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Jedd Ong Jan 2014
The deeper you stare into
The flotsam,
The clearer our origin stories
Become:

We are shipwrecks.

Islands
Bro-

ken Like bread and
Doused in
Salted wines.

We are cupbearers,

Slaves
With rusted chains
That dangle
Loosely
From our ankles,

Shrouding our skin from the harsh
Freedom

Sun offers.
From a harbour, not a beach. More your story than mine.
Jedd Ong May 2014
I'm sorry, first of all, because
I couldn't save you.
How all I could do was
Stand there,
Listlessly while
You clung to the hems of
My mother's skirt.

How your little sister
Stood between us,
Pretending if for awhile
To have a real home,

And I'm sorry that
All I could've given you
At the time was money
And that I didn't even
Do that because I
Was afraid of getting
***** looks from everyone around me.

So many unsaid things hanging
Between us like
A foul-mouthed cliche.

How in the midst of
All these bodies for sale
I would've paid for you.

How I would have paid
For your company how
I would tell you
How lively your eyes were.

How I would've made your little
Sister laugh and stare
And we'd make stupid faces
At each other all night.

How smooth
Your brown skin was how
Beneath you
Everyone else looked.

How if you had spoken,
God would have heard you.

You are His daughter
Not theirs.
You are His child
Not theirs.

You are His Pride and Joy and
He loves You.

In this loveless, lifeless world
He loves You.

Please believe that
He loves You.

Both of You.

All of us.
she's real. and so are they.
Jedd Ong Dec 2013
Round and round the black tape went,
Swaths of it came, and left unbent,
Around my wrists, and around his mouth,
From back to front, from north to south...

Round and round the tape unfurled
Spinning and spitting, his lips- they curled!
Sneering and snickering, bitterly he yelled,
"What good is a God who's secrets don't tell?"

While mourning and weeping in this valley of tears,
His mighty hands shook with them ancient fears,
Tongue wet with wine, lips dry in stutter,
He buckled his knees with all faith he could muster...

While he, the mournful jeerer lost,
Quickly towards the garden rushed,
As darkness, nearer and nearer, hushed,
Left him to ponder its cost.
For CS Lewis.
Jedd Ong Jan 2015
In the beginning
Was a reboot. God

Running his fingers
Over the 1s and 0s
Of our artificial minds
Bending

Its language
Backward. Let himself

A small grin; Einstein

Founded a theory for the way
Light bent
Through
And not

Ran
Ramrod straight
Into hardened walls.

Called it,
“Quantum,” traced,
With the tips
Of his numbers
The merciful

Fragments
Of our misshapen
Universe,
And too smiled

At our salvation.
Jedd Ong Oct 2014
The only thing that ties me to this quilt-patched land, is memories of a flag: red, white, yellow, and blue.

Red is the blood used to paint our doorways—protection from ghostly wolves that sought our firstfruits. It is fight, even if our weapons are terribly flimsy. Bamboo tinted spears, mashed with berry paint and maskara on our brows is our arsenal. We fight in, and with the shadows. Light chases them down. Memories of GomBurZa, Noli Me, Balintawak, Tirad Pass and even EDSA remind me of how the wounds are slowly closing. Red is the color of our scars.

White is the gifts we received from our conquerors. The plow and the print: an awakening of consciousness new. White is the color of skin that polished us. White is also the gift of void, bleakness and forgetfulness. In exchange for the new, we shafted the old: our language, our anitos. A gift of disconnect: resolute Babel collapsing, burying us in tongues filled with sorcerous lisps. We curl in vain our own lips to fit their shapes. We speak gibberish now. The ghosts scoff at us in an even newer language of their own invention.

Yellow is the sweet sun which kissed us tenderly—even as we were surrounded by bolo, spear, sword. The sweet sun fights to give us light, and reaches out to us misunderstood. It shaped our land—softened our soils and gave it fruit. It is mangos, and papaya skins, and ripe bananas. It gives us joy and sweetens our sweat.

Blue are the lakes beneath which linger our roots. With the water is our identity: our hearts, our gait, our dance: the light shuffling of feet, the sway of brown hands, the wind waving at the rice buckets bobbing on our heads. We were never a warlike people. When we are wounded, we seek refuge in our seas, in the saltwater wounds that so painfully clean us of dastard memories. They sting like a freshwater song. Like the harsh howling of the monsoon rains, and the tides rising and falling with our chests. Humming.

We forget and we remember, like the ebbs and flows of the shore, the coastal highways that we leave in peace, like a languid dance. They float in and out of history—as one hops in and out of bamboo rods as they dance the Tinikling. The songs, they string us well. String names like humble Rizal, larger than life, and manic Bonifacio, who looked us straight in the eye. Names that sing of the prairie wind—softly massaging the hard grains that we till quietly in the fertile soil.

Soil—what ties us together is our history.
Jedd Ong Oct 2015
Am I not my Father’s son,
who too, touched sky and stars
and sat atop moons gawking at the
world’s birthright that tomorrow
would be his if he had only
asked?

Am I not He, who walked too
upside down shrubs, and skies,
and bushels of wood and fire and
swam through soil, digging through
water, marvelling at the glorious
ruin of His creation, how he’d
one day bring it towards light
again?

Am I not He, too of Joseph,
father of dreamers, closing
his eyes and feeling stars crackle
beneath his feet despite the Earth
burrowing his neck further beneath
desert?

Am I not He, son, of Solomon,
who worshipped in temples of gold,
robed in purple and gifted with
brilliance -  made to plot, sow
stitch and reap the fruits
of fragment kingdoms at sceptre’s
will?

Am I not He, Son of God,
nailed to crosses and sprung from
stone graves, body light as air,
heart white as snow, skin
made to glow glorious, guiding
those who wished only to see,
blinding those who thought nothing
of sight?

Am I not He, God, Your son,
who was knit bones at your
suggestion, made to stitch soul
to flesh, knelt as your soldier,
became one amongst they:
ruinous, crumbling, blinded, they,
split, and crooked, and
broken?

Am I not of You, God?
Am I not You, God?

Am I not, God?
Jedd Ong Oct 2013
On the wooden beds you once lay
Bloodstains remain-
A murky brown
Undoubtedly
Yours.

You paid the full price
For sinners who wouldn't
Stop

Injecting pins and needles full of
Bitterness, scorn and
Shame.

For your life
Was exchanged rusty needles and half-
Filled syringes full of
Hate—

Searing our
Eyes full of anger and mockery and—

Grace,
What have you done


You,
Stabbed to death for a
Freedom not even guaranteed,
Wounds not even cleansed,
Bones not even mended—

Murdered for me on that cross

All for the slightest glint of broken mirror,
Hoping that a shard would
Pierce

Me.
Ex. 14:14
Jedd Ong Mar 2014
Those who have managed
The weight of the sky are few;
Far between
And scattered—hidden—searching
For those likewise
With calloused hands
And weary glances,
Rounded shoulders and
Parched voices roaming,
Shouting as one does
When the dawn finally turns to
Day and realizes

"He lives!"
Jedd Ong Jun 2014
I dream of golden nooses
And oak, glided chairs,
And a sick man shriveled up and
Wasted away shivering on top
Of a rain-soaked rooftop
With rosary in his hands
Squeezing one last prayer out
Of his blueish lips
Before heading back down
Into his bedroom.

Chinese characters tattooed
Sloppily on the
Stark white cement walls,
Words for death and dying men,
And mercy and God,
Paintbrush dipped in bright red—
Red is the Chinese color of prosperity.
Gilded gold and cedar the American one.

In frustration at the hollowness
Of his Midas touch,
At the way his hands grasp the
Cross of Jesus only for it
To turn gold in scorn,
He screams.

In anger seizes the
Rosary around his wrists
And snaps it on

His neck.
Jedd Ong Jul 2014
Still,
I rise.

By the power of God,
I sheath
The knife
That was once pressed
To my neck.

That falls to the floor
With a resounding
click.

Rusting. Tetanus shots. God.

Somehow I saw
Jesus' face in the blade's
Own,
Ruddy red hair and
Scraggly beard.

And.

Voice cleaving through
The darkness—
a whisper.

For the first time in
A while,

He spoke to me.
Still,

I rise.
No matter what, praise Him. I owe him a lot.
Jedd Ong Jan 2015
You ask me
To write poetry
And I will tell you
To draw a face.
Any face.

Because the poetry
Is in your lips
Believe me
I've tried
To run away from it
But you,
There you are.

And when you
Ask me
To write poetry
I will ask you to sing
Because the poetry
Is in your voice

And believe me
I've tried to stop hearing it
But you,
There you are.

When you ask me
How to write poetry
I will tell you
To draw a wall.

Because this barrier of words
Is the only form
Of my love thin enough
To escape the crevices
Of your glance.

You are poetry
My dear.

The preservation of
A voice brushed away
And left to the
Winds of time.
Jedd Ong Nov 2013
As the dust settles in
On the coffee table,
I smile.

The rising sun
Elusive and innocent

Illuminates their faces as they sleep:

My brother-
All stubborn scowls
And groans.

My father-
Weatherbeaten and wizened.

My mother-
Pining and tired.

Youthful shadows creep into our home
On tiptoe,
Grinning impishly.

Barefoot, I greet them.
It's one of those afternoons.
Jedd Ong Feb 2014
There aren't enough of them to
Go around:
Windows bleak but truthful,

Showing the world
Outside:
Whether black or
Painted with flowers

And Knows
The difference.

Allows for prisoners to
Forget the bars
And the bars to forget the prisoners-

Especially the innocent ones:
Murderers for mercy
Toiling underneath the
Razor sharp edge
Of a microscopic knife
Cutting past the throat
Of innocuous farmers.

Wheat plains that stretch Golden,
Stretch for miles and miles
To a little place the other Kansans call
"Out there..."
In Cold Blood.
Jedd Ong Apr 2015
Jay-Z sounds like he's underwater. And the showerhoses tilt shut and the bathroom door opens to reveal - well, what I thought was a sealing wound thankfully turned out to be headphone covers and my brother's obscured big toe. Trembling.

He walks as if he was the rapper himself - chest hunched, back lurching forward like that of a street cat who doesn't know he's made it. Shaky feet, wet hair, darkened eyes that hadn't been shut for days.

''For my father was black, and beautiful, and beautiful, therefore, black. There was a blackness to him that was beautiful. A blackness entirely clear and his own.'' -James Baldwin, Notes on a Native Son (paraphrased).

His legs if you roll up the pajama bottoms are filled with quilt patched mosquito bites and blacks and blues. Self-inflicted. Eyebag patches punched back into his face resurfacing in the hidden contours of his thigh. Trembling. Allow me to reintroduce myself. Trembling.

He is and he isn't. No native son of ours black but yellow covered, yellow but eyes tinged with red, and awash in shadows black and blue - he is beautiful - puffy eyed, brickfaced boombox carrying screamer of profanity and tongue tied silence all and still - he is black, and he is beautiful.

An underwater mixtape taking shape to be a broken record anthem.
Jedd Ong May 2015
We are not warriors yet.
We still gaze at stars
that predate the dawning
of time - heaven-sent
crumbs bowing to Earth.

This is all that becomes of us.

Our bodies will explode.
We will chase the other off
shadows nursing our blood.
Moonlight will ground whispers
into long-drawn screams.

We, reduced to streaks.
Jedd Ong Oct 2014
Row stubborn, Lord,
Row stubborn,

Resist the violent
Crashing of the waves—

Sleep, savior,
Sleep, and do not wake,
For wake means winning,
And the devil is in the details.

Do not fret,
For dear, you are never one to.
Please, stay true to
The full moon that draped you
In the tomb,

The stars that lit your path
As you made your way
To Golgotha
And back,

The stars that light
My darkness,
Today, as I find myself
Barefoot
For the first time,
Unsure how
To move about in this
Velveteen black—

A lot of glittering,
Glass, perhaps, gold,
God, I know

This rawness in my heart
Is sensitive and
Incredibly quick to chaff
But row stubborn Lord,
Row stubborn.

My journey has only begun
Jedd Ong Sep 2014
Somewhere
Deep inside me
I can tell you the reason
For why

Pawikans escape to the sea
Only to fiercely
Return home knowing
Imminent death—

And why minted Simoun
Returned home with weakened
Hands and shakily digs up
The remains of his young
Grave—

It's because
The heart that will not rest
Until it has cleared
Our good name
In the annals of history.

The name of a nation
Blotted with such
Scattered pride.
Paying my respects to a beloved book of mine—Day of Valor by Pauline Lacanilao.
Jedd Ong Sep 2014
We will grow old,
You and me,
Grow back in time,
To where the bicycles
Were lopsided
And the streets very much
Old brick road,

With the oil lamps
And quiet nights spent
By candlelight,

With the weeping parchment
Blown to dry,
Scratched meticulously
By a dancing feather, oh

We will grow old.

And come back to the little
Park bench where we used to
Sit. Count the cracked, granite
Pillars that paint the
Pathways of the Champs Elyseé,
Or Bagumbayan,

Dance alone,
Along the Great Wall,
And sing, you and me,

With a Grand Piano and
Giant mandolin and everything.

And we will wear coats and ties
And flowing skirts
And hike our way down
To the cul-de-sacs of Venetian Manila,

Where the bridges are still
Shores of sea, on which
Young lovers, friends, students, artisans
Still comb for pearls,

Yes, indeed, we will grow old.
Jedd Ong Aug 2014
Two crows
Perched on an entanglement of cables:
The universe signaling her
Twisted approval—
Like barbed wire only not
As ending of things.

They stand side by side,
One mute,
And the other lame,
Both hard of hearing.

Their claws cling tightly
To the promise of an electric
Jolt—transcends mute,
Transcends lame—a message
Of life—something like
Its mathematical proof.

Two black crows sat perched
Side by side waiting
For a physics lesson:

Namely, the one that stated
For every action,
Is an equal and opposite reaction.

Their light, feathery wings
Brush against
Each other as if by
Chance.
Jedd Ong Jun 2014
The good Lord
Provides a roof
Over my head,
And embraces me.

I close my eyes
And dream his
Wonderful dreams.

Ears still open to
The world's hurt—
Still listening.

Hearing the scores
Of angels, crying:
"Hallelujah, hallelujah!

There is refuge for the lost,
The blind will see again,
So get up and walk,
Get up and walk."
Jedd Ong Mar 2014
I watched the Sphinx
Die quietly of thirst;

Front paws buckling,
Eyes bloodshot—

Her smile, once human
But a twisted grimace.

She shrieked, as her talons
Gouged out her heart; gasped:
"Child,

"My Wisdom is yours."

And she gave it to me
And it was mine to hold.
Jedd Ong Feb 2014
Oh! How hell awaits—
Open your gates, and see!
The wrath of God revealed to all,
And all revealed to me!

Within these rusted gates
Hang gallows coarse as sand,
Engrained on it, in weathered stone
My names in fine, slight hand.

"I'm sorry son, it's just too much,
"The punishment's all but done.
"And though stand you, with head held high,
"The charge has just begun."

And on their steps that beckon,
With body ******, bent,
My ears, they heard, in whispered snarls:
"To die, He never meant!"

To this, I turned, and glimpsed and smiled,
"To You, Oh Lord, my praise!"
Which he in turn, with glass-strewn eyes

Refused, utterly betrayed.
Part Light Brigade, part fear. I got lucky with the meter.
Jedd Ong Jan 2014
Sometimes I wonder whether
The monsters underneath our beds
Have simply learned
To leave us alone

Fully knowing that the fear comes
Regardless.

Knowing that many times we scare
Ourselves into thinking
Once we dream
We will never wake.

That every night we hear
Sirens
And ambulances wailing-

Mistaking them for gunshot wounds
Buried deep within
Our chests waiting
To resurface.

And we dream of our stretchers.
Of if our arms
Will seamlessly tuck
Into
Our chests as we curl up
Beneath the smoke and
Rubble
Of to-
Morrow.

As if our sleep leaves open wounds
Left for them to
Sew.
It's getting late.
Jedd Ong Sep 2013
From the rooftops
Of my aureate balcony

I will the thunder
To scream louder.

I will the winds
To blow harder.

I will the lightning
To flash brighter,

I will the hail
To flow thicker.

The moonlight kisses
My temple

For I...

I am a stutterer.
Jedd Ong Dec 2015
It is impolite to wonder
whether the hot air balloon in your
lungs have begun to deflate,
grandfather.

Whether you wish to float away.
Dad said you never feared flying -
dad said nothing about it, rather.
But I fear for you.

You are old. Older than I can ever imagine.
You are frail but for the globes rising
in your chest and stomach; they fall
with each frail breath.

Let it carry you away. Do not
let these wires hold you down. They do not
pump poison into your body. They do not
let the heat escape.

If it must, it will, grandfather. The ceased oldness
in you expanding and contracting
at will. You will not die without a fight,
grandfather. Oh you will.
Was never close to you. But you're an intriguing study. Very grave.
Jedd Ong Feb 2014
I.

My teachers tell me
(Cockeyed and smirking)
That my looks
Can be deceiving.

Bastos ka pala?

And they're not wrong.

Disrobe me, and
You will find

**** and ash
Running up my veins,

Unvirgin pupils
Lapping up
Every last drop
Of that
***** joke.

II.

Oh, how the rain falls!
Well.
Jedd Ong Apr 2014
Latin purifies.

And so do the other languages
That ring foreign to my ears.

And prayers sound lovelier
When they are honest.

When honestly,
There is nothing to be understood—
No silent covenant.

When "God"
Is but an uppercase letter
Uttered with the utmost clarity.

Or if not,
With the utmost sanctity.
Jedd Ong Dec 2016
(i see) two scions dance in traffic: sun and moon,
sky and stars; God’s two heirs
dancing in traffic as if they weren’t demigods but
small maya birds - transfixed
mortals, fighting to keep away from the blinding
might their status affords them.

as His children their world and its light is for their taking,
of which they can feed - or not:
they go on instead like hungry wolves, next to I, rising
(sidelined, falling) flagging down jeeps
in the thick of the Vinzons Hall jeepney stop. They bark loud
and cheerily to keep idle; from unravelling
their wax-worn strings. They are birds guided by concrete routes,
those yearning to feel its bleakness

in each syllable creeping up their gold-and-marble throats:
the soft choke of exhaust smoke
and the rosiness of their gaunt in the face of all-knowing fate:
that of snatching from death
a world not theirs. They declare: “Perseus we are not, and
Janus we choose.” They shuttlling
commuters obscure and without fuss and without end
to and fro, where they come

they spit on the universe in baggy basketball shorts
Jedd Ong Jun 2014
In time
I swear,
This disease of mine
Will go away.

This hacking cough this,
Prickly throat and
Splotched tongue,
All red and black
And red and more black...

And sometimes
Sickness renders me a mutant
Because I feel as if I
Am the only one here Sick,

I am the only one here
Undead, pale, cancerous...

Perhaps still Awake.
Bad day. Sore throat. http://marvel.wikia.com/Deadpool_(Wade_Wilson)
Jedd Ong Dec 2013
Grandfather's whistle
Blew down the chipped clock,
Face in shock, broken glass.

Glasses. He was blind to its sound,
Faintly tinged, his arm and red,
Cheeks sallow like a hound's.

He stood there frozen:
Shoulders taut and brazen
But eyelids twitching,

Fingers quivering
As he balled his hand into a fist.
On the persistence of both time and memory.
Jedd Ong Nov 2015
we are not butterflies
wings splayed flat across tables
like specimens. we are
not fluttering in the wind
like figurines. we are
life

and love, and hope and
faith floating eternally
in the distance, just
and beneath our grasp. past
the skies we fly still,
splayed across blue
like specimens. poised
to spring to life
like figurines. we

are beautiful. we
are strong. we
are feeble, and plastered,
and nailed half-folded
to surfaces that scrape against
our cheeks but still
we fly. still

we are not butterflies.
for my brother who still chooses to fly away.
Jedd Ong Apr 2015
For amy fight*

You and I,
Into the good night -
Wrought by bleak
And scattered by twinkle -
We won't go gently.

Gazing the pink
Leaping the blue
Painting the sky
A thousand hues -
We won't go gently.

Screaming the fat
******* the know
Clothing the brown
And clotting the snow -
We won't go gently.

We, winding the tunnel,
Pinking the red,
You, look out below
As we're coming up dead -
We won't go gently.

So you guard the keys,
key the louse
And watch these hues
That guide our house -
We won't go gently.

We bleed this city
Pink and blue
And skip to these twinkles
And wrinkle our Lous -
We don't go gently.
Jedd Ong Sep 2013
Some days,
I'll be waiting outside
On the street corners

Carrying nothing but
An umbrella and wearing
Nothing but the toughest,
Driest, warmest clothes
I have.

And only on those days
When I am ready for the
Rain to fall

Does the rising, shrouded sun
In all her yellow-white
Glory decide to come out
And smile.
Jedd Ong Jan 2015
I will tell you a little story
About mountaintops,
And how despite being

Six-foot
Nothing
I have always had a fear of
Heights, and rollercoasters,
And falling.

Somewhere in here
Is a love poem.

Good timing too.

I was about to talk
About how my greatest fear
Is not the crash,
The tightly knit crunch
Of rock on
Shattered bone,

But rather
The limbo that hangs between
You, and inevitable
Ground
Like a poorly written apology.

One you could never
Find yourself
Reciting
Out loud

For fear
Of having your voice catch
Just as
You hit

The earth.
Jedd Ong Sep 2013
Out in the willow
a caged bird
sings

wound up slowly
by metallic
strings

drunkenly stumbling and
twirling about

hopping clumsily
on a branch.

Out in the willow
a caged bird
sings

chirping mechanically
about nonsensical things

drunkenly stumbling
and twirling about

perched precariously
on a lance.

Out in the willow
a caged bird
cries

spiraling towards
an untimely demise

drunkenly stumbling and
twirling about

groggily swelling, his breast
full of doubt

out in the willow
a caged bird
Falls.
Jedd Ong Nov 2014
It's true, what they say:
Time turns back
In dreamland.

Hair, somehow
Thickening,

Beard,
Oddly thinning,

Belly
Obscured handily
By a small, thatched pillow.

The man

Looks clumsily
Like his father:

They share the same
Squashed nose.

But
His breaths,
They reflect not

The heavy-handed heft
Of his ancestral chest
Rising deeply,

But rather the lighter airs
Of a simpler time

Resting gently
On his eyelids.
For Saki. Hehe.
Jedd Ong Sep 2015
A stone lies shadowed at morning,
Its figures carved long like the shore.
An acolyte lies on it, yearning,
For flames that stoke now no more.

This birthright, he sold for quiet,
A peace but traded for pride,
His scorns, his scar - once scarlet,
Now fades: and so his stride!

To which the eastward sun, foreseen,
Blinks by the shade, above,
Tracing the vestige of figures beneath,
And their voices that beckoned thereof:

“To the Sun belongs the truest light,
“And with it, heard let, and be,
“The fire of men was not for fight,
“But the fight sealed tight in he.”

— The End —