Cloud

If asleep
I'm like Arctic night cloud
and you a star wanting
to embrace me in your glow.

Pardon
my stillness to your advances.

I want to gather more water
from the days you've become my Sun,
the days when I'm all puffed
morning white -
listless frenetic and obedient
wherever the arms of your wind
carries me;
a silver crown over a mountain,
a shadow over a lake,
until I'm nimbus blue and heavy
continent vast, battle-ready
to shower and gust
and thunder your love
until I dissipate
and evaporate in your light.

2 Poems

I found some poems I wrote last year in two notebooks.The first poem was written during my cousin's wake. I was alone that day. The visitors were scarce. The second poem I wrote after Valentine's day, also last year. It details an emotion that was waiting to explode that time. Enjoy!


Regret

Ask me what the leaves say
together with the wind -

Ask me what that voiceless wind
says as it settles over noon -

Ask me what an opal sky carries
in its early summer cape -

Ask me why white cotton candy clouds
dissipate under a hot butter sun -

Ask me why the birds hide
in the shadows of tree branches -

Ask me all these things now
before the music of the rustling
brittle leaves is done,

then the day ends -
and you gone.

-- for Jong, RIP
January 23, 2008





Suspicion

I will resist the devil
charging electrically through
my fragile synapses
about some thoughts
that poke my suspicion
whether you just lent
the yellow hanger
that carries his maroon towel
or it just took too long
for you to converse
with him in careful
whispers last night
or the frequency you drank
water from the second floor
when you usually never did,
or the way you described how
he looks more handsome
the longer you stare at him -
I will resist the devil
like a lost soul resists
burning in his own cauldron.


-- February 20, 2008

RIP Francis M.

It was summer break. Kuya and I were fighting over whose tape should be played in the cassette recorder. I was into 80's pop, the kind that you'd like to dance to silly in private. Kuya was inclined to this fresh new artist who delved into the genre of rap when rap, for me back then, was equivalent to country music - meaning it sucked. He eventually won, and bullied me with Francis M.'s "Cold Summer Nights". I hated every moment I was forced to listen to a man crying over spilt milk. It's not that the song wasn't good, because it was. It's just that I thought my brother used the song to irritate me for not being able to have my song played in the cassette.

The hate didn't last long. Because my brother had me listen to it so many times, I eventually had it memorized to the point that I sing the song to myself. One time I was going to school and I was singing "Cold Summer Nights", one big boy told me he almost wanted to shove me because I looked irritatingly lanky. He didn't because I was singing his favorite song. Needless to say, Francis M. saved my butt.

Fast forward, 19 years later. One of my favorite artists died from septic shock today at noon. I watched an online mini-video of Eat Bulaga hosts announcing his demise. I cried. Funny how songs remind you of days that will never return, albeit mundane and common. You still cherish them because something about those days reminded you of a good thing you still enjoy even up to now.

I hold that memory with me still. I hold that song more closer now. Thank you Kiko. May you rest in peace.