“ARE YOU AROUSED? ALL OF YOU? FUCK YOU!”

  “I SAW YOUR ASS, MS. K.”

 

I saw your ass, Ms. K.,

up there on the stage.

I saw how you twirl

that red flower to cover

a bloom much brighter,

saying,

“I am poor.

I can’t even buy me a dress.”

But you forgot to offer the flower

and say,

“Merry Christmas everyone.”

I saw your ass, Ms. K.,

“and all the world dropped dead.”

Reunion ver.2 (reviving a lost poem)

 

REUNION ver.2 (reviving a lost poem)

 

 

So we’re back in high school,

playing hoops on our old court,

running and shouting under the same denim sky.

Reflecting the planets above,

our half-naked bodies glisten

from some far pale lamp post.

Chains rattle and the ball bounces,

echoing the beats of our heart.

Ghosts come, whispering old jokes.

The wind gathers our laughter

and scatters them into the night.

Up in the bench our beer gets warm.

The music from the hall is still loud

but slowing down.

After we gather our car keys and

forever leave this place,

only the night remains to remember

our secret desires, our hidden delights.

 

Bottle (edit.)

Bottle

It stands on the edge of the table.
Its sweat, a bead, a tear,
trickles from its lips
along the lines of its breast,
and drips down to the wooden
cracks on the floorboard
forming a stain, a blot, a spot
where other sweats from
other bottles wet.

It stands on the edge of the table.
A woman, a goddess, a mother deity,
a staple of modern-day dietry,
posing its ancient beauty
for the world to see.
Its caramel fizz freezes the nose.
Its soda bubbles burns the bones.

It is cold, it is cool, it is a cooing crow
that fills up man’s sweat
he lost to a woman’s scent.
It stands on the edge of the table,
erected, mounted, and very tangible,
a rising tower, a hardening dark claw.
Its lips glistening with
its sweat, a bead, a seed,
longing to be grabbed on its
head to quench an
animal thirst.

It stands on the edge of the table,
sexless for its being sexy.

Ghost Writer (edit.)

Ghost Writer

You look out through the window:
a glass, a sea, a mirror
reflecting coffee smokes
out from a cup
and a vision of a man with
hardened face and with much
hardened stare.

This is the window
where they change your name.

You write another stroke on the white,
a story where they change your name:
a line, a life, a poem.
What is your first word?
Will it end with a simple dot
or another loopy question mark?
Is that a coffee stain you will
leave behind, or tear marks
for the blue lines?

Sipping the air for the last cup,
a world, a sea, as deep as your stare
onto the piece of paper lined with
cigarette burns and creases,
counting loops and slashes
where spaces should be plated.
Holes emancipate you
through your face on the window
that served as your prison,
a face is filled
with singing pricks.

You are silenced but your name sings.

For this is the face
where they cannot touch your name.

This Paper Will Bleed (edit.)

This Paper Will Bleed

Once bare,
like the midnight sky on New
Year’s Eve in Davao wrapped in
muffled rain shower,
no smelling of gunpowder,
no screaming of bright lights,
black and white thoughts of
a sick young poet will fill
this blank paper.
Once an empty shell, this
thin crust will house a citadel of outpouring
wild and savage emotions,
gashing forth the poet’s black
lead, white ink, fake tears and fresh drool
on the whiteness of its skin,
playing the fortune-teller that he is.

Once young,
like the virgin pulp from which
it is made, the moment
this paper will leave its nest,
the harbour of the young poet’s mind,
it will live and die at the same time.
It will flourish away from its parents to
live what has been foretold,
to fulfil a prophecy.
It will live to glorify the poet’s words,
and die for the sake of it.

Once true,
like the purity and nakedness it
truly conveys, it once possessed,
this paper will bleed on the hands
of the fortune-teller’s oppressors:
his classmates, his teachers, his idols, his gods.
And like the back of his hands,
the poet will know that
this paper will bleed like an
assassinated congressman,
fire-cracked fingers, or
any tomato-pasted dish.

And once used,
it will strip off its essence
and will emulate an identity:
not the nakedness it once gleamed,
nor the youthfulness it once owned,
especially not the truthfulness
it will always live by to deny;
but it will continue to live, to imitate
only the face of the pale young poet
draining with what words he wanted to write.

“The last look through the window” (edit.)

“The last look through the window” 

The last look through the window is the hardest
as the thought heavies
like a stone dropping into an empty well,
screaming as it hits the bottom,
piercing echoes of deafening mute.

My hands long to touch your face
as a palm to the glass is always never enough.
To sink my nails into that reflection
which separates what I believe is true
and what is becoming the truth,
like seeing my face fading
and smelling the sky in a blurring,
to give you more than a fleeting kiss,
to say more than this is all too well.

But I will not touch you
nor even come close to you
(my hands all trembling
my breathing pausing),
not to pretend this is not happening,
not to give you another handprint that
will bastardize your face that is drying.

I want you to break that glass.
To replace that dead hallow inside your chest
with my fist
that will pound
the way your heart beat on your skin
much harder and much, much stronger
than how you gathered the claws
that singled your life into a single wound,
a mere cry to the world.

I want you to breathe again
to wake up
and slap the hell out of me
until the brushing of my wet eyelashes
on the back of my arm is nothing more
than a fresh butterfly drying its wings from its cocoon.
I want you to look straight at me
and shake the life in me
until I stop recalling
that they all die too soon.
That butterflies are never free.
I want you to wake up
and tell me that the rain
does not fall to mock us all,
to whisper that the heavens feel our loss,
to caress that the gods did their call.
I want you to break that glass
and scream the hell out of your abyss,
to crawl the hell out of your pit,
out of that deep shit
you holed us all in.

I want you to cry
This is not how I want to die.
Not bleeding on a cold concrete,
not alone on a side street.
I want you to get up
and tell me how to be there
to stop the blood from oozing out,
to stop the breaking out of sweat,
to lock up the gates of our hell
and to assure me it is not too late.

But I want you to have peace,
peace that will make the heavens cry
peace that will bury your mind.
I want you leave with
a lasting beat that it was not in vain,
to leave with the knowledge
that you are always with us in the rain
never leaving our side
always playing in our minds.
I want you to go.
I want you to go now.

This is not for you.
And I swear to you
this is not through.

I may have stared at your face longer than I should
but not to linger on the last image I will have of you.

“The last look through the window is the hardest ” (edit.)

“The last look through the window is the hardest “ 

The last look through the window is the hardest
as the thought heavies
like a stone dropping into an empty well,
screaming as it hits the bottom,
piercing echoes of deafening mute.

My hands long to touch your face
as a palm to the glass is always never enough.
To sink my nails into that reflection
which separates what I believe is true
and what is becoming the truth,
like seeing my face fading,
like smelling the sky in a blurring,
to give you more than a fleeting kiss,
to say more than this is all too well.

But I will not touch you
nor even come close to you
(my hands all trembling
my breathing pausing),
not to pretend this is not happening,
not to give you another handprint that
will bastardize your drying face.

I want you to break that glass.
To replace that dead hallow inside your chest
with my fist
that will pound
the way your heart beat on your skin
much harder and much, much stronger
than how you gathered the claws
that singled your life into a single wound,
a mere cry to the world.

I want you to breathe again
to wake up
and slap the hell out of me
until the brushing of my wet eyelashes
on the back of my arm is nothing more
than a fresh butterfly drying its wings from its cocoon.
I want you to look straight at me
and shake the life in me
until I stop recalling
that they all die too soon,
that butterflies are never free.
I want you to wake up
and tell me that the rain
does not fall to mock us all,
to whisper that the heavens feel our loss,
to caress that the gods did their call.
I want you to break that glass
and scream the hell out of your abyss,
to crawl the hell out of your pit,
out of that deep shit.

I want you to cry
“This is not how I want to die”.
Not bleeding on a cold concrete,
not alone on a side street.
I want you to get up
and tell me how to be there
to stop the blood from oozing out,
to stop the breaking out of sweat,
to lock up the gates of our hell
and to assure me it is not too late.

But I want you to have peace,
peace that will make the heavens cry
peace that will bury your mind.
I want you leave with
a lasting beat that it was not in vain
to leave with the knowledge
that you are always with us in the rain
never leaving our side
always playing in our minds.
I want you to go.
I want you to go now.

This is not for you.
And I swear to you
this is not through.

I may have stared at your face longer than I should
but not to linger on the last image I will have of you.

Growing Up (edit.)

Growing Up

Carelessly you toss your head
into the air while your hands whiten
as you hold tight onto the truck railings.
Child-like spirits die old
but the scream of sea lives on our skin,
flowing and always thrashing,
never afraid of slipping away.

Our hair races in the night,
never fading but to the denim sky.
Our weights are crushing the brittle nuts
inside canvas sacks that presses prints
on our dancing bare feet.
The night wind washes our faces,
spacing out our burnt cheeks
(like the kisses we make
on the bottles we share)
while you close your eyes to the little lights
wishing summer is not dying so soon.

It may be our young hearts’ desire
that takes chances of what has entrusted.
Forgetting what we are leaving for
you slip your arm around my shoulders
to whisper “we’re gonna be okay”.
This is not the end
just another beginning.
Going back to the city takes only a short while
and these hitch-ride will quiet us down.

demo

Demo

If it were not for the free snack,
I would not be here where
the room darkens as
conversations die into hushes and into
complete silence in the background.
The big screen blinks white, then
winks blue, then into
a myriad of flashing images of
glistening frying pans and
glowing electric stoves and
shining blades slicing through
bleeding tomatoes like
sliding away samurai limbs.
“This is our latest product,” says
the man in black suit and
blinding white smile.
He takes out a metal rod,
lengthens it by pulling its tip and
points to the screen
slashing the images into two.
“This one is best for cooking eggs.”
His gaze searches the crowd for
a willing face to help
his trembling hands.
He finds mine and
pulls me into a table where
white lights shouts like
a child drowning in black water.
“This is made with high precision.”
I pick the knife and
rub the dark handle with its rough plasticity.
The blade shines in the white lights as
it slices onions and
minces garlic cloves and
cuts my finger into two.
The appendage falls and
rolls on the floor into
the darkness where the crowd holds its gasps
while the wound burns from
the thickening organic juices.
I clutch my hand and
run to an open door where
orange lights are seeping through.
I left but not before
grabbing a plastic bowl
filled with onion-and-garlic soup.

This is not for You

This is not for You 

The last look through the window is the hardest
as the thought heavies
like a stone dropping into an empty well.
It screams as it hits the bottom,
piercing echoes of deafening mute.

My hands long to touch your face,
as a palm to the glass is always never enough,
to sink my nails into that reflection
which separates what I believe is true
and what is becoming the truth,
like seeing my face fading,
like smelling the sky in a blurring,
to give you more than a fleeting kiss,
to say more than this is all too well.

But I will not touch you
nor even come close to you,
(my hands all trembling,
my breathing pausing)
not to pretend this is not happening,
not to give you another handprint that
will bastardize your drying face.

I want you to break that glass.
To replace that dead hallow inside your chest
with my fist
that will pound
the way your heart beat on your skin,
much harder and much, much stronger
than how you gathered the claws
that singled your life into a wound,
into a mere cry to the world.

I want you to breathe again,
to wake up
and slap the hell out of me
until the brushing of my wet eyelashes
on the back of my arm is nothing more
than a fresh butterfly drying its wings from its cocoon.
I want you to look straight at me
and shake the life in me
until I stop recalling
that they all die too soon,
that butterflies are never free.
I want you to wake up
and tell me that the rain
does not fall to mock us all,
to whisper that the heavens feel our loss,
to caress that the gods did their call.
I want you to break that glass
and scream the hell out of your abyss,
to crawl the hell out of your pit.

I want you to cry
“This is not how I want to die.”
Not bleeding on a cold concrete,
not alone in a side street.
I want you to get up
and tell me how to be there,
to stop the blood from oozing out,
to stop the breaking out of sweat,
to lock up the gates of our hell,
and to assure me it is not too late.

But I want you to have peace,
peace that will make the heavens cry,
peace that will bury your mind.
I want you leave with
a lasting beat that it was not in vain,
to leave with the knowledge
that you are always with us,
never leaving our side,
always playing in our minds.
I want you to go.
I want you to go now.

This is not for you.
And I swear to you,
this is not through.

I may have stared at your face longer than I should,
but not to linger on the last image I will have of you.

now na?

Growing Up

Carelessly you toss your head
into the air while your hands whiten
as you hold tight onto the truck railings.
Child-like spirits die old,
but the scream of sea lives on our skin,
flowing and always thrashing,
never afraid of slipping off.

Our hair races in the night,
never fading but to the denim sky.
Our weights are crushing the brittles nuts,
inside canvas sacks that presses prints
on our dancing bare feet.
The night wind washes our faces,
spacing out our burnt cheeks
(like the kisses we make
on the bottles we share).
You close your eyes to the little lights
wishing summer is not dying so soon.

It may be our young hearts’ desire
that takes chances of what has entrusted.
Forgetting what we are leaving for
you slip your arm around my shoulders
to whisper, “we’re gonna be okay”.
This is not the end,
just another beginning.
Going back to the city takes only a short while
and these hitch-rides quiet us down.

Frida

Frida 

“Look if I loved you, it was for your hair.
Now that you are bald, I don’t love you anymore.”
- Frida Kahlo, 1940

You cut your hair with scissors,
a pair of iron beaks on your hand
and you scatter your
locks across the floor, where the
strands resemble the lines of
your name and the musical notes
among the lines on the board.
You’re hair was your beauty,
Now we’re both empty.

You take off your dress and slip on
a man’s, combing your
cropped hair to the back of your
ears to crease your face
where you still wear those
eyebrows straight.
Did you hear a voice call
when the scissors squeak
to lose your scalp off?

You go bald while you sit,
waiting for the imprints
in your fingernails to fade.
Looking at you, do you
still remember how
the wind glides through?

You may have loved the woman with lovely hair
but we both know it wasn’t merely for your hair.

Ghost Writer

Ghost  Writer

You look out through the window:
a glass, a sea, a mirror
reflecting coffee smokes
out from a cup
and a vision of a man with
hardened face and with much
hardened stare.

This is the window
where they change your name.

You write another stroke on the white,
a story where they change your name:
a line, a life, a poem.
What is your first word?
Will it end with a simple dot
or another loopy question mark?
Is that a coffee stain you will
leave behind, or tear marks
for the blue lines?

Sipping the air for the last cup,
a world, a sea, as deep as your stare
onto the piece of paper lined with
creases and cigarette burns,
counting loops and slashes
where spaces should be plated.
Holes emancipate you
through your face on the window
that served as your prison,
your face is filled
with singing pricks.
It sings.

For this is the face
where they can’t touch your name.

Monteverde

Monteverde 

Down the street of Monteverde,
little girls poke on
little boys who poke on
grounds on
search for worms, or spiders,
or whatever bug of the world
the earth has to offer.

These little kids sleep
during midday summer heat
and wake up in late afternoon
streak with their powdered necks,
running out from their houses
to Magsaysay Park where
the trees are powdered with salt
from the breeze of Davao Gulf.

They grow on worms,
and sun and whatever
dust of the world
the street has to offer
and chase their
little lives from
their little cribs out
to the Sta. Ana Wharf,
waiting for whatever cargo
of the sea the water has to offer.

These little kids knock on windows
of passing vehicles,
pull shirts and call names,
offering their little packets
of white powder
to whomever
man of the world
who treads their holy playground.

Down the street of Monteverde,
these little kids turn a corner
with their little lives go out
with them on the corner,
and they return to their little homes
with their little faces powdered
with gunshots and wounds.

Down the street of Monteverde,
their playground becomes their graveyard
and the worms of the world feast
on their little bones.

bottle

Bottle Body

It stands on the edge of the table.
Its sweat, a bead, a tear,
trickles from its lips
along the lines of its breast,
and drips down to the wooden
cracks on the floorboard
forming a stain, a blot, a spot
where other sweats from
other bottles wet.

It stands on the edge of the table.
A woman, a goddess, a mother deity,
a staple of modern-day dietry,
posing its ancient beauty
for the world to see.
Its caramel fizz freezes the nose.
Its soda bubbles burns the bones.

It is cold, it is cool, it is a color tone
that fills up man’s sweat
he lost to a woman’s scent.
It stands on the edge of the table,
erected, mounted, and very tangible.
Its lips glistening with
its sweat, a bead, a seed,
longing to be grabbed on its
head to quench an
animal thirst.

Its stands on the edge of the table,
sexless for its being sexy.
 

Boob Tube Talks (edited)

Boob Tube Talks

The boy in black-and-white Mickey Mouse cap
sits on the lap of modern-day luxury
drooling over his potato chips and the sounds of MTV
while waiting for the Pussycat Dolls to rip their
cloths off and stretch their legs into infinity.

The boob tube spits images in living colors twenty-
four hours a day from the depths of outer space
as it glares and blares and stares back to the boy,
hypnotizing with its blinking digital clock,
counting seconds backward to the beginning of time.

Forty years ago, the Beatles invades the land of white
America and the rest of the black tongue-tied globe,
wearing nothing but bob cuts and the British insignia for blitzkrieg,
flooding the world with their music like an “endless rain into a paper cup”
while singing their immortality like constellations across the universe.

Fast beats swirl in ranging patterns, old and new
like hormones on carousels, on Japanese Ferris wheels
plunging to the recesses of the boy’s ears
where his drums lay rotten gold, down and dusted,
smelling old and wasted from the spoils of a long-forgotten note,
fifty years dead before his birth and twelve
years living on his short existence on this planet Earth.

An old taste lingers between his teeth as his
tongue reaches another depth and he figures out
what lost essence did the potato chips has disguised and
the stench of modern-day musicality has washed away.

The boy wipes off the drool that now smears white dry
on his cheek as he wishes to have been born on the Sixties,
where in Manila, they spit the Beatles out of their brown country.

The boy turns off the TV and checks what’s new on his MP3.

what?

3/30/2007 11:39:13 AM

To His Coy Seatmate

(After Cecille Laverne dela Cruz)

|                                            |

|                                            |

|                                            |

|                                            |

|                                            |

A                                            B

Two parallel lines, fated never to meet in a two dimensional plane.

 

If you place line A

to compliment line B,

you’ll end up with a telephone pole.

Santa Claus flies to all children,

from North to South, good and bad to give

candies and charcoals – all around the magnetic pole.

If you’ll allow me,

let me talk you into a vision

where the world melts like a chocolate

and everyday will become Christmas day. Things

will fly that every concept is nothing but good and good.

I’ll even let you come to play in Santa’s factory.

Come, then.

I’ll talk my tongue onto your pole.

pangarap cong maging pintor

Painter’s Room

A four-post bed here, a 1986 stereo there,
This room will stay the same, father says.

The smell of oil paints and egg yolk will also remain,
It goes the same for the patches of colors on the floor.

His brushes and palettes will need not to be burned.
His paintings will all go to the family heirloom.

With hair in burnt-brown curls and eyes askew,
That portrait alone will hang on the wall.

His smile, together with his shoes and plastic fruits, will
Forever echo a sigh: silent, unmoving and still.

Tonight, mother will secretly gather the photos from its frames
And will read the unsent letters hidden inside pillowcases.

She will empty the glass jars filled with murky waters
And will bleach unused canvasses white for keepsake.

Can I have his guitar and CD collections, Papa?
No, father says, everything will stay the same.

This room will be untouched, un-trespassed.
This room will stay the same, father says.

Except for the heap of laundry on corner unwashed
And your brother that still hangs alone by the door.

let’s sing a song

The Royal Song

I write songs on this white shiny
bowl, sitting like a king
on his ceramic throne,
gathering distant inspiration
from muses locked up
within walls of roof tins
and stain-old plywood.

Up in the ceiling of cobwebs
in this comfort outpost,
a bulb hangs and glares
in a yellow-dull stare,
solitary and rusting,
lighting the darkness of
this kingdom of cold, mossy tiles,
illuminating subjects
of born silence:
a soap dish, shampoo sachets,
and the living sound of water
dripping endlessly down the drain.

I scribble words to describe
the rat stealing glances on
my unpolished toenails
while a black little spider,
shining in the dark,
moving in a polygonal dance,
weaves another house of silk,
adding another lot to its estate of dust.

Standing up to wash my past,
I gather the muses of the ripples
and of the undaunted scents.
I flush the world and there goes another song,
singing its way down the cesspool
where all my works they say should belong.
I leave my position and kingdom
to live a life of an ordinary man.

Tomorrow night, my throne will sing
and I shall reign again.

boob tube talks

Boob Tube Talks

The boy in black-and-white Mickey Mouse cap
sits on the lap of modern-day luxury
drooling over his potato chips and the sounds of MTV,
waiting for the Pussycat Dolls to rip their
cloths off and stretch their legs into infinity.

The boob tube spits images in living colors twenty-
four hours a day from the depths of outer space
as it glares and blares and stares back to the boy,
hypnotizing with its blinking digital clock,
counting seconds backward to the beginning of time.

Fifty years ago, the Beatles invades the land of white
America and the rest of the black tongue-tied globe,
wearing nothing but bob cuts and the British insignia for blitzkrieg,
flooding the world with their music like an endless rain into a paper cup
while singing their immortality like constellations across the universe.

Fast beats swirl in ranging patterns, old and new
like hormones on carousels, on Japanese Ferris wheels
plunging to the recesses of the boy’s ears
where his drums lay rotten gold, down and dusted,
smelling old and wasted from the spoils of a long-forgotten note,
fifty years dead before his birth and twelve
years living on his short existence on this planet Earth.

An old taste lingers between his teeth as his
tongue reaches another depth and he figures out
what lost essence did the potato chips has disguised and
the stench of modern-day musicality has washed away.

The boy wipes off the drool that now smears white dry
on his cheek as he wishes to have been born on the Sixties,
where in Manila, they spit the Beatles out of their brown country.

The boy turns off the TV and checks what’s new on his MP3.