I look deeply at you.
I look at you deeply.
I touch the comet tails.
I witness Arided, Asmidiske
And the blessed Sun of Joshua.
I peel the galaxy off of stars.
I hear the lyric and the moon.
I feel the musings of your heart.
I light the crescents on your chest.
I harbor wolves from the snow.
I write like Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto.
And I become distant, a sigh, a spirit.
I look at you deeply.
I look deeply at you.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

To fully understand this is to bridge
The hundred islands of Pangasinan,
Or to darken the sands of Boracay.
I say, let alone the confusion,
The thrill, the beauty,
And let us love terribly, fully,
Crazy, and make sweet follies,
In the simplest way
We could ever know,
Saying,

Love does not ask,
And does not answer.
It only feels.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

Looking at her eyes,
Her eyelids must be
     New galaxies.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

My heart has emptied itself into my mind
The same kind of emptiness a leaf has,
Keeping it afloat, and keeping it unfree,
Lying, arrested, on the melancholic mirror,
The teardrops of the foreign gods,

The kind of lonely which has lurked on
Its verdant veins always, always missing their old blood,
Their feet, their seasons, their rootless root wandering,
Wailing, hovering all over the islands and their self-pitying,
Which kept them miserable and sane, sometimes,

As my mind empties itself into my heart,
With all beauty and curse, strength and fragility,
An elixir, the panacea, the venom, the decay,
The memories, the memories, the same thing that
Makes the stars seem shivering while you look at them,
At night, in deep nights, in the course of your sobbing,
When you cannot fully sleep, when a mystic moon
Is but a shard of the sun your spirit was.

This is your pain. This is your mind venting, like eyes,
Like the same eyes that did not look at you
While bidding their goodbyes.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

To embrace her
Is to be dandled
     At her lap.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

Pretty color, pretty smile,
I hear your loudest cry
     Inside.*

© 2015 J.S.P.