coming home...

finally..i am coming home.

the weather is not that good as i do this, and yet in a couple of hours i would be going back to where i came from.

pages of memories were filled up here...and i would be thanful for them.

iligan is a girl/woman/mother/priestess kind of city.

i am sure gonna miss this place...and my room..and her...

---- cheesy i guess, but the only works i wrote while im here...

Songs for Jacqueline

Song i

The days, the days have flown and blown
Like dry leaves on the last day of autumn,
And soon there will be a winter in my heart;
A winter whose first flecks of snow would fall
The moment my steps lead me to where I belong

I will soon be there where you are not

There is magic in being
a stranger in a garden such as yours—
I roamed these strange paths, losing myself
In its splendor of fresh fruits and bright colors.
Little by little I trained my tongue
To trace words as you do with your own.

I waited, and watched, and immersed myself
Among these waters where you belong
While my soul longed to find its heart,
Only to find my own heart, my own soul
Filled with longings
Filled with images of you
As if knowing you would lead me
To discover much more than just the face
Of this city whose arms have welcomed me.

5:09 pm pala-o, iligan
24 November 2004

Song ii

With my blackened heart
I have never seen an angel,
Yet even if I should never
I need no visions of halos and wings
To believe in One
who created all sorts of things;
the wide spread blanket of the sky, the stars,
a flower in bloom and dew on the grass
for you are there, among all of his things

I remember your voice
Of how your tongue weaved
The currents of air and space
So I may listen while I witness
How your eyes were
Twin silent and still pools
Deep as the night when only a few stars
Dare to reveal their light to mortal eyes
From so far away and yet warm
Like the fires of your smile
Who crept from the horizon of your lips.

I remember, and I dare not forget
Of how you belong among the colors and shapes,
Of how your presence kindled those around you,
And I watched you, for that was all that I could do,
While my memory turned page after page
Filled with your lines, your color, your shape.

Poet I call myself but the world calls me a fool,
One among the few who are dying everyday.
But absence is the price for those who live,
I know, and I am willing to pay
for these blinks of my eyes each filled
with the knowing that I do not know you,
amidst the sadness that it is.

I have never seen angels and perhaps
I will never discover you for who you really are,
Know what lies beneath
Your voice, your smile, your eyes
And yet I would give a smile
For what I now have, pieces of you,
Even on the moment
Before I forever lose my breath
and close my eyes.

5:35 pm pala-o, iligan
24 November 2004

Song iii

Home, the memory of home tugs at my heart, whispering to my ears the words in a voice I shall never forget, nor regret. It pulls me, like planets and stars do with each other, holding me in place, in space, floating to chart uncharted maps, in orbit.

I do not belong in iligan.

And yet, in this garden that is sometimes a jungle to my senses, whose shadows and shapes and colors I am still to recognize while clothed in morning light or starlight, I find something in the blossoms carried by the winds. The air here is filled with fragments I cannot name yet ones I would like to discover.

I am nothing more than a boy/man/lover/poet/vagabond.

And this city is a girl/woman/mother/priestess.

And I find myself on my knees, lips chanting an invocation of silence, as if the flutter of my lips would bring my thoughts to some secret place whose blossoms would flutter themselves to where I am now.

10:17 am pala-o, iligan
25 November 2004