I pray for warmth;
One that soothes and lingers,
To burn despite the chill;
To kindle dampened hearts.
The ember of grace,
May it not die out,
From the biting cold and wet.
May the flame endure the spite,
Of untamed weathers;
That it blaze without ceasing,
Unyielding but kind.
Let it light a pyre of hope;
Amidst the windswept rubbles,
Of the tempest past.
May it resonate what signals lost,
And restore where wires are cut.
Let this beacon carry,
Words of homebound comfort;
And reach places where refuge,
Still has not been.
May scattered shards and rocks,
Find their rightful place;
For the mud and dust to bind,
The stones of a stronger hearth.
Let it mend lives,
Burdened from palm to sole.
May it help kindred faces,
Find lost and forgotten smiles;
Let them gather again brightly,
Like the stars of December skies.

For what are lies but ugly words
Cruelly dressed in fancy clothes
Which came to grace the masquerade
Until their very meaning erodes.
The truth in every swearer's tongue
Hummed loudly like an untamed gong
And ears bled out from aching songs
Unbridled by unmuted wrongs.
The host is left without respite
From ghosts that haunt the drunken night
The table unset, the music died
Without recompense, without requite.

Snuggled for warmth,
Kindled the flame,
Bathed in the smoldering February rains.
Untamed desires,
Unkilled delights,
Fueled by the incandescent summer nights.
Did you feel the burn?
The radiance quickly flickering.
Did you feel it fade?
The fire slowly subsiding.
Drenched in goodbyes, we're watching the last cinder die.

A husk
Of a love that once was
Where it bloomed but no more
Abandoned by monsoons
Longing for perennial rain
Waiting for November moons.

A train
Of thoughts lost in tracks
Tip-toeing on fleeting memories
Trapped in open-ended verses
Looking for a period
When this heart came to senses.

A chapter
We wrote but left incomplete
A paper town of tangent streets
Where there's no solace to find
In these desolate pages
Of stanzas that rhyme.

You negate and overcomplicate,
Obsessed in trivial intricacies;
At the risk of contradicting yourself,
You foolproofed your own idiocy.
You oppose in totality just for the sake of it,
And obviate the need to deliberate;
Instead of making bridges from paragraphs,
You built garrisons out of sentences.
Convinced in waging petty wars,
You run your mouth without poise;
But for all intents and purposes,
A bark is nothing but recycled noise.

Thespians and thieves
Dressed in pitch black robes
Hiding egos beneath their sleeves
Drunk in their own monologues.
With nations for puppets
They pull invisible strings
Behind bloodstained carpets
Of dead bodies and dreams.
Playing god at their podium
Waging wars and pointing fingers
For the proper decorum
They conspire to pull the trigger.
A buffoonery of reporters
Fiddle the media screens
A game of smokes and mirrors
To stage the perfect scene.
They dance with politics
While half the world burns
Amused in the devil's antics
While war-torn cities mourn.
A soiree will soon follow
At the pounding of the gavel
The jury will watch the gallow
While they sip oil from the barrells.

Ma's other half,
Our chief of staff,
The house custodian,
His grandkids' guardian,
Always the humorist,
Seasoned saxophonist,
Spiritually rooted,
Retired but lauded,
Champion of good reason,
Father for all seasons.

Served warm,
Like your love for us;
On a deep bowl,
As bottomless as your trust.
A bit spicy but healthy,
Like your lectures on things;
Seasoned with care,
With your sharp instincts.
Calm like a river,
Of your boundless patience;
In waves of flavor,
Like your ocean of common sense.
It's a dish I'd long,
Surely from time to time;
Because there's more to it,
Than these verses that rhyme.

I keep hanging by these tangents
Of your dashes and curves
Trying to figure out how every
Version of your twists and turns
Unravels into a canvas
Of visual perfection.
It's perplexing, really
How you mend your schisms
Into waltzing polygons
Every time I break you down
Into fractures of your selves
I end up lingering in your angles
Of oblique abstraction
Turning vertices into suns
And edges into horizons.
Then I reconstruct you
From your purest form
This brush provoking
Both palette and palate
For every stroke and spatter.
Your beauty didn't mind
What madness to this method
The monochrome requires
To finally become free
And shackled at the same time.

I cursed my summer storms
And it poured down the whole sky
On me, heavily.
I keep dragging these horses
Down the raging river but they wouldn't
Drown quietly.
I watched the tides kiss the shore
Washing her tears away only to say  
Goodbye, repeatedly.
I tried deserting this sinking island
Trapped in midnight sunsets
But it wouldn't let me.

I started digging my own grave
But the sands keep receding towards
My inner gravity.
I went deeper until I found a well
Brimming with cold truths and bitter
Memories.
I began staring at my own reflection
Until I saw my soul skin and
Bones, hungry.
In this lonely oasis I brought myself
Back from the dead into this
Barren reality.

I stopped looking for water
And let my heart bleed a fountain of
Pure clarity.
I embraced the restless winds
To change the course of my own
Fate, tirelessly.
I scattered my broken pieces
And they flourished in the land with
Rare beauty.
I once dreamed of sailing the seas
But now I'm swimming in the ocean
Of endless possibilities.

Keep your friends close
But your enemies closer,
So you can punch them whenever you want to.

Fool me once, shame on you
Fool me twice, shame on me,
If you can still fool me thrice, you're really clever.

Success is 1% inspiration
And 99% perspiration
Plus a thousand prayers, just for good measure.

There's a rainbow
Always after the rain
Just make sure you don't look at the clouds at night.

It's always darkest
Before the dawn
So set your alarm to six or seven in the morning.

There's always light
At the end of a tunnel
A claustrophobe has two things to worry about.

Your music delights Apollo
Even on the rainy days,
When the Nine Muses won't dance.
You strum your guitar
Like you tickle the wind,
Healing our weary souls.
You play your saxophone,
Lifting our spirits
As you breathe life to it.
You sing to the tunes
That our hearts want to hear
All through the years.
You have a hundred stories
In your book called "Fatherhood"
Waiting to be told.
We'll add more pages to it
While we make new stories with you
As the years unfold.

The culmination of the battle,
Between salty and sour,
Peppered to perfection.
The sweetness of caramelized onions,
The tickling aroma of browned garlic,
In a beautiful confetti of scallions.
Warm and tender meat,
Drenched in an otherworldy sauce,
Bursting with umami and flavor.
A product of love and spices,
Filling both our bellies and hearts,
It never fails to remind me of home.
But mom, you see,
In all these years, I've come to know,
Of all your versions of Adobo,
The best ones are made,
When you share it with me.

If the reaper showed the moment of your death
Would you watch it with great excitement
Or would you rather not?
Would you tell the world how you'd meet your doom
Or would you keep it a secret
Until you meet it soon?
Would you accept your end with open arms
Or would you try to avoid it
Like breaking a curse with charms?
Would you live each day like it was your last
Or would you use the present
To bend your future without rewriting the past?
Would you start saying your last goodbyes
Or would you try finding a way out
Of your inevitable demise?
Would it be a question of when or how?
Or would it be a premise of here and now?

February Marched east
Skipped the blue moon in between
So he May see June.