The thing about love is that
     It is strategically tragic,
Built to last, made to make you feel,
Feel good and alive, to feel enough,
     Gracefully and sudden
Like a gentle kiss, the spreading
Of wings of the soul, the fall
     Of listless stars, but
          Just as lasting.

I do not know what else to feel
Upon seeing this ocean, except
To remember you with the same
     Natural feeling, inexplicable,
Like the color blue catches on
     With the bleach of white,
Aiming to accentuate, searching
     For the old burn of red
          In vain.

And beauty is felt more
     Than it is seen. Eyes have
Seen more than they have rested,
And they have seen things best,
     While they are closed.

More than sorrow, pain and suffering,
More than sure looped-goodbyes,
     It is the serendipitous affection
That rules over all, overthrowing
The flowing madness of passing worlds,
Passing all the lovers by, mad enough,
     And mad still, yet the fight
          Is worth loving for.

Love is worth fighting with.
Life is worth it. Love
Is priceless, yet, I love you
A little less
     Than love itself.

Love never grew, it just stays beside,
Just beside, them, us, blown
     By the havoc of life, fate and time,
Drifting amongst the drifters
Surrounding us, dizzied,
     Ever-tested, enduring all.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

You shine before the light,
All known light, except, of course, Jesus.
It is something one do not realize
With eyes wide open, but now that
Mine are at a slow close, sweetly,
Blinded by you, it suddenly hit me, braving
This expanding darkness, knowing
That love feels deeply and has deep faith
Which willingly abandons the sense of sight.

     I will see you. I see you...in a white dress.*

© 2017 J.S.P.

Infant formula...
The cries of the motherless
     Infant formula...*

© 2015 J.S.P.

''We should not speak
In turns.'', she said.
''Kiss me.''*

© 2014 J.S.P.

We may have forgotten
Some memories,
     But we cannot
          Unlove.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

The potential quarrel only,
And I say only, is the thought
That 'us' would not be us
After our kisses.

We will never be just one flame,
One firebird in the distance
Pecking at mimosas.
And there's just too much flaw
If we are perfect for each other.

I could be the day of our starts,
And you, the day that begins.
I don't know.
You tend to over-think,
And often, I think of you,
Etcetera,
Vice versa.

So one by one, we secretly seek
Each other's secret;
One by one, we hate
How we hated each other
Till other things remain
In other things.

And so we think of each other
Only,
And then we kiss.
And I say:

Let love be a kiss,
For when two people kiss, it never mattered
Who stoops or reaches more.

© 2010 J.S.P

God must be really kind to spare you
From my impatience, but it only means
That you have to deal with my persistence,
     You have to tame my hard-headed heart.

It does not guarantee that I'd pursue you
With an equal amount of passion
Each and every time, but it certifies
That it can possibly withstand the length
Of wait it requires just to get into your heart,
And the objective is always not to captivate
     But to penetrate.

One's love must be generous, not stingy,
Nor cunning, nor selfish, nor proud,
For there's no sound sense in defeating
Your very purpose, being driven
By a hidden agenda. I'm in a battle
     Where I don't want to force a draw.
I'm here to help you win, against all pain,
     All fear, all doubts.

I want to be your warrior, princess of Jesus.
I want to be what I never got to be before.
I want to be a man, and man up
     For the cause which you deserve.

          You deserve, at all costs, to be loved.*

© 2017 J.S.P.

The universe is unnamed.
Time keeps forgetting his birthday.
Wind, fire, water, stars--
Shaped in our favor.

But when I love you,
You are a curve in a thumbprint.
When I love you, I am me.*

© 2014 J.S.P.

I want to be what I should be
In the context of consistency,
Your early morning ritual, the coffee
And the egg that you would like me to be,
     A habit you can never get rid of,
A certain pose for the cameras,
A certain post on Instagram, the way,
Exquisite, unique, and endearing
That your mouth motions, your lips lead,
Your cheeks cast the skip-a-beat
     Magic of your smile to my heart.

Dearest PVC, I want to learn cardiology.
I want to be the Michael Faudet
For your Lang Leav soul.
I want to move a japanese mountain,
Then be a sushi or a truffle, yes,
     I even want to be a truffle.

     And I just want to court you...
     ...like always...
          ...and after always.*

© 2017 J.S.P.

I own a library of thoughts in my eyes
     With your eyes alone.
There is no other way to know you,
But to compile and compress it deep
     Within my heart,
To flourish inwardly, to perish,
And to strive for
The academic excellence of greater love
And be the scholarly fool
     Of your divine complexities.

What can I say? I love your Astronomies,
Philosophies and Geographies. I love you
To the fact, to the fiction and back,
To the histories and the mysteries.
I can't unstudy your laughter.
     I am ignorant to your full allure.

Love, I only love you, your pretty eyes,
Because they close and reopen,
     Capture and imagine,
They wander and they wonder,
     And such is the way of life.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

The moan of water
As she plunged
     Her righteous artistry.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

The crispy perfection risen
From the quick burn of gold as though
The phoenices of old came back to greet death
With the pale, clear smoke
Or with diaphanous ashes gilding still
The fieriest of feathers and their souls.
Oh how they bleed before the beheading,
But such end, for me, is
Ever favorable, and never ill.
I want an equal passion to receive me,
Where I would be eaten whole, taken
Full and proud, and stripped and naked,
Delicately touched, willingly devoured, consumed
By the mouth of my kisses, of my doing,
And thoroughly tasted
By her need-driven tongue.
I'd give my all. All.
I want that.
And that, I tell you,
Is a **** death.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

My eyes,
Like any other eyes
Staring at the window
In the loneliest of bus rides-
The long way home.

I travel
Like paired green wings
Of a quetzal,
Like vagrant leaves
Led to be nostalgic
To a neighbouring dead tree:
I am the memory
Of my shattered heart.

Through idle times like this one,
I recall myself staring at you-
Un-captured by your smile, your lips,
Your scent,
But instead
Your eyes open for me,
Making me feel the movement of the Earth,
The breath of God.
But I only look at them
Because
That's just what is life for me,
Only because--

One is reminded of hoping
When you are lifting your eyelids.
One is reminded of dreams
By the closure of your eyes.
But when my eyes close
And suddenly reopen,
I tell you:
One is reminded...
...of missing you.

© 2010 J.S.P.

Melt Antarctica,
Flood over these islands!
     Take me to her!*

© 2015 J.S.P.

Do not lead this finger...
...to your tongue.

It...excites.*

© 2014 J.S.P.

She is the most attentive person
That I know. So I am winking
At her.

I do not really know
Which star at night
Reminded me of her
Just like before.
Sirius, Rigel, Vega, Aldebaran--
I do not recall a star that--
That does not look back,
She cannot see me anymore,
Just looking, staring at her,
This way. God,
She's so beautiful.

She is the harpist of my life.
She feels more than ever.
She longs for shapes, sizes, and textures.
What a cute baby...
Her hand is fond
Of my hand, memorizing
The intricate lines and features,
Telling my future.
You can tell what she really is.
She smiles despite of.

She is literally wind, monsoon,
Literal dark and light,
A soul, a window.
She is literally blind.
She is literally love.

She is the most attentive love
That I know.*

© 2014 J.S.P.

If only you revealed yourself to me
As the flower that never blooms,
But rather, imploding,
Enriching all the sweetness,
The alchemy, the brewing of perfume,

Then, this triangle of stars, the sun,
This colors of freedom, this hospitable country
Would mean nothing in my mind,
All in bitter vain,

Life would soon not fascinate me
Because the fear or thrill of death
Would no longer be breathtaking,

I will circle all over the Earth as your feet,
And as the road you will be taking,
Because I would need to watch you,
And love you, and be you,
And be for you, for forever.

So, I have to steal the rays for you.
I have to bring light at your footsteps,
At night, the grace of dew, short rains
In the afternoon, and I have to be the reason,
The only reason, that you open up
To the World.

Not like this, my love,
Not like this, where you,
Rising, would show yourself
As great fragilities,
As fireworks
Shared by all,

For Life, then, will matter,
Time,
And so is Death.*

© 2010 J.S.P.

Get me a dictionary.
Poetry
     Is sorcery to me
          Sometimes.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

Inside a department store,
Busy day, busy people,
Second floor, sound of floor, sound of leather,
And at the corner, a section
Full of picture frames.
O how we ache
For the shape of rectangle,
Then we start to count the places,
The faces,
As we pose ourselves
The question.

     How do you rid yourself
           Of memories?*

© 2015 J.S.P.

The textures of a star as with her flesh
Are not those that seep nor soften
That they grace the hands divine
With the airiest of moistures or the fluidity
Of fire. It is far from that.

All smoothness that I know I felt
And are all too palpable.
Now I abstain from such,
     From such nakedness.

Not the papaya, the apples, the grapes of La Union,
Nor the watermelon kind of touch
But of the moon attenuated, the pierce
Of the narrow light or the folding abaniko,
Could unravel me towards the discovery
Of wild fragilities, little by little, all too tender,
With its river, and its regions forbidden
     And its sections.

I circumnavigate my passions
Towards hers.
     I shiver.

I have yet to measure a feather,
Her waist,
     With my lips.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

Girl, naked,
In an orange vest,
Sinking ships and hearts.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

This is all, everything,
Our love—
     A string...
          ...of ellipses.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

Gladly, surrendering,
     Stiff and still,
Lying, in this night of nights
Burning so proudly in my being,
     This righteous scald,
A firebird pecking, dismantling,
     Piecing into ecstasies and art
My cold, cold heart,
For you are here, near, tickling
Caressing    
     My unassuming hip...

          ...with your eyebrows.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

If someday you would find me,
Destined for another,
That I only kiss
With half the feeling it requires,
Then by that time, you would know
That I have already decided
To go against my patience.

I no longer await
The fulfillment of the heart.
I no longer wish to see a world out-of-place.
I would see as if
I see like you.
I will no longer look at your *******, your hips,
For I would only look at *******, and hips.
Your eyes-- just eyes
That I would stare at still.
And I would secretly want you
Like classical music.
I would secretly want to touch
Your moony left earlobe.

I am destined with such sshh inside of me.
My heart is only wind tonight;
My hands, water.
I struggle for the poem of love,
The leaf it carries towards you.

A cicada is all I can think off your songs;
I have no use for the evening but to listen to.
My soul is not contented, not,
That somewhere two stars are far apart,
As though a male one from his ex-girlfriend.

I have a liking for what I cannot have;
I let you go on purpose.
The black of your hair, the little of your feet,
Hands, slight-fevered,
Rows of lip, rows of thigh-
All of it, gone;
All of it,
Cloud and jasmine.

I let you go because I want you still.
I love what I do not have.
I know my fate.
I love you.
And I set you free.*

© 2014 J.S.P.

Minutes are myths
     Seconds seemed syrupy.

Each time, when we kiss, as smiles
Pave way for us, ever so close,
And the mood is righting all our wrongs,
     Dear, you eat away from Time,

Biting at its ear with a giggle. No wonder,
When Manong Sorbetero passes by,
     And when we hear one shouts Taho,
The passion lives on, stirring from within,
     We will touch with our tongues still,
     Precise, tugging at our words,

Or the sword of approval, sometimes,
Uniting us. In the distance,
There's a jealous light on a staircase
     In the distance, carefully descending.

And the flashes in the sky, how majestic
May they seem, anger in colors
Of leaves and daffodils, are nothing
     But a Man-of-war embarking
          On the deeper seas.*

© 2016 J.S.P.

You blew me, simply, into motion,
Like pinwheel,
     Like fire.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

To write a poem for you
Is to busy one's self in choosing
His favorite toe: Say, a starfish,
A jellyfish. Say, an octopus,
A squid, scribbling in the water,
Listing 'ten reasons why' as
Autobiography.

Look
What you've done to me.*

© 2014 J.S.P.

She kissed me on perfect spaces,
     With stars,
          Into constellations.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

From lovers’ stare to lovers’ glance, we go.
We danced only by taking these ranging steps.
And it was I who was forgotten.

The front door opens and I think of you.
The window is lonely
That it opens and I think of you.
And I think of your goodbye.

The wind bears the voice of you.
The sad night trails it off.
You tread so slowly,
Star by star.
Night by night, I have kissed you
Over and over.

It will always be this one train hurrying itself,
This passenger waiting,
Like they should have to meet,
But then they won’t.

It will have to be a chair,
Unmoved,
And you’d come home early,
Finding your bed.
There, lies the space I left.

And this is me measuring my love:
My love remembers,
It would be the last to die of me.

And in this story, love,
I am the sole stranger.
And I have forgotten you only,
When forgetting allows me so.

© 2011 J.S.P.

Love is after the dead,
And they will soon rise.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

Let's close our eyes
And let it be
     Let true love sleep...

          ...between two dreams.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

Sadness cannot withstand
A godly array
     Of poetry
          Called Love.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

May death do us good,
Before and after
     Our immortality.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

Love is the only struggle
We truly want
     To face.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

As soon as I have left, I have returned,
Such is my fate, as though
A sudden wave recedes
From the shore, the nomadic wind
Brushing your shy cheeks by,
Lifting your hair, glorious,
     In a captivating moment.

No shadow, nor faint light,
Could ever walk with me
Like you do, always. I will roam the Earth
And will not lose you, for a part of you
Is etched, scratched, on melancholic fibers
This heart has. You are,
But a far-off thing I see
     In sleepless nights.

I have limited my words among the crowd.
     I have limited my self
To an “I love you”, day by day, intending
To say it right there and then,
On that soft cloud you are sleeping on,
     Snow angel.

My mouth is not satisfied
From our last kiss, for your laugh
Is for my lips, your lips are,
     Your silence.

I have limited my steps into an island.
     I could never stray from you,
Though you tend to stray from me,
Little by little, word after word,
     Look after look, blink
          After blink,

Pardon me, if I see to it,
That you sit gracefully,
     That I see to it that you are simple
As a white rose, that I deeply feel
That your heart, dear, is across from mine,
That I see to it that my feet
Are across from yours, even that,
     Even just that.

Forgive me,
If I have limited my self
Into a question
     For you to answer.*

© 2017 J.S.P.

O breath-bloomed beast,
O phantom pulse,
O sweeper, swift,
O shadow scars
Of destinies
And designations,
Of heart's desire
And desperation,
And despair,
Downward detours
To despair, the deep Danube
Of departures, I detonate
The dormant dynamite
Of decent death,
Now, seal the sea
Of my seeping soul,
Let alone the love
And sshh the sails
Of sorrow, that I might
Greet her tomorrow,
With a trellis of tears
And a smile.

     A smile.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

You are nowhere to be found
By my side, sweetly,
Perhaps, just for one day,
One night, and one
Dream.

One sweet gesture not for me
Was like a time stopped forever.
One breath- harder than the last.
And they say that jealousy
Is also sweet. I wonder why.

My travel is long and hard,
That even the beauty
Of a female passenger, across,
Feet in front of feet, eyes to sleepy
Eyes, did not bother me, as much
As your giggle bothers me,
Sweetly.

Bread does not nourish me.
My mind has lost its old self
From having thought at times,
I have not eaten with you always.
So what would it be like, as
Your head tilts from there, to here,
To this sad shoulder? What would it
Be like to hold your hand, or
The other, sweetly?
I have hungered for days, beloved.
I like what I do not have.

I have felt the December breeze
Lean unto me, and have not felt your
Arms oftentimes, nor the touch of finger.
I just wish my memories
Has flesh enough, that your forgetting
Has embrace enough, so that
Night by night, I won’t have to dream
Of kiss, kiss, kissing you to sleep,
Over and over.

And yet you will ask,
If I can taste
The littlest of your kiss,
But I'd say yes,
Sweetly.

© 2014 J.S.P.

I think what we are missing out is that love is plain receiving, after all. People are clumsy enough to give it or lose it along the way. It can be sung or tediously written. I may be wrong, but, I think the problem we have with love is with who we want to carry it. We decide what is true and noble with the way it was packaged or presented, thus we hope. And so we pour out what we have, to the extent of our flaws, for the so called authenticity called preference. Then some would chase for love as though it's an adventure. Cookie crumbs are everywhere. There is no end to people who are lost, happily. And so we spend a little more time and energy, and money, tossing all to the ocean as ill-fated bottles for our forgetting, just to bitterly fail at it. Kind of makes me wonder how this *** I know found the love of his life. How did he do that?  Is it really just about ordering the right kind of coffee at the cafe? Or lying under that one auspicious tree? Perhaps, we're just addicted, frustrating ourselves with the idea of love returning. I think people, subconciously, just wanted to build the value of what they already have. We are not contented that there is such a valuable thing on Earth as love we can effortlessly attain. We think of it as an irreproducable need, like it is buried someplace else, in the distance, that one should say it is precious, that one should say it is deserved. We tend to precede the struggle, not knowing this simple truth: The struggle is after love not when a man is after it. We refine what we have, and consequently, we define ourselves. We don't search for love, neither will it find us. It already did. And it has found us fools. Contentment is true key. Love differs from hope, and hope love, and even faith. What we love makes us stranger; love keeps us sane. We tend to conquer love; love is submissive. It remains true to itself, while we are just being...ourselves.


© 2014 J.S.P.

I am an army of jealous marching,
Armed with guitars.
I am no conqueror,
Lording over roses,
But they won’t get near you.
You are a flower of your own.
Your tongue is a ninja.
A kunai is at my throat.
Your *******…is a tactical unit.

I know what I want.
And I am easily angered.
Yes, you would see me
Slaughtering flying-kisses
With a Balisong;
Love letters for you--
Burned, gunpowder.
I would be on the watch
With a machine gun,
Guarding your heart.
And then you would call me
Weird.

You see, my heart has a detonator.
And if it's your wish to see me
Exploding, then let it be,
Yet do not pick the pieces,
The adjectives in the streets--
You will only make a lament
Out of them.

Dear,
I am just a blacksmith of words.
And your love…is a blazing fire.

I am at war
With your senses,
Your attention.
You are mine.*

© 2014 J.S.P.

Our love had no bite,
But it was...
...all...
...tongue.*

© 2014 J.S.P.