we have friends who during a
party ask us
where have we been all these times
what we have been doing
on those spare days

and we answer that
we have been writing poems
and trekking the country for metaphors

and they all laugh while holding their wine glasses
thinking that we are joking
and finding us all
funny

"cheers! we'll drink to that" says a friend
to celebrate those days
when we merely talk about stocks and dividends

pretty is sweet and rose scented
i go only for the hugging and the caressing
she licks me though on my feet and toe
but no matter how lonely
i do not sleep with pretty

i still have fears of the fleas

let us be candid and wild about this my love
our love, lick my love, my love,
suck my love, my love,
i will lick all the love you

have
suck mine that i too have
love goes like a pendulum
to and through, and through and through,
so lick, my love, my love,
suck my love, my love
until we are all through and through
until we are filled and emptied in this then and now.

let me hold your hand so i can take you there
on a chair
i spread my legs and look up to the sun above us
you kneel and i be your god for this moment
you root yourself to earth like a sunflower
you shed your leaf you bow down like a slave
you find my treasure my dews
for now i became the shape of another

a leaf am i
consume me, you worm!

there is dignity in what you do
makes man a king
you go to earth and open your mouth
letting in the quintessence of manhood
think of humanity
without this the world would be so many
swallow that pride of masculinity
inside your grace and kindness
accommodate this offer
man and woman entangled
tendrils so entwined
let no bud turn into a flower
let there be no fruit
for that is what they wanted

there is a waterfall on my belly
there is a dam on my pelvic bone
i cannot stop this
i will let go a river
there will be a flood
needing you.

be the parched earth
let your cracks be mouths
i will be the rain, i will be the flood
do not destroy humanity
take all of me, this flood, this rain, this dam is broken
i let go a rampage of emotions
i explode

you be the space
you must take all that i am
all that i will be
tackle me, swallow me
drink me
o thirsty earth, my love,
my life, my outlet, my current.

a pool lies at the foot of a hill
there is a bush of mushing green
beside a rotten tree are mushrooms
birds drink here and then sing
a crystal pool where Narcissus
rests and stays for a while

at the side of the bank are white stones
a frog licks a fly
drinking upon a dropp of sperm

Narcissus is sleeping
soundly upon a grass
under a tree
it is windy.

she left her for good
but he manages to stay
and keep himself
sane,

he sits naked on the stair
caresses the loneliness of his flesh
and squirts his substance on the floor

at least he did not spit on her

what i think is what you get
this is all i have
a finger, a thought, a tongue
i can offer you a hand
if you want
if you stay, i can offer you greater
than all these
you may have my body
and if you care for me more than
enough
you can even have my soul
but if you are true more than enough
that you take time
burying me when i die
then i can give you
more than my soul and my body
but you may not like it
so i may ask: won't you take my poetry?

don't laugh, i am a serious writer.

last night was different
inside my dream i was gentle
kind to myself there was no blaming
no enumeration of sins and no formula for what must be done
it was more of taking things like a shallow river
i step on it and there is no qualm
no sounds of wild ducks
just the cool, calm waters with slight ripples from the drops of dew
from the leaves of mountain trees,
last night, we were different
we simply gaze upon our bodies
naked as we are to the honesty of who and what we are
i kissed you on the mouth and your tongue licked mine
we closed our eyes we caressed our bodies with our hands
not a word, just a savor of the fleshy feast,
no justifications, no explanations
we grip our fingers
we bite our lips
on joint orgasms, a celebration at last of having discovered
our souls, fused, divine, and forgiving.

it is like my test
do not anticipate this for an answer because it can be that.
i do not go for filling in the blanks
for that would be too easy neither will i ask you to enumerate
for how can you ever have a good memory,
i go for an essay
the one that ask for justifications
where white can be black
and black white
with a person like me and like you
based on the need
and our desires
reasons abound like a bunch of ripe grapes
sweet sour
we pick them all, make the wine, ferment, and then
we sit like lovers
drinking our inventions.

Raffy in Las Vegas always knew what to do with his life.
Nothing submerged, suppressed, everything waiving like hands
Welcome, welcome,
Happiness, there is no tint of sadness on his face
Lovers abound, There is no shame,
There is always that touch
That tickles his legs
Of hair and
Tongue,

He forgets home

where his face is stuffed
Like a bear.

A sea of cloth on an early morning
A wooden boat afloat
The cloth of blue and gray clouds
Still touching
Hands and Lips
A man wearing a straw hat
A woman on green skirt watching
Him sail back,
A child cradled on her arms
Serene in sleep

it is obtuse, and you must
take the form of the isosceles

not off tangent
do not be strict on
perpendiculars

take the angle where
love fits most
where the groan is least

the pain
negligible

love maximized on trapezoidal
compromises

the dream

i like this to be simple.

she was tiny and smooth
like a shell
(not the shell of an egg)
a sea
shell, she has a song
from the wind
it is sad, but i love it,
her, she is the other woman,
on a bamboo bed,
she my time unexplained
i make love to her
she pretends, i am hurt,
but it does not matter,
i am lonely, and feeling so lost,
i am a ship
needing an ocean not an anchor
i have no port
of origin and arrival,
that night, the sphinx
was shattered, and the following morning,
she was dead
asleep, she was so exhausted like a slave
woman, feeding me the love
that i have not tasted,
i was a puppy, yelping for help,
for meat,
and then i wake up
early, for some
anxiety, what time is it,
where am i,
i am leaving, i offered her
not flowers, i planted a kiss,
it was not part of the
contract, but just the same
i kissed her, for she is dead asleep
dreaming perhaps of the
man she really loved.
i put on my pants
combed my hair, and silently
left the room, locked the door,
and be myself again.

it is as simple as that, back home,
i do not need any complication.

.. and so we went to her place
in a house where her only furniture
is a bamboo bed

she holds my face
she kneels down
she kisses my hand
as though she is my slave

... and so something which should not have happened happened
there's that tinge of guilt
i wanted her to say she loves me
but she didn't

she made me happy all the way
all way through that lonely night
on that bamboo bed

that following morning
when she was still fast asleep
i kissed her hair
put something beside her
that she loves most

it will make her survive perhaps for a month
even without love

you dream about a court litigation,
there was this man, emaciated suffering
from tuberculosis, his bed is worn out, blood stains
on his pillow and blanket unwashed, you can estimate
how this foul smell emasculates him,
he does not sound a complaint,
yet you know he does not like everything around him,
including himself,

there are cockroaches feeding on his saliva
drying and more are coming from his mouth,
no one cares for him, he is left alone to die,
and you see these things above him
you are the spirit of his dream, his son, and he
is your father,

there are unresolved issued between you and him
years ago, you are ambivalent,

did he destroy you? or was it him who placed you
in the throne of your success now?

Hamlet, to be or not to be,
you murmur the lines in your sleep.

you wake up, remembering a friend under the same circumstances.
some of them, too, died in despair,
unable to understand the madness of the Furies
existing in the mind of the weak and
the feeble minded.

things are simple. Doubt is a reality.
Ambivalence is human nature too.
What is important is this: they belong to their world now
and you are on your own
in this contested Paradise.

Why not enjoy it now? Savor, and just be yourself.
Go on. Write about it and be the redeemed man that you are.
With God beside you, who can be against you?

Ah, not even your cruel father. Not even your insensitive self.
It simple. Life is simple. Do not complicate it with the unnecessary
Metaphors. Words are nothing but words.

Dreams are just dreams. The cockroaches are merely symbols.
The man with TB was never him. Funny, but it could be you.

Meanwhile, you take a walk, and be under the power of the sun.
Stare at it. Close your eyes. Savor what red is there.

he scratched it accidentally
perhaps when he was asleep
as he was wont
to raise his arms on his forehead,

and with uncut nails
he caused a wound therein
infected by his carelessness
his hand touching
barely almost anything dirty

he looks at himself on the mirror
studying
the gaping wound like an
eye staring back at him
asking

why should a man raise his hands
even when asleep?

and why should he wound himself
unnecessarily?

why does he not care about
the possibility of the complexity of an infection

that may even
cause his death?

is this the kind of surrender
he had dreamed of inside his dream?

his way of finally giving up life
since it left him with nothing to offer?

he looks at himself closely
now, he becomes a strange man staring at
another man he thought
he knew too well.

that quick little brown dog
jumps over the fence
near the bank of the river,
it is not your dog,
but you happen to be there when it
jumped,
over the fence near the bank of the river
into the river
that deep river with an overrunning
of the water
the dog was struggling to swim back
to the safety of the bank
but it failed and the dog was taken away
by the river and
it was gone,
you wonder why until now you think about that
dead dog
it is not yours but it sticks to your mind
as though it is yours
somehow you think as though you own it
and that you feel so painful about such loss
and you cannot sleep
and then you dream about that quick little brown dog
that drowned
it is barking so hard trying to be alive again
you wake up
with lots of cold sweat
somehow you think again
inside that dream
the face of the quick little brown dog
that jumped over the fence
into the deep river
is yours.

i imagined her again
that early evening when she overdrank her wine
she was bent at nothing
but simply to relax herself a bit
from a broken heart

she was tipsy, she walked towards that room
dimly lighted, she did not close the door
she undressed herself
walked naked and laid herself
on the carpeted floor
which i could see from where i was seated
trying to compose myself
in my own way of recovering from an old wound

she stood again went back to the door to close it
as i did not follow her
she did not smile
neither did she speak a word
but i understood

the following morning she dressed herself
put on her shoes
whistling her way out of the door then closed it
i went back to the usual pretense

i slept
till ten.