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.

Landscape with Cypresses

Photo reference: Tuscany, Italy

For the background, a wide stroke
of undecipherable blue:
for the foreground, dabs of red poppies
dotting the quick brush strokes of grass.
The clouds, patches of bright white
and light grays, temperamental
over the layers of land that rolls
in different shades of green.
Mountains at the distance
can have the same color as the sky;
roofs of scattered meadow houses
can shimmer cloud white.
And the crowd of cypresses, darker
green - dark as secrets,
and tall as beehive hairs of queens
conferencing under the sun,
trading gossips.

Anticipating

My gaze traveled carefully at your profile - hunched, world-weary and heavy with sighs, the scrotum of your fantasies shriveled and dried. The shadow of your hand moved reluctantly from the table. The crushed apple bits crowded comfortably in your glass. Your fingers hugged the cold of the fruit juice while it lasted.

Then I imagined you reminding yourself of his ghost on the opposite chair.  He would've made a joke about the height of your newly-colored hair.  Your wrinkles would have laughed easily with the crescent of your smile.  He would have forked the silence from the table to his mouth.  How easy it would have been to hear
the boom of his laughter, the deep heavy breaths -- if only he was there.

I'd like to know how it felt - the hardness of his metal chair.  But you'll have none of it or any others - you'd rather have air.

Sino-Envy

Their customs are not ours
and you're barely fair-skinned
while I look more jihadist
than tycoon scion.
But we visit their temples,
wave  incense sticks
and pray to their ancestors
for guidance and luck.
You've never learned how
to write your name in calligraphy,
never learned how to thrust
the sword to the air
with a certain art,
have portions of your body
punctured strategically
with pore-thin needles,
nor speak in the lilting
staccatos of their varied
native languages.
I marvel at the nine eyes
around my wrist,
and the triple infinity, gold-plated,
keychain in my pocket.
Sometimes I wish I have
a necklace with a pendant
of an alligator's teeth
or an unused bullet
to gift you back.
One thing we agree on
are the noodles,
and February won't be the same
without mother's moon cakes
fried golden with battered eggs.
You prefer chopsticks
than the spoons and forks,
and at night our room
is drowned by the smell
of jasmine rising
above a candle flame.
And yes, you consult our futures
through I-chings and fortune books
and check compatibilities
by the animal years of our conception
and what elements differ us
but wood nurtures fire.
The small percent of my lineage
is an interesting discussion
since you're disappointed how bereft
your ancestry is of the oriental
men who sailed in junks
and bartered history, traded culture -
but then again, you're often
more Chinese than
my Chinese friends are.

"Fight"

The time I learned the word "fight",
my fists punched the air
not knowing where to hit.

The time I learned the meaning
of the word "fight",
I was 10 years behind my dreams
and the world cautiously moved on.

The time I learned to "fight",
my eyes lost their dangerous glints
and my wrists were more limp.

Then I fought.
A jab released won't refrain the pain;
Drips of blood won't crawl back the wound.

A decade of my timeline became a scar.

There is a lesson to learn here.

At The Marketplace

He stood in front of her
and the apples, the Granny Smiths
arranged in rows, pointing at the ones
that have more luster in the ancient heat
and asked the question as old
as human civilization - How much?
She shooed the flies with a sway of her arms
and let him stood in front of the apples
like some kind of thought that didn't register.

My Time

My time is when the world hushes,
when the moon parades herself
over the roofs that keep quiet
for their inhabitants.
When the street occasionally grumbles
along with the sick cough of an old engine.

My time is when the neighborhood dogs bark
caution in the shadows, at some quivering of leaves
no breeze has touched on a windless night,
at the stretch of a street as empty as my pocket.

My time sneaks like a cockroach on the floor,
studying the corners,  looking for holes
in the wall to crawl in,
or cracks in the window to scamper out.

My time is a cooler temperature, sweats rarely pearl
on my brown skin.

My time. It has served me  - graying my hair,
making my skin more paper thin.  
I've married it for 10 years,
aware of the repercussions, the sleeplessness,
the back and forth steps in the living room and kitchen.

It's a servile partner, supportive of my habit
of twiddling a thought, committing it on the page
into lines and noisy lines  that don't mean much.

The Other Continent

The sound. It is painful here.

The gray world turns ice to ice.

Rain from the sky fall hard as stones

and cluster over the ocean,

silvering with cold white.

The wind is never light -

its density pounds the land.

It eternally howls

about the zero

the negative

the never was

the naught.


The wind demands a mountain

to stop it from its path.

Not this emptiness

more vast than itself

Endlessly spreading

in the absence of desire.


September 20, 2005.  This one's older than this blog.

Courting

The wrinkle around your eye is quite unreadable -
how it forms without a twitch on your face, confounds.
Is it the temperature? 34 degrees hot
slapped on your cheeks by a disturbed wind?
Did an ant crawl unnoticeable on your skin?
Is it something I said? Which word
in a parade of adjectives meant to woo
comes off insincere?
The table is like an endless sea between us.
I lost the sail that directs my trail of thoughts.
How drops of seconds feel like oceans of years
while you sit like a moon on a divan of clouds
throwing off beams of hints that may be as glum as no
or radiant as an affirming reciprocation.

RANT: Something I have always noticed...

Some artefacts veiled with dust
on a decade-old cabinet:
a bowl of goldfish
full of stones and air;
lamp clocks with hands
rendered still;
shell with a palmful of dead
batteries, hair clips;
pictures of babies
now grown, suffering
distances and absence;
and a face mirror where
the cheeks of a man turned
dangerously edged, stares back
puzzled with his position.

Cris Hugo

Some unfortunate news you read
on a small column in a tabloid :
three columns in width, ten lines of phrases
impressed together, tells
the final story of his mortality.
You want to be more familiar of him,
sketch his face as it stares back
from the page: want to understand
how his eyes smile like an old friend's;
want to know this stranger more
scribbling his mouth, what dreams it could tell;
want to hear with his hand-drawn ears
what he heard, how the bullet spinned
and splayed him on the pavement.
You'd switch ink from time to time,
black to red, red to black, wondering why
a world promises then quickly takes
a hopeful glow to guide us in the dark.
Your hands become heavier,  the strokes thicker,
the lines of his profile more chaotic
and confused, you forgot when you started
and why you can never stop.

Everett Ruess

                                     - Where I go, I leave no trace.



I followed the narrative to Escalante
where the Earth shimmered brighter colors
and stones have stories, none of which told where
you last left clues of your final presence.
Now we go about acquiesce to the toil,
the rhythm of days, rest of our lives pushing
cities further upwards to the sky,
something marvelous you didn't envision
because the wilderness, a constant Muse,
has always been most beautiful, sui generis.
Now I wonder the fragments of bones
that can have your name, the spot of canyon
where I can make pilgrimage - mysteries
not even the old wind can answer
even if he frequents himself  here
in the other hemisphere.

Afunakwa

i.


Nights I can't sleep, I let you
disturb me, one more time
in the room, haunt me
in my sleepless disposition,
let your formless self whisper
a lullabye in the dark
some old folklore:
a father sojourning further
the edge of the island;
an orphan crying his name.
I wonder that name,
which syllable lilted
to comfort the little boy
or some child I keep
hidden in my heart.


ii.

Your music rose ambient
like flood in every corner
had me grasping to put
a face to your voice
which the decades hid
like a mystery unsolved,
nothing visual to cling on
but an aging record
whose hiss before the end
becomes more profound
because it precedes the silence
that is more silent
than the hush of your sound.