He's seating beneath a big block of stone
On a place where art lays and unfolds
Staring at the passing traffic
Watching at the reality dancing before him
As if he's guarding the ruins
Of the old world crumbling behind
Like the sun slowly fading at the green bay

I can hear him constantly switching
Radio stations on his cheap phone
To pass time, to pass eternity
But never seem to find the song
He's used to dance with in his youth
And now in his twilight amidst
The setting of the great tropical sun
He ruminates on the rising edifices before him

How everything had changed
The thatched roofed houses
Have now become towering cranes
The tall grass have become steel fences
The muddy earth now paved
I can see in the old man's static gaze
That he is wishing and hoping for something
Something he can grasp with
His calloused and wrinkled hands
Something his old frame can lift and hold
Like a moment, or a memory he can be proud of
Until the last of his august days

Yet he found what he's searching for
The last minutes of a ball game
I can hear the ecstatic crowd roaring
As the game dribbles to its end
The buzzer sounds over triumph and defeat
Then the old man closes his phone,
Drinks from his jug, and fixed his things
He looked at me as he stood
Then walks away slowly, losing himself
Beyond a sea of concrete

The tree are whispering in hushed silent tones
Their voices carried softly by the wind
Caressing the whole forest with their hymns
Suffused in their cries, the arrogance
And greed, and vanity of men
Men that were tasked to guard creation!

Their chants deafening, echoing, increasing
In brave tumultuous waves
Growing ever louder
Pushing the rivers and tributaries into the seas
Infused in the currents
The laments of the helpless
Trampled, and ravaged, and killed
With violence and impunity!

Be wary of the axeman, the hunter, and the miner
They are lurkers, waiting in the dark canopies
Waiting for a chance to **** and pillage
To **** the forest out of its wits
Until it loses its lushness and vitality
'Til it surrenders its grip from the divine earth!

Be wary of the forest ranger
For they are the ones that orchestrates
The relentless and appalling ******
That decimates lives, hopes, and aspirations
They perpetuate the madness
They are the harbingers of chaos, they are destruction
Their charm, vile and putrid
To ever allow them recite their prose would be death!

But never despair,
The sleepers have woken
Those with quiet ears slowly hears the noise and commotion
The deniers have silenced their self-serving lips
Await that moment, when the silence is fractured
By the forest, howling in raging defiance
Justice will be swift, the wolves will be unraveled as sheep!

And only then says the oldest of the trees
Can the children of the forest roam free.

I missed a run again and my conscience shouts at me in anger.

Apparently, it needed a break from the monotonous hum of hasty, disquiet fingerings for buzzer beater deadline finishes,
and a respite for smashing cushions all day.

Pencils are opportunities, it dulls as you write,
mistakes slowly burns the red rubber ****,
and sharpeners are luxuries or government help or socialism.

But what about cheap pencils,
whose lead dulls or breaks easily.

Pencils are all equal if you look it in the outside
but what you can't see is that these cheap pencils
does not have a solid strip of lead inside,
it has some small quantities of opportunities to write.

I need to sharpen it once in a while
so I can clearly write.

But not everyone has sharpeners nor extra pencils,
some even bought this kind of pencil
with all the money they have
and they cannot write their stories
and their happy endings,
when the luster of their leads are constantly fading
into white, swallowed by the open
free-market place of ideas blank paper.

And I can't blame the poor vendor who sold me
these substandard opportunities.

However,

I am blaming the owners of factories,
for making such lousy imitations,
for exploiting my hunger to write.
I am blaming the government,
for allowing such pencils to ever exist!

Their lust for power, their greed takes away
my opportunities to write clearly and continuously,
I am blaming them for assuming that all of us have sharpeners!

We should not pay for social sharpening services!
Sharpeners and pencils should be free!

Zoom, roar, cars honking, Jeepneys
Racketing, plying the flooded streets
of suburban Manila

How I miss your dreadful and depressing sight
Hauntingly beautiful to the
Glass-eyed hipster romantic, romanticizing
Poverty and banality - what a good use of privilege

Sulu, you are a stench to my sight
I can hear your wounds screaming
And I can taste the bitter sound of your helpless cries

Yet, you cradled me and my drunkenness,
You danced with me under the moonless night
Along with the rowdy bottles of San Miguel
The bottles occupying the floor
Signified our comradeship
You had my back when I sleep
And you are my eyes in the morning
Before I wake up

How I will miss listening to jazz
Inside your deceptively-fragile looking walls
How I will miss puking on your floors
I will miss that part of my youth that I
Have left when I closed the front door.