how did you do it?

how did you catch her eye
when she was too shy to even lift her head
to look at the world around her?

how did you get to know her,
how did you get to learn of the little things about her,
when she barely speaks of herself?

how did you break into her little heart,
when she built walls around it
because she never felt pretty enough?

how did you change her mind
to stop believing that life is not meant
to be lived in your own,
when she had always been content with being alone?

how did you get her,
a lonely, solitary soul
only in love with books and dances,
to fall in love with you
as you did with her?

in baler where the sun shines and the waves visit
is where freedom bathes under the blue skies
in the seaside realm of surfing

simple hotels line the shore
where you can run to the beach fronts
after settling in little white rooms,
and in the blue water
wait tanned, youthful surfing instructors--
local boys of the province who've grown up
with the salt water as their playground.

get on your surfboard and
join the waters,
"mag-timing ka sa alon,"—
"wait for the waves", the instructors say
and lie down on your stomach on the surfboard,
and when you do get the waves you ride them fearlessly,
you are lifted, invincible,
by the hands of the philippine sea.

and if you don't surf,
the smooth sands are there,
calling you to lie around
under the seaside sun.

and when night falls
and the waves are reckless,
you can sit on the sand
with a bonfire and some drinks—
watch the stars
with the sound of the tides as your music
and do not fear;
for in the morning
the waves will come rushing
back to the shores of Balers
to give anyone freedom
as they always do.

i want to know you enough
to know how you like your coffee
i want to see you enough
to watch your face light up at the little things
i want to hear you enough
to listen to the words you'd say when nobody's around
i  want to feel you enough
to know how it is to intertwine my fingers in yours
i want to be around you enough
to understand your being, so beautiful and complex

but as silly as it is,
although we're lifetimes apart,
i still seem to find you everywhere:
in sunsets, in flower beds, in the rain,
in the things i love
for you make me feel the same way they do—
yet this isn't quite enough.

somewhere in hollywood along route 66
stood a cheap motel—
an asylum
for rockstars and their groupies,
artists and and poets and strangelings alike.
the morning only saw its residents,
drunken and drowsy,
and its black-tiled pools as dark as the night;
yet the nights were its prime
when the artists would gather
in the name of music, dance, recklessness.
the syringes would pierce their skin
and the alcohol like ocean waves
washed out the most of them,
and events too unspeakable were the norm.
the motel never attained 5-star ratings,
but it become the playground
for fleeting moments, wild nights,
brewing grounds for creation.
these nights were so loud and colorful,
but only remembered in hazy visions
and muffled sounds.

and so all those nights end here, today:
at the south of The Strip
where some modern, ordinary hotel now stands
once used to be the mess
that the likes of Jim Morrison
and Tom Waits called home.
its guests would have burnt it down,
but they would've wasted their money,
and who has the time anyway?

ladies and gentlemen, the tropicana motel—
a stop over where
wild minds and wild hearts would meet
and eventually go their way,
the place where these legends
of music and madness
came to play.

radio blasting Bowie
and the manila heat so strangling,
messages streaming in
only to be ignored,
deadlines pile up
and so do the dreams
and the skyline,
visible from the window
is a reminder of what's beyond
the mundane and this difficulty,
a reminder of what i've yet to see.