I.
Time passes, another
batch of refugees and migrants. Cities turn into
new houses of gambling and vicious cycles.
Some say only machines can speak clearly
and most humans have lost what they have earned
throughout all this time, just right on schedule.

To own our language,
and the relationships it sets into motion,
we learn painfully, repeatedly like sunrise
and sunsets.
Claiming our own spaces and demons
hidden in our conveniences and reflex routines,
and learning the tricks that has kept peoples
from fully healing from broken promises
and betrayals throughout time.

We own up to our language and its demons
every day and night that we toss and turn
into something feasible, edible, livable.


II.
Iba ibang uri ng digma.
duguang kasaysayang binabaong buhay
binubura ang lakas at memorya tulad ng siyudad
ng Songdo sa South Korea na ang ibig sabihin
ay "city with no memory".

Ito din ang isa sa mga modelo para sa New Clark City
na tinatayo sa Luzon. Sa dalawahang mga pamamaraan
ng mga naghahari-harian, nakikibaka ang anakpawis,
nakikibaka ang kamalayan ng pagpapasya at pagwasto
sa mga pagkakamali, na paulit-ulit na sinusubukang
patayin sa iba ibang mukha.

Mula pa sa panahon ng mga lolo at lola noong 1940s
hanggang ngayon, patuloy ang mga pag-eexperimento nila at paggamit ng panlilinlang  at dahas, sa ngalan ng kalusugan, edukasyon at batas, upang ipain ang buhay sarili, lasunin ang lupang kinakain ang sarili. Kung hindi tayo mag-aaral at mag-iingat din, tayo mismo ang papatay sa mga sinisimulan. #

Dito sa Lungsod ng mga siksikang tren
sa umaga at sa gabi ng paglubog sa mga makinarya,
Ang sentro ng  pabrikang papel at usok, na buong bilis
sa inaliping katapatan at tapang
ay naninirahan palagi sa piling
ng mga madaming mga ipis at daga.

May nalilimutan na mahalaga tungkol
Sa tahimik na hele ng mga flourescent na ilaw, kaalwanan
ng mga matatayog na pangako ng condo't bagong mga kainan, magagarang mga pabuya.
Mga panibagong mga tagisan ng lakas
sa mga makabagong Coliseum ng Roma,
sa bawat amoy ng dugo at bagong silang.

May tipo ng sukal na wala sa mga gubat, at tunog ng mga
malalakas na putok ng baril na wala sa digmaan.
Tila sa kahit anong panahon, mag-alsa man mismo ang Kalikasan
at magpadala ng Tsunami,
magpalindol at magpaputok ng bulkan
sa panahon ng kakaibang asul at pula na buwan
sa pagkakabuwal ng bagong bilang
ng mga magsasakang sa mga mass-suicide
mula India, Korea, at Pilipinas dahil sa di-pantay
na mga batas kalakalan:

Ipadala man ng mga makata't hukbong
gerilya ang kanilang pinakamatikas at
pinakamatatapat na mga bilang sa mga pagsubok
ng panibagong mga pag-aaral at pagsasapraktika,
maaaring Puting Elepante din ang
hindi sasapat ang kabayaran para sa mga utang
na dapat matagal nang nabura at naigpawan.

Mula sa lakas at pwersa hindi lang ng mga diyos
ng mga sari-saring pampulitikang mga pormasyong nagdidirehe
sa mga kilos ng mga taong kapit na sa patalim,
Kung hindi mula din sa lakas ng mga nangahas mabuhay
at lumikha ng mga paraan para makapagpatuloy na
makapagaral ng sariling pagkamulat:

Ang kaaway na papel na salapi o papel na tigre
ay nilikha din ng tao para din lamang
maunawaan ang mga sariling kahinaan,
mamulat sa mga repleksyon ng mga nagbabagong
sarili sa gitna ng unos, upang matiyak ang yapak at
mabuo ang mga hanay at kahandaan ng mga
unang hawan, at huling mga walis.
Ang mga kalabisan ay para lamang mapatingkad
ang kahinaang dala ng kasaysayang nagluwal,
ang kawalan ng pagpapahalaga sa binubuhay na mga palitan.#

By now,the seed varieties of the world,  
may have been attacked beyond recovery
by wars of pretense and relapses.
We are still learning
how to handle it properly.
We tend to say.

Some will talk and plan over dinner parties,
over TV or Radio. Most will leave
it behind like another corpse
of lessons thrown to the gutter,
like a dead *** on another Sunset Boulevard.

Iraq's seed banks
we blew up in the 2000s.
In various places in Asia
and the Middle East, places of life and cultured
varieties gone in an instant.
Echoing our imprisoned
ignorance and drives for more instant goods and services.

Indian farmers have committed mass suicides after
their god Hanuman was used by a chemical giant
to sell poison seeds and renewed
bondages of indebtedness.

One question a stranger asked a group of writers on tour
was not what their poetry or books were about,
nor why they wrote it, but how writing may and
may not be helping as we make decisions and solve problems now?

Once agricultural lands turn into new promises
of commercial buildings. Cities of inaccessible towers and
abandoned malls in America, Spain, China, and Russia
feeds us back our own echo.

Like converted uses of lands, our humanity
is converted into inanimate collections and status
symbols of some players or parties. As we face
our continuing struggle between
our oppressor-selves and our genuine roots.

Despite the perversions,
inside vicious habits of waste
where we glorify promises of war and efficiencies,
we continue to be entrusted with the ongoing lessons:
Rarely do surviving generations through famine, war and diseases,  
throw away means to live, or destroy any kind of seed.

Every day we wake to the ruins and remains of
Our living poetry, word spaces, hours, exchanges,
gains and losses, stopping and going. This time,
not just for fires of anguish or unnecessary losses,
but for each other's midnight lamps.#

I am half-Chinese and a half Filipino-Spanish.
I have only learnt to speak Filipino my whole life.

The best advises I have received is that there is no right or wrong,
that labels does not always help.
That no matter what, I should just go
and "Live my life", or "Sing in Full Voice, Until Then".

Attentive to a fault to the work or person at hand.
Because of routine and living demands, sometimes I
only pay attention to what is available or given to me.

Like the quest for the Spices of the East, I could no longer live the same way when the time came. I had to learn preservation and other flavors.

In a Asian Food Show, someone shares
How some later generation Chinese had to study their own native language in secret between 1966 to 1998.  
Stories of how their migrant or refugee heritage have made them scapegoats of many local tensions.
And varieties of words and ingredients also native to Chinese and later generations that lived offshore.

Many of us now in the thrash of our collective songs
towards healing and full living as humanity, continuing
refugees and wanderers in our own ways.

Where we see our indigenous-selves and our oppressor-selves,
is not as difficult as we are usually made to,
in a world of artificial
demands and surpluses.

One old song gently reminds me
in many languages singing,
as another bowl of handmade noodles
breaks open into countless random pieces:

We are only passing through earth.
Made to experience, and let go of our fears
and limitations.To gather our remains so that
it is inanimate buildings and objects that are used
by the living instead, and nothing is left behind.
To not leave a trace. To learn how to love.#

We create our own stories,
our own gods and reshape our own peoples
We also create our own demons and enemies.

An old retired fighter once said to a traveler,
"we learn not run from the enemy, but go towards them."
In learning, his new pupil destroyed his heart
and his lovers. And them, destroyed their own in turn.
The traveler sits with piles of stories of all kinds now,
from all over the world, in a library shelf
like a white elephant of impotent rage in his room.

For decades the populations of the world
have been subject of mass experimentation by its overseers.

In other stories, a people's Creator has gone mad
working for his human creations
which required using toxic chemicals to turn
their raw materials into life, while working to
reveal our own gift of growth from attachments
and into self-knowledge, compassion.

For decades also, populations of the world
are kept apart from their own full living potential
not because of some evil or mad Creator
or some insanely depicted required competition towards
reproduction or respect.

Rather, because we continue to face our tasks
through our mistakes and failures, knowing
our deadly blows from through those we reject,
shame and escape from, as our teachers of compassion
if not more than those that we gravitate to
or already belong and accept as our own.

Thus continues perhaps the stories of people's
potentials outside of their fear's many
perverted versions. #

Metal bones dropped over another
clashing sounds across the night of smoky denials
in a city of thieves, paupers and scholars.

Worn down and without memory, someone's father
brushes off the dust of a young person's tombstone.
The oblivious student bends over information
into another alarm bell of insatiable chases.

Huddled in a street corner
like sprites of another dark jungle,
workers in uniform and hard hats share
stories and spare time as if nothing else matters
but this fading incomplete point in time.

Overhead looms the impending bright dangers
and dim warnings being built
From metals and soil into another giant promise
trying to excuse itself as it rips through
the city lungs, calmly abiding
and seeming always ready to die or live through.

Clothes of all kinds
on the sidewalks
sold for crazy cheap prices.

Kids and old people alike
scramble fast towards through mountains
of bargains, this once inaccessible
and highly prized scene of Fashion sense,
separating the haves and the have-nots.

I was born with skin color, names, and belongings
that no longer made sense when the time came
to decide and become.  I ran to meet a friend at a corner
a long time ago when the Ukay surplus clothing stores
were just starting out.

He carried a plastic of hiking boots
and a pair of stylish jeans. Laughing and smiling
at the exchanges. A pair of running shoes
and a jacket that was already too big for a woman.

Like a character hoarding advises like jewelry
from a story like Fantastic Beasts, what do you think
what are the best life advises you have hoarded so far?

Sharing some of mine before they get stuck
in another schedule in the slaughterhouse inventory:
"Wisest is he that knows he does not know"
"Just live your life"
"Sing in Full Voice, Until Then"
"What are you doing here?"
"What is your plan?"
"Eat first"

Do not worry we have better villains
and heroes now than long time ago, I told my brother.
In turn, he made a song on a ukelele
after his little one cried and hid away the broken
CD collection of her brother. They called it together, the
"Last Supper Constellations".
His child said, "If there was a Creator. I would like to think He or She, like you or mama, would be kind. Would not that be swell?"

My brother shared with us one advise from his favorite collection,
"My friend had a family filled with orphans. Even when they could no longer afford to adopt, they continued to adopt children. I did not understand before, but I also did not forget his story." #

Hello, Poetry Incorporated,
how are you now, coming after
the world's 3rd breakdown?
Where do we go from here?

Here beside us now, another gift
after the deathly blows.After children entrusts
us yet again pieces of their lives and deaths to us.

A Japanese animation in the 1970s was banned
somewhere offshore. Not just because
the landowners who banned it was just evil,
Nor because one was "better than the other".

It was forbidden maybe because of many questions 
still haunting us to and fro, beckoning us into
living our lives fully, not because of the light and dark,
but rather despite of it.
Like the dark and beautifully frightening
ocean tides that have capsized whaling ships
and yet have given birth to all our species.

Unlike many other animations,
the banned show did not have crudely offensive content.
It was a story of different people coming together
inside a big machine and operating it as one
as they manifest themselves as the Voltes Five.

Through the thunderstorms and mountains
of an urban jungle. Luna met
his lover. By sunrise,
he has forgotten
her name, and had to go, unknowing she has
dissolved into him a long, long time ago.

"In wisdom, Elohim created the world.
So man may grow in spirit, another
human was made from his rib
and called woman. What was one
was divided into two so they may
know themselves better."

Only in this separation and
stranger distance, their delicate essential
song. Consummated into
the oceans as if for refuge.

As he leaves the building to catch a bus home,
he passes by a newsstand. On a business
section: A Japanese company seeks
to formalize commercial mass Whale
killings for consumption.

So this has been where you were
all this time. Especially the kids
that looked up to you.

In between being forced by your intelligence officers
to beat up your comrades
and then *******,
or else die.

This dark uncharted
neglected geographical treasure:
your breathing heart's chamber.

Looking straight out
what is always here with us
regardless of all our lies and grand
machines of escape.

This is the price you paid
for being able to bring life and sustain it.
Until now, we are still trying to see through
this visual masterpiece: another drug mule caught.

Drugs, sometimes as if the sullen reminder of our collective
human attempt at remembering our real treasures
and how we have lost them: A grandmother has 7 packs taped around her body, like a parasite but also like a baby mammal,
or an omen of something else yet to be remembered
and said out loud.

One day or day one, a friend would always remind me
when sober. We step into understanding ourselves better
or we keep making things to express
unresolved fears and anguish.#

After my child woke up to mountains
turned into poisoned orange fields.
And towers howling empty through
the skeletons of proud and fearful
monsters of the Next Big Racket:

I sat down and knew things will
never be the same again
no matter how much I ate,
or whatever I wore, or where I lived.
We have died a long time ago.

Why I am still here with you is
a question only I can answer.
Everyone else has lost
after the successive attacks on
places where we used to speak freely.

Tomorrow, they say our hearing will no longer
be the same and that our children
will no longer remember us. I would have loved
to sharpen you another blade or shine another
weapon for your next trip, but there is a wider net
that has stolen my hands and the lamps
which I use to work through the Night.

I know you struggle every day and we barely
remember each other's faces, doing as we are told.
I spend time sitting down with my wounds, some of which
you blew down on me when you were too high.

One day or day one, you would say when sober.
Others remind us gently still, we were made for this.

Through all this muddy waters and chaotic mix of dung,
blood and sweat. We are lotus flowers, stardust.

In another story, a grown-up has learned to slow dance
with his lover as the world falls apart around them.

Would it be too much
wanting to say hi again and
wondering how you are doing by now.

I had no choice then but
show up under-translated and cold, while
you were sleepless and feverish.
All I heard and saw then are broken ropes,
goodbyes and mockery,
just like the Dan Deacon's When I Was Done Dying
song you loved once.

From the many coffee cups
that tasted like lies even when
you were always with me,
you knew nothing is enough
even when i have always been with you
just the same.

After another day at the artificial public,
a surprising light breeze on a face.
I smile at the way our
absences sometimes show how
friends meet.

Your magnificence,
luminous heart and hands, magnified
without a doubt from me.
Only a strange familiar song,
stars like yours meant to burn through
darkness like mine,
until I may return to quiet unknown.
I catch your stardust and hear you
turn, sleep and uncover yourselves.
Admiring you from a distant exile,
after you are always finished first, and I am
finally burnt, consumed by your presence
ever hungry for itself. Echoing across
a knowing black sky, consequences
and second chances.

Salitang Ingles na ginagamit para sa mamamayang nagbibigay-ingat
at nagbabantay sa mga tumatawid na mga manlalakbay
sa pagitan ng mga mundo.

Habang niyayanig ng mga kontradiksyon, panatiliin
ang sarili, tapusin ang mga paglalakbay ng walang patid,
Hindi dahil walang patlang, kung hindi dahil kabahagi ng pagsuong
maski dilim, patlang, at kawalan.

Patuloy na tumuklas at buuin ang sariling praktika,
hanggang tuluyang matutunan
kung paano tahimik itong pakawalan ng walang pag-iimbot o pagtanggi
sa Lawa na nagbabaga sa pagal ng mga kaluluwang
hindi na makalapag at makapagugat sa ilalim ng lupa,
ngunit hindi rin makauwi sa pinangakong lupa, langit at tubig
na ngayon ay isang lotto ticket, SDO, at mga gawa-gawang karapatan.
Ayon din sa matatanda, hindi ito mababago, at nabubuhay tayo para makidigma at patuloy na tumaya.#

Fiber optic nerves
wires that fill walls, floors and
ceilings of abandoned and new
constructions of residential
and commercial buildings in Luzon,
Detroit, Orlos, and places in Spain and Russia.

Meanwhile intrepid distracted denials
of wireless connectivity, fills the air.
Imagine the number and speed of attachments,
connections, cravings of How are you?
How may I help you today? Is there anything else
you need?

Nature is still the same
Going out of balance, histories and herstories
swept under rug after rug.
This chosen form, inbound
provided with the only blue planet.
Now showing nothing is ever enough,
no matter what has been
already sacrificed in the past
and is being sacrificed at present:
The shifting tides assuring him
of his place while the
stormy dunes of deserts welcoming
her stillness.

Sudden improper cracks, thunder
and rain arrive on the proudest pavement
tonight surrounding the metropolis.
Inconvenient walls and static downpour
over once promising singing symphonic spaces
on coffee tables and hang-outs.

Some weary commuters take shelter
under random roofs, some
thinking of flowers on graves.
Lovers of seasons, recalling silence
and chaos like clandestine letters scattered
among shadows of cities on overdrive,
unheard and unspoken.

Provincial buses can no longer enter the metro.
Romances on the highway,
under duress tonight.
A gift of mad craftsmen
to privileged warrior classes.
Paying debts that have already
been long paid off.

The sun sets into midnight.
Heavy rain in ink black, like a
deafening incoherence from a severed arm
of a body of a messenger sent
through a battlefield. The pavements
exhales humidity,lifting
a veil towards the red clouds.

One morning after interrogations
and permitted rest, a training day warning:
Objects look bigger than they appear.

Gunshot was fired again.
Along with flair and sentiments in fancy frames.

She was told to stand-up again
and He was told to run for his life as far as he can.
He was shot dead after a few feet.
She was let go only to allow trackers
to find the others.

Facing seducing blades and machines
in lines of neon relief, we bury in a hurry
forsaken selves.

She shakes cold under someone's embrace,
wonders about how staying together
may also be just another lie.

Sharpening blades tonight,
Oberon and the Moon covers a skeleton.

By sunrise, the towers are unmanned,
chasing and hide-and-seeks.
A survival meeting that never existed.
A radio singing while someone works and eats.

My mother's blood was spilled
long before I was here. 
Just as she bled forth
like her mother's.

There has always been a price
maybe, for all this turning around
through all his stories I kept
on buying, and cherished.

I barely recognize
the real value
of my own
blood.

Older by a few years, this mast
and compass marked by my past nightmares
and odysseys. Lost and faded into the deep folds
of seafoam, my bitter and sweet
reminder of how to take care
of steering wheels, and sailing cloths flapping
in the wind. Ropes tightened in the high noon
sun, a Sailor's eyes and ears
on a far horizon.

There is a reason why, always
a reason for everything. A stranger's advice
from younger years, greeting
the first waking hours of a Coyote Ugly.
Clumsily, someone somewhere messily greets
self-reliance, loving and letting go.

Another default smoke and mirrors chain
of lists, pennies, trains into
this point in history, why
herstory is buried under
rug after rug, and
her many unborn names.

There is a reason, some always sing.
Why even the most bloodthirsty Roman fears
a simple young man, speaking foolish about
life being turned against itself--poisoning its own children.

Another default zero-sum day for all this young blood,
Icing of Magic Sugar. Yet some would say,
like a warning. There is a reason
for all our civilised education, fast calculations,
our entertaining freedoms.

Our intruders fear children growing up
from the manufactured past, a terrifying beauty
that forces the ego to face its own ragged abyssmal bride-soul:
our nuts and bolts, unmanned towers and planes,
wires and frequencies escalating
into a clashing. Calling to sleeping wisdom,
claim this terrible machine of blind sight
and weak strength. Cast away illusions,
and come Home.

Peoples forgetting and abandoning many strengths
for tricks and branded promises
too easily. Beautifully unprepared, desperately new,
and summoned by its time.

From stories of many lost villages
that met with big men and machines of attack:
A fighter recalls with lost travelers
how enemy troops have captured young fighters
because they could not recognize
the voice of their true leader.



-Inspired by Lord Of The Flies. In response to a friend's poem about survival and recovery from multi-generational childhood trauma and abuse.

Newborns in ditches. Dead **** hidden
at the back of another big party line.

Here we go calling again.
Each other, whatever we want
we become.

We filled ourselves with poisons
of complaints after complaints filed,
yet we cannot change the way we respond
to injury, insult, or our own inner grieving
and fears. Trapping the young in straitjackets,
labels and using their good work
only to build better prisons
of self-destruction
for them.

We remain miseducated and lost
because we see our time and work
as mere instruments to be sold and bought,
instead of ways that can save lives
and set each other free.