March 18, 2020

 

Today I’ll fold my work clothes neat

in the cabinet farthest from the bedroom door,

hide my leather shoes, canvas sneakers

at the bottom shelf of the shoe rack;

roll my neckties, hang my sweaters,

turn most pairs of my socks to balls;

arrange my pens and sticky notes in a pack;

confine in a box my 3-year old knapsack.

I’ll ration the canned goods and some leftovers

for two weeks. It will be hard to go out.

I’ll befriend the citronella, converse with the snake plant -

an odd pair perched on my balcony’s gravel stone ledge.

I will get more used to the stench of the backyard canal,

neighbors nervously pacing our building’s narrow corridors,

blares of sirens rushing to a nearby hospital,

my Aegean cat rubbing her nose on the floor.

Things I’m assured will be within 35 square meters;

the size of my world, the new normal.

The steps I’ll measure will be the length

of how my dreams stroll further in my mind.

Nights will be darker, humid and restless;

days will be quiet, replete of the scurries and hustle.

Working hours will be spent in front of two monitors

placed near a window for a view of the sky.

And on weekends, pastimes on paintings and prayers

that the world won’t descend towards chaos and hell,

then binge watch frequently Aamir Khan’s 3 Idiots

to keep telling myself all is well, all is well.

Under Construction (still)

The houses mushroomed with blue roofs
for almost a decade.
Settled dusts, dried paint
left their own craquelures.
Through the window, late morning lights
poured in different slants.
The cerulean roofs carried
hesitant bird chirps.
A tricycle travailed lazily
over the cracking asphalt road.
The rusted tractors parked
under an incomplete flyover
had, on their one-armed claws,
residues of leveled down
century-old trees.
A young boy led his reed-thin goats
to where the grasses still grew.
The old farmer who once owned
a little plot of that land, sighed
"houses should stand here
for the foreigners, the city dwellers,
that's what Mayor said.
But look, nine years after I gave up the land
they're barely sold yet."

Do not lift the pen

Do not lift
the pen. Don't
even think
about it,
excuses
to stray from
your penciled
gray outlines.

Think of those
light sketches
the way Earth
Mother made,
on her skin,
deep ridges
for rivers
to flow rich
ceaselessly.

Imagine
like rivers
your inkflows
layer on
the graphite,
thick imprints
of your hand's
careful, slight
signature.

Imagine
the quickness,
the swiftness,
the utter
thoughtlessness
letting lines
bear genius,
make mistakes.

Do not lift
the pen. Don't
entertain
doing it:
random strokes,
curlicued
adventures
dry quickly
from previous
glistening
wet daydreams.

Respite

I lost my movie ticket
Looking for an open door
In an already closed, barely visited
High-end mall.

It's one way the universe tells us
We've got enough to spare
Like the dinner you didn't like,
The oily sesame noodles
Coupled with hot tea,
Not worthy of the pesoses
We easily departed with.

It's one way the universe tells us
Not everything goes our way.
And if we want to buy another peace of mind
Shell out further those extra pesoses
Clipped cleanly in our small pockets.

Distraction

Pleasantly
sat over
my finger -
a red glob
reflecting
splintered light
here on my
punctured skin.

I never
wondered how 
it was formed,
never blamed
the needle
that planted
its sharp kiss
on taut flesh,

Never asked
what karmic
punishment
for past sins
imploded
my lofty
search for one
sacred word;
rendered null
multitude
fleeting dreams;
made it quite
difficult
to recall
a stranger’s
comely face
while my mind
got a bit
engrossed with
prickly pain.

What wild worlds
I might have
written, what
character
could have sprung,
what tall tale
might have formed
from such swift
slight instance
was made moot,
lost for good
by fate’s hard
piercing smooch.

Now I must 
convince you,
dearest ones,
expect not
much wished depth
nor yearned
eloquence.
Be content
with these words
that it bled.

My Blue Cap

My blue cap’s
Gone grayer
Hung alone
By its nail.

Seven weeks
Have passed by,
I dare not 
Stretch my hand,
Pick it up,
Slice the air.

I wore it
Under clear 
Brighter skies
And some smile
Flickered wide
In your eyes.

That instance
Is long gone,
Images
Blurred further
By callous
Passing days,

Memory 
That has aged
Where it is 
Crucified.

Wanderlust

While away
with the wild,
pick a peak
of mountain
you would like,
traverse those
beaten paths,
unrappeled
cliffs, gorges,
get god’s view
of the world,
the distant
sketch of sea,
line of land
and ravines
you would like
overcome.

Above, sky
patterned with,
mostly, clouds,
dome your self-
adventures,
morning fogs
planting their
wet kisses
on grass tips.
You find wind
hurrying
without time
to speak with
a brave man,
and he’ll do
remember
your presence,
carry scents
of your brown
sweat-stained shirts,
well-traveled
mud-caked shoes
to hidden
mossed gullies
and gulches,
secretly
brand it with
your true name.

Graffiti

Some found words
written on
a bus seat’s
creamy white
top cover:

“You lonely?
Come, call me.
We’ll both have
lots of fun.
I’ll make you
be happy.”

Artly you 
scrawled with blue
ink against
tarpaulin
your numbers
enticing
me to press
your digits
and connect.
Cautiously
I studied
your cursives,
the tremble
in each loop
looking for
danger signs.

Finding none
and the far
station’s now,
finally,
been reached,
I stood up
and quickly
left the bus.

Some Found Things

Some found things
by the road
to your home:

Your pair of
eyeglasses
thrown away
forsaking
clarity;
torn pieces
of paper
hastily
scribbled with
familiar
acronyms;
little bits
of chipped wood
from what seemed
like a well-
split pencil.

The small road
told your tale
as it was.


  * * *


Your small house,
commonplace
corpuscle,
lost you well.

Where should I
find some marks
of your faint
fingerprints?
Should I start
making up
wild stories?
Like, let’s say
“He was here
but found this
world wanting,
that he fled”,
or “he loved
them, the lights,
very much
he’d rather
in the dark
stay hiding.”

Those great dreams
you spoke of
now orphaned
walls, pillars
with no nails,
subterfuged
cobbed corners
bereft of
your trademarks,
absent your
presences.

Accuweather

The latest update
was a cloudless sky
for most of the world,
Manila to Toronto,
calmer docks in Miami,
clearer outlook in Dhaka.
Save a dark brown patch
on the radar screen
over southern regions of China,
all is good for a moped rendezvous.

This is the new fear, the one
to keep our weary eyes on.
We'll take the dusty road
close to the reservoir,
get a good look at the water
beyond its critical level, rationalize
the schedule of rations and why
our faucets are still dry
even in the first months
of the rainy season.

Friday

Friday. You both wore the same shade
of color: royal blue, a language
understood by a few, that exclusive
party of him and you.
There, that unspoken agreement
hidden in plain view, was clear
to me. Just me. Nobody else.
You did everything in stealth.

A paranoid would have gone crazy
not knowing the back story,
subterfuged history,
anecdotes passed in whispers,
why it became clear he held
an umbrella over your head
in a morning that had a light rain
while I stood from a distance
in a weathered raincoat
and my skin turned slightly green.

Argh

Some dire things

That I fear

Like losing

You my dear

Snaps behind

My left ear

More wary

Of the mere

Thought of you

Not found here

Beside me

Makes me hear

Crazy things,

Makes me swear

Crazy things,

Might as well

Drown in beer.

Some key things

I hold dear,

Losing you

I most fear,

I peek through

The veneer

See if you

Have come here,

Praying you’re

Coming here,

But you are

Nowhere near.

Let me grab

One more beer.

Residence

Hi. Welcome
to my home
where a cat
imprints on
the leather
ottoman
her own sui
generis 
signature
scratched beside
my penciled
version of
that lucky,
auspicious
Tree of Life;
a turtle
paints green trails
of himself
on the smooth
white-tiled floor;
how the dank
toilet room
has passed days
untidy,
molds forming
strange colors
where water
used to drench;
and up there, 
the bedroom’s
grayed ceiling,
a spider
weaves a thin
prismatic
most fragile
expression
of herself.

There’s not much
space to run
and let dreams
wildly fly
and the paint
on the walls
have all gone
brittle with
traitor time.
But please do
come in. Please,
I insist.
I have chairs,
some corners,
dainty cups
for coffee
or hot tea,
a window 
with a view
of city
and a mind
that’s brimming
with stories,
poesies,
heresies.

A Brown Bird

A brown bird
perched atop
a wizened
brittle branch,
trusted all
of its weight
on the gnarled
forgotten
thin fingers
of an old
sycamore.

The wind snapped
the branch from
its comfort,
broke the weak
dying stem
and blew it
on the gray
hot pavement.

Left dead at
the asphalt,
that old branch
forsook its
hopeful wish
to ever
grow its own
small green leaves.

Hastily
the brown bird
flew away
with its wings.

At Eastwood

Well, problems
tastes better
with gulped beers,
hot noodles,
crispy-fried
kangkong leaves,
more at home
with kind friends
who'd really
sincerely
be all ears.
Some empty
wooden chairs
around us
I wish were
occupied,
more open
hearts and minds
to give some
kind advice,
carry up
that heavy
weight of your
current world,
heavy as
the March heat
on our heads.
I might have
stayed longer
after shots
with faved stars,
but sorry
I have skipped
more stories
from your tongue
for your voice
can't compete
through the blare
that loud blare
I barely
heard you well.

Oh Brother

i.  
It’s obvious: truth’s little fingers comb
the inner walls of her growing womb.
No use for secret.  Secret is a hypocrite.
It would rather dwell in the dark.
Secret transfigures into truth.
Truth desires to see light,
learn to walk on its two feet, learn to speak.
Don’t wait for truth to point it’s finger at you
and scream. Words are more painful than fists.
The universe conspires for a flourishing, healthy truth.
If you need to explain, explain it to the truth.
Make your explanations easier to swallow.
Roll and fry a meatball of a joke.  Truth might laugh.
Unplanned situations demand unplanned laughter.


ii.
Truth grew up, your spit and image.
His little sister blossomed - has your smile.
Burly as your dream, he’d search
The fats of your memory, bits of your love,
On toys that came in boxes.
She’d be bright as lanterns
Reed thin with delight
the gleam in her eyes gone.
They grew older than their ages
Permitting emptiness’ presence
In their lives, tired of asking questions
on Christmas, on birthdays,
because nobody answers,
nobody comes.


iii.
I'm telling it as it is. 
She pretended to be you behind the glowing screen.
I pretended to know her like I know my brother.
And when the words quivered, trembled
too much with the invisible, unsure electric
that brought the message over, I knew
some cords have already been cut, contracts
burned in the heat of the desert sun,
and the world you left to make better
completely gone.  You bit the apple
and you're not even in the garden,
the original trajectory of your life deserted
for the desert. And in her emptiness you found
the fruit tasted sweeter. 
And I comprehend the travails of a fellow weak creature.
And I'm telling it as it is.


iv.

We're all made evil by this act -
sins of anger, sins of avarice
your fruits bear heavily in their hearts,
sins of rumors, sins of lies
flying constantly in the emails, in our minds
haplessly snatching which words,
which stories are true anymore.
Now we all bit the apple from the tree
the lecherous snake coiling around our heads
its tail stretching further from your thumping fingers,
arcane Facebook accounts, sly messages
constant absences, delayed supports.
Look, there's a hole beneath our feet.
We're digging it from both ends of the world.
The devil is waiting with fiery hate
we can't help burning from the hearths of our hearts.

New Year's Eve

New year's eve.
The drizzle
has filled up
the gutters.
Firecrackers
are all wet
for bursting,
no sparkles
to garden
our front lawn.

The kitchen
is in great
dire state of
disrepair.
The worn sink
is molding
where the white
dry cement
used to fill.
We do with
the measly
morsels we
preciously
have cooked for
our pleasure.

In his room,
Papa's cough
is our sole
noisemaker
in the house
to ward off
the past year's
odious ghosts.
He tries hard
to be man
of the house
one more time
with what's left
of spaces
in his lungs,
energy
to heave from
his belly
all his last
convincing,
fatherly
final boom.

Jom and Mei
keep themselves
in the room
recalling
past new years
were better
than this one.

My brothers,
we blow out
those trumpets,
wake what new
tales will come
breezing through
our small house,
but our house
tells us now
that it's tired,
waiting which
old stories
are ready
to be shelved.
It has lost
some hopeful
perspectives
this first step
of the year
while the sky
is keeping
behind deep
mats of clouds
all its stars.

Drought

The water turned itself to heat
leaving the land flaking to dust.
He wonders how the crops will grow
emerald and robust
when the brown color of burning
has crawled its way from the tips
of leaves down to the stem,
the demarcation of struggling
to survive has become smaller
and smaller as summer progresses.

Resolute he will never be
broken and seeking refuge
in an onomatopeic, scalding city
subjugated to a career
having the sun-loved backs of his palms
parallel to the ground.
He prays for something biblical
to redirect a river's flow
and quench the acres of dried
desertifying land.

But the river itself is thirsty
having lost its being a river -
So he ponders displacing to somewhere
water is still water.
Then again, there's nowhere to go
when the heat, cloudless and unyielding,
burning slowly whatever it touches,
bearing the heavy belly of its air
over the earth, borderless as the wind,
smugly blows around his archipelago.



San Pablo, Laguna
March 12, 2010

Yolanda

When we awoke to rummage through
Some memories that were swept
From the coast and inwards to the city
We had to tread the piles of debris,
Walk the littered highways with our tired dispositions
Past a ship that was easily disanchored
By the surging arms of a powerful ocean.
We overturned some cupboards for morsel
But got greeted by a neighbor’s carcass
Who once loved to belt out, in his karaoke pastimes,
Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.”
Close to our location, a throng of people
Piling away from a store some plastics of rice
Never mind how they can make fire from wet woodpiles
Or where to get clean water.
Wouldn’t it have been better to be swept away,
let the Earth or the sea be left responsible for our bodies?
Here is another lesson that the world is teaching us
That we’re too hungry to comprehend.

(Note: I should have posted this 2 years ago.  Oh well, better late than never.)

Portrait of A River

Noon burns on

A river

Black as oil.

The smacks mauve

In color.

The rusts climb
Persistent,
Barnacles
On each of
The boats' sides
Easily
As if it's
Quite proper
To go forth,
Multiply,
Gnaw away
The iron.

And inside
Light transits
Some people
Gaze at clouds,
The outlines
Of cities
Growing old
And modern,
At the sea
Shimmering
Pellucid
And distant.

But no one
Dare look at
The river.