Imagine my surprise
Seeing you
Yesterday.

How often do
Our friends visit us
If at all

There you are
In silence
In the side walk

A wild
Green In the city

How did you come here,
My healer?

The last time I saw you
You were there
Near our river

Where the mountains
Meet the sea

Is it really you?
Or just a spitting image
Of a daughter?

Touch my nostalgic wounds
Can you heal them?

Bleed if you must
Please
So I can be there

In your blood
Once more

Imagine my surprise
Seeing you
Yesterday.

How often do
Our friends visit us
If at all

There you are
In silence
In the side walk

A wild
Green In the city

How did you come here,
My healer?

The last time I saw you
You were there
Near our river

Where the mountains
Meet the sea

Is it really you?
Or a spitting image
Of a daughter?

Touch my nostalgic wounds
Can you heal them?

Bleed if you must
Please
So I can be there

In your blood
Once more

In Tibiao,
My childhood’s home
I remember riding on a karosa, a cart
Being pulled by my grandfather’s carabao
While watching the setting sun
As we go home
After his day’s work,
I, accompanying him.

Tonight,
Seeing vehicles
Plying EDSA, lugging tons of passengers,
With their back lights, neon red, glaring
I think of hundreds and hundreds of bull frogs
Being pulled on their hind legs
With their smoldering eyes
Looking at me.
The night
Is my grandfather
Walking me home.

for Picasso*

The painter paints
a dove.
The moment he lifts
his brush
for the last stroke,
the dove flutters --
Flies --
Enlarges itself:
Her whiteness,
Her wings,
Her peace,
Covering the whole world,
Silencing the world
For a moment.
Then, it disappears
For a reason –
Why? Only the painter knows.
And the world rotates…
On its axis, rotating
And the world revolves…
Around the sun, revolving
And the world waits,
Waiting…
And waiting…
For the painter,
For another painter
To paint another dove.

But I can see the leaves fall --
Golden, red and brown.
The wind assists each leaf’s gentle descent
To the ground --
Wet from the midnight rain
Until dawn today
Before I walk among the leaves, crackling
And feel –
Ah, this could be autumn.

The red round fruits of the tree,
where the roots I saw
hanging on its branches
yesterday,
are strewn all over the ground:
little, plump and round,
like the smile of the sun
gently breaking
to greet you.

THE FLOWERS I SAW EVERY MORNING WERE CUT DOWN TO THEIR BULBS,
THEIR STEMS TWO OR THREE INCHES JUST ABOVE THE GROUND.
TWO OR THREE DAYS BEFORE,  I SAW THEIR WHITE FLOWERS,
LIKE SUPPLICANT HANDS, THEIR ARMS RAISED TO THE SKIES.

IT IS RAINING OUTSIDE. IT IS RAINING OUTSIDE.

A DECISION WAS READ TO A MAN, YES, TO A MAN.
WHY DO PEOPLE HAMMER THE WRONG NAILS?
OR NAILING THE WRONG MAN?