I saw a dead
bird on the ground
while walking home.

How bad had it gotten,
I thought, for someone
who could fly
to end up here.

I wondered if I should
leave it be and walk away,
or say something.

“I didn't know you,
but I hope you
had a great life.
The things you must have
seen up there.”

Then I continued walking
again. I don’t know why,
but I thought of
the way my little sister
says “computer shop,”
how lovely she sounds.
The loveliest sound on
the planet, for me.

But it was all
while in fugue, even
as a neighbor stood there
barefoot, the trilling cicadas
barely heard. A climate
rippled the calm like a
faint heartbeat
beneath damp ground.
I knew these people;
the sort to meet in stopovers.
Briefly, modestly, passively.
They carry conversations
by vibration, not talk.
Withdrawn moans,
grunts, edgewise glances
more potent words.
One night, I touched
him. He needed
to be touched.
To be so far away
to forget warmth, how?
He touched me back.
I allowed. His body melted
onto the floor, leaving only
a lit cigarette. I unlatched
instantly, like a derailed train.
His body gathers; the marrows
retreating to their proper places:
blood, bone, muscle, skin
assuming back a shape.
The town held a quiet night
the way newborns are held.
No one needed to know.
He will forget.
I will, too. The cigarette
belched a thin trail of smoke
until its fire ran out.

In my house the men
wear breastplates for fun, and
the women race heavenly
on the speedway, the soles
of their feet caking with sand.
Yes, my house has a speedway.
If you close your eyes for a moment
it feels like a beach minus the tangerine
minus the birdcalls

minus the summer spit
frying old skin.

To be shaped by love, know first
How it destroys.

To know how it destroys,
Recognize love as a physical act.

To recognize love as a physical act,
Consider the body's limits and transgressions.

To consider the body's limits and transgressions,
Probe it for signs of anomaly. Of creatureness.

To probe, start by using your fingers to poke
Regions where illusions are cooked, like the groin.

To locate the groin, slither your hand from mouth
all the way down until you feel dirt.

Once there, dig. The mush will feel soft and wet and grisly
And delicious. Like exile. Feel around for a thin chord.

Once you get your hand on this chord, pull. Pull very hard.
Like you're born to unstitch. Or turn off a light. Or flush.

Your body will split open like a thick *** of paper bills
fresh off a rubber band hug. And your remains

Will flutter like a flag. Notice the bone marrow in bloodspeck
jangling in wind chime language to announce an arrival.

Your arrival, maybe. But what is left other than your body splayed
open? Notice your meatshop bargain delicacy. Limbs as vivid

As a freehand sketch artist's depiction of alive. It sounds so beautiful,
Love. Especially in Springtime.

Tight
in there, pulling
enough teeth
to doorstop the
night ghosts, who sing
songs of taking you.
Too dead then,
keeping secrets of
that time when
the mirror almost
sprung out a hand
to slap you awake from
self-loathing.
Here you come,
years later
on the floorboards
weightless.
Now that you’re made of light
only the shadow gets splinters.
Enough with your body, Carl.
Enough limbs have sunken
into gracelessness.
Enough, enough, enough.
Enough for reserved wounds.
Stop writing the instructions
on what it takes to become unforgiven.

In half the spine still a spine,
longing for its missing parcels.
Your body will rest
in the middle
of its punishment, but
still no tailbone.
Incomplete, you did that.
Now learn, Carl.
Pay prices.

Under the train station from across the road
one musty midnight after a late dinner, I saw him.
He was alone. He watched jeepneys pass by. He
stared at the road. He remained still when
the other workers walked past him.
He held a 7-up or maybe a Mountain Dew
by the bottleneck & brought it to his lips to drink.
He was sitting on a stool too small for him
& so his legs were spread open.
He put his free hand on his knee, in between
fingers an almost finished cigarette.
His work suspenders glowed under the
plastic fluorescent light of Althea’s burger shop,
& beneath he wore a red shirt that
fastened his torso tight. When it was time to
ride my jeepney home, I looked at him for a moment
before getting on, & it could be that
he looked right back. When we
moved forward I tried looking again
but saw he was looking somewhere else.

Manila, 2018

I’ll never forget.
MiniStop, Intramuros.
2016?
I had long graduated, the mortarboard
now a naked head of hair. The gown
now dilapidated jeans, and an overfitting
shirt. The fancy shoes now knockoffs
caked with mud and grime.
The little store was hot. Small.
On walls: baby cockroaches took chances.
Trash bags dog-eared below snack concessions.
A brown goop spun, the tungsten overhead
made no noise. Was there music? Was there
some commentary about love or crudeness on the radio?

Always self-conscious, I retreat to
the inner racks. Magazines lay there vacuumed, unpurchased.
Outside the picture window, an afternoon beamed its sun kiss.
I think I didn’t end up buying anything, because before I could,
some college boys entered. At the instant, I turned to them
and felt curiously incensed. This odd duality of envy and sympathy.
I was you, I’m me now. I want you, I’m not you now.
To look that young yet mature, to have a schedule.
To saunter inside the store before, during, after class. The
choice to enter, to parade, to be so vital.

The college boys, their plackets, collars,
their image. These hot-blooded men finer than me, stronger
than me. All handsome, winsome, reckless and brimmed with
swagger. Me? I stood examining the force, the association.
We’re all merely similar men, and I’m at a similar age, and I can
be a similar form factor. Mimic their teflon skin; shed my stucco,
leatherbound flesh.

And as soon as I attempted to undermine their specificity,
I lost my own place. I found that there’s no connection at all.
Other than I know nothing about the boys,
and the boys know nothing of me.

There was love here before.
Some animal on a plank.

Didn't hold for very long.

Rain came often. No one saw.
Puddles formed and dried
at the same times.
Because there was no Occurring.

A restaurant chain
had opened up a franchise
in a stopover, alcoved
by gasoline parkways,
sheeted in neon.

I found it that night
on my way.
Great food.
Great place.
A time to ****.

Strangers cast curious smiles.
Some ask questions about
where you're headed.
I wish we knew
when small talk
butterflies into
big talk. Then we can know.
This is serious.
Someone will learn and,
if I'm lucky,
try on my plans if it fits.

The air conditioning whistles and howls.
Some stereo sounds: a horror show
about doctors malpracticing in purpose.
Gore gore gore.
Filthy good. Feel cranked.
I walk to my jacket and open the door,
sounding the bell.
Night greets me back
its smells.
Menthol and ****.

I am headed north.
But this was great.
Nice time.
Cheers?
Cheers.

It happens when
we go quiet
and then quiet
hangs in there
a bit longer than usual.
I look away
and think
—will it ever be love?

God said,
are you ready to process the hurt.
to stop keeping your pain there.
I said,
where is it, God?
Where do I keep it?
I feel it seep into my marrow.
I think it’s a cola fizz
erupting in my throat forever.
The heart inflating like a rubber glove.
Did you wear my heart in your hands, God,
as protection from twigs and splinters
when you collected
soil and dirt to give Earth earth?

You overthink things, God said.
Then show me the design.
Lay it all on me.
I can’t, God said.
If I do
you’ll discover why we **** up
the people we love.

How do I get there.
How do I dig it up.
Is it even dug?
Is it cocooned, vacuum packed,
locked inside a vault
in a lava pit?
Passworded?
Iris-scanned?
Police line do not cross.
Is it that gruesome.
Does it exist somewhere
between denial and delay?

God smiled.
And said
There.

There? What?

A sly God.
But.
I had a guess.
Could it be?

The locking mechanisms of pain
is pain itself?
But that’s too simple.
I couldn’t believe that was by design.

11am. A disaster waiting to happen.
A pearl of sweat dances down
my fat belly. I scream at my mother.
I scream at my father, who flees.
My mother’s face quiver
like a defeated child’s. Then I remember
a picture of her. She’s cutting
my birthday cake, in her work clothes.
No gloves.

I see with my eyes closed
the warmth of your skin
if you just stop punishing
yourself.
And since we’re here,

I press on your shoulders
like boulders sinking and
tearing the earth’s surface once
they reach ocean’s bottom.

Is that why you flinch
at the tap?
Is that why your bruised knuckles
rap over the mantelpiece
and you snap, like a twig
stepped on by a fallen bird
learning the difference
Between fly and drop?
Won’t you let me
close the gap
between used items on your
mantelpiece and
other ones still wrapped?

I don’t do this all the time.
There is no occasion.
But since we’re here,
since we’re in front of
a fireplace, I look for an opening.
Something, a hole,
a soft mushy layer on
your body not a glacier
like everything else.
And I wait for it to melt.

Since we’re here,
maybe it’s time to
trust me.

Remember that?
Saturday.
When we woke up
before the alarm rang.
You told me that
when you were a kid
your cousin said,
“You’re supposed to tear
through the wrapping paper
when you receive a gift because
that builds the surprise.”

I felt some massive force
pull me out of body, an astronaut
****** out of an airlock when you said,
“I’ve never tried that.”

You remember that?
Of course I do.
Why’d you mention that?
I want to.
Since we’re here.
We better.

It’s always after a film when you say,
“Did you like it?” I think for a little while.
I think of the film as a whole, in chopped parts, and time
spent watching it that’s become time no longer.
It’s swimming now in a stream of phantom haze; less of a memory,
and more of the carbon imprint of an experience over.

We argue a lot if we liked it. I think I did, but over
the course of plenty moments, my mind goes restless: What if to say
I liked it somehow violates its completeness? I don’t trust memory
can tell me everything. A moment stretches, it happens a while;
then it's finished. Once immense now vapor; the thing no longer
the exact thing. And to access that again, to recall the past, plays with time.

After the film, you and I have a nice time.
I’d ask for this thousands of times over.
Running through street lights, shadows are cast: mine’s always longer.
You catch up, you giggle, there’s nothing to say.
We stay kinetic for a while.
The spools, the underpinnings, the machinations move, and create a memory.

The film was about a town that one day stopped speaking. One memory
of it astounds me most: The more time
passed, the clearer it became. It took a while,
but we finally knew why. But the credits rolled and it was over.
The audience vacated the room and it belonged to us. We didn’t say
anything. A respite emerged, and it grew longer.

You look at the shadow again, longer
than yours. I wish it was easy for me to access my memory,
and to access yours, too. I wish I could say,
“Did you like it?” and see you go back through time,
back before present turned into past, before it became over,
back when the vapor was the immense, and the blip the while.

While
longer,
still over.
Memory and
time.
“I liked it,” I say.

It took a while, but we have the memory.
We can access it longer than the merits of time.
And when it’s over, I’ll forever say.

‘Cause this is what happens
when you hand yourself
over to somebody else
& you’re alone in your head —
the least where you want to be
— wanting to find even a sliver
of evidence that they ran away vs.
you pushed them away & which
is worse. I am not yet tired of
remembering ruin. I want my
eyeballs soaked in a coffee pit.
I want the three seconds I admit
I need rescue to last longer before
I snap back & hit my face hard.
I want freedom to choose not to be me.
I want to be reborn as a motionless
centerpiece in a street with skyscrapers
so high they cover the sun. I want to
wear stripes & I want toy guns in the
compartment of my imaginary
2nd-hand Lexus & I want my food vacuumed
off the floor with a metal detector. I want
paper skin & dotted lines around my neck
& collarbone as if to say hit here, or find
the missing panel. I want to learn all forms
of worship & the names of all gods male
& female one-headed three-headed
featherskinned slimy able to breathe
under water can hold lightning can **** son
can shoot laserbeams from eye
can run like a horse & act like a man.
I want to touch a full moon with my bare hands
& I want to do as I am told & I want to
focus on my own paper & I want a sudden
stroke of genius to fly away like a plastic
bag before the tornado blows the roof off
our heads. I want to control the climate
& tilt the world a bit more downward
so Antarctica gets more nights. Somebody
whispered in the wind the secret of walking
& I think I already know what it is.

I open a
box of insecurities and
add one
more.
The sound of my voice.
The boys in their Vans
have them fully-formed by now,
chests heaving, with splotches of hair
and the usual marks of transition.
I don’t, I can’t have those
things. I meet the requirements:
I am a boy, I’ve tried it all.

But in my bed at night, sometimes,
the ocean hums its wavelength
of monsters screaming, howling
for a rise up, to see more light.
a cloud formation gargles and spits out thunders.
A shiver reaction. Muffled. Loud. The strike
cracks the lips of our skies,
and it confesses some secrets about
its own insecurities; that there is no more
wonder in silence, that there is constant
stimulation and reduced pondering,
that there is a need to get rid
of the bad feeling.

It says,
when the thunder strikes, listen
up and listen long and hard,
because there is plenty of
chaos from your own making, but I offer
you unannounced, unpredictable,
disjointed disruptions of comfort, and it is
I who make you scared of uncertainty. It is I
who make you jealous about my loud voice,
my formed voice, my raspy, powerful voice,
not the boys in their Vans.

I surrender to your chest
and press my face against it,
as soft as wool
clipped from a sheep
who couldn’t say
I suffer.

I dread the day
I’ll make you say
I’ll leave you. But that is
what I do. I find
angel boys and postpone
their holiness.

I teach these boys
there’s a space
between blood and bone
to store prayers. That
the whistling pressure that
sequences our next heartbeats
are disappearing acts.

I make them
piggyback on me
as I kneel on all fours in
glass shards and make them say
they like it. They learn to.
They ask if
it could be them kneeling
in pain next time. It is
around this time
when I call it quits.

I said I delayed holiness.
But some of them
Never claim it back.
There’s a river of discarded objects
under the skin of someone
who’ll die for you,
and those they want back.

Between blood and bone,
prayers are stored, yes.
Yet for now, the chest;
rising and falling,
my face against it.
The lung beneath you
a universe-ordered shape
as perfect as a handhold
dovetailed into prison rails.

Beautiful angel boy.
So soft and warm.
Do you hear how loud
it gets
when the moon pulls Earth
and Earth doesn’t say
I suffer.

My father,
the man
who invented time.
My father,
the latecomer.
Life is like that.

There comes a time,
in the middle of your oppression,
when two men *******
isn’t **** anymore, but
an empowering thing
like Betadine.

Have you ever been kicked
by a bully in the groin?
a kiss should feel like this,
but only from a boy

My boy
stick your tongue out
even if no winters
could ever arrive here.
Don't wait.
Come and go
As you please.
Earth is a hotel room
of strangers
rehearsing abandon
with ease.
When you get cold,
bet on me.
I can lay
my body down.
Fitting to yours
like crooked teeth
biting the ridges
of a saw.
I promise, it's
a soft bite.
Trust, that's all.
And I'll try my best.
But please.
Don't ever ask,
Are We Here

Lying here, my back pressing
On your back while sleeping
And breathing. When we sleep
We lose control of the rules.
The body drives itself: submit,
It says. But are you there? Maybe.
And where is that exactly?
I am no expert on place.
Though I know I feel
less of me when you are there but
Not there. That's okay. Here but not
Here, that's where I am, too.  
More often than you.
And more like this,
Me waking before you, will come.
All that needs to be done is wait.
And wait is the only unbreakable promise.
To you, I promise to be whole even when
I'm living in the interim between here and unhere.
Even if I'm a resting carcass penduluming
From one end to the other. This is why
I go away, you see. I wish the answer was simpler.
I want it to be simpler because I can't
Lose you again.
Nothing compares to the percussive
heart assault of descending into
your mind. Or falling into you.
Your chest
Rising then falling,
the print of ribs underneath like gift-wrapped cages.
That's really what falling is.
Together
even in the lapse of alive.
In this Vulcan moonshade, all I can do is
adore you while I wait for sleep to come.

after Ansel Elkins

Carabao **** isn't permafrost,
temperature, disdain — climates
stirring into a tornado soup
of force, melting, seclusion.
In the heartbeat of gulls,
the waves gargled froth and
spat on charred limestone.
Then the grass beneath our
wet feet writhed in the
slice of wind atop the hills
of Hiyop, in Catanduanes
where roads go unmoored from
their skiffs like violin
strings curling under sharp
slide. You can invent a new
word to describe transformations,
but these will never catch it
in the act — the moment
vibration somersaults into
howl, when swinging grass
is louder than jetplanes
then suddenly quieter than
prayer. I like to dig my thumb
into the soft marsh, dirt
occupying the folds, creases;
labyrinthine pathways of skin
blanketed with Earth.
At this point the mountain
knows me;
and I dare to know the
mountain but come short, reaching
only its narrow berms,
pockmarks,
and ****-ridden sheath of
dry flowers cooking the
words to a song of its
people.

10:00 am. How
is it still dark?

In a forest.
Top bunk. The hint
of apocalypse

In his sleeping face, the
world away.

I come down the ladder,
foot landing light on
the floorboards.

Cocooned in a blanket
as I head toward the porch.

There’s no roof. Only screen doors,
wireframes, a platform. Can’t
call it a house yet.

To the lake I go to meet the Fish.
The second I get there, it shoots out from the water,

Telling me,
“your clock is broken.” Then it plops back in.
I leap and return to our “house.”

With military precision and speed, I reach the top bunk.
But in my rush, I stop and see

His strange face, still asleep.

I ****** the clock from the wall.
I wind it back to 7:00 am. Then the sun
Comes up.

I go to him.
I lay with him.

I put my hand over his belly,
feeling it falling and rising
as they replenish with air.

He begins tossing slowly.
And I hear the growl.
The sandpaper breath.

The thing you do
to get the morning out of you.

And on cue,
his eyes open, seeing me. There is a moment
when he doesn’t recognize me. Then it registers:

I am a person he knows. We are in bed.
It is morning. This is the only place we belong in.

There is nothing to worry about. Everything is correct.
The hierarchy of details worm their way in shortly thereafter:
Weather—sunny. Temperature—a bit cold. Feeling—hungry. Taste—dry.

Soon the wub wub wubs heard through his grogginess
dissolves into clearer, more articulate ambients.

With nothing out of place, finally,
he looks at me. I can see he knows me.
I can see he knows I’m obsessed with his skin.

I want to eat it. I want to wear it.
I want to burn it then inhale it.

My lips glide over his chest;
his knuckles rub my ribs,
like police dragging their batons along prison gates.

Finally, he asks the thing he always asks,
a question I always fear.

“What time is it?”

I say what I always say.
“The time is right.”

I. You

An old friend.
He liked me until
I began forming opinions

about pizza.
Soap.

Then politics.

And, X-Factor.
I hated that show.

Because!

He ******* loved it.
Told me, ‘What’s wrong with you?
People just wanna feel good for a while.’

I said it ***** because
it prioritized deliberation
among all facets of performance.

‘You look into it much
more than necessary.’

I looked into everything.
How come you can grow a beard and I can’t?
What was your puberty like?
Did you know lithium-ion batteries degrade overtime?
Keith, don’t charge it beyond 80%. Always stop there.
Then, once a month, charge it to full capacity then

Drain. So it recalibrates.
That’s because batteries have memory.

I look into you.



II. Me

Here’s how to tell a story.
First, gather the facts.

Then,
transmit the feelings of those facts.

We met.
We fell hard.

And as if they’d respond, we
asked the stars what type of connection
they gave us. A pact. An alliance.
A lasting impression? A semblance.

It felt like a love we were free to define. But you
went away, I didn’t come running. Or I lost you
along the way when I hid you in my shirt pocket.
You must have fallen from a hole.

There were words in my pocket, too.
But they were bigger than you. I clung to them and pasted
them onto me like suntan. Scorch, scorch, you *******.

After transmitting the feelings, characters come in,
complaining they deserve better stories.

‘I got it.’ You do got it.

‘I just got in here.’ You’ve been in there for hours, man.

‘Why do I keep wanting you?’ I say the same thing. I don’t mean it.

It ends with an episode of X-Factor.
First, gather the facts.

Then, transmit the feelings of those facts.

But people just want to feel good for a while.