Mindscapes

Hahanapin Ko Ang Itinayo Mong Pader

2006-03-16T02:40:00.000-08:00

At sapagkat nagpasya akong hanapin ka,
susubukan kong hanapin ang itinayo mong pader
na gawa sa pinakamalalamig na bato,
hawiin ang mga tinik,
bigyang buhay at palayain ang
mga tutubing iyong isinumpa.
Pag narating ko na ang dilaw na butas
sa gitna ng pader, sisilipin kita
sapagkat ang pag-ibig ko sayo'y
agimat laban sa mga bubuyog
ng iyong hinanakit.
Sa aking paglapit,
maramdaman ko ang tibok ng tadhanang
papayapa sa nahihimbing na pagsabog
ng iyong mga bomba.
Hahanapin ko ang natatagong tali
at patutunugin ang iyong kampanang
sabik sa alingawngaw ng pagmamahalan.
At pag ako'y nasugatan,
iaalay ko ang aking dugo
sayong humihiling ng katapusan
sa iyong kalungkutan.

Itong pader aking aakyatin,
at di didilim ang aking paningin
sa siyam mo pang pader
na aking tatahakin.

1/27/06

Paglisan (Para Sa Aking Ama)

2006-03-16T02:39:00.001-08:00

At nang dumating na ang takdang araw
ng iyong pamamaalam, isang paruparo
ang nagkubli sa init ng kanyang bahay-kabataan,
ang alon ay umurong sa pagkakayakap sa
dalampasigan, at ang tuyong dahon ay lumipad
pabalik sa sangang kanyang nilisan.

Pinagmasdan ko ang pagpatak ng ulan
pataas sa langit, tulad ng luha kong nagpupumilit
sumiksik sa gilid ng aking mga mata, takot
ilantad ang natatagong dalamhati, pilit
ibinabalik ang oras na walang pakundangang
sumusulong, sumusulong,

sumusulong.

Nang makita kong matunaw ang mga bituin
at araw, at naging sabaw kung saan lahat ng
buhay at saya at sakit at salot ay nagmula,
naintindihan ko.

Naintindihan ko na, aking ama.

1/26/06

Santo

2006-03-16T02:39:00.000-08:00

Lahat ng nakatanaw
ay nasisilaw sa kinang
ng iyong espada at lisik
ng iyong mga mata.
Ang ngalan mo'y katumbas
ng gintong yamang makakamit
sa punas at halik
sa yong mga paa.

Sinasamba namin
ang banal mong korona.

Ngunit sa ilalim ng yong hiwaga,
hindi nila nahalata
na ang kabanalan mo'y huwad.
Dumadaloy sa yong dugo
ang lason ng kapitalismo.
Bulag ang iyong mata
sa hinagpis at poot
naming sayo sumasamba.
Bingi ang iyong tenga
sa hinaing at hamon
naming sayo umaasa.

Nawa'y mamulat ang masa
sa yong malansang kaluluwa.

1/26/06

Ode To A Poet

2006-03-16T02:37:00.000-08:00

I never heard words like yours before,
picked with singular care as a farmer picks
his strawberries for the "sorted" pile
(as the rest goes to the "unsorted", twenty pesos
cheaper and mushy underneath).
I remember that noontime in La Trinidad.
The sun forced itself on my scalp and nape,
but the wind embraced the rest of me,
raising goosebumps on my skin like little
erections.
Everywhere I saw red - red ripe strawberries
on fields beneath the mountains, red wildflowers
smelling faintly of grass and taho, red cheap wine,
souvenirs (dyed wooden penises hanging by the dozen,
all three inches long), jackets, doormats,
even my eyelids as I shut them to the sun. But
the sun did not burn me the way

your words did. I read them and I saw red.
The burning raised goosebumps on my skin
like tiny ready erections. One word more and I will
burst.

01/05/06

Bahay-Bahayan

2006-03-16T02:36:00.001-08:00

We watched
as the summer grass surrended
to the weight of the slate-hued
smoke drifting towards the chapel.
We knew Father Sicio would be angry;
our makeshift incense has the power
to incense,
but we merrily burned away the afternoon
cooking (stolen) garlic cloves and random
leaves on random rusty tin cans.
Overhead, the kites flew like
a congregation of catatonic birds.

You called me Nanay, so I called you
Tatay.
Together, we flattened the razor-sharp
grass to make beds for our children
(our age),
careful not to step on the sleeping
snakes in their myriad hibernation holes.
Our children tumbled raucously,
rearranging the grass, making
their beds a bedlam
and we scolded them to sleep.

Before sunset, we scampered to your
house (Father Sicio was walking
towards our playhouse, his corpulent
face reeking of rage).
It is time Nanay and Tatay went to bed,
you said. You asked me to follow you
to your room.
The children outside giggled mercilessly,
while you, behind closed doors,
undid your shorts
and tainted
my nine-year-old's memory.

9/7/05

Nine to Five

2006-03-16T02:36:00.000-08:00

It's a day same as any other,
this daily grind from nine to five:

The 7am alarm crashes a dream of
Caribbean nudies, wet buttocks frosted
with a spraying of sand. The salty air,
upon waking, wilts into a humdrum scent:
that of a day-old cold beginning to bud.

If I could slither up the gaps in the blinds
where sunshine streams stripes on my bed,
I will. Lying here, I am bound in shadow-bars.

I carry this imprisonment with me:
in a car stuck behind an asshole
at 8:30am. His smug grin creases his
salon-pampered face. I shoot him a death wish.

At the office at 9am, I feel like a superstar,
deluged by fans before reaching my cubicle.
I am a clownfish in a pool of piranhas.
I am a hooker in a strip-bar. The patrons
couldn't help but tear my clothes off.
I drown in a combination of paper and saliva.

Lunchbreak is the eye of the storm:
one hour of pure unadulterated work-talk.

The afternoon raises things up a pitch.
We have a presentation at four. An emergency
meeting on the same hour. My world is a
septic tank. My world is an overloaded
washing line. It is an overclocked Athlon.
I'm waiting for the smell of burned hardware.

I wish I were built by Pentium.
Then I can be a moon man, rejoicing
in my weightlessness, and not
waiting for my circuitry to break.

8/31/05

Tadaima

2006-03-16T02:34:00.000-08:00

(with respect to Nobuhiro Watsuki)

This bend in the road,
blanketed in a bloody sea
of withered sakura leaves,
feels the eagerness of
my footsteps. I wade
in this whispering mass
of red leaves and even redder
memories.
This road here, this bend,
has seen much of us, love.
Our history hangs stagnant,
odorous in the air.

You were thirty then, and I
was charmed by the sharp
poetry of your katana.
I was seventeen.
Here we've first met, and here
you've first parted the innermost
folds of my kimono.
The leaves blushed a deeper
crimson, were it possible.
I bore you a son.

But happiness, like paper,
is fragile. Touched by tears,
it breaks at the slightest breath.
I broke when you left me,
favoring your sword's mission
(penance for your blood-stained
sins) to the warmth of our home.

I've waited for you thirty years.

Now, here we are, standing
on autumn's cerise tears.
I felt you in my heart, love,
when you arrived today
at our secret sakura path.
How much you've aged, how
white your once crimson hair is.
I've waited for you to come home
all these years.

"Tadaima", you say,
"tadaima, love."

"Okaeri,"

I reply.

7/6/05

Homecoming (for Pinoypoets, Inc)

2006-03-16T02:33:00.000-08:00

This journey is an uphill litany -

each steps stirs the decaying dust of ennui.
I grow weary at times with this solitary trade:
spinning metaphors from gossamer clouds and
weaving words on water for the wind to read,

but then words, as weightless as they are cherished,
will often be carried out to sea or squirreled away
to plebian corners where they quickly disappear
with a gaggle of other lost and discarded dreams.

Poetry is the art of being lonely when one writes
for one's self to read.

Poetry, therefore, should be shared to the world,
cast with honesty, offered with unyielding arms -
an emptying of the self in order to enrich
other countless emptying lives.

And when, magically, one cloud-spun metaphor
takes root in a solitary thirsting soul,
Then, this maudlin journey will have ended.

This poet will have come home.

7/05/05

Machiatto's Curse

2006-03-16T02:32:00.000-08:00

You are Eve.

I savor your taste
on my tongue, as I explore
your body (bold, drizzled with syrup,
topped with whipped cream).
My mouth is a study in lust
as I lick every milliliter of you.

Your thickness stirs something in me,
a memory of heat,
tongues probing, eyes languid with longing.
Slithering down my throat,
I welcome you inside my body
as I would nectar, eyes closed,
lips parted in wonder.

Machiatto, you've kept me awake till dawn.

9/7/05

Rain Fell

2006-03-16T02:31:00.000-08:00

Rain fell:
Like a multitude of coins poured deftly
in a tin cup, it clattered, battering
my roof in a cacophony of clamor.
Outside, above the swaying trees
surrendering to the wind's fickle rage,
lightning flashed -
a tangle of leaves and limbs
etched in memory, a snapshot.

It's amazing how rain, discarded tears,
make a house echo with the deafening
ring of emptiness. Abandoned, my walls,
cracked with age and regret, speak
to each other. In silence, my doors
and windows answer in a language
made more profound by ambiguity.

When thunder rolls, I listen. In the
stillness that follows, I hear more.
White noise begets rememberance:
rain does this better than anything.

Tonight I will drown in drifting memories.
Alone, it will be hard not to remember
when, many storms ago, you were with me.

6/02/05

Jeepney #2.5

2006-03-16T02:30:00.000-08:00

(after Jardine Davies)

The world here is frenzied
from the outside. Rare peace
between chaos are punctuated
by the tense expectation of damnation
that is work.

Everybody complains about the bumpy ride.
The fish vendor with the vocal cords
of a bingo caller hauls her wet cargo
from end to end, covering
the rusty hallowed corridor with
muck, and with any luck,
the smell would ventilate out into
the smog.
Amazingly, people would avoid looking
at her, preferring instead the bleak
cityscape of garbage and wrecks -
human and otherwise.
They would avoid looking at each other
thinking that perhaps being
caught staring is the apex of rudeness.
And so they pathetically peek out through the
dismal little spaces between heads and hairs,
pretending to be fascinated with
the marvel that is traffic.
And when one pays the fare,
everybody pretends to sleep, ignoring
the outstretched hand that would deliver
food for the driver and his family:
Eight kids with swollen bellies is no
laughing matter.
Grudgingly the coins are passed-
"Bayad raw ho. Mama, bayad raw."

When you pay respects
to the driver, however,
and you bid a exhausted goodbye,
the longed-for "Para" hits you.
Finally it is over.

Squalor stops, time moves faster.
Your descent is both sweet
and bitter.
You alight with a sting of truth knowing
that the worst is yet to come
and the real plight is inside the deified walls
of the office compound.
You acquire jeepney nostalgia
when your feet touch the ground.
Somehow, the filth and stench is
paradise compared to your perfunctory
existence.

The next, and every day
thereafter, you hope
that the dreaded journey
will cease to exist.
Yet you hail another jeepney,
Bestow mercy on another driver,
And forget the ugliness of the previous day.

4/25/05

Encore

2006-03-16T02:29:00.000-08:00

Your face is blurred
like a mirage, or a dream
shrouded in half-sleep,
vaguely remembered:
a curse of stirring.
Or is it just my tears
Clouding my vision of you,
Drenched in fits of half-sentences
Fumbling for the nuances
Your fecund mind could conceive?

I’d die a little each day
hereafter.

I wish it were a play,
so I could shout 'Encore!'
and catch my last glimpse of you,
inhaling your vision again and again
Wishing the performance would never end.

4/18/05

Dorm Girls

2006-03-16T02:28:00.000-08:00

From time to time, a glance
at an open book: a cheap romance
while stirring a pot of
instant noodles.
Bored sighs mingle with
the smells of cat litter.
Work was wearisome,
She finds no rest here.

A single electric fan
in a room for six.
Small talk and banter
chatter and tsismis.
She hear them all before-
How Jing got pregnant
by the village bum
All lies and then some.

She dreams of a place
of her own
made of stone
Not wooden sticks like
this sad, sorry hellhole.
She finds no relief in sleep
knowing tomorrow is the same,
a sad, soulless game.

5/10/06

The Rarest Wine

2006-03-16T02:25:00.000-08:00

Being with you is like
sampling the rarest wine.
I sip slowly, savoring
the taste, the liquid
caressing my tongue -
a slow, sensual dance.
I notice the little things:
the notes, the nuances,
the vintage,
swallowing oh, so slowly,
for, all too soon,
the wine will be lost,
to my aching thirst,
my parched lips...
And I will be left
with an exquisite, empty
bottle.

4/6/05

[first post] test

2006-03-08T03:34:00.000-08:00

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