Raindrops forget to
drop
a drop
dropping slowly
the rain forgets to stop
stop
plop
a plop of blood in the ocean of firestorm
now death opened
like an unturned boat in the
middle of the world
to receive the last plummet of hope,
last blessing
in a humane drop from above
above
the above has
no rain for the next season
the winds are afraid to return.

To behold the daybreak!
-Walt Whitman, Song of Myself from Leaves of Grass

In days like this one,
when rain drops so light
& everything dips
into weeping grey
my sanity longs for memories.

My sanity longs
like impulsive recalling
of plummeting sadness
in greying day
sashaying mournful recollects
from sunrise to daybreak.

Remembering vanishes
in the joyful marrow of life.

There, forgetting lives.

Tell me the last time
bliss comforts your soul.

It is a transient tick
too stiff to evoke.

What about the last time
pain feigns your saneness.

Memories turned into bullets
slitting shrapnel
warping into my soul.

Happiness lasts for a second.
Sadness, a lifetime.

Tell me how to get rid
the hurting clout of ache
existing as a blunt fragment
benign yet reminisced.

Daybreak pours so hard
and my sanity like a waning light
crawls back in a miasmatic cave
along the river known
to be a home of a witch
& her cursing narrative
of throwing silver saucers
making her a spotless shadow
through vestal times
never again a thriving spirit.

Forget Blake. Forget Whitman.

Only in daybreak
where everything
churns into life,
my sanity shrinking back
collapsing
into surreal gaps.

Here & there,
my sanity longs for memories.

J.R. said the man in the helmet said, “Goodbye, my friend,” before shooting his father in the chest. His body sank, but the man shot him twice more, in the head and cheeks. The children said the three men were laughing as they left.*
-Daniel Berehulak, They Are Slaughtering Us Like Animals, New York Times

Manila, goodnight.
The world is watching you slowly die.
Tattered truths & losing sense of life
captivate your battered night. Mud hurls blood
streets batted with horror & blabbed
anonymous spirits ghostlier than ever.

(Even ghostlier than your Martial Law days)

Manila, tranquilize yourself.

Your rest will be disturbed by scourged souls, thunderous cracks of guns,
bullets hitting flesh, motorcycle tandem arrests,
people’s holy shouts shunning shibboleth sounding death.

Hear them not. Sleep well.

Maggots festering wound. Manila,
on your knees, worms stich your broken nerves
healing gunshot wounds with peace.

Your night will be a train of madness
shattered by lies through morbid holes in skulls
& confessions in cardboard signs.

(Justice today is served cold, so cold)

& everything from that day on is simply to be known
as a cold just.

Truth decays. Life smolders, vanishing.

Your nights will be unthreaded from memories
for no one dares to look back to twisted arms clenched
by plastic strips, head bowing to ground (instead of ground
bowing to head), ground kissing the body naked swarmed
either by grease or blood, the body breaking gossips
among gossipers & gossamer among spiders.

Weep not, dead men tell no fiction.
Their bodies are the shocking truth, forsaken
shocking headlines hissing morning papers
peppered with mint or lies.

Manila, goodnight for your night will be remembered
through vigilant myths & nothing more.

Often cold bodies, freezing voices from limbo,
can’t speak nor bothered the living.

Again, Manila, in your arms, dead men tell no tales.

The killing spree of fragmented morality,
mortality, fatality, vanity, sanity, insanity, apathy.

Manila, do not move. You are now sedated with fear,
stronger than cooked methamphetamine of crooked realities,
no less than a drug making your anxious, bothered
in the darker & dimmer night
in dimmer  & darker disaster.

Manila, walk with your graffiti walls.
Your gutters will be banks of blood. Daylight traffic
will erase your night’s unwelcoming sphere. Last night
persists as tiny figment of imaginings photographed
& again, nothing more.

Everything will pass like hyacinths of Pasig River.

Everything will pass like one’s eternal passing.

Everything will pass like a chilling December wind.

Everything will pass either a typhoon or a butterfly fluttering.

Manila, goodnight. I am afraid they will ****** you
in your sleep. I am afraid that everything will just pass
like your breath losing hold of your lungs then your heart.

I am afraid that your death, my dear Manila,
will just be a neighbourhood rumour passing
& everything turns into a fiasco of a madman who believes
that he is a messiah, was he a messiah or never he will be a messiah.

Manila goodnight, I will watch you in your sleep. Your sleep
will be a thousand fold peace. No more of your sons or daughters
will be killed at least not in my memory.

Manila, here comes the night. Sleep,
sleep holy in the hidden lair of my mind. Your
catacomb will be wreathed by flowers & tears.
Incense will be fragrant burning bones. Your life,
your tired life will be a gentle ebbing of time
like your Bay’s sunset beauty, like your lively street people
like your once known heritage, your life
in the busy daybreak of your kindred sons.

Goodnight, my dear Manila.

Our thoughts are like an ocean.
For they make up most of who we are.
They can be very deep and vast,
And impossible to completely explore.
Sometimes you must tread lightly.
Watch what you do and think.
For there is the occasional drop off.
And with just one wrong step; you might sink.
Though sometimes it may seem scary,
Swimming in the dark and unknown...
It can also be quite beautiful,
With all that life, you don't feel so alone.
There is so many wondrous things,
Going on in our minds.
If we all just choose to open up a bit more,
Who knows what unique things we might find?

After all, poetry is a savage calling.*
-Edel Garcellano

Let poetry be an interstice.

Say, an intervention to the gap of loneliness. Depressive. Let bitter medicines dissolve or, madness will make its ultimate call.  Convulsive patterns of mental spasms. Schizophrenic impulse hitting the nerves.

What is known to be rational flees. Enough to learn from the burning of its wings and Youth.

Say, pulling a magic trick under the hat. You know you are being fooled but why enjoy such spectacle or, better enjoy than masking the truth.

Say, a glimpse through an interstice—from Whitman’s poetry.

An intervention to the rashness of day. An intercept to the chaos of the soul. A reminder that we are not assemblages forever desiring.

A poetry fumbling to the course, enough to welcome the rain of sad realizations.

“The task is heroic. Poetry is a minor matter” (E. Garcellano) – an intervention/interstice, the negotiator to the ultimate task of poetry.

We are savage gods. We feed on the detritus of truth, those are, lies.

Consider this poetry as an epitaph. To the disremembered victims of El Sidro. We dealt the cards of fate. We intervened to live. We pierced our stones to their hearts so cold.

Darwin’s prophesy always reminds us that in every epoch there are some interventions we cannot avoid. After all, we are his favorite animal.

We are gods feeding on loneliness. We are agnostic souls entangled in caves of shadows.

Say, are we forever trapped in the compulsive dimensions of ourselves? In love, for example.

To answer this question is the task of poetry.

Let poetry be an interstice.

my mother always said
"don't fall in love with a poet"
they pretend to love you
but what they really love
is writing about loving you
you are mere words to them
feelings cheapened by a page,
dusty grey typewriters,
and many unfinished drafts
of lovers both old and new,
you are the question mark,
but not the answer,
they are searching for ?
person unidentified: mystery
the page wanderer,
each poem a missing
person poster to cover their
bedroom walls.
they cannot love something
that is in their head
poets are the loneliest of
all people, my mother said.
they write to immortalize
what has long passed.
to live within their words,
but not reality,
lost souls writing suicide notes
and proclaiming it art.

Never thought I'd listen to Kodaline,
as I walk down the Memory Lane

Oh, Clementine
For when I was with you I've always been sane
You said you'd be at nine
But since you were no longer mine,
I spent all night with you in my mind
And glasses of champagne on my hand

Oh, Clementine
It's hard for me even to draw a line
Letting you go costs insanity I can't define
With countless loss of dopamine
But I guess if you're fine
I'd do my best not to intervene

Oh, Clementine
February 14th you're no longer my Valentine
Driving through the sreets I ran out of gasoline
But the time is due and I've come to the deadline
While sighing 'I'm done'
I know it's time for me to be gone