Driftwood and daffodils

Into the wind, down the stream,
LIFE...

lightly and utterly will soon become with infinite care

the story I will write.

---

With apologies to e.e. cummings. And because my life's soundtrack is fast becoming a compendium of human clamor, drowning the seemingly clear goal I had drawn out for myself when I was young enough to believe that the world, ultimately life, is what you make it no matter the circumstances. Relatively young and no longer prone to believing too much, we are but reactors to predetermined fate. The choices we make are not really ours.

---
Some pretty depressing shit, huh? Ok, 2013, we need to talk.

---
Oh, and the weird thing is, I really can't think of a place I'd rather be right now.

Sense and Sentimentality

My apologies but it was not love.

It was an itch in my pants --- how unfortunate that you had to be the one to help me scratch it.
And yet, calling to mind a beautiful reason neither you nor I could afford,
I fell into the trappings of it.
Finding ourselves pantsless, the itch had nowhere to go but up,
the way smoke billows like waves licking the heavens,
how you tend to study the sky, regardless the weather,
rather than write on the sidewalk that would eventually lead to me.
Still, you belong in lines drawn in the sand, fleeting, teasing,
your presence an erotic joke cast by the shore, gone by nightfall.
By then I shall have been asleep, dreaming dreams that disappear in the morning.

So no, it wasn't love.
And yes, no need to look miserable when we kiss
or pretend to care about the hurt, an ache I'd rather miss.

---
Because I had just begun reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

One more stone

Cast
cast away
cast away with metaphysical precision
cast away with metaphysical precision from your perch above the clouds
cast away with metaphysical precision from your perch above the clouds and proclaim:

"Yes, I am without fault. Without sin, holier than thou."

In the streets
far, far below from your perch above the clouds
people stumble in their lives, bleak and heavy with imagined desires
hacking away at a domain in which they wander
fanning their hands in exhaustion
because -- and you scoff at this -- they lack the means nor the right
to cast
cast away
cast away with metaphysical precision.

Grumpy, meandering thoughts

"Oh, look," said the Universe disapprovingly. "Tata is happy again. Better fix that." And so I fell, once again, into the throes of a truly terrible cold. My third for the year, and how truly horrible at that that I finally dragged my lazy bollocks to the doctor. To which, adoring V quipped as we stepped into the waiting area of the Las Piñas Medical Center OPD, "You're 35% cured! Going to the doctor just speeds things up."

Coughing incessantly, contending with mild headaches and a stuffed nose have made me philosophical: I can't blame the bug for wreaking havoc in my body. The little critter, like all of us, just wants to live or to be more apt, fulfill its purpose. How unfortunate for the little bugger! Achieving what it ought to be at the expense of others.

Stop.

All sorts of crazy have been crawling out of my woodwork because what I've been attempting to write hasn't pushed through so, hello, here's a totally useless scene from a sporadic writing life.

Step back in time and PARTY!

Lez get our groove on!

A throwback to the decade of peace and love, disco dancing, crazy clothing and groovy music.

With girls, girls, girls to boot!

Lez Go Retro!

Scool Bar

614 Julio Nakpil Street, Malate, Manila

17 November 2012 (Saturday)

Advance Reservations: P200.00

Regular Price: P250.00

For more information:

Mobile: 0917.555.1426 || 0917.707.9662

BBM: 2699FD56 || 27D03DD3

Facebook: Lez World

Head on to Sapphic Lounge for information and all things lesbian.

Matthew Says

Must I always concede to the world?

Ask, often you do not receive ---
like the time she caught you peering from half-lidded eyes:
half-wanting, half-shy to start something of meaning
or the time she held out her hand to you hesitant to claim what was given
and so you lost the opportunity, drowned yourself in wine and whispers of reproach and longing, bouncing against a wall of ambivalence, her not caring. Anymore.

Seek, what have you found?
A felt-tip pen buried in a book to mark a page
filled with words that sparked a dozen exchanges over time and space;
a feeling, intense, demanding to be felt yet nameless;
that incident in the bathroom fading into memory,
fading into Must Forget.

Knock, who opens the door?
Choosing to keep it closed, deferring to Archimedes and buoyed by blood
displaced by the organ, which has lodged itself between lock and key,
every twist and turn
vomiting words instead of what you drank for dinner.

Again, must I always concede to the world?
Perhaps there are battles that mustn't be fought
nor beliefs that must be taken with a grain of salt, i.e., the silly belief in the stars
and what they tell us about the past and distance,
radiating from the dark expanse of night ---
how conceding, sometimes, is just the thing you need to get you going.

Sulong

Panalangin ang bawat minutong
pumapatak mula sa mga sandaling
kinulayan at hinulma ng mga
mapagmahal na palad.

Kinukumutan ng titig
sa pagnanais na hilumin
ang anumang bahaging
kinukulang sa halaga.

Ganito ang pag-ibig:
Babaybayin ng pandama
ang bawat pangyayari,
lalanghapin ang bawat pagtatangka.

Ipaglalaban upang
maging katotohanan
ang bawat maaari.
Ganito tayo: mandirigma.

Lalabanan ang panahon
at pagkakataon
sa matinding paghahangad
na mahalin din tayo ng tadhana.

What

Begins when everything ends: Love
vestiges of lust, evolving with a hint
of truth; written in many, many forms
of blood, from blood as ink, ink of blood
drip, drip, dripping from a heart
worn, aching --- ready to relinquish
its claim upon your sleeve.

There are many measures of love.
A heart contrite, for one. And two, a hand
reaching out into the eye of the storm
that exists for us both: similar and not the same,
differing in minute details: the intensity perhaps,
what it picks up along the way, debris, the chip off
a shoulder, baggage lugged  from one continent to another.

Love
has been written about elsewhere before
rewritten and rewritten but can never
claim to be rewritten no more,
perhaps by myself, wary and yet dauntless ---
as a way maybe of moderating desires or
questioning them:

Do I love you, for example; or
Do I love me with you that's why I do love you?
You and not you when you are with me?
Or what you do to me?
Now that I've shrugged off the fear
of what could be and may and will happen,
I will let love be[gin].