Today I learned
That God kicked my ***
At poetry,
Among other things.

Not that
It wasn't a given,
But still.

Adds to the list.

Mile long,
Mile wide.

And here
I'm simply stuck
Making mountains
Out of molehills.

And over there
He's making molehills
Out of mountains.

Would you look at that.

My God can
Take apart
Put together
Break, fix, turn sideways

Even the largest
Of his creations

And I sometimes still
Can't figure out
How to open a
Bag of potato chips properly.

The elephant
In the room,

Well no seriously,

The elephant in the room
Has ivory
For teeth
And a sinewy trunk
Made out of some
Neat little fiber to
Take in water and nuts.

God's
Given our world
The closest thing
To a walking gold
Animal

And here I am talking
About his poetry
For crying out loud.

Gotta love him man.

Gotta love him.

To be one day performed in sign language*

Perhaps
You could call it
Music—
A gentle guitar
Solo,
Or even a piercing
Voice clear
And high.

Silence is a song.

I know
And you do too.

Well,
Perhaps I don't
As much as you would.

There is a cadence
To the way
Our pens
Twist and turn
Like my grandfather's
Heyday.

There is an art
To the way
Your fingers
Seem to curve
At the slightest
Twitch
Of your lips.

Your body's language
Is like an evergreen
Dance—
Eyes, hands, feet wide
Open to the
Rhythms of the world.

And what a stunning
Beat it drums.

God please
Let my ruse
Hold out
Just a little bit further.

Let my mask
Stay on
Just a little bit longer.

Let me walk away
With Pride
Still dangling
From my chest-

Lord grant me no rest.

I think
I've seen it all:
****** turbans,
Mosques riddled
With bullet holes,
Bus stop bomb shelters,
Bad aim.

I've been out of the loop
Recently—haven't
Had the time to
Stop and smell the
Newsprint on

The coffee table but,
I see pictures.

Paper maché
Leg casts,
Wine-stained
Hello Kitty bandages,

Slit wrists,
And a ground out cigar.

Lonely engines,
Browning fires,
And balsa wood.

Gas masks,
A judge's gavel
And traveller's checks.

House of cards,
Plane ticket,
Ukrainian flag.

Smoke bombs,
Sandpaper flares...

Rocket ships filled
With bags of sand.
And cups of coffee:

Wake up.

I can name you
The exact date
On which he was shot:
June 28, 1914.

Who killed him?
Gavrilo Princip,
Member of the Bosnian Nationalist
Movement: The Black
Hand.

Suddenly this montage
Of bullet chambers
And dead wars
Shift -

Hands. You. Me.
Your fingers,
Which I long to hold.

Your voice,
Which I long to hear.

Which I have forgotten -

Sometimes it is hard
To trace the annals
Of history. Our
****** pawprints

Make the trail of
Arms and hatred
Harder to keep straight
Than sin and so

We walk backwards.
****** trail of footsteps
Perhaps stepped
Into

By a meandering
Mao, or ******,
Or Tojo. Muddied further
By the presence
Of an Alger
Hiss -

Your voice
Is a whisper,

It sings to me in
Secrets - I do not
Know you but I
Am in love,

You are beautiful and
I don't know why
But there's a
War. In my heart.

A war of attrition. Subtraction
Of causes. And the Archduke,
Well the Archduke
Is glad to see you.

Hear his dates blur
Into yours -

History tests,
And love notes
Crumpled away folded
And stored
In the same junk
Folder.

I imagine his hands
To have folded
Quite slowly,
Searching for something
To latch onto.

Like mine.

Empty palms flickering
Amidst a trail of
Blood and dust -

Oh, and yeah
The history lessons
Of course.

remember marjorie,
and how her footsteps

pattered quietly
after the rain,

how she rarely smiled
with her lips

but always let you know
what she was up to
with her eyes.

with her, came the day.

in this darkest of nights,
i remember

the sweetness
of her laughter,

the bold redness of
her moon-like cheeks.

her sweetest
smiles come not

off wide-eared grins but
rather the slightest

twitch
of an ear,

the gentlest slant
of her lips.

Sometimes you strike me as a
Paper airplane:

Somewhat flimsy,
Somewhat crumpled up
And tired,

Wayward,
Stumbling on and swaying-

A product of all those
Late nights

In night-oil'd
Bars,
Blue-lighted,
Beer-lighted,

And of all those sleepless nights
Preparing for them
Alone,

Unsure how to open and close
Your mouth properly.

Cracked labi,
From lack
Of saliva.

And sometimes you strike me as alive.
Like you wanted it this way.

That
You trained your body to be
Hollow

To allow your spirit
More room to
Dance with the beams of light

That lap at your heels
As you
Approach the
Alikabok:

Cheap ***** playground from youth.

A swallow
Only ***** its wings
As it falls
To earth.

I will go.
And I will know.

The comeliness of night,
The futility of fight,
The fickleness of might—

I will go.

O vainglorious combat,

I will go.

Go gracefully, I hope so.
Go brightly, I don't know.

Go gently, I will go.
I hope it will be so.

Well, no.

Your eyes
Drew me in:

Large pingpong *****
With brown diamonds
Embedded in the center.

When you smiled,
I remembered not how your mouth curved,
But how your eyes
Brightened.

Even then I could tell you were a little delicate-

Okay a lot more delicate
Than you would let on, and

That your soul always forced its way out of you.

I'd ask
"How much for the little girl,"

But then I'd be overvaluing
Their worth to you.

They,
Hidden away in some forest,
Wearing black scarves
To cover
The soft contours of
Their diamond shells.

Gun-toting madness
Shellacking
Their temples.

You demand that women respect themselves.

Swallow your Pride.

I come clean about the night,
How the moon sets
In the morning and parts
To reveal the light,
And with it
My scars—below the eyes,
On my lips,
My perfection all but blighted.

Raindrops on
My windowsill
Race down
Paths that
Light trace for it,

Faint slants
Which carve
Niches for
The innocent—

Mornings which
Cough faintly,
Smoke lingering

On her throat
But still singing.

I.
The burnt patches on your
Index finger have quietly been
Snuffing out the cigarettes you've
Been inhaling ever since
The start of this
****** conversation—
All too deep, I suppose.

II.
Your cigarettes remind
Me of my shriveled up crayons:
Wayward patches of yellow and
amber in between
Countless granules of
Fairydust;
Gaudy amalgamation
Of mirthless colors.

III.
As you leave the downtrodden
Sods of my mind,
I can't help but pick up
The stubs you've been grounding
Out all night.
Light a match.
Listless.

IV.
You'll be delighted to know
My bedroom walls now
Come in different
Shades of gray.

Muelle de Binondo Street,
Barangay San Nicolas,
Old Manila.

My dad's fate
Will always be muddled
With nostalgia:

The mid-afternoon
Traffic of fruit vendors,

The toothless strains
Of my grandfather's voice,
Bouncing off
The warehouse walls
Like folding cardboard,

The ceramic gallops of horse-
Drawn kalesas taking him
From school to
My grandfather's offices,
Every day and back,

Up and down
The cardboard box river
To Tondo. There, he hurriedly
Buys ten
Asado buns
From a stall across the
Street from their
School - a voracious
Schoolboy
Forever late for class, forever

Putting on basketball jerseys
Too wide for him,
Basketball shorts too
Short; body
Always too gangly,
Too long-limbed, wide eyed
And fleet footed
For his dreams to catch.

He once could dunk.

He is still a baby boomer -
Scared of firecrackers,
Weird penchant
For popped collar shirts,
Pointed shoes, and
Sequins - he, was an avid

Lover of stars - his old
Dust-strewn bed posts
Giving way, I imagine,
To iron bars caging
The luminous starry night,
Floating high above
The sewage
And the freight trucks
That weigh him so.

They sang to him.

In the tune of
My mother's voice -
The only album
He ever possessed.

Song set from
His favorite band.

"Apo Hiking Society."

His favorite word,
Was "leap."

A disciple
Of MJ, Dr. J,
And Magic,
Samboy, and Jawo,

Icarus on hardwood
And leaping
From the free throw line.

"Son," he once told me,
"You gotta leap
"If you wanna live."

He was always afraid of heights.

It wasn't until 41 that
We made him ride a roller-coaster,
That he had even seen a roller-coaster.

"You gotta leap
"If you wanna live."

I think my favorite
Memory of my dad
Is still him wringing my fingers
At Space Mountain with
Eyes so tightly shut
That we forgot
Our fears,
And screamed instead:

So.

This,
Is how the stars look like
When unbolted
By folding cardboard,
And iron bars.

Dear Sarah,

I think I got lost a bit there in the patterns of your dress - stars splattering over the hems of your skirt like a never-ending physics class.

You ever studied the constellations? Because speaking of, I think I've gotten lost too in the way your voice sounds like a nebula cracking open. Your eyes travel at speeds laced with infinite decimal points, each glint and blink slowly chasing down light particles - which is to say I cannot seem to grasp how flustered I really am by you and how your poems always seem to leave my lungs screaming for more air.

Staring at your face makes me feel like I'm trapped in a vacuum.

We will
Wrap
Our fingers
Around these gifts
Like ribbons,
And unknot them
And unclasp the
Thoughts
That hide beneath them,
And find the joy
That comes with
Giving.

Each date line
Is a future stained
In pencil marks,

Each grand crease
Of the palm
Another corrupted
Image—

Cuts upon cuts upon
Beautiful, minuscule cuts.

Each intersection,
Each fine line

Telling a story.

Skinned pavement,
Pencil callouses,
Oven burns, or perhaps

Bruised thumbs,
Stray rebounds,
Sharp-edged comic books

Candle wax,
Rose thorns,

A tightly clutched hand...

I think I'll trace
The origins of that
Last one.

heaven sent
graffitied
wormholes
to usher us
out - busts
of deified
physicists
presumed
dead, noses
chipped - like
paint on
old highway
billboards -
stacking
"Welcome!"
signs atop
Vacuum
Cleaner

advertisements.

Fight, fight! Through these hallowed halls,
The chalkboards that seem to scream,
"Rah, rah! You're trapped within these walls,
And all is not as they seem!

'Brilliant!' You may say, and 'Brilliant!' you may be,
But the cramping hands, begrudge,
And no match are you for these cackling C's,
And a brain that just won't budge—

Oh hark! Hear! Oh the scribbles far and near!
Watch your own blank page!
And know why white is the color of fear,
My dear, where is your sage?"

" 'Tis here!" Cry I, and gnash with my teeth,
The grit that lies wherein,
For what shall be, my God will bequeath:
The writ that lies within.

dustv  eils
swi   ftly
ayo  uthful
lens;  legions
of serra  atesight
scarcely  tempered

A little boy and little girl stood
Quietly to the curb sweeping
At flowers that never really
Swept back. They gathered them gingerly
Like newborn saplings. Petals,
I may add, wilting ever
So steadily on cement floors. Blown
Off branches by wind and
Made to dance on thorny ground. They
Remind me of us. Flowers one,
All wilting on the cold hard
Earth. Fallen petals from home.
From home. Swaying each and every
One. Like little boys and
Little girls plodding hand in hand
In unison.

I.

Somewhere in a mailroom in China
is my acceptance letter to
Brown University,

fluttering in the
sticky, smog-filled wind like an
unspoken birthright,

vacuum sealed in some shoddy warehouse,
slap-banged next to my father's
porcelain wares and flasks – and my grandfather's,
and his father's. "Son,"

my father tells me,
"you've got a lot of the old man in you.
"I am grateful."

I then retch
in the dingy comfort
of our hotel room bath
before proceeding to lunch.

Dad's Chinese counterparts
congratulate me on
being able to tell them what I
want to do when I grow up.

"Wo yao dang yi ge shangren – zhu fu."
“I want to become a businessman – get rich.”

II.

"Wo xuyao xiezuo."  
“I must write.”

TS Eliot once asked me,
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"

I do not know yet,
but I think I have found fragments
of an answer lodged in
hotel bathrooms,
a Tianhe-bound overpass
on the way to Beijing Street,
heirloom warehouses,
And two Canton fairs.

"To get rich is glorious,"
Deng Xiaoping once said.

But I glance at
My father and mother,
And theirs,

And wonder if all their life, they have but
knocked on the doors of their fate -
chased dreams not
tobacco stewed or gold-ground
by the teeth of an Other.

As to answer your question, T.S Eliot:
Maybe, if just to find where I truly belong.