Please let me touch...
...your...*

© 2014 J.S.P.

I am witnessing
The great mauve the sky is,
The same one, as she divested
Closures from all four winds,
Cutting her hair off,
Depriving her nape of
Tickles, my cold, cold fingers,
But what can I say,
That was the afternoon
Of afternoons.

Here’s to the kiss of blue
And fire, of this very life and the next
(whatever that means).
All the cooing never got to me,
The nth star did not. So frown,
Laugh at me, but here’s what I think,

Love is not walking, nor talking, not even falling.
Love is not stop, nor go, not even wait.
Love is not probable, nor improbable,
     It is certain.
Love is not right, nor wrong,
     It is true.
Love is all, not us, not me, not even her, but
     How I love her, all of her, with all of me
Having her, us, even if
     I just have us now.

This is all,
That I can love (and I will love, I did),
     And I chose loving her,
     Choosing to,
           Even now.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

With all mirth,
With all despair,
I shall leave you
My last verses.

It's in my sweetest intent
That I would share this when I die,
When I'm as open as I could over be,
When death itself is no longer death
But true love.

When I lay, when I'm alone,
When high-noon calls for me,
And in an instant, a bird
Sends the shade with its wings,

I do not know if you're the Sun.
I do not know if it's your summer kiss.
I do not know if you are someone
Who truly cares for me.

Now, I'm freeing my mind
From all the metaphors
That are known to me,
Simply because I do not know,
Hardly, because—
Because I wanted to say this
Plainly:

That I love you
And always will...
...forever...

          ...since forever.

© 2015 J.S.P.

Jesse, I am already tiptoeing
With my tap shoes on.

Here is your 'i love you' poem:

''I love you.''*

© 2015 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.

Someday, stars will plummet
Like banished beings,
     As we love.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

Without a coin,
Without even wishing,
The wealth of this well
Has been thrown back at me.
     Me.

          Because you love me.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

I am wind, sound.
I am echo.
I am...avalanche.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

The rain will fall anyway...

Your heart will beat...
...anyway.

Keep crying.
You are only hurting,
Because True Love...
...is selfless.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

She fell for me, too slow,
As the fabric was, off her bed,
     Slithering,
An hour late for all night long,
Few seconds close to dreaming,
The moon's crippling crescent,
The sleight, the curves of these waters,
     All pronations that are for me,
     Were for me, and mine only, only
That everything smells like fresh pajamas,
Only that this time, for a very long time,
I am waiting, and it sounded
     Like true love.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

True lions ruling their pride.*

© 2016 J.S.P.

My heart was
An empty
Nudist beach
Before I met you,
But now
You are there,
We are there.
     And finally
          Are...*

© 2015 J.S.P.

But it is when I kiss you
That I rush the poem of love,

And the righteous time delays
Its clockwork move,

And all the writers, old and new,
Write to agree with me.

Only when I kiss you...

When you begin...
     ...to kiss me back.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

The side of her neck...
Her *****...
The ribs...
...below.

O stars,
Godspeed to me.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

Fill hearts with upright fireflies,
And shadows
     Will surround them.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

Love...

It felt like beautiful cancer,
Said the cancer survivor.*

© 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.

She kisses
Old kisses away
Much better
Than the last.*

© 2014 J.S.P.

My words wade through absences,
Memories,
     Into sentences
           Into poetry.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

A boastful poet sees a baby
     In a high chair.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

May you not weep like
Flowers of the morning.
May you be glad like
One rare evening
Accepting
All the loneliness in me,
Which no static star
Has ever carried,
Wishing, still,
For true love.

I only ask...
...to be remembered.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

Make for me the day
That I'd remember you,
I will tread on the Earth you love.
I'll blame no cloud nor season.
I will be staring at the leaning grasses
Of the Archipelago. I will be calm.

Make me not turn to you,
If you are to approach me
From behind, surprisingly,
Locking your tiny hands on my eyes,
Asking me of who you are,
Because in that moment,
That moment only,
Will I truly dream.
And seeing you
Might make me want to kiss you.

Do it so, stealthily, then
Walk away from me. Run. Leave me.
Send off your goodbye, as though
It was your loving touch
That I may live on
Like an ill-fated Sun,
Missing, always missing,
Its cold half,

As I untiringly wander,
Wonder, remember,
Answer
Why my feet
Can't be across from yours.*

© 2011 J.S.P.

We are talking about years,
Endeavors, dreams, moments.
A day has enough problems on its own,
     And you are stronger than
          You will ever think you are.

These scars, these ceremonial
Scars you bear, imprints
Eternally embedded,
     Proudly present to you
          The true challenge of the heart.

2017, in the cold, calm winter, Germany,
January, prematurely, you will open
What you fought so hard for just to close
     In hope of letting some healing in
          And fiercely love again.

You will make space, bridges,
Towers, arrange your stars,
Set your cardboard, pick wild flowers,
Eat one cup of rice instead of two,
Do some sit-ups, and let yourself wait
     And wait and wait
          For her to get here.

Here, in the middle,
In the very scar you reopen.
     There.

Happy New Year.*

© 2017 J.S.P.

Time was a pure drop of infinity
From her eye. Time.
When it moved, everything else did.
Music reached me. My soul—
Resurfaced. Come the flesh.
Come the shadow.
Her smile was light.
I was blood pouring over.
I was noticeably inlove.

Time. The Grandfather's Clock.
The pendulum of my heart. Time.
What a cruel alarm!
What vast silence! Time.
I stopped living before, for once,
I know, because—
Because pain stopped chasing me. I
Know, because I'm existing now,
For it has finally caught me.
My heart—hanging
Like an old dreamcatcher.
And one can only whistle hard
Just to stop the crying.

Here's a night like no other:
The cool fire of the Universe
Made its way into me, a certain
Cold I haved likened my soul into.
I miss her more than I remember her,
Like they are two opposite things.
The stars would weep stars.
The moon shapeshifts. The cicadas—
Courting one another.
And I miss her.

Oh, if darkness could only blur
The things that I know
And will never know!

I would give everything to the Sun,
If only it could give back the orbits
The revolutions of the World, hoping
Against all hopes, just to be with her.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

If love's really blind,
     I hope the cupid won't miss.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

The dichotomy, the desire of both—
To relive
     And to forget.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

You are one-thing short
Of Everything...

You do not love me.

© 2010 J.S.P.

As if I were to cross the street
To be beside you, I am,
Without a second thought,
Writing for you, a poem, a leaf of it
From the branch of the tree
Of the dirt of the Earth
     This skyline loved.
You are as heaven
As the heaven I am believing-in.
     Believe me.
I shall wait no longer.
I would dare not live with regret
And sit by an old park bench
     Alone, saying,
You are the one whom should I eat
     This sandwich with.
So I love you.
     I say I love you.

          There.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

Red leaves land
From a treehouse, through the wind,
     For this whisper,
While the earth buoys the waters,
     And the waters—stars,
As we lip all silence that there is,
     Together.
    
          This is how we kiss.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

The rabbit took the lead again
And never
     Looked back...*

© 2015 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.

"I keep your letters", she said,
"Somewhere, between fresh...
...*******."*

© 2014 J.S.P.

Free your butterflies with a kiss,
They might love before we do.
I do not wish to see a heart
Hold feasts for their young,
Nor lungs, heavy with cocoons.
And so, let go. I say,
We tend a garden here, together,
On our mouths, our lips,
And plant without a seed.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

Love...
...is shorter...
...than Haikus.

© 2014 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.

Funny,
It is when we find love
That we start to search for it.

Funny,
Some say that love is blind
Yet, it always seems to find us.

Funny,
You’ve always been with me,
And it is only now that I’ve found you.

Seriously,
I have now found
True love.

© 2010 J.S.P.

The science of stars
Fell deeper
     Within her heart's religion.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

But now, I am seeing love
In a different light,
     And so I speak of love
     With a different dark.*

© 2014 J.S.P.

...dizzy guys...
...with pet names.

© 2014 J.S.P.

Pelvis withdraws.

The tongue...
...wins.

© 2014 J.S.P.

Without you, without the flirty melancholy,
     Without your memory, without love poetry,
Which from leaf to leaf sets off
Into yellow crisps, and sad crimson,
     Congregating somewhere,
Crackling at every strut, a pixie,
     Graceful, treading on,

I will, I would seem as though the root,
Which, in vain, motions its longing,
Long arm, no hand, nor palm,
     A lone finger, saying that I miss you,
No wind to disintegrate, no lungs,
A heart, meditative of emptiness,
     Dreaming of carpentry.

The dormant doormat of yours,
Even that, could not welcome me,
     Without you.

Without you, it is only you
That moves, not me,
     Not even time.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

Should a star learn to hurt another
     Without hurting itself,
As I, for one, am also capable,
Know, that to begin with, before the impact
Or little lightyears back,
We were not from different constellations.
We are still the same,
     Portenting love.*

© 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.