Edge of the Year
It was a crazy summer
The winds raged with bared teeth
And the clouds were crying
Bite marks and tear drops
Drowned and consumed the streets
And there I was, finding refuge and warmth
Tracing infinity in the mouth
Of a warm cup, black
Like the absence of sugar in my life
A crazy summer
And yet like all things once whole and sane
There was a lucidness,
A brief spark of sanity in the dark
A sharp glance from the afternoon sun
Cutting through the crowds of the clouds
And it found me.
How long is a lifetime?
Is it encased in the shell of solitary seconds
Exploding one after the other till the air
Is filled with blossoms from newly sprouted flowers?
I left the cup empty
And walked through the streets of life
Navigating with the stars
My hands mine and yet belonging to someone else
And we talked about the births
That always happen while so many are dying
And of how beautiful it was to be
Trapped between them.
Until
Amidst the persistence of the stars
Mortals such as you and I could not deny
The night that was now holding us.
From summer, I am now here
At the edge of the year
And the days are like nights
The stars with whom I navigate
Burn themselves from within.
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Friday, December 09, 2005
Pinoy Big Brother , The Fucker
Pinoy Big Brother, The Fucker
I have always believed
That real life
Is lived
And not mixed
like herbs and spices
vegetable, meat, salt
baked
then sliced
into little servings
called
primetime
at least, I am happy
for those who have sold
pieces of their lives
for their dream
of recognition beyond
mere ordinary patterns.
They must be happy
Even as they shed
Their tears
That are like
Promises
Written on sand
Perhaps big brother deserves my envy.
of how
Big brother speaks
As if he was the bush
Burning not with flame
And yet whose light
Many wait
In couches, sofas
On cold dirty wet floors
To witness
As if a flick of the remote control
And things go
On and off
In his house.
This is the television series
Of Real life,
Or so they claim.
And if that was a lie,
why is it that so many believe?
They fail to return calls
Or text messages,
the genesis of a variety
of Cancellations and postponements,
Even the spoon waits
For the open mouth
While eyes are glued
To the altar
Where Big Brother’s
Fake fire
Burn.
The television series
Of real life.
While in all the cities
Somewhere in its streets
Beyond the reach of street light
Where sound doesn’t sound
Like sound at all
Someone is waiting
Outstretched dirty hands
Clenching their stomachs
Trying to squeeze away
The cold fire of hunger
Waiting
For a big brother
Or a sister
To take them home
And live real lives.
I have always believed
That real life
Is lived
And not mixed
like herbs and spices
vegetable, meat, salt
baked
then sliced
into little servings
called
primetime
at least, I am happy
for those who have sold
pieces of their lives
for their dream
of recognition beyond
mere ordinary patterns.
They must be happy
Even as they shed
Their tears
That are like
Promises
Written on sand
Perhaps big brother deserves my envy.
of how
Big brother speaks
As if he was the bush
Burning not with flame
And yet whose light
Many wait
In couches, sofas
On cold dirty wet floors
To witness
As if a flick of the remote control
And things go
On and off
In his house.
This is the television series
Of Real life,
Or so they claim.
And if that was a lie,
why is it that so many believe?
They fail to return calls
Or text messages,
the genesis of a variety
of Cancellations and postponements,
Even the spoon waits
For the open mouth
While eyes are glued
To the altar
Where Big Brother’s
Fake fire
Burn.
The television series
Of real life.
While in all the cities
Somewhere in its streets
Beyond the reach of street light
Where sound doesn’t sound
Like sound at all
Someone is waiting
Outstretched dirty hands
Clenching their stomachs
Trying to squeeze away
The cold fire of hunger
Waiting
For a big brother
Or a sister
To take them home
And live real lives.
On Leaving Balulang
On Leaving Balulang
There I was
A Sunday without a sun
Having a conversation
In footsteps
With the twisting road
Long and tiring, that was how
I thought it would be,
As how I remember it
from all those jeepney rides
I took with someone
Who knew more than just my shame.
Walking on a road
Towards the heart of the city
where no one knew me,
whom the one I love abandoned
For the unknown horizons of Bukidnon.
Along the way, my naked foot
Had accumulated souvenirs:
A thin lace layer of dust, smoke
And tasteless bubblegum
stretching and snapping
like my will.
It must have been a long journey
But don’t really know, can’t really tell:
I was busy
Unhooking the syllable thorns
From the word
“STUPID”
There I was
A Sunday without a sun
Having a conversation
In footsteps
With the twisting road
Long and tiring, that was how
I thought it would be,
As how I remember it
from all those jeepney rides
I took with someone
Who knew more than just my shame.
Walking on a road
Towards the heart of the city
where no one knew me,
whom the one I love abandoned
For the unknown horizons of Bukidnon.
Along the way, my naked foot
Had accumulated souvenirs:
A thin lace layer of dust, smoke
And tasteless bubblegum
stretching and snapping
like my will.
It must have been a long journey
But don’t really know, can’t really tell:
I was busy
Unhooking the syllable thorns
From the word
“STUPID”
Everything is Clear
everything becomes clearer.
the sky that is blue
and the earth that is green,
where do they get their buckets of paint
for both almost infinite canvass?
and who is the painter
who slaves in the dark while we sleep?
Everything is like when,
As a child with hungry eyes and ears,
I fed on things that were new.
The leaves and branches are raising their arms
Waving them at the arrival of the winds,
Birds and bees, and small insects unseen
Join together to perform this symphony
Of celebration at the waking of the sleeping sun.
Everything becomes so near.
An empty chair sits by my side.
And even in its silence, I hear,
Or perhaps imagine,
It’s absent voice calling out for someone.
Everything is so clear
Light and sound,
The lengthening of shadows.
Until the stars come out to watch me
And we watch each other.
Everything is…nothing
There is only empty space
Everything is clear
And that is why I fear
That certain absence
From whom a shadow
Whose shape is not like my own.
And yet blends and covers
My own shadow
Complete, total
Like bonfires whose fingers
Washes away
The stains of dirty memories.
Monday, December 05, 2005
Another one from the Yjanla Castello experiment..the last one i guess
Note : i have reason to believe that this isone of the best from that long ago session...
Rain
Whenever the raindrops end their exile
and become refugees on my skin
I cannot explain but I remember you
Of how you held them, broken as they were
On the cup of your palm, as if an offering
Or waiting for them to fly.
Like a child you were with your smile
With outstretched arms you welcomed them
As if they were the toys inside boxes, behind glass
windows.
I have wondered if you welcomed the rain
To become your cloak, your mask, and if their hold
Is kin to the shadows you left yesterday
Oe perhaps, their cold is there to temper you,
So that whatever that burns may steam off
And blow away the dried shell breaking.
The things that fall need places,
And the rain washes away the streets, why not
Let it wash human bodies
So you told me with your transparent words
Emerging from the cave of your mouth,
your eyes had hands and whisked me away to talk of
different paths…
…until the sun was chased away by the dark.
Whenever the raindrops end their exile
and become refugees on my skin
I cannot explain but I remember you,
And even after when the hands of day
Have brushed away the rain you held so close,
and I wonder if you were also washed away
absent as you are now.
Rain
Whenever the raindrops end their exile
and become refugees on my skin
I cannot explain but I remember you
Of how you held them, broken as they were
On the cup of your palm, as if an offering
Or waiting for them to fly.
Like a child you were with your smile
With outstretched arms you welcomed them
As if they were the toys inside boxes, behind glass
windows.
I have wondered if you welcomed the rain
To become your cloak, your mask, and if their hold
Is kin to the shadows you left yesterday
Oe perhaps, their cold is there to temper you,
So that whatever that burns may steam off
And blow away the dried shell breaking.
The things that fall need places,
And the rain washes away the streets, why not
Let it wash human bodies
So you told me with your transparent words
Emerging from the cave of your mouth,
your eyes had hands and whisked me away to talk of
different paths…
…until the sun was chased away by the dark.
Whenever the raindrops end their exile
and become refugees on my skin
I cannot explain but I remember you,
And even after when the hands of day
Have brushed away the rain you held so close,
and I wonder if you were also washed away
absent as you are now.
on borrowed memories
Note: the followings are just mere rambling..that is..firstdrafts...will try to work on them when i would..wi would, not when i could..but fornow..here they are...
Musings After Midnight
When did your eyes learn how to transform
and capture the light and reflect them into glances of lies?
Why did you make midnight promises
And carve letter on blowing sand?
why call me in so many names
only to leave me with the only one I chose for myself?
Why did you abandon the one you love
And lost what you sought ages to find?
Why coat in sugar and honey the words
that was rotten and bitter in the core?
Why do we trust, is it only to be betrayed?
Why do we live again, is it only to be murdered all over?
Why do memories remain without traces?
Why is holding on so difficult and letting go
As soft and automatic as breathing?
These throng of questions have walked over me
And I have scraps of their passage;
Broken twigs, dried leaves, dried petals falling
all without moisture that a small flicker
can turn them into a bonfire
fit for the cremation of one’s soul.
and yet these questions
whose answers I have long possessed
still haunt me
they bloom each day
like flowers
whose leaves and petals
carry along its surface
the teardrops born
out
of my lonely nights.
DisConnectIng
What is it, bravery
Or the aftertaste
From the kiss of desperation
Suicidal madness
For one to gouge one’s eyes
Slice off one ear, then the other
Sew the mouth
After the chopped tongue
Cauterized,
Legs crashing
To the call of
“timber!”
Arms and fingers
Crushed, broken
Like twigs to set the flame
Burning that knows no flame or warmth
But only mist
Crawling
Like oil.
To choose
To be suspended in midair
Never knowing how high heaven
Or how hard but fertile
The earth could be even
Amidst giant heaps of stones
And pebbles.
Like clouds I become
Like clouds
Drifting from one landscape
Driven by the currents of your desire
To be left all alone.
How like a cloud,
Transformed and molded
Into named and unnamed shapes
Absorbing moisture
Everything, tears and dirty water
Until everything is heavy
Is dark and gray
And from the weight
Sometimes my labored sighs arrives
After the lightning,
Tears are shed
That people run away from
Hide from,
With no one to wipe them dry.
How like clouds
Whose shape
Is raked into strips, thin and thin
Like stardust that is never quite seen
And all that remains
Is the sky
Blue, like the ocean
Whose surface
Froths and waves
While underneath lies
The stories and treasures
Never to be revealed or told.
Friday, December 02, 2005
3 poems from the Yjanla Castello Experiment
The following are 3 works from what I have labeled as the Yjanla Castello Experiment. As to what the experiment was all about, I am sure the works would spell it out. Enjoy.
Traces
It is possible you are not of this land
Though I have seen you weep
The poison from spirits long left in your empty cellar,
Though I have seen red gasped and flowed
Like the flower you held for me
Whose torn pricked you.
Who is the mother who taught you
To caress like a silent stream newly born?
Who is the father from whose seeds with embers
You sprouted,
Flesh and form garbed in fire?
I ask these questions and others
Because though I have deciphered your outlines with my own,
Because though I know your secret name,
I cannot remember a page from yesterday
Whose words, colors and sketches are kin
To those with whom you leave your traces,
Nor can I find among books or among the trees
Or there where heavenly bodies call their home
The name for this elemental force in the season
Arriving with you every time.
From what far away constellations
Did you steal these stars, these suns
Who are now submerged in your skin
That in your room filled with the dark
I saw you with my unopened eyes,
Your caress is a feather,
Or a like a fallen leaf floating
In air or sleepy waters.
And in the silence I seek for the sound
Murmurs, pieces of you
That I could decipher.
Listening
i have been listening
to the songs you burned
in silver discs whose face
reflect only my own
the final song is playing
our song, you proclaimed
and as my fingers trace the edges
of the next one,
as if following a path
that would lead to you
i cannot help but remember
the tenses you used
burned in
read only cds
burned
burned out
like ashes
if only the compacts of our lives,
round, spinning and spinning
like the earth
were rewritables
then i would be burning them
as you did
not with your songs
nor ours
but mine
burned in, burned out
the flames invisible and long gone
even before the final wail.
Of Seasons & Stars & You
The seasons have lost their minds
Astray, confused.
It rains on summer these past years,
Falling and falling
And they press the sweet blossoms
Deep into the earth
Unsmelled.
And so I am sensitive
To that certain silence,
A liquid silence
To nights where stars flower
After the fall of rain
Before I knew constellations
My eyes jumped
From one star to the next,
In the night sky I pegged
The strange and unexpected orbits of my life
Until I discovered
In textbooks
The truth
About seasons and stars.
Exploding blossoms of light
Whose flower, whose center
I could not touch.
Yet these mournful eyes
Filled with clouds filled
With the evaporation of happy memories
Still look at the stars,
A shared affinity
Deep and misted as these nights
Where stars bloom after summer's rain.
It has been another season
Since you last came
Yet the embers still burn from the nights
That blazed with our bodies,
Bright white lights,
But your memory belongs
To another season.
In nights like this one
You are like the stars
Carrying your light in the distance,
And the truth about stars
Are also yours,
Bright, burning light
And dead.
Traces
It is possible you are not of this land
Though I have seen you weep
The poison from spirits long left in your empty cellar,
Though I have seen red gasped and flowed
Like the flower you held for me
Whose torn pricked you.
Who is the mother who taught you
To caress like a silent stream newly born?
Who is the father from whose seeds with embers
You sprouted,
Flesh and form garbed in fire?
I ask these questions and others
Because though I have deciphered your outlines with my own,
Because though I know your secret name,
I cannot remember a page from yesterday
Whose words, colors and sketches are kin
To those with whom you leave your traces,
Nor can I find among books or among the trees
Or there where heavenly bodies call their home
The name for this elemental force in the season
Arriving with you every time.
From what far away constellations
Did you steal these stars, these suns
Who are now submerged in your skin
That in your room filled with the dark
I saw you with my unopened eyes,
Your caress is a feather,
Or a like a fallen leaf floating
In air or sleepy waters.
And in the silence I seek for the sound
Murmurs, pieces of you
That I could decipher.
Listening
i have been listening
to the songs you burned
in silver discs whose face
reflect only my own
the final song is playing
our song, you proclaimed
and as my fingers trace the edges
of the next one,
as if following a path
that would lead to you
i cannot help but remember
the tenses you used
burned in
read only cds
burned
burned out
like ashes
if only the compacts of our lives,
round, spinning and spinning
like the earth
were rewritables
then i would be burning them
as you did
not with your songs
nor ours
but mine
burned in, burned out
the flames invisible and long gone
even before the final wail.
Of Seasons & Stars & You
The seasons have lost their minds
Astray, confused.
It rains on summer these past years,
Falling and falling
And they press the sweet blossoms
Deep into the earth
Unsmelled.
And so I am sensitive
To that certain silence,
A liquid silence
To nights where stars flower
After the fall of rain
Before I knew constellations
My eyes jumped
From one star to the next,
In the night sky I pegged
The strange and unexpected orbits of my life
Until I discovered
In textbooks
The truth
About seasons and stars.
Exploding blossoms of light
Whose flower, whose center
I could not touch.
Yet these mournful eyes
Filled with clouds filled
With the evaporation of happy memories
Still look at the stars,
A shared affinity
Deep and misted as these nights
Where stars bloom after summer's rain.
It has been another season
Since you last came
Yet the embers still burn from the nights
That blazed with our bodies,
Bright white lights,
But your memory belongs
To another season.
In nights like this one
You are like the stars
Carrying your light in the distance,
And the truth about stars
Are also yours,
Bright, burning light
And dead.
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