and then you are nothing.

yes it is all in the mind
writing without hands
pens are dispensed like
an outmoded tool and
here you are facing no
screen even

the fingers lose their
directions, because it
is all in the mind, in a
dream where you can
no longer tell who is the
dream and the dreamer.

wherever you are 
know this, it is the breathing
it is the taking in, that
really matters.

remember, when all these
come out from your
mouth, you are no
longer its owner, and then
you are nothing.

two rocks speechless.

Buddha
you sit there
the usual silence
lovelier
always lovelier
ever
to the utmost
solitude

i am incensed.
i keep on burning
with a flicker and
then i thin out
until all the smoke in
me is consumed
by air
that permeates the
whole empty body
of this room

this is my sweetest
loss

i empty myself so
that i will be gone
into nothingness
so that i can be
an incense again in
my own
sacred place of
silence

with Buddha beside me
two rocks speechless.

like a chopper to the blue skies.

i may lose you.
in exchange of that loss
is this silly feeling

they will say you are
my everything
my existence is inside
your world
and i do not have
my own
except this simple word

perhaps love, but i doubt
it at times, for it makes me
feel silly, most often and

to lose you someday may
not be difficult at all, since
i already felt that years
back

when we keep on talking
about same things same people
everyday for the rest of our
lives and you sometime

walk alone, and do not answer
my cellphone ringing and then
turned off, i

understand, this silly feeling,
this anticipation of a break-up
this painless set-up of you
losing me and i losing you

to lose you can be a triumph
towards a gate where i can
shout to the cliffs and my
echoes will be that of  a

song, yes a song, of echoes
that uplift me like a chopper
to the blue skies.

UP IN THE MIDDLE AND DOWN UNDER

as it is in the sky
it shall be too on
earth and it shall
be too underneath.

The analogy is in
the roots of trees
and your hairtips
and follicles.

It shall be in the
fungus of our
existence. It shall
be in the nerves of
mankind.

Heaven, Man, and
Earth. Planes and
cars and submarines.

away from the madhouse of the chattering crowd.

i just read about the 20
most interesting people to
watch and read for 2013.

amazing. really amazing.
one feels like a dead jellyfish
the other says life is a shore
with lots of waves and the
other says he eats cannibals.

i shiver. One feels autumn in
summer. I can't relate. Going
back to my room and facing
the same screen, i face
my own blankness.In the mirror
at this moment i am a man without
a face. I feel like i am not
interesting at all.

well everyone feels this. A speck
of dust a grain of rice, indistinct
upon a big bowl. The shore is
endless, and the sky is limitless.

but i never want fame. I like it
this way. I go out of my door
walk alone, and the crowd sees
no one. I see all of them, and
that is enough to make life
so interesting.Animals in the zoo.
Stuffed toys in the store.
A dress shop. A show of guns
and bullets. And then another
explosion headlining the most
famous people entangled in
that ending.

I'm lucky. I am not in the headline.
I am back home, watch the news.
Eyes get tired and then have some
sleep on an hour without restrictions.

No one tells me that in this broad
daylight, it is not good to have sleep.
As others work themselves to death,
i rest at my own choice. I am nothing
After all, this is nobody at his utmost
luxury, in privacy, in seclusion, happily
situated away from the madhouse of
the chattering crowd.

and where i shall go after?

we are two who have become one
because of the law, we thought it was
because of love, too late we found it
not to be that,

too late, for us who find ourselves
naked in bed, and then find nothing
desirable at the end, our eyes stare
at the ceiling finding no stars, no moon,
but just wood, and yes this bulb which
i bought at a cheaper price, and now
about to flicker,

you say, we shall endure, what will
others say? shall we break an oath?
shall we put ourselves to the shame
of our elders and the law? i say
nothing. i am worried about the flicker.
Soon it will end. And this room will
be dark, and i won't hold your hand
neither will i embrace your body.

i put my hands above my abdomen
in prayer and you see me before that
light dies, and you smile, as i pretend
that i am dead.

That is your dream i know. And mine
too, perhaps. How i wish i'd been
clear to myself, who i am, what to do,
and where i shall go after?

my shadow

follow me, follow me
do not look back, keep on following me
move one step and be with me
hold my hand, hold it tighter
look at me, we'll stop, i'll kiss you
kiss you hard, i'll make love to you

my shadow.

i shall not run away from myself

to tell you the truth
i keep on writing to make myself live

if i stop, i die, and if i die
no one lives for me

for i am alone by myself
in all these

i do not die neither to i wish
to have it myself
done, for that would be
cowardice at its most

one who loves oneself does no
lose oneself
for what choice do i have?
except to live and show the
courage that i still know how

you may be happy now in
another lover's arms
what choice do i have?
no one bears all my regrets for
me except myself

i am brave, brave as a thousand
lonely men who know how to fight
and not run

away from myself.

how time really swiftly passes by

again i see this movie
i look around me
i close the window panes
and then the door
and then i go within
the movie in one of those
characters
that keep on chiding me
that i have done nothing
to make that love come true

it keeps on laughing at me
saying
"how time swiftly passed
and you are left alone
still tending to your wounds
as she had sent her boy into
manhood and now waits with
him at the altar for his bride"

bad character i supposed
but i am worse
i know how to jump
into mud into the situation
and tell myself
" Go, go away
i have more loves
to tend and tender
for another day!"

what we did in bed

if only the bed has a
tongue of its own and can
speak the words

it would have spoken
endlessly
all the stories about us
always
unfinished

if it has a tongue
i'd cut it.

academic screaming.

she is sleepy
since she says she slept last night
at 2 a.m. already


what was it that
she was thinking?

i won't surmise.

i also slept at
12 midnight

i am not thinking
of any Cinderella

i wrote many poems
last night
now i cannot remember
what was each all about

i am pretty sure they are
all about boredom and
emptiness since the void
has become my own
goddess thinking that
perhaps it is more
beautiful than being filled
up with no space left
for me to move about

in this i can say that
emptiness has its own
indescribable weight

its own length that
can measure the depths
of the foxhole of my
soul

i am thinking a lot
unloading uploading
with only one thing in
mind that something
that is still hurting and
giving me fears shall
disappear

that perhaps hope
still lurks somewhere
in one of those hidden corners
of this empty heart

a fly hovers on my hand
i must have been smelling
like a spoiled fish because

i have not taken a bath
already for days and
breakfast has been so
irregularly eaten

i like it now, i am getting
thinner, and deeper now with
this dipper of hardly obtained
wisps of  wisdom.

i am talking to myself.
and i like this clarity now
amidst the noise of my
academic screaming.

I am healed.

i have a friend in virginia who is talking to his chihuahua
named Silver,





do not ask me,of course, he is lonely, and Tolstoy has described it once
when the only boy of the horse driver died in an accident one winter time
and he had a hard time accepting the loss, and lamented such fact that
he wanted to talk to anybody but then no one is there to listen, the snow
fell heavily, and the whole world is one thick covered sediment where
indifference was so thick that no empathy was possible to penetrate it.

this friend has white hair, wears thick glasses, and i haven't seen him reading
a book, but he has his wine, and TV, and some friends to see on some special
weekends,

he walks with his dog, and has a one way conversation with him because the
dog is not talking back


this i can say, i can relate, as i too, talk to the car when i drive long distance
just to divert my attention from what is found in the house, empty chairs,
milk boxes, medicine capsules, celery and lettuce and tomato salad on the
dining table inside a white porcelain plate, the scent of black pepper and
olive oil, turmeric and ginger juice for my morning ritual,

my wife has five dogs, which make us a big crowd in the house, but for one thing
i never bother talking to any one of them which has become a lot of noise for me

i love white cats but all these dogs drive them away. I like to go to the mountain
where Papa planted some trees surrounding an old cottage. No one stays there
because of the bandits who killed our caretaker . They  cut his penis and hanged
it on one of the beams of the old house. He was beheaded. There was hatred for
a very uncertain reason. The man was very old, he had ten grandchildren. They all
left the land.

i talk to my table when i am left alone in my office. I talk to the trees when i take
a walk on early mornings where i can fill my lungs with fresh air.

Talking to something inanimate is not uncommon. I remember this old man too in
Fiddler on the Roof.

i guess my friend who is childless like me who works as caregiver in the U.S. of A
is just coping up. Boredom is dangerous. Perhaps if he does not talk to his dog, or me
talking to a chair, the possibility that the Demons of our Minds will begin talking to us,
is not remote.

But there is one thing that i like to share. I was in the hospital for five days, isolated,
and drugged to sleep by my doctor, and then i still remember, i held the rosary, and
i begin talking to God, not the chair, not the table, not the bulb.

Whatever that is, call it a miracle.  I am healed.

in the poverty of their souls

there is noise in the silence of the room
it goes louder when the lights are turned off
i am trying to listen to it
what it is going to say but it is too crowded
like the biggest mall in the city filled with so many
people talking within themselves as they walk around
window shopping and just like anybody sufferer
in the poverty of their souls is buying nothing

i still listen attentively and hence not getting any sleep
till dawn breaks into a dimly lighted morning as outside
the world is still colored gray, shadows of trees etched
on the horizon, clouds are heavy and then as nature
so edicts, the rains begin to fall

and then i listen to the rain, its sonorous cadence
its monotonous tapping and dripping from the sky
down to the roof following the given rules of the gutter.

the noise subsides, the rain stops gently, the pond of water
slowly mirrors a gaping light, showing that hidden blue sky,
white cotton clouds like small ships coming in to the ports of
my newly found silence. Now, the noise resolves and so
i can soundly sleep alone in my room with a window open..

black spider i keep my silence.

i know how it feels like to be in a narrow alley
there is no rope but the feeling of being choked is always there
in such a way that you cannot utter the necessary words calling for help

you fear the coming of the night because there are no more people talking
and silence seems to be another cruel stranger without a face and fingers

the weirdness of these all
underlies a throbbing of the heart drums without music but all palpitations of an abnormality which you know exists but which you cannot drive away like unwanted birds pecking on your hair as though they are grains
as you see yourself getting bald and bloody

there is no screaming now, people won't hear anyway or if they hear they will think that you are being haunted by
invisible demons, which you yourself cannot figure out which is the head and which is the tail
and you move your arms in circles trying to locate which is the point of an ending

that happily ever after that you like to write which cannot be written because now you cannot pinpoint
the cause from the effect and the effect from the cause like a wedding ring which has become too tight in your finger

you like to throw it away but it is not that simple. People are complicated. Events are either lawful or unlawful and you are given the choice whether to go to prison or die.

the deep blue sea and the devil. you or I, either and neither, puzzling bitch surrounded by dogs like a lake surrounded by small shores, like a mouth mumbling for syllables which still remain irresponsible  and
hence incomprehensible

but i know each like the fingers in my hand, and to avoid death of the black spider i keep my silence.

the escape door

i want an escape and so i run away
towards a door which has writing hands
overlooking a pathway of oceans where
imagination looks like it, vast expanse of
a dark blue
field
filled  with monsters.

the oxymorons in action

you are supposed to act
naturally, in the most random order,
and bring out the original copy
of that painting which was found
missing, true myth, sweet agony,
growing smaller as pretty cruel's
only choice

what a conspicuous absence
alone together with the crowd
beautifully painful running slowly
as though you are a walking dead
appearing invisible in that tiny
elephant suit as an unpopular
celebrity waiting in a short while
in our criminal justice system

old news, that deafening silence
with a certain definite possibility
which has terribly pleased the
student teacher of the small crowd
breathlessly loose tights,
and hence so clearly
misunderstood.

THE POETIC CORNER

This is the place where money
has no value,

where work is always free because it is
loved,

because love is always one with its beloved
expecting nothing in return

loving without measure

always priceless
more than a gem
beyond gold
transcending the fences
of our being

despite the tiredness of our hands,
despite the drying of the
rivers of the
mind

imagination always flies

like birds
outside the matrix
of
the boundaries of
migration

a diaspora of metaphors
clinging to nothing but its
faith to
the ecstasy of
the most common words
the diaphragm of
syllables
the bugle of sentences

press the keys
you can write some more

face the screen
and
bleed.

IN POETRY

the soul weeps
stripped of its wings
it falls upon an
abyss

it is dark there
and it is struggling
to get out
from its prison

the soul howls
like a dog in the
night
as though
it lost its
master

thus it is in
poetry

the soul calls for
God
who is not
there anymore.

FOR YOU WHO CLAIM TO BE THE OWNER OF MYSELF

it is shallow
i know, it is only skin deep

to be godly
i could have immersed myself
in that deep river
of blood where i could be
shaken
totally and panic calling for
help

but i like it here
sitting on the shallow part of this river
thinking only
about how drowning could be such a
horrible experience

since
(anyhow) the inevitable always comes
anyway
and for the meantime let me have my own time
relaxing myself

before you finally come
on time as
always.

A POEM ABOUT DEATH

is still early

the sun is still crazy

over aridity

one gets bored with a hat

and uneasy now with the usual shade of an old tree

what choice is there?

that desert has killed so many travelers

and no one came back to tell the exact story

how it happened

the usual thing is curiosity

and restlessness

and then finally because of too much loneliness

one finally ignores the sun

and embarks on the unanswered questions that lie in that desert

where death tells its own story

and then you will like it

and so like the rest

you too, do not come back

and when finally the sun sets

and darkness comes

there is peace in those lights that spring

from the windows of houses

and then after a moment

too, die, in the serenity of the silence

of the night.