The results would be in by the end of the month, or first week of May. I do not know what the result is gonna be, but these were my entries for this year's national writer's workshop here in Iligan. They are old works but with revisions. Are they good enough? I don't know. Still, here they are, my candidates for the workshop.

I only hope that they are strong enough to pull me in even if I was not strong enough to give birth to them.

Enjoy.


Pairs
J. K. R. Kanindot

It is not
The way of birds
To reign over
A sky rain.

I do not have wings,
But there must be
Something
About water glazed on fine feather
That disturbs
The art of flight.

And yet there they were,
The pair I could not name.
Wings tracing half circles toward the other
Overlapping and crossing.
In the sky there must be
And invisible pole,
And they were two separate vines
Twirling around each other.

And yet it is not the way of birds,
Nor is it the way
Of sanity
To stand still in the rain.

There must be a rage
In these two birds
To defy and remain.
Perhaps, they are waiting
For the sun to wash over
The cold tears
With warm fingers.

So much perhaps like my rage
And my waiting
For an umbrella to bloom
Over my head.



Pinoy Big Brother : The Fucker
J. K. R. Kanindot


I have always believed
That real life
Is lived
And not a recipe
Of herbs and spices
Vegetable, meat, salt
To be 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.
For their smiles
As they shed
Tears and 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
In a flick of the remote control
things going
On and off
In his house.

This is the television series
Of Real life.


Little brothers and sisters, devotees
Fail to return calls
Or text messages,
Cancellations and postponements,
Even the full spoon waits
For the open empty 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 warm light
Where sound doesn't sound
Like sound at all
Someone is waiting
One outstretched dirty hand
The other clenching the stomach
Trying to squeeze away
The cold fire of hunger,
Waiting
For a big brother
Or a sister
To take them home.


Shape
J. K. R. Kanindot

Because it is not my lips
You seek for your own
So you may savor the day
That is being born as promised,
Laced with the aftertaste
Of ashes and yesterday.

Because my hands are scarred.

And your skin bristle, your flesh
Shiver at the contact of its strangeness.
Your skin detects but would not believe
The possibility of ripe sweet fruit juices
From the seeds I gathered and saved away
From the famine of abandonment,
Coated as their shells are in grime,
Washed out traces of something red.

And so you dare not even discover
What twigs it would gather
For bonfires to blaze in your darkness,
To melt your shields,
Your daggers and armor,
And forge them into spoons and forks,
Into a clean goblet
To hold the wine.

Because my voice is not his voice,
My eyes are not the stars
Of your blued skies,
In daylight or dark.


Rain
J. K. R. Kanindot


Whenever the raindrops become refugees on my skin
I cannot explain but I remember you.

Of how you held them, splattered 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 colorful and ribbon-laced boxes
Behind iron bars and glass windows.

I have wondered if you welcomed the rain
To become your cloak, your mask,
Or if they clung to you
Like those who embraced you yesterday

Or perhaps, their cold is there to temper you,
So that whatever that burns you may steam off
or perhaps wash away the dust and dirty traces
Of something heavy even after you said your prayers.

"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 they whisked me away
To talk of different paths…

…until the sun was chased away
by the dark who then stood between us.

Whenever the raindrops become refugees on my skin
I cannot explain but I remember you
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.


My Poetry
J. K. R. Kanindot

If my poetry is filled with women,
it is only because the branches of my life
were tended by them
even before it was a stalk.

Like you I was a seed inside a woman
and from the moment I sprouted
from the shell of her womb
my roots were taught to dig deep
into the soil of life,
past layers after layers
of stony indifference and shallow water
to drink from the mouth of this earth.

Under the sky of women's love
my branches were free to seek out
the layers between myself and the sky,
in the garden of women's love
they guided my roots
to sink even deeper
and not to wander wide.

There was a woman
whose smiles and eyes flashed
like white stars as she named for me
the constellations in the sky,
Orion and Sirius,
of what I would have to bear,
major and minor.
There was a woman
who spoke to me in meter and rhyme,
who fed me my first sweet fruits of metaphors
whose aroma and flavors I could still taste even now.
There was a woman who tucked me
between warm bed sheets and blankets,
soft pillows on my head, like her breast,
so that I could dream and in the morning
be set free to discover who I am to be.

Father is only a name
I barely remember. Brother
is the son of my uncle and aunt.

If there are so many women in my poetry
it is only because I have been loved
by plenty as I have loved and lost many.
From women springs
the blossom of my summer laughter.

There will always be women
in my poetry for I know
with a rooted certainty as deep as my roots
that when I could no longer smile
nor sing to the wind nor feel the moist
of the earth, when I have forgotten my name
for the windows of my eyes had witnessed
their final silent sunset,
there would be women,
it would be a woman
even if I no longer have my poetry,
who would shed and share her warmth
from the tears and her arms
for me.