Oftentimes, the Universe, even,
Can't make sense
     Out of stars.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

The spaces...
...between...

...between her fingers, toes,
*******...

...the Spaces...*

© 2015 J.S.P.

The Sun had an arrow
That could pierce through the Moon, but,
Withdrawn, disintegrated
     Into stars.

And such is our love—
A close one, a closing one,
A consolation,
An exchange
     Of well-wishes.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

How many stars...
...are out there?

......

Exactly.
     We don't know.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

I unzip your back and expected,
Anticipated
No goose, nor bump.
No loose passion, no pause,
Nor hesitation.
No wings. No angel.
But I look into you,
Your flesh, your curves
And respected your tired soul.
I shall move, slow, and consider
The new moon.
I'll only kiss, kiss, kiss,
Breathe and pressure the old weight
And the tension away.
I bare you and I unravel the illusion,
The galleries, the ateliers
Of mysteries
Or the path to a naked star.
I embrace you
Just as an answer
To a query.
We shall be together, a reverie,
Entwined.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

If so, this earnestness requited be,
That as I move the mountains this, then that,
Your eyes, they turn to me,
To ignore the world for coffee cups,
For clumsy poetry,
And then, to listen closely,

Then consider this poet gone,
A word ahead from you,
A blank page behind,
To sweet, sudden silences—
A kiss, a dot, and are ellipses,

For when I love you,
Because you make me want to,
You wring the clothes of my heart,
The high sun is wet,
And I have nothing left to hide.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

I adore the evening still,
Though not as dark as it used to,
Nor as dark as her eyes.
I guess...the shadow of the world has forgotten me.
And I have no stars for her.

Well, she's asleep now.
Novels, stuck in her favorite pages.
Her bed longs for her sweet weight just as I.
And the weak rain outside was a long-playing record.

The playful wind dodges her hair,
As if to search for new strength
In the coming dawn of her waking.
And my hesitant arms drifted elsewhere with them,
To look for the finest of roses,
So that in the morning she may be reminded
Of the touches I long to give.

Such is the beauty of this night-
Somewhere she's asleep and somehow
I think of her.

And so,
I am writing these verses now,
Before I end them...
...with 'I love her'.

© 2010 J.S.P.

Love itself is immortality,
Panacea, the key
     To true death.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

You made...
...this goldfish...
...smile.

© 2014 J.S.P.

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

© 2015 J.S.P.

Will you let me
Read your scars
     And revise them?*

© 2015 J.S.P.

Where your happiness
Meant being happy--
That is my home--
Anywhere.*

© 2014 J.S.P.

Love is setting
Both your feelings
     And a person free.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

A vulture ate the lion's heart,
The rest, a hyena.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

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

© 2015 J.S.P.

Poetry is my public apology, for loving
     And hurting you too much. I bleed
In adjectives. My scars appear
Randomly at the last pages
Of your old notebooks.
     I am revision. I am bare.
I do not know darkness which can
Shadow me, but this: that you
Can see, somehow, this cosmos,
     This timeless chaos,
The divine, the celestial, guiding you
     To count on, and count
     And count and count
          The stars again.*

© 2016 J.S.P.

There is no way for you to know it, but
For me to say it, write it like I mean it,
A revelation, a firm oath, telling things like:
"My stubborn heart is a parked automobile
     Waiting to be towed away by you."

Because the word "Wait" can be deceiving.
To lie at our Homeland beach in the summer
Of 2017 could mean patience or indulgence.
To fall in line on a counter could mean
     Paying or just plain getting.
And to sit at a bus stop could mean
     Going home or leaving things behind.

And so this pen tries and tries and tries
And (because King Jehoash stopped short)
     Tries and tries and tries some more
To be a decent bouquet of flowers
Or an acoustic cover of a love song
Or a bag of truffles I never once tasted,
     Though you don't even notice.

Dearest, I'd rather pursue you
With all that I got knowing full well
That I can possibly fail than to stop short
And spare my self from shame.
I cannot go half-hearted. I'm all in.
     And I'm here to win your heart.

          So help me God.*

© 2017 J.S.P.

Our love was—
Tragedy, somewhere,
     In Edvard Munch's
          The Scream.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

This better be love for you, a kiss,
A stranded sail you could believe in
     At the far-end of the shore.

I await in the distance as though
To throw pebbles to your window.
Steadfastly, I would wait for signs
That should soon come
     Or might never come.

Dear, I sing winds away to your hair,
And as fingers, to pinch
     Those doughy cheeks.
I am making this
     Most obvious.

Still, if you would take these lightly,
Find it strange that you matter most to me,
     Then pluck among the petals,
Pluck among the hyacinths around you,
     And hear me say: "He loves you",
     As I always say, because I want to.

So this is love,
     Love that can't be measured,
Love that is not bounded
By time, nor distance, unfailing,
     Like new hope,

Like two roses
     Blossoming further
Into full-grown butterflies
That are to meet
     In this lifetime
          Or the next.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

Play with her,
All of her,
Her,
Except her heart.*

© 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.

It started off as though to say:
I love you.

But then I'm learning, and adapting,
And deceiving, and becoming,
And beginning...
...to be bad at it.

What a strange feeling!*

© 2014 J.S.P.

It is when I remember your smile
That I remember to smile.
Not smiling outwardly,
But having that hope
Of days brighter,
Now that you have come my way.

I have come a long way from sad
To not-sad, only to be drifted here,
Seeing you,
Once,
And then not having to see you again,
But still end up happy,
And definitely
Wanting to be happier.

It is when your lips part and un-part;
It is when your eyes blink and un-blink,
That a man focuses
And be out-of-focus at the same time.
I have forgotten to pay my fare.
I have forgotten to get your number.

It is when a man writes this thing down
Right away, impulsive.
It is when a poem is not as beautiful
As to whom it is pertained to.
It is when a man writes something down
On a receipt.

I better keep a frown ready,
When I am down,
That I may be reminded
Of that gift you have.
And then I’d smile.

This is when a man makes you matter.
This is when a smile is both inside and out.
This is when you smile me out of lonely.
This is when you smile me in
To the very Word of God.

And now
This one smile
Has two smiles
To smile about.

Now I go,
Straightforward,
Saying:
You had…
…the sweetest smile.

© 2012 J.S.P.

She alone will understand
Why the word star in my poetry
     Will never be well put,
Why the colors and the setting change,
And how her name
Does not ring the same,
She alone, where we, she
     Alone.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

You flirt with me, not my feelings.
My heart knows what it practice full well.
It deceives all including itself—
An ocean, a serpent, a sly moon.

You flirt with me, I think, and my body says so.
My hormones, bubbling to the brim.
I pull your waist and not your hand, your curved
Waist, and you should notice that.

My love does not go where the body goes,
It is spirit. And should you open yours
To me, we will know what it is
To be one, to be omitted to the known world.

If my hands camp over your body,
Know, that it is by our doing,
And it tears my being into pieces,
Exposing itself to a great misery—

Parts of it, in agony, in ecstasy,
Sleeping by the supple, and the subtlety,
Burning with the shadows, weeping
Bitterly over losing me.

But when I love, love, I use my soul,
The stars will attest to that.
If I lie, I lie with the world,
And if I should, it would be poetry,
It would be true.

So wait for me, for I love you.
And I am coming for you,
So wait for me.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

Shelter your frailty into the open.
Protect it from your lungs, your soul, your *******,
Your curved bones and apprehensions.
I say release and decompress.
Forsake the dangers in your chest
     And love me.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

How I've longed
To kiss your heartbeats
     Into the open...*

© 2015 J.S.P.

I do not intend to withdraw and abstain,
And succumb to the pitiful state of complacency,
What I never own, I decided,
I must bestow, freely,
     Unto you.
I shall not shy an ounce of energy away
From its full-blown capacities or capabilities
     Of grand intensities.
If I have to stay, then I shall stay,
And stay with you, driven by infinities.
     There is no other way.
I shall not ebb and flow
To this limiting experience,
This dire existence. I shall love
     And love you bravely, purely.
This is my course, my dictum, my curse:
Each star is love and the threshold
     Is the Universe.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

What is with those eyes, that
I'm impoverished into Ten w...*

© 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.

...
...
...
...
...
...
!!!
...
...
...ever,
Ever,
Ever,
And...
.­..ever.

© 2014 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.

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.

Stay...
...like an origami would.

© 2014 J.S.P.

You are this certain factor
     In withdrawn I love you-s,
A constant, nonpareil kick in my blood,
My veins, knowing full well
These distentions, the holy perfusion,
A cardiomegaly which ever so sweeten
     Like a plump fruit.

You accentuate all the divinities
I long longed for, slowly,
     Infused within me.

Now this is love,
And love is nothing else...
     ...but you, but God.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

If love is blind,
Then memories serve
As its blindfolds.

© 2014 J.S.P.

The Sun is not allegiant to the fire.
The grass crown the earth before your feet,
Trees stretch their long hands like those
Of a drowning man's, and the sand shines,
Revealing itself, like attenuated stars,
Like eyes, a lot like eyes intoxicated
     By an eager love.

See, I adore...
     ...your chaos.

I don't believe in storms
Rid of miracles, nor lies
     Of truth.
    
I will make you love you.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

The hotel balcony is the highest
That I could get, just as lying down
On the greener grass in Luneta Park
Is the lowest that I could ever be,
All because she is with me,
All because my hand fits, feels just
Right about her hand, and all because
All the warmest stars kept on
Staring back at us, inspired.
We are the farthest satellite
That they could ever find.*

© 2014 J.S.P.