And when the people with the giant skies came to visit
and when they saw my sky was only the size of a pebble,
they ripped it from my hands and swore it was big enough
to drown a few hundreds.
And when I tried to reach for other skies, they warned me
I should count my steps, turn back, try to find other ways
to protect myself from fallen meteorites that want to get
back to space.
I remind myself everyday I have a billion pebbles under my
skin and they’re waiting to be stolen from people with giant skies.
Little bombs that count down for the right moment to explode.

Saturday morning I am waiting,
patient for the sky to crawl.
I have heard from someone’s someone
that the world today will fall.

No real reason to be excited,
not that I don’t want to live.
It’s just the moments that betray me,
and it’s the people that I meet.

I keep getting looks of worry,
I’m being told it’s really bad,
the one day I am truly smiling,
is the day we’re getting burnt.

Saturday evening I am waiting,
it seems they tricked me to believe,
that hopes can be attained to heavens,
even if the death to greet.

Someone’s someone was a liar
and the world today won’t fall.
I’m still hoping for such disaster,
the one that’ll save me from it all.

we’re plastic people

and when we ought to break

we keep on taking

Imagine a map, it’s a map of the world, a giant map, placed on the wall.
There are lights on the map, some of them blue, some of them white,
some of them glistening more, some of them flickering faintly.
Each light represents a soul.
Your light is on the map and I don’t know if it’s blue, white,
if it’s shining or if it’s hiding, if it’s bruised or healing.
(If it’s healing, it’s purple.)
Then something horrible happens; a villain steals the lights.
Not the souls,
just the lights.
Blue, white,
purple.
No indication of them on the map.
The map’s plain now. That’s not nice, is it?
A plain map. A plain map that didn’t use to be plain.
A plain map that used to special!
The villain returns the lights. He isn’t a villain anymore and
once the lights are placed on the map again, they shine like nothing
happened.
The villain didn’t break them.
But the map doesn’t want them now. I don’t need the lights.
The villain who isn’t a villain anymore leaves.
The map tries to shake them off but the lights don’t badge. Please,
get them off me, the map says. Please,
I don’t need the lights.
Nobody hears the map.
Nobody will ever hear the map.
The map proceeds to tear itself apart, the small voice not loud enough
to make its presence known:
*I’ll try to get off you, I swear!

Your name has meaning not to me
for I want the bat and not some trick
you use to hide your nightly guise,
the one I’ve come to
idolize

There’s many reasons you and I
have chased the cats and not the mice:
the rats have trouble keeping up,
the cats will scratch you but with
love

I don’t seek the face behind the mask
for I want layers upon layers—
upon dusk
to hide a face that might prove
you’re just a man and I’m a
fool

When the monster realized no one would respond
to its cries for help, it decided to go and help anyone
who needed it late at night;
self-destructing souls without bright enough lighthouses
to guide help to their half-rotten ports,
ghosts trying to breathe properly under
muffled pain.
The monster’s help was always taken as an attack to
someone’s childhood, so when parents finally convinced
their youngsters that monsters do not exist,
the possible relief of any unresponded pain
was immediately vanished too.
The monster of course never stopped trying,
because the monster knew
and the monster had seen those lighthouses
and their little broken lamps.
But every time it laid its little hurt hand to reassure
someone everything would be alright,
however fake that promise was,
the self-destructing soul would turn its back to the monster,
the ghost would stop trying to listen.
The monster then would start talking to aching limbs
and the limbs would explain why stars keep falling
and why planets can just as easily turn to black holes,
but the monster always preferred the rare occasions of happy story-telling,
where stars and planets always shined bright
and didn’t feel the need to bear wishes on their backs
just to have a small moment of awareness by the world.
Or maybe it was an act of hopelessness,
and that was their last resort.
You see, “Quick, make a wish!”,
and no one ever thinks of making a wish
to save the falling star.
Meteor showers are massive suicides,
the monster thinks to itself,
before returning under the bed.
Tomorrow night, it’s the wardrobe’s turn.

Make peace
with your
demons.
Why? Why
make peace with your
demons?
Demons
keep you
alert.
Demons chase you
and you’re
forced to
run. Don’t
make peace
with them.
You made
peace with
people
telling you
off, getting
angry at you
for things
you never
promised to
do. At things
you didn’t
do but they
still found
something
annoying in
the
nonexistent
action itself.
You made
peace with
your parents
when they
didn’t
understand
your pain
and thought
life was easy
for you, so
why not
bring you
down for a
change?
You made
peace with
everything
bad
that’s
come your
way. ****
peace this
time. Get
angry. Get
hurt. Sink
your nails
inside your
chest and
dig until you
find your
heart. Rip it
out. Scream.
Feel dead.
Start your
war. Lose.
Defend your
ground and
then give it
to the enemy
without ever
asking
anything in
return. A gift
from the
losing side
to the
winner. (It’s
they who
lost. They
accepted
your bomb.
Tick-tock.*
Let’s see
who’s gonna
count limps
when it goes
off.)

♛

First it’s the pearls—little moons falling in the puddle
and the rain has made sure to make it just deep enough
for the muddy water to cover their shiny surface.

Then the gunshots—one,
two,
echo through the alley and you’re certain someone will be standing
at the end of the dark pavement,
at least around a nearby corner,
and they’ll hear you, hear the gunshots again
and again,
and again.

Because you do.

It’s the blood you notice last—the muddy puddle
that’s slowly being fed by a red liquid you’ve only
seen one more time before,
(you fell)
and suddenly the bats return from the dark cave—you
have scared them.

Years after the pearls,
and the gunshots,
and the blood,

but not after pearls,
and gunshots
—more blood,

you realize the bat doesn’t symbolize your fear of
falling,
but it was the shape your parents’ blood took when a
J and a C painted their portraits.

At the end of the alley,
at the end of an alley,
at the end of many alleys
stands a masked man.
It does resemble you an awful lot.