To render strings of scenes from your head
into words on paper
that another person could read in order
to recreate the voice of someone unmet,
and at the same time be presented beautifully and clearly;
to choose the right words making the right phrases
making the right sentences making the right paragraphs
making the right chapters, and to have these chapters
interweave into a cohesive story that manages to
fulfil the reader and make him feel
joy, sorrow, despair, or hope;
is insanely meticulous,
and inanely ridiculous.

And to come up with characters
that need to feel alive:
to have to be so many people at once,
each with their own dreams, wants,
thoughts, feelings, identities,
and treasured memories,
how can one not explode?
How can a mind not erode?

And of all the hobbies, passions or pastimes
a human being can engage in—
from juggling chainsaws on a tightrope
to playing the piano while  painting yourself playing the piano
to sculpting a hypercubic klein bottle,
nothing is as delicately difficult
as juggling a thousand possibilities of plot
on a swinging tightrope of self-doubt
while playing the instrument of your vocabulary
to paint a scene revealing itself magically
all the while sculpting an entire universe(!)
piece by piece from the flesh and bone of your own
pregnant imagination.

Who, then, but only the most idiotic,
brave, ambitious, and diabolic self-haters and self-lovers
would write a book?
It's a noble task, to be sure,
for without its fair dose of literature,
mankind would crumble and un-create
back to the unthinking, unfeeling dirt from which it is made.

Why do we need to read?

A silly question. It's for the same reason we need to breathe.

But some people can't read. And lots of people who can read don't even bother to. Am I saying they do not breathe?

No, but I like to think of reading as an "acquired necessity."

It's like an acquired taste like wine or cheese, but once it enters your life, you find that you can no longer live without it, and you wonder how you ever existed before it...

I guess in a lot of ways, Love is an acquired necessity as well.

This world is right;
I'm nothing after all.

(The night is bright
with millions of my dreams
holding me safe)

Up on the sky
I dangle on a rope
above the smoke of today's defeat.
What's tomorrow but another retreat?

(If I could fly
into your thoughts tonight
and if I could find
one warm memory of me
then all the stars can die
for I will be alright.)

Here comes the Wake
eating up the light
that clothes me.
Soon enough I'll find myself
gasping on my bed,
wondering
"Am I alive or am I dead?"

(Just hold on tight
my dreams, my love, my light;
I'll come for you all one day
Through all these narrow rooms
where despair and darkness looms.
I'll find a way to smile
In the shadow
Thanks to the thought of you.)

I thought today would be terrible, but it wasn't so bad. Everything's alright.

I don't know what it is. Even if I passed a hundred couples holding hands today, the spaces between my fingers did not ache . Even if the scent of other roses perfumed my solitary air, I felt no sorrow in being alone.

I sat behind Her, the motor of my heart, today in the library and I felt my heartbeat. We never talked but I felt content just being so close.

Even if I'm watching the full moon by myself, I'm chipper tonight. She's my Valentine my best Valentine my brightest Valentine, and the world is still.

It was a hot, sunny, summery day, and the fire trees were in bloom. Their red leaves littered the streets with sunset though the midday light cast contrast on every little awning and ledge.

You were hanging out by the Big Brother store, talking to the friendliest shopkeeper I ever knew, drinking soda and listening to his stories.

From far away I thought you were a boy; your hair was cut so short. It was the first time I ever saw a girl without long hair, and ordinarily I would have been curious, but I had other problems, as you knew. As my little feet marched closer to the store I saw (though I tried to keep my head down) your face, which was so pretty with your huge luminous eyes and your fair soft skin.

I was twelve back then, though, and so were you, so those weren't exactly the things on my mind as I reached the awning of the store, facing the storekeeper and trying my best to get it over with. I was disappointed because you were there; that there was another person to see me. I was even more shy back then than I am now.

I must have made quite the curious first impression on you, huh?

As I said, it was a hot summer's day, and the sky was robin's egg blue, and there I was beside you, about to purchase some juice and biscuits.

And I was soaking wet with water.

My hair and my clothes were heavy and dark and drooping, as if I had just been submerged in a river with all my clothes on. A trail of tiny blue puddles followed me from the gate of our house to where I was, where a big puddle was forming under my feet. I was frowning.

You just stared at me with wide eyes as I told the shopkeeper what I was going to buy. Straight to the point. Oh, and back then I couldn't speak Filipino very well, and so my words had an outlandishly English accent. The friendly shopkeeper was used to it, but you definitely didn't hear me speak Filipino every day. He didn't even ask me why I was giving birth to puddles. He was cool like that.

He handed me the juice and the biscuits. Great. I could splosh back home. But I hazarded to look at you, so ever so shyly I turned my head to look and remember who it was that saw me so I could avoid her.

Then oh man, I blushed. I didn't know you were that pretty with your short hair and your wide eyes and your fair skin.

I'll never forget it; how right then and there you lost it. All this time you were biting your lip while watching me, but then you just giggled and laughed and bent over and laughed some more. I was so embarrassed, but now as I sit remembering that moment, I realise how happy and innocent your laugh was.

Then I made like a dish with a spoon and ran away in a blush as red as the fire trees. I hoped I would never see you again, but of course I did.

I did, sometime later, when we were older, and I remembered you. You didn't let off that you remembered me from sometime past, but I couldn't miss the way you half-smiled and held back a chuckle after you studied my older face.

I never did tell you why I was dripping that day. You never asked. You're cool like that. I swear though, that someday when we meet again I'll tell you, but for now it's my little secret, and you'll be the first to know.

And oh how I was in love with you and, I think, always will be.

All the time I keep asking myself
“Is she worth all this suffering for?”
I stare at your picture—
Smiling through those deepest eyes of yours
—and after crying until the ocean in my heart is dry,
I somehow manage to convince myself that
“Maybe not… There will be others like her
I should stop weeping and be happy.”

And all goes well for a while.

But darling I have learned
Through years of this charade
That it is as futile as throwing stones into the sky
To taste the air for a little while,
For they will fall back to the ground
As inevitably as my thoughts fall back to you.

In moments sublime, with the crash and play
Of picturesque peace and beauty,
Through association, I see you,
And I wish you were beside me.
In the deepest of my thoughts,
In the stillest of my dreams,
You are my archetype of Love,
And of everything that is desired in life.

And I rationally fear
That a mere lifetime’s width of painful edges
Cannot cut this emotion
That runs deeper than my heart is capable of.

And of all the universes out there,
Why am I in one where you don’t love me?

It’s just another world without you—
Empty as the outside of Time.

It’s now but another hollow street
When you disappeared into your serene retreat.

This galaxy of elegy and commemoration,
These yesteryear’s cheers of annual celebration,

How can they keep rolling,
How can I keep going, independent of your forgoing?

These voices have no weight and these stories have no soul
Your conversations, your smiles, were all I cared to know

And now, as good as any gravestone
your faceless face now hangs alone—

Framed in my heart for all to see
I love you: Please come back to me.

i keep on thinking,
and grasping,
and clawing for

words
and words
and words
upon more words
stacking on, or attacking
this stagnance of mind,

unintentionally filling
this nothing
with thoughts
of your memory:

a sunsetclad feather
locked in a safebox
in the corner of the basement
of a mossy cottage
resting on a flowered hill
in some faraway place
recurring
in my sleep's sleep.

(somewhere
i long to belong to
but may never reach.)

do you travel there, too?

under the sky,
somewhere placing
one foot past the other
like i am now,
contact (roses eclipse)

under the stars,
somewhen breathing
a particle of air
i once brushed,
alive (are we now)

under all time,
somewho you,
the not less of life
closing distance
float (opening existence)

and under Imagine,
somehow us
through all mazes
say hello find
what is (never) lost.

sleep forsaken.
this is why we are Night:
when all sunhidden
natures awake.
and the stars fish for friends
in the deepest pools of our heads.

(can you feel it
in your heart's fingertips?)

a curious buzzing of bees
like a transcendental scattering
of omnipossibilities.
up and down,
block and flow;
smallest sparks erupt into a fireshow.

(spiderwebs of thought)

catching magic by its wings,
from which Genesis unites
these disparate things.

(behold, my beloved)

but all too soon
the neons flicker:
(like eclipsing moons)
castles drown,
oceans fly,

and the dullness of Day resumes.

braindead beating heart,
blinking thought and sleep
universe in floating
deep above what commonplace
people call tired–

think not of
screaming.
(undesire is flower)
for just the moment
understand me:
a coma where period should be.

lost in fluttering
senselessness of song,
you can’t realize anything
but human misinteraction
and lack thereof.

settle spinning,
(organize)
this life is once only
afflicted from the
get-well-soon-ness of bed.
you might as well think:

we have all the time in forever
to procrastinate once we’re dead.

the poet
spacefully stares at:

(more than seeing he is)

tables and chairs,
lights and walls.

(dreaming he is)

making
infinite feeling into breathing
ink on finite paper:

(exploding)!.?

punctuation, letters,
imagination enters,

and then

(he becomes the room)

always believe in Sunday
for Sunday believes in you.

though every dusty calendar
in the corners of your grownup mind
tell you
of the neverending flight of Otherday,
you know.

in your smallest smile
and in the smiles of others
lies this simple truth:

to your childheart,
it is ever Sunday.

Of course as always
these dreams
they displace me from despair:
embraces smile
from shadows and
the silverfire scent of your hair.

But when morning comes
crashing the joy no longer there
you sing unspeaking
and evermore sinking
like a key lost in the deep
of my seawater sleep.

All this No and lack of Yes:
why do I even bother?
I just like you,
too much, I guess.

have you ever seen the moon drop from the sky?
it’s a surreal feeling; floating
steadily as the night dreams around you.

[one day you'll realise
dreams are rarer than you think;
not everyone is free enough
to find what they've been searching for.]

all these crickets they croak;
they sing my sorrow in static.
did you ever really feel?

[when you do, i hope you'll remember me;
and the way you took your words
and shot all the stars from out of my sky.]

aside from that the world is so silent
just like your thoughts of me.
did you ever really see?

[when you do, grasping his hands;
someone so rough and deadfeeling,
with your children all bleeding

I hope you remember my face,
and cry like I do tonight.

and die like I do tonight.]

because now only the wind and the moon
hold my heart in place.

sometimes I wish I had taken
writing or literature: all the time
words and images surround me and spin
like silent storms of thought.

but then I remember the money;
(little diamonds scintillating in silicon streams
emulating consciousness.)
and then like magic,

all these equations come alive.

the air hangs heavy
of dignity in spaces meant
to house a golden king.

despondent, alone,
i am the silent sunken stone
of understanding pebbles
bathed in shallowater sighs
of quiet far-off longing.

all one; air
rushes in and fills my wings-
i fly and breath the sky.

a sun of your heart
warms me through the cracks
of injured earth
centuries apart from day,

i rise and smell
the song of your smile.

i wish i was bigger, dear April
so i could give you a ring
like daddy gave to mommy;
a ring so small so round.
but today, dear April, let’s sing
trees in puddles ripple
mudsplashing holdinghands as
we laugh and cry
because the summer goes by.

i wish i was stronger, dearer April
so i could carry you away
because time is a monster
sleeping under your bed.
but today, dearer April, let’s dance
a ring around the rosies
with May June and July
and let’s pick all the poppies
while spring is in the air.

i wish i was taller, dearest April
so i could hold your umbrella
while we parachute to our dreams
and i’ll catch you when we fall.
but today, dearest April, let’s float
up up up like reverse snowflakes
all the way to the moon
and then uper than the stars
because winter is ending soon.

(i wish i was younger, everdear April
so i could see you again
and smell your hair in sunshine
like angelscent memory.
but today, everdear April, i’ll remember
the way we sang danced floated dreamed
all the way to the moon of marry
until you fell away like a leaf
sailing in the winds of autumn)

Today is a dream
Tomorrow is a dream
And Everyday is a river
In which I am a boat
Paddling with my Memory
Towards some distant bank.

(Faces and Places–
Reflections in the Water;
Ripple as I wade)

Dripdrop dripdrop

     The umbrella on the drops makes a tiniest splattering
     Of collected shades of transparency: Memory
     And the whitenoise of the rain

(step step splatter ripple)

     Serve to recolour in sepia shades
     Even the grayest seconds
     of Yesteryear’s faces and embraces.

(Drip
     drop
          drip
     Drop)

one day i was a fish
swimming with many other fish
within an arctic sea.

there were so many lines;
they came from the sky
and went down
down
down
and ended in cherry plastic.

fish who bit them were pulled up
into the surface
(where we were told never to go)
i’ve heard it’s a whole new world up there.

the red was beautiful
the surface was new
i bit.
(i couldn’t help it)
and rode a hook to the hole in the sky

out i shot.
who knew the surface was so free?
it’s a shame i’ll need to breathe soon.

but it’s alright; i’m just dreaming.

nobody would want a fish like me.