There are always new places
For our feet, always
Another,
Wearing out the shoes,
The veins, and soles.
I learned to love the world
From your waist down.
There is no end for travel.

We travel and travel more.
The buses fill, the jeepneys,
And the planes. The trains fill,
Terribly fill. Boracay fills.
And what a tedious postcard
This is,

When the whole point
Of the matter is this: that
We are bound, headed, destined
To someplace else,
Boundless, vast
And everlasting--
A non-lifetime--

Which pretty much answers
Why love does not return.
I think that love could,
But must not return.
And I will carry you on,
You,
On my back,
Just to prove it.*

© 2014 J.S.P.

If someday you would find me,
Destined for another,
That I only kiss
With half the feeling it requires,
Then by that time, you would know
That I have already decided
To go against my patience.

I no longer await
The fulfillment of the heart.
I no longer wish to see a world out-of-place.
I would see as if
I see like you.
I will no longer look at your *******, your hips,
For I would only look at *******, and hips.
Your eyes-- just eyes
That I would stare at still.
And I would secretly want you
Like classical music.
I would secretly want to touch
Your moony left earlobe.

I am destined with such sshh inside of me.
My heart is only wind tonight;
My hands, water.
I struggle for the poem of love,
The leaf it carries towards you.

A cicada is all I can think off your songs;
I have no use for the evening but to listen to.
My soul is not contented, not,
That somewhere two stars are far apart,
As though a male one from his ex-girlfriend.

I have a liking for what I cannot have;
I let you go on purpose.
The black of your hair, the little of your feet,
Hands, slight-fevered,
Rows of lip, rows of thigh-
All of it, gone;
All of it,
Cloud and jasmine.

I let you go because I want you still.
I love what I do not have.
I know my fate.
I love you.
And I set you free.*

© 2014 J.S.P.

I think what we are missing out is that love is plain receiving, after all. People are clumsy enough to give it or lose it along the way. It can be sung or tediously written. I may be wrong, but, I think the problem we have with love is with who we want to carry it. We decide what is true and noble with the way it was packaged or presented, thus we hope. And so we pour out what we have, to the extent of our flaws, for the so called authenticity called preference. Then some would chase for love as though it's an adventure. Cookie crumbs are everywhere. There is no end to people who are lost, happily. And so we spend a little more time and energy, and money, tossing all to the ocean as ill-fated bottles for our forgetting, just to bitterly fail at it. Kind of makes me wonder how this *** I know found the love of his life. How did he do that?  Is it really just about ordering the right kind of coffee at the cafe? Or lying under that one auspicious tree? Perhaps, we're just addicted, frustrating ourselves with the idea of love returning. I think people, subconciously, just wanted to build the value of what they already have. We are not contented that there is such a valuable thing on Earth as love we can effortlessly attain. We think of it as an irreproducable need, like it is buried someplace else, in the distance, that one should say it is precious, that one should say it is deserved. We tend to precede the struggle, not knowing this simple truth: The struggle is after love not when a man is after it. We refine what we have, and consequently, we define ourselves. We don't search for love, neither will it find us. It already did. And it has found us fools. Contentment is true key. Love differs from hope, and hope love, and even faith. What we love makes us stranger; love keeps us sane. We tend to conquer love; love is submissive. It remains true to itself, while we are just being...ourselves.


© 2014 J.S.P.

You are nowhere to be found
By my side, sweetly,
Perhaps, just for one day,
One night, and one
Dream.

One sweet gesture not for me
Was like a time stopped forever.
One breath- harder than the last.
And they say that jealousy
Is also sweet. I wonder why.

My travel is long and hard,
That even the beauty
Of a female passenger, across,
Feet in front of feet, eyes to sleepy
Eyes, did not bother me, as much
As your giggle bothers me,
Sweetly.

Bread does not nourish me.
My mind has lost its old self
From having thought at times,
I have not eaten with you always.
So what would it be like, as
Your head tilts from there, to here,
To this sad shoulder? What would it
Be like to hold your hand, or
The other, sweetly?
I have hungered for days, beloved.
I like what I do not have.

I have felt the December breeze
Lean unto me, and have not felt your
Arms oftentimes, nor the touch of finger.
I just wish my memories
Has flesh enough, that your forgetting
Has embrace enough, so that
Night by night, I won’t have to dream
Of kiss, kiss, kissing you to sleep,
Over and over.

And yet you will ask,
If I can taste
The littlest of your kiss,
But I'd say yes,
Sweetly.

© 2014 J.S.P.

Beyond my I love you lies
An I love you too,
Or sad poetry.
I write what I cannot have
Or what I cannot keep.

I go from loving to losing you
And both. I go from pain to
Odd pain then to forgetting,
And beyond that-
Pain even. But hope
Is always there.

The sun sets, not for the moon
But for tomorrow; Love leaves
Not for pain, but for love.
Pain never leaves.
Love always comes back.
Love comes back better.
Pain disintegrates.

Beyond sad poetry
Is romantic poetry.
Beyond poetry is reality.
Beyond everything else,
Good and bad,
Is you.

And You are far better...
...than an I love you too.

© 2013 J.S.P.

If I were to die,
If this life be remembered
Like diminutive things
You unknowingly admire,

If little by little, you will go
Leaning towards me,
In which once
You were too hesitant,

If I mattered in this instant, just now,
If I, in this time, a very token from me,
And you see me fit for remembering,

If I were to depart, love, if I were to,
Then see me fretful,
That the things which I cannot hold on,
Might smile on,
And me leaving.

If I were to die love, if I were to,
And you'd just come to me, I am alive.
It is because no matter how old
Or ageless time is,
It would be as if
It was only born today:
If I have you, I have forever.

You are an inkling of life to hold on to.
Be it for love or not that you inch yourself close
For reaching, just for reaching.
I would be, would seemingly be,
Like a night without its fireworks
And you
A love song.

© 2011 J.S.P.

Lower down the silly guard
Of your charisma,
Let your ears reveal the pull
Your smile creates
In certain corners
Of this sanity,
And let me love...
...You.

I would vow to keep your hands
In mine forever.
I know none of stars
That shine tonight
As brighter than this love- its eyes.
Much better,
Let me love...
...You.

Feel the rush, the icy blue
Of this perfection.
You won't have to stay in slumber.
Let me lower down a shoe.
Let me feel the hair you grew for me.
And you will take me in, a beast.
I promise,
I will love...
...You.

Now.

Let me love...
...You.
Now.

© 2011 J.S.P.

Show me the soles of your heart,
And we will run,
Together, to the acres
Of matrimony,
Where we are souls
In our very first forever.

We will nod the nod of love,
As one, as yes
As we could ever be.
We will know how flowers
Keep memories.
We will know why I love you.

You will show me how to dream,
Your true self.
You would be nearer than what I thought
You could ever be. You will dizzy me
With curious stars.

Now this is our far, far away,
Amusing, existing:
A hand on your hand,
Two pairs of lip, perfected,
Entwined.

© 2010 J.S.P.

And even though it doesn't want to,
The moon sees itself in the river,
The light, the shadows that it cannot touch,
The borders of your Neverland,
That grand open garland, your waist
That tickles past imaginations.

The night air, as Eve was,
Had nothing to wear.
Frantic, it covers itself
With your hair,
Perfumed, it laughs at itself,
Sharing its first fruit.
I, a human, am staring
At the very breath of God.

Forget the wind, the moon,
The river, the old, old
Stars hung as jealousy.
I have a mustard seed of love.
And I need only to believe you.

© 2011 J.S.P.

I have enveloped you with my dying hands
And everything that might bring you here
From some place in my dreams.

Death would be a cruel death
If I have none to hold, my love.
Truly, my heart still seeks for you:

You, my dearest,
My pain, my breath;
The song that carries me to a long lost echo;
The echo that appears to be my nightsong,
Must curse me:

To bring old painful truth
On lasting new memories,
To bind forgotten lips
On long-forgotten lips,
And to have you--
Though not having you-

Gifted to be as loving as angels,
Gifted to just roam the earth
Without a face,
Or flesh--

Taking the final form...
...of pure love.

© 2010 J.S.P.

The potential quarrel only,
And I say only, is the thought
That 'us' would not be us
After our kisses.

We will never be just one flame,
One firebird in the distance
Pecking at mimosas.
And there's just too much flaw
If we are perfect for each other.

I could be the day of our starts,
And you, the day that begins.
I don't know.
You tend to over-think,
And often, I think of you,
Etcetera,
Vice versa.

So one by one, we secretly seek
Each other's secret;
One by one, we hate
How we hated each other
Till other things remain
In other things.

And so we think of each other
Only,
And then we kiss.
And I say:

Let love be a kiss,
For when two people kiss, it never mattered
Who stoops or reaches more.

© 2010 J.S.P

...the sweetest nod...
...of love.

© 2014 J.S.P.

From lovers’ stare to lovers’ glance, we go.
We danced only by taking these ranging steps.
And it was I who was forgotten.

The front door opens and I think of you.
The window is lonely
That it opens and I think of you.
And I think of your goodbye.

The wind bears the voice of you.
The sad night trails it off.
You tread so slowly,
Star by star.
Night by night, I have kissed you
Over and over.

It will always be this one train hurrying itself,
This passenger waiting,
Like they should have to meet,
But then they won’t.

It will have to be a chair,
Unmoved,
And you’d come home early,
Finding your bed.
There, lies the space I left.

And this is me measuring my love:
My love remembers,
It would be the last to die of me.

And in this story, love,
I am the sole stranger.
And I have forgotten you only,
When forgetting allows me so.

© 2011 J.S.P.