Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Turning

Morning

What is there to lose?

Rueful and sheepish, I am when it comes to a dialogue where you are the central character. I remember distinctly how you uncorked the bottle to have laughter and words spill out, unbridled, instead of wine. We laughed and laughed some more, exchanging our versions of sadness. Or something like that. After sifting through each other's shit, what did we talk about? Nothing much. But always, some sort of insight was gleaned through the labyrinth of innuendo and allusion.

"How ironic." 
"Irony is sexy."
"How can you say such a thing? Feigned ignorance is condescending."
"Now that is condescending. But to be strikingly unaware of say, beauty or one's apparent coolitude? Now that is sexy."
"I get you."
"I know you do."

And for a moment, it felt like everything was right in the world.
Alike in our differences, the night offered an overwhelming sense of being overtaken by joy. It was as if the city and night and you and I, midst a wave of people, were united in a kind of profound identity.
So I plummeted, reveled in that lighted moment, when we seemed to understand ourselves and the world and, for a single instant, knew the loveliness of living beings.
But the moment vanished quickly, and we are almost embarrassed to admit that it has ever been, as though in doing so we betray a willingness to believe in what is not true ---

Because

there are those who cannot reconcile
how joy may come 
from where we do not run from life,
from where we learn to break out of the prison of self.

Because

some find it strange how 
perhaps joy is most likely to come
when we forget ourselves in service,
or in the pursuit of a great dream.

Because

most fail to understand how
we are most likely to experience moments of joy
if we can admit that there is more to life
than we have yet fathomed.

And because

we refuse to consider how
moments of deep exaltation are born out of
uncertainty and challenge and peril;
how we are blind
that there in the universe is light,
a stuff,
a tissue,
a substance

in company with which one would never be lonely.


Noon

I keep to the shade, quiet places where I can sip my coffee and look at the world. You bask in the sunlight, always in a flurry of activity, paddles untucked, never at one place at one time. You wear your heart in the outer folds of your sleeve, sometimes in your back pocket or at the tip of your nose but always where everyone can see it. I have kept mine hidden in my cobwebbed cage of blood and bone, only to claw its way out when you revealed yourself to me. It's been somewhere since, never within my reach, enjoying this cruel game of hide and seek. 

To be continued...

Night

Cont.

I stay cocooned in my nest surrounded by people made out of paper while you keep to dancing lights and the haze of smoke.

Be that as it may
You and I will forever
remain equals, still.

And I must say, there are things I love:

Love that we battle
in secret, drawing our swords of
prose and poetry.

How you challenge me
to say the least, more
than I do myself.

Yet the question still stands: What is there to lose?

Say I lost my heart
somewhere in the folds of your skin.
Say you chanced upon it
would you, would you
consider keeping it?

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

And this

briefly explains the writing:
"Poetry is what happens when nothing else can."
 Charles Bukowski

Whereas I have found a way to silence the truth in my heart. With patience to forget.

Forget the season where we blossomed. Forget the words that wound; misread missives of almost adoration. Forget the desperation to believe the promises read between the lines. Forget the place that welcomed us too easily with music and beer. The w[h]ining and the dining.

Forget the place where it all began -- offering memories and the sound of a name all too familiar. Forget the mismatched interiors gloriously kitsch. Forget the firmament rendered uneven by waves of beings desperate for connection. Like us, perhaps?

Forget the night. And the passion it brought, how it urged us to curve seamlessly into each other. Forget how it seemed like our bodies knew the map of our souls before we touched. Before we met. Forget how that felt. Forget the scribbles, the box, and the bottle. Forget today. And tomorrow. And everything. Forget that magical place. In between some kind of forgotten wonder.

X marked the spot where we stood, and Y stands for all the unanswered questions we collected like coins to get to this point. Forget the coins, currencies of feeling. Forget the song, the sound and the girl you could not possess because you came but did not see. Forget the flight, the tentative unfurling of gossamer wings.

Forget the hunger to see, the longing to hold. Forget the girl whose hand you were afraid to touch. Forget the questions. Forget what have we here. What we had. We are but bobbing heads eagerly awaiting that some thing to believe in.

Forget everything.

Forget because forgetting is the first step to stop the scarring.

Forget.

Because we wound ourselves --- again and again -- by remembering.


Monday, June 11, 2012

No hearts


And yet
I've said this far too often
how one day we will be nothing more
than bits and pieces of dust
swirling in the vast expanse of sky
without direction. 
Nothing.
No arms for reaching nor
hearts for feeling.

So this I tell you:
We are running out of time
to claim this brightness while we still can.
Because, really,
What else have we got than
you and me?

---
At 1:38 a.m.: Dissatisfied with this poem. Seems like a quilt of verses, scraps and spillage, almost there but not quite. A deletion seems necessary so ---


Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Unang Kaganapan


Nilakbay ng mga salita ang karagatan
ng tunog at tulang ikaw at ako.

Tumagos ang mga ito sa banayad na usok ng sigarilyo
na pinunan ng alak gamit ang mga sarili.

Hindi mapigil bagamat tipid ang pagtingin,
ang pagtitig sa kung ano ang maaari.

Nasa laylayan ang pananabik.
Dahan-dahang aalisin ang pagkakatupi hanggang sa mahanap ang balat.

Itong kiliti, nakakatakam.
Nakapaglalaway.


---
Dahil minsan tinanong mo 'ko. At alam kong hindi mo na maalala. Tagay na.


Sunday, June 3, 2012

Dahil minsan kitang minahal

hindi ko magagawang talikuran ang mga alaala
subalit sisimulan ko ang maingat na paghahakbang
palayo sa iyo

kakalimutan ka ng unti-unti
at sa pagkawala ko ng tuluyan
hindi mo na ako maaring balikan

marahil mananatili bilang huling habilin ang tulang ito;
kumakatawan sa mga araw 
na sa panaginip na lamang muling masisilayan.



---
Hello and goodbye.

Friday, June 1, 2012

Red Flags

uttering her name you fell completely
unaware how the sonant curved into a warning
planting a seed of sadness in your heart
only to blossom majestically

its thirst quenched with tears ---
tendrils enveloping the organ
powerless to contain the burgeoning
darkness within

like a flock of birds with fractured wings
struggling, beating mercilessly
through your cage of blood and bone
poised for flight

in the stillness of the night.



---
Night terrors are the pits.