(i see) two scions dance in traffic: sun and moon,
sky and stars; God’s two heirs
dancing in traffic as if they weren’t demigods but
small maya birds - transfixed
mortals, fighting to keep away from the blinding
might their status affords them.
as His children their world and its light is for their taking,
of which they can feed - or not:
they go on instead like hungry wolves, next to I, rising
(sidelined, falling) flagging down jeeps
in the thick of the Vinzons Hall jeepney stop. They bark loud
and cheerily to keep idle; from unravelling
their wax-worn strings. They are birds guided by concrete routes,
those yearning to feel its bleakness
in each syllable creeping up their gold-and-marble throats:
the soft choke of exhaust smoke
and the rosiness of their gaunt in the face of all-knowing fate:
that of snatching from death
a world not theirs. They declare: “Perseus we are not, and
Janus we choose.” They shuttlling
commuters obscure and without fuss and without end
to and fro, where they come
they spit on the universe in baggy basketball shorts
Dec 4, 2016
Dec 4, 2016 at 10:42 AM UTC
the cat snores
at midnight, below
call centre agents:
bathed in white lights above
and the security guard’s badge below which gleams
of splendour; reflects the moon
by his chest: waxing
where it rises
and waning as it falls; a truck’s engine
roaring in the distance. my footstep
stirs not the cat
Dec 4, 2016
Dec 4, 2016 at 10:37 AM UTC
"Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
-Ozymandias
I.
O wait for us, Colossus
as we wait - and throw you
to earth: from heaven’s gates judge you
unworthy - to hades’ lands assign,
where your iron limbs make mincemeat out
of anguished homes - by tyrants
you were thrown but floated aimless past
the drifting realms where once lay hell,
and fired you your rocket boosters - apollo’s gift
blinding still your eyes -
II.
next, awake: the visage of the Child
in your face - languishing, affronted:
two vast and trunkless legs of iron glare, only to grow
rigid still - slumping at His feet: with heart-engine smoking,
eyes hollowed-black,
lying in slumber with giant's knees bent,
in grasslands rest and where hearkens the plain - He cries out:
’tis you!
though dwarf, He is - he kneads your iron
by grass, and your wounded legs the earth
now christens, snd blesses still your sleep.
III.
He moves forth with grass blades and twigs,
crown you a nest; and bear stones unrolled to where
your feet first kisses ground.
-2.17.16
Mar 15, 2016
Mar 15, 2016 at 11:38 AM UTC
do i want to lie flat in your prison cells? perhaps not.
but i do know that the curse of our words is that
they will one day swap out our air for oxygen,
and we will breathe ink down our throats; gasping
for sound.
it is inevitable. these vestiges of mind matchless to those
who give chase - we who disappear like ghosts - one day
to resurface - our bodies in exchange. we will be beaten
by batons, cut open by silver: a cuff for a tongue. we perish
for our
speech.
Feb 22, 2016
Feb 22, 2016 at 12:39 PM UTC
reverse engineering:
tomorrow
i will know still your voice,
how your silence splits words
into pieces, as you break me
with your collared sweaters and polka dot
socks: tell me i am floating,
question my Gods, forbid me
from touching your church elders; your parents’
Lord.
today
i will know your laughter, a tad frail:
the voice of an unsteady
deity - your fingers - never stilling a pen,
nor sketching a hand - whittling
my own: your chin trembling as you chide me
for their largeness; i show you their erasures:
your lack of wayward lines; your work
of an artist.
yesterday
i tell you to sing, you tell me not to -
you arm yourself and lock away in your room,
say your poetry terrible,
wrong, un-joyful, cross-averted; they cracks
in all the wrong places like your flimsy
hands, like your hopes massive-disintegrating
like the feebleness in your dust-allergic bodies; your lack
of lungs: brittled long by heavy-handed
words and thin brushes: you with death -
the un-wayward stroke: You
who are sickly, whose quiet breaths reach
where we cannot find
and find the places where
our gods long to be touchable.
Feb 11, 2016
Feb 11, 2016 at 11:55 AM UTC
i.
the poem has a beginning exactly as you’d expect it:
pa in sweatshirt, ma with purse; the funny thing is
i never used to call them those names:
“pa,”
“ma,”
always found them too cowboy-ish,
too un-me, un-like
us: who held chopsticks before dinner time and shared
stories of how grandpa came over from china.
ii. (at the dinner table)
there is no symbolism here. there has been none
for a while now. this household eats and
eats in quiet. my grandmother is a poet but their
books all burned down
back in ’45 when mao stormed into fujian and
all her uncles could eloquent on was that
“the communists were coming!”
“the communists were coming!”
and instead of poems took with them their
children, and their gold to pawn
and their clothes on their muddy
mortar-stained backs
and the japanese
iii.
my grandfather now comes twice a week to the
hospital for chemotherapy. it is a nice hospital.
good view of the cleanest part of our *****
city. there are lights and white folks now. two things
my dad said did not used to be there. they
used to be spanish. they tilled
our rice fields and spent the money on living rooms
with lots and lots of space to sleep. we on the other hand,
worked. he claims.
your grandfather and his grandfather and i
iv.
awake every sunday morning at precisely 8:30.
made to go down to the temple in kalesas
and told to fetch the office paper for
noontime reading. see we weren’t spoiled: grew
up just next to the pasig river which back in
the 70s did not smell as bad as sin only
sweatshirts
and the sweat we soaked them in we reeled along
steamed fish heads and chopsticks for picking at them with
and bowls of rice we never really ate with spoons.
v. (back at the dinner table)
i listen to my mom and dad
sweat profusely in the evening heat only we can have here
he in his sweatshirt and she
with her golden purse,
preparing to leave - a wedding party awaits -
an jacket draped over his shirt just like grandfather used to do it
in a sense,
but gripping the chopsticks delicately for all us
to see:
“pa,”
“ma,”
v.
it is not cowboys that give us our names.
Feb 11, 2016
Feb 11, 2016 at 11:55 AM UTC
*for my pastor, for my father, and for a friend.
6.
i find your name carved quiet by the windowsill
in an empty room.
5.
i find half your coat hanging wayside where once his coat was, too.
4.
father told me you too keep your dentures in a cup like grandfather’s.
3.
that you were there as he packed his bags and warbled off
for the hospital. you didn’t talk to him then
but still we knew. or so he did:
he caught you smiling by the desks where he worked.
2.
i find your photographs by the balcony,
and your footprints by the garden. bits of your
hair by the pavement next to candy wrappers and
pencil jars.
1.
together we pick up the pieces you left behind. and sew. and stitch
ourselves together. open our mouths in silence.
0.
we wait for your next visit.
Feb 2, 2016
Feb 2, 2016 at 8:11 AM UTC
Let us rise once more as saplings sprouted from gravel,
by the highways where the mufflers of the buses threaten
to blow us all
away, and sprout none
the lesser and watch for
maya: who may take our seeds and spread them and we
by them survive, strangled as we are by breath, exhaust and
white smoke: teach them with our dying leaves their names,
and let them mouth
it on their tongues, discoloured as they might be by
their birth, and see
and hear once more
the cars’ horned blare
and the tired cackle of gravel,
and the whistles of the trains rushing to: up, forth and
away, farther farther farther farther from the cracks where
they must have heard it, and with that sound pick themselves up
and give chase
to that sound that too
is theirs, but fading
away from where they too were born, and begin to begin again.
Jan 20, 2016
Jan 20, 2016 at 4:24 AM UTC
“And he was one of the bravest men I ever met."
Wands raised, we sing for thee who bows to death,
And greet him well hello with such a smile,
Whose smile bade such farewell we shan't forget,
A teacher - always, now - who loved beguiled:
His potions dangling coloured on the walls,
The marks of darkness shroud by hidden sleeve,
Who glided quiet, blue through hallowed halls,
And stared down pupils green like daybreak’s Eve.
The dawn she, and her forlorn chaser you,
Who sought her out as kin seeks too for kin,
Who found instead her brood, and harshly knew
Her steadfast love kept just by scars within.
Pierced sharp, his wounds knit twice from serpent's pain,
Now wakes to see, and leaves this world no blame.
Jan 16, 2016
Jan 16, 2016 at 8:19 PM UTC
For volleyball games with our kids
and the grit of dirt slipping through your teeth
like a pancaked hand flat on cement surface.
Ball. Court. It is a good morning and
the sunrise rises to give life to the game. This game:
ours. We run and jump and sing; old bones
made to jog its memory. Bounces the ball and we run
again. Laughing like children. Next to the children.
Leaping after them. Watch as the ball rises high
in the sky next as outstretched arms give chase
to them: its hands caked with dirt; gravel on nails
from the swept cement rock and line paint. This we
share like a communion, a church service. Young
and old, here and not here we rise and we
fall prostate next to the prayers of the net, the brush of fingertips
against fabric against rubber, each palm
of the ball a Sunday chorus stretching, congregation, religion,
swept from the sky and made to kiss ground where
the gods of our sweat and grit belong.
Jan 2, 2016
Jan 2, 2016 at 10:42 AM UTC