Peace, make way to me.
I empty me
     Of poetry.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

...into roots...
...of our love.

© 2014 J.S.P.

Only accept what you cannot give.
Only expect what you can't receive.
Love is kind and marvelous. Believe.
You made me believe, love.
You made me. We need not
Answer why-s.

The past sorted out the stars tonight.
The same auspicious stars will arrange
The moments for tomorrow.
The same boat of time will be
Old enough for fireflies and
Crescent moons, somewhere,
On a majestic river in Bohol.

This spoon, this fork, this red
Straw on clear, perspiring glass of
Red tea, this ill-fated receipt,
The wooden tables and chairs
With uneven leg-lengths,
Those couples over there,
The lamps, the crew, the ambiance,
The long line at counter number 3,
The clock, that classic clock,
Especially, knows that--
That I love you. I love you,
Because you showed me how.*

© 2014 J.S.P.

''And as tomorrows move forward,
yesterdays...are uncertain.'', he said.

''But our love...is yesterday.'', she said.
''It never ends.''*

© 2014 J.S.P.

Love’s not simple, God knows it’s not.
If it is simple then it is not love.
But to make it simple, to make it seem simple,
I am sending it out to you, word for word,
Line to line, poem after poem.

I am handing it out to you
Like a million dollar contract.
I am making you feel it, touch after touch,
One halted-touch to the next,
Sadness and happiness.

So forgive me, if I burden you
With all love’s complexities.
Forgive me, if I am heaping it
At your feet, all this confusion.

My heart is only boat tonight,
And you have every right
To own the ocean.
My mind is only wind tonight,
Yours is a closed window.
Our hands were the shiest couple,
And our elbows were French-kissing
For quite some time now.
So I have a liking
For what I cannot have.
I think it is quite clear.

Don’t pull me in.
Don’t push me away.
Don’t tire yourself.
Open the door
Or just have it closed.
But please forgive me,
If I knock at your door
Forever, for I love you,
And I love you, simply,
With all its complexities.

I am offering you
A key to an opened door-
My heart.
Use it well.

Forgive me, dear,
But I love you,
And it is
That simple.

© 2011 J.S.P.

Blow...
...
...
...
...
...the dice of Love.

© 2014 J.S.P.

Cross those arms, love...
Cup, uncover,
Surrender,
What is human of you
To wow me.

I like...
...knowing you...more.*

© 2014 J.S.P.

The vividest viridian, the variety,
An orange vinaigrette,
     Vexes her.*

© 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

I could lie, and lie hard, about looking,
And looking hard for the perfect blue,
A certain force of blue that castles
The white sand beaches of the South,
Of the Visayas region, somewhere
In your eyes, beloved, while they only echo
The whisper of that brown coffee blend
You infinitely adore, or that proud tan missing,
Always missing out on a red bikini.
But my heart can't nor simply can't.
There's this something about my lineage
That resonates within me, that my soul, wet,
Would always want to travel back
Like a driftwood drifting back.

I do not demand the burn nor the fire.
I am completely fine in smoke, shadowing you,
Shadowing me and the scars,
Making love, perpendicular,
Out of a night perpetual, and postpone sleep
Over our mutual moon beaming.
There is none left for silence, but us,
Only our lives. (Listen.)

I can't help but love that eloquence,
Your tenderness, a roof
Out of your hands. Your comfort
Is where I rest and wake up to.
Say something, anything, for it speaks,
And is pleasure, a poetic treasure,
A novel or a story. I love the way
You nag. Be candid for me,
And especially for you.

I would enormously love to burst
In a quiet laughter, simply because someone
Made me so with a crafty subtlety,
In me, from the inside out.
I would trade my poems for a woman like that,
Like you, and I would love a kiss,
A kiss for all of that.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

These sunken faces
In frolicking water
Cannot bring her back.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

Nice,
Slick,
Steady,
Unbuttoning...

She makes
Naughty
Things
So
Forgivable.*

© 2014 J.S.P.

The fissure in the skies
(yours or mine)
Are not of distance, nor time,
But of our hearts' disbelief
Of these satellites,
Of these static, static stars,
From ever colliding,
     From ever entwining.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

My poems attest
That I lived
     As I
          For them.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

Believe me, pal.
When she says zip,
It means unzip.*

© 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.

I vow to love you with my every,
     Every now and then.
So every now and then, I might hurt you,
For great chances had their risky clause,
And so your soul will wash your cheek,
Your nose red from having pinched by me,
     Every now and then.

So every now and then,
Every now and then, you will cry, weep,
And tears will start to dig through my clothes,
But remember from where they fall,
For those are what I fell for.

     Even now. Even then.

© 2015 J.S.P.

Every time you coast the ridges of my ribs,
With the moist of tongue or the fingertip,
Every time with your lips, technics, a precision,
And crows, and ravens, and dark lipstick,
     Everywhere. Every time,
     Your body desensitizes
          My all.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

As kisses traipsed like ants
On her neck,
     Her collarbone...*

© 2015 J.S.P.

The last...
...creak...
...of swings.

© 2014 J.S.P.

Mount me by the belly...
...and take a stolen shot.*

© 2014 J.S.P.

There were two snow globes in two glass houses,
Two ballet dancers in a studio,
Two butterflies that have gone back to the chrysalises,
And two wishes coming true,
    As her soul, gradually, peers through.
And I tell her,
It is a Universe outside as it is within.
I lead her eyes to a close
     With a kiss.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

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

          ...between two dreams.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

Brea-
Fru- -sts.
      -its
    .
        .
     .
    E
      K
      O
    M
     S

I was once...
...a pile...of leaves.

© 2014 J.S.P.

Are those who does not hope,
Does not, also, love?*

© 2015 J.S.P.

Not even the vein
On her ringfinger
Reached
Her heart.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

You giggle for the simplest thought
Of pickup lines. Next to you, feeling
Like I won, feeling like I’m new, is to feel
That I have lost the sadness somewhere,
As we fearlessly fall, further, entwined,
My baggage, unfurling like a parachute.

You came for my love
That I would love to love you with,
A romance rid of readjustments.
It is like, each day, all I would want
To believe-in is that, when I feel like
Putting my best foot forward,
I must do otherwise, act stupid, for there is
Nothing sweeter than a woman’s laughter.
There is nothing sweeter
Than your ever-laughter.

And now, with so much pent-up
Energy, and synergy, my soul, sweetly
Soul-touched by your eyes,
I feel like kissing you, over and over,
For showing too much teeth,
And tongue, and chin, those paired
Provocateurs on your cheeks,
I religiously swoon over,
All calling out to me.

So now, I advance, move forward,
Braving forth to the heavens,
Your humbling haven,
For your smile is for my lips,
Your lips are, your laugh is.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

I wonder if goodbye will come,
If I say hello as often as I could.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

Humming
Humbly.

Hopeful.

Heading
Home.*

© 2013 J.S.P.

Despite the moon, the mood
     And stars on foreign skyline,
From having seen the Earth, this world, teeming
With life, with breath, and breath Almighty,
     And spirit in things which are perceived,
Still, I feel a deep longing, a chasm,
The feeling of missing, the want
     For reliving a lot of things,

Like the beaches on the South,
Sagada, Batanes, the tarsier,
The reefs, and the mangroves,
Our fellow Filipinos eating Adobo
And the so-soft fluffiness of rice,
In celebration of our heritage,
     Our famed resiliency,

I am a tourist all my life,
I remind my self,
     Until I found you,

For they are all yours, all finest things.
     You are the islands of our country,
And all these call me
As though to take me to you,
As though you were calling out to me
     For an embrace.*

© 2015 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.

The sunny sorcery
Over silly silverbeets in Sicily,
     And You.*

© 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.

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.

Can't lick your elbow,
Can you?
     I can*, said she.

© 2015 J.S.P.

Just like people,
A book without a spine
Are just sheets,
Just...sheets.

     Just like people...*

© 2015 J.S.P.

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

© 2015 J.S.P.

Free your castles to the sky.
Hold a hand
Other than yours
And speak
Like you never met me,
As I go from passing glance
To stare.

Let January be itself
And us
The month to follow
Or months
If your heart seemed willing:

For I am not your friend
Or a stranger
That wanted to be.
I'm just in love,
And in love
I breathe anew.

So search now
As if you haven't found me,
But as for me,
I've found my heart

© 2010 J.S.P.

Our love was a tragedy,
A bridge, a gap, a separation,
A masterpiece, somewhere,
     In Edvard Munch's The Scream
An unknown affair, a farewell
     With very few witnesses.

          Nothing can save us.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

You are feathered butterfly
Armed with mimosas,
Perfumed to perfection,
Dressed delicately, purely, with only
The most diaphanous of colours,
Of your simplistic silhouettes
And your ever-glow, the peppery yellow,
And gold, and emerald and silver.
You govern my little empire.

I come like a deer bowed before you
In integrity,
For you are royalty,
A gift of nature.
You wear the therapeutic tiara,
The morning of mornings, my rest,
My hope, my sweet.
You are the princess and the panacea,
The kiss I long longed for,
And I'm your squire,
Your only,
Only dreaming.*

© 2015 J.S.P.