering to the grounds of my
beginning

acknowledging that on the same spot
i shall rot
and end.

coming back

it's been quite a time
abandon is such a very sad word

neglect has become
important
and every word here mourns
for the demise
of a beloved
craft

i am back and you shall take
revenge
nights are sleepless
days are restless

life becomes one strange cat
with only
one life left

to come back and be
a slave again
on this
page

on stevenson syndrome

lowly
writer are you
dwelling
in an indistinct island
namelessly

if you write about
the rain
it is nothing but simply
rain

your sea is not
their kind of sea
though
its blueness
is same without
shame

unless you are a
Louise
when he writes about
the rain
and the sea
and then
suddenly everyone
becomes
crazy
figuring out meaning
where
actually
there is none