She paints a lovely picture
But this art work has a twist
The paint brush is a razor
And the canvas is her wrist

I have so many words to say but hold back.
For the fear of embarrassment is too strong.
I just wish you knew how i felt, i'm tired of always being the one to start the conversation.
I just wish talking to you  was as easy as it was in my dreams....
Another night, another dream wasted on you.

The shimmering light has died
         The image of you slowly
                    fades out
I will cry,
       I am crying,
                I have cried.
The darkness consumes the doubt
                The hail Mary,
        the pass over the line
    It's too much,
             I can no longer reach out
This knife is too pretty
         and *I'm not fine

My parents tell me to stop bringing misfits home.

Stray cats, lost dogs, lonely people.

Anything sad in the neighborhood, sad in my sight, I bring home with me.

The poor teenagers up the hill, the stoners dazed by the lake, the girls with broken souls and the boys with broken minds. Survivors of all kinds of abuse find refuge with me.

I carried an orange cat home one day, I found him walking around a construction site. He was fed and given something to drink, and we found his owner.

A puppy only a few weeks old, eyes still closed, deathly ill. We bottle fed it and took it to the vet, but it was too late. She said she had a damaged spine and wouldn't make it. I stroked her head as she stopped breathing.

I brought a schizophrenic boy home and helped him through an attack in our living room, while my parents sat horrified in the kitchen.

No less than three girls have cried on my shoulder in the safety of my bedroom, traumatized by rapes they didn't know how to talk about.

These strays, these wounded souls....These are my people. I love them all.

So when they say "stop bringing such damaged things home" it breaks my heart.

And I do it anyways.

My eyes fight to shield me from the dark
With my last waking nerve I think of wrong and right
How much I want to be a good person
Why the devil is so fond of using me as a pawn when clearly I am a queen
Or at least I'm trying to be
I can go anywhere I want but not like a knight
For I am not chivalrous enough
The tides of disease will rush in to take you
But I will not move a muscle for I am grounded from moving in the way of an L...
As in Love

Onward, soldier.
Onward.

That’s what they all
tell me, but
let me
slow down for a moment.
There’s a little something I gotta
say,

Thank you.

To that swing set in Greenhills Music Studio
San Juan City,
without you,
I’d never have learned that sometimes
it’s the other way around—
feet in the sky and head on the ground.

Mrs. Arambulo, the swing set’s owner,
who made sure I was well versed in
sonatinas and arpeggio scales
before I found out they’d already made
a piano that didn’t need tuning, and

Ma, who’d test my memory by
asking me if I
could recite
whole paragraphs at age four,
she’s why I remember things like
the smell of pilmeni,
the color of our first house’s carpet,
and nine page spoken word poetry,

to everyone behind that old kids’ show, Bayani,
watching it in my
second grade HEKASI class
would bring me to tears each time — no kidding,
you all paved the way for my homeland’s history
to make its home in my heart,

my English teachers from
sixth all the way to eleventh grade,
who all believed and still believe in the words I put down on paper
and spew out on dark stages armed with imagery and the Spirit,
you made me fall deeper in love with the way words can be waves
or flames,

Dad, who taught me
to climb mountains, to read books,
to let myself run free among the nations
but to always remember to leave a part of my heart at home,

to the four little boys I met in Hong Kong,
if we meet again, I owe you a better explanation to your question,
“Why do you dance?”
thank you for asking me that, and I’m sorry for my cowardly answer back then
but I’m braver now, and
I promise it’s for more than just fun or exercise,
it’s for this God I hope you get to know,

and to every Philippine history teacher I’ve ever had,
keep teaching like that,
we need more young ones who’d be willing
to die for their homeland,
you taught me that there is so much more to this country
than its own people tell me, so
burn on.
and make sure they catch fire.

Onward, soldier.
Onward.*

I’m not sure where I’m headed,
but I’d rather be uncertain of the road ahead
than forget
where
I started.
I’ve told you mine, now

tell them yours.

Strong independent
This we all want to be
To bad this world leaves us
Depressed insecure and lonely
Is there any one truly happy
Is there such a thing
How can i hope for a life without misery
When pain is in every note the bird sings
In every breath a child takes
In between the empty i love yous
The meaningless i do's
Why do we even pretend we are happy
We all know it's not true
We are all slowly dieing
And none of us know what to do