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.

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.