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.

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.

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.

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.

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..."

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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!

(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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.