Pants: And because it is May 1, and I'm posting things....

                                          Time to make you big.  BAM!

Altitudes

Anywhere 10 meters above sea level,
Not suitable for us
Or the neighborhood we must accustom to
Because they are prone to troubles
Knee or chest-high
Or even beyond our heights.

Below 20 meters is cutting it close –
Who knows how soon the oceans will rise
Or how fast the city is sinking?
Wading is a skill that I’m not willing
To learn with fearful muscles and bones.

Look. There’s a house waiting for us
Between the city and a sly volcano –
70 meters above. That should do well
Quite nice to keep the roof over our heads.

We’re made smarter now by what we’ve lost,
Much wiser, more protective of the spares that’s left,
More wary of the world and what its winds might bring.


We should never have been too trusting. 

Rant: "traveling" versus "travailing"

I don't know if it's because of the stress from work, editing in real time the transcripts for the world's top companies. But I didn't notice in a poem I previously posted (April 10, 2015) I used the word "travail" when I meant "travel".  I'm pretty sure I keyed in travel, because I would only use travail if I wanted to mean something that was done with lots of suffering.  (Excuses, excuses.)


I checked on the etymology of the word travail. Google said (yes, I'm treating this search engine like a person and one of my closest friends, sue me) that the origin is the Latin tres palus, which literally meant "three" and "stake". This actually described an instrument of torture called trepalium, which is a Medieval Latin word.  If you're wondering what a trepalium looks like, think of the letter X stabbed vertically with the capital letter I; or an asterisk with a longer middle line.   


I then checked on the etymology of the word travel.  And wonders of wonders, it most likely may have originated from the word travail.  Some would argue that it might have originated from the English word travailen or travelen, which had quite similar spellings.  Either way, these words are synonymous to toil, strive, torment, strenuous.


So imagine this:

                  And here you are still, wide-eyed like a kid,
                  travailing a familiar path with a skip,
                  cheeks burning pinkish with heat
                  pulling a smile as wide as the sky.


I wanted that part of the poem to exude happiness, that carefree feeling of treading a known place where no one is a stranger and nothing feels strange and no one is judgmental to child-like awkwardness.  But that word completely ruined it.  

Or maybe it didn't.  Maybe it made those lines more interesting, because you question that child-like happiness having to go through toil. Could that be possible?  Happy suffering?  Toiling with a sense of wonder?  Am I making sense? (No.)


Damn it.  This must be because of stress from work.

Diva

She visited during the hottest day of April.
Nary an invitation, she thundered through the heat
And scratched the surface of a sweltering land
With the sharp nails of her crooked lightnings.
Dusky and heavily set, she boomed with might
And all the pale clouds surrendered over the horizon.
Everyone heard her deep alto ascend
And hammer the wind with such magnificent scale.
She made sure her tears would leave an impact
On the arteries and veins of a throbbing city
Whose palpitations are almost close to entropy,
Toiling through the chaos of its daily survival.
She made clear the meaning of her song registered
As a flood that accumulated on narrow streets
Washing away the sins of a slothful, lusty summer
Who was only halfway through his complacent reign.
For her finale, she hit the perfect note – 
The last surge of light that cracked the sky open
Into awakening.  And then, after the eventual crescendo
Dragged her dark gown as she vacated the space
That all the wide-eyed spectators are hushed with awe
Never to forget her tremendous range. 

Poem for Hajime

How quaint. The old pages,
Brittle shelter of forlorn verses --
Precise, concise as his life.

(After Takuboku Ishikawa, 1886 - 1912)

April 10, 2015

We followed the river to the falls
where the growth of rocks was thicker than the trees.
If we were lucky, a hint of rainbow
revealed itself in the white spray.
In the waters, the fishes darted quicker,
swifter, aware of the fisherfolk
who came in warmer months
for a more abundant catch.
"Nothing's changed much. That's good," you said.
"The world is the same as I left it."
You reminded me of a fire tree in the forest
alive with the reddest flowers --
a worthy treasure of your childhood adventures.
And here's you still, wide-eyed like a kid,
travailing a familiar path with a skip,
cheeks burnt pinkish with heat
pulling a smile as big as the sky.
Nothing's changed much about you too,
And that's good.

Going home, March 22, 2015

By the headlights, the rain
sketched its drops hastily
in quick needle strokes
before it smudged the ground.

In the traffic, the buses glistened
with the weather's new coat of paint.
The colors, glum at night
became lustrous under the city lights.

A Porsche careened the highway's 
empty pockets, swerving 
through the traffic that crawled like a snail.
Unmindful of the slippery wet road, it braved
the police cars parked before the bridge
challenging their sirens to sing "Order"
from the weave of chaos it had left behind.

The bus I rode stopped at the shed
and welcomed new faces 
and managed still to wait
for those who hurriedly went.

At the heart of the city, a river
thick with rainwater, bereft of barges
slithered by the banks and the walled borders
moving at its own pace.

President of the Potatoes

He preferred the red, white and blue cars
than the same colors draped on the caskets
of men cornered in the wrong field
cut like corn that's not ready for harvest.
The wide plain never recalled such friends;
he held no power over such a landscape.
Of the 45 who tried to solve a confounding riddle
one went back after wrestling a river.

And so he made certain that the distance
from the tarmac to the factory was that far
that when more and more questions were asked
he'd be scant and pretty much preoccupied.
But when the flood of inquiries touched the tip
of his earlobe, he'd have his remarks
readily scripted, "I'm bereft of details.
I wasn't informed on time. 
I just woke up."

Now some bird's wing got caught in the branches
and some part of the archipelago can still keep its secrets.
And we, his purported masters, were treated like root crops
yellow spirits dimming within our skins so brown
buried and confined like potatoes in the dark
waiting for truth's hands to harvest us into illumination.

January 25

Morning. She let the grains of rice ascend in its pot
beside a kettle that hums over a subdued fire.
The sun peaks behind the green curtains, a gentle
cold temperature moves its weight through the window.
Junior's asleep. The stuffed Teddy that was his
present last Christmas is doing its mission well.
He tucks it in his blanket, a gift from his hero
sojourning the dried earth, the brown stalks of corn
managing themselves beyond the curve of the river
in a day as peaceful as a cloudless sky
and the quiet shadows moving behind the trees.
She always gets his call on Sundays
before the church tremors the wind with its bells.
Today, nothing. A lump finds its rest in her throat.
The pot boils. The kettle sings a brazen song.
"This day is no different than any other day,"
she comforts herself slicing the lemons and onions
till the curtain dances over the window cabinet
where his portrait, wearing a black beret, fell.

October 13, 2003

The way I look at you
is like Jupiter staring back at the Sun -
gravitating around its brightness,
inescapable from its orbit.
How, with one red eye, it longs
to be first in line
in a parade of planets
that dance around their paths
to the fiery tune of your song.
It knows its preordained place
and the heavy burden of distances
and the longing that pulsates along with
the throbs of a temperamental Universe.
But it stays, magnetized by your glow,
whirling along with your choreograph
to make you whole.

In front of a house in Las Piñas, September 29

I let the wind carry your name,
see if your house receives it.
A window flicks back dead skins of darkness.
I trace the passing time with my footsteps
circling outside the gate, waiting
a slight creak from an opening door.
That door remains closed, like the other doors
lining the street, never opening for me.
I measure the shadows' movements
with an aging day - stretching longer
towards the east where the sun rose.
The sky changes. The wind displaces
the dried leaves from where they rest.
The silence of your house is a creature
fat with hushes, crowding all the rooms.
How it must have shooed you away quickly,
no time to pick up sculptures of dwarfs
littering your little garden.
In its rib cage, my heart pounds why
departures seem hurried. No goodbye.

In The Bookshop

In the bookshop, the wind sat still on the page the old man had come face to face with, ignoring his fear of paper.  His tummy churned and loudly protested the acid crawling up to his chest.

A little moth flew quickly from the silver worm-devoured binding, happy of its freedom from the one minute imprisonment in the small gap between the pages and hard cover.  His eyes followed the angle of its flight over the hard and soft bound worlds orderly arranged in their shelves, one of which he has on his hands, and it came out ethereal and with texture, from the leaves spread out over his begging palms.  Time inconspicuously passed like a specter by the cabinets, and everyone slowly faded into light.

In the bookshop, the old man silently began eating words.

Message from a former tenant, August 24, 2012

Turn at the corner of intersecting streets.
There are lightposts to illuminate the dark,
     your perseverance,
and a blanket of night punctured with stars.

Shun the tricycles, however silently convincing
they tell your destination is
farther than it is near.
Trust your feet more and the rope of words
     you now read.

You can count your steps or measure your breath:
    either way you'll find my place.
My place is gray, a facade forlorn
than the dead rivulet flowing behind
nameless, inconsequential.

I tell you where I am now because
nobody wants to be forgotten.
My mistake is a 10 year limbo that is adding more years.
If you find yourself deaf between claps
   and chants of your name,
remember a man engrossed with his shadows
and pray he has moved to another place.

During Habagat, August 8

The streets, with ankle-high waters, led
the ambulance to the nearest hospital
on the corner of Santo Rosario.
You heard its loud siren wail
while it traversed a dead night
that's gotten used to silences
after a disaster.

Ambulances - they've usually carried
stories that have gasped for breaths
after some kind of fight:
he must have been heroic
struggling against the rising water levels,
salvaging the scattered pieces
of his life swimming out the door;
she, overwhelmed by a beastly shadow,
panicked in the absence of the familiar
hands to clasp with hers;
a little kid, too adventurous, thought
he could survive the strong currents
since, amongst his friends, he's
the strongest swimmer.

In its last hurrah, the monsoon
tried to hush the wailing
by pounding the city with more rain.
You let your sigh escape, closed your eyes,
and in a world that's as indurated
as that callus on your left hand, prayed.

Breakwater, July 14

There used to be
a whirl of a street
on the surface of those stones
now crushed and piled
on top of each other.
Stones.  They were once
what our feet kissed
measuredly. I wished
I took each steps to be sacred
because the place held, unpretentiously,
something so holy to me -
like an altar of horizon
dying golden,
or a bay as dark as desert oil,
or your secrets, each as precious
as the pearls of your necklace
my heart a decaplet of oysters
keeping every single one of them.
I can barely remember
why we went there, except
you desired an atmosphere
with a scent of salt.
Now there is only the rubble
an angry sea wants to reclaim from the city.
Definition of destruction - a key of land
pounded beyond recognition
with a decade old memory
not even standing a chance.

By Manila Bay, July 7

For the morning, these colors: gray horizon;
brown skins rushing at the docks;
metallic Baltic blue of a bay, heaving
with the breath of an encouraging morning;
the black hulls of cargo ships at a distance
placidly afloat and without care;
violet full-grown leaves, fresher green leaves,
or in the orange color of dying leaves
trembling with a wind that strangely undulates;
a team of rowers in maroon shirts
negotiating with the murky, speckled waters;
and you, at the back of the boat, pushing the paddle
in your blinding, sun-bright yellow tank top.



Revised, August 10 2012.

Hoarder

The arrangement of clutter
is like chaos theory -
tumultuous and confusing
but mathematically specific.
He knows where to find
half the pair of his shoes
in the boxes and bags
of collected memories.
He knows where he hid
the rental receipts
between the tall piles
of newspapers bought
and never read.
He knows where to look for
souvenirs from a rendezvous
and that nice old lamp
rescued from the dump.
But I wonder how
he never seems to seek
in the litter of items
himself.

Father's Formal Pants

It kept coming back, that instance
his palm slapping the back of my head
while I negotiated with the creases
of his brown polyester pants.
He had me press out the weeks it stayed
crumpled like a ball of paper
in the corner of the cabinet, unwashed
and forgotten like a childhood memory.
My worth was measured by how smooth
the pants felt out from the heat
and how evanescent the folds were
from the touch of hot iron.
What he taught was temperatures
needed to be precise, exact
to quiet his mumbles, grumbles.
What I learned was my skin can burn at a touch,
the heart can hold some anger,
tears are not for the weak,
rooms should hush in his presence,
and his pants were never mine to wear.

Green Mangoes

So many green mangoes the tree bore
like fists of jade clinging in clumps
lost their grip and scattered on the pavement,
snapped away by an overbearing wind.
One browned old, shrivelled with neglect,
no earth to root itself on the cement.
Some found themselves subdued by the weight
of vehicles that minded their ways on the street.
Birds flew down on the others, tasted the ripe
flavor only summer brings under their stony skins.
For the unaccounted, a baby leaf, or parts of their flesh
resting on the space where they used to rest.
I, being a man who can never tell
how they have grown sweet by the way they smell
or the tenderness of the mass behind the peel,
took them all in this capacious basket here.

Teddy Bear

i


Her cabinet's ready for keeping him,
her younger night's constant companion.
He's begging with sad, button eyes -
one more hug.

One more hug, she hears him again
in a climate more indecisive than her past,
but she's already outgrown
all that fluff.


ii


The eight-cornered shadow hugged him
like a spider curls when it's dead.
When time broke a yawn,
the arms of the morning stretched
inwards from the opening door
and took him out while he smelled
a hint of his own, older fur.


iii


Red light districts sprout
like amanitas in a forest of skyscrapers.
He searched for her in the city.
He searched for her on streets
gone wet from fickle monsoons,
streets that won't get him closer to the lost.
She hid very well in her own room
where different throbs of colored lights touched her,
and corners had eyes watching
intently from their tables.
Lost himself, he quit searching
and surrendered to the bed, cuddling
with young, young girls.