bleak darkness and its measure:
squandering the light
no definitions
no spectral haze
no inhibitions
its onerous labor is one
    with me.

live life at the edge of the fall.
holding a hand
fallibly.
live alone, love alone —
  these things pulse with strength
      in singleness, even the glances
of prying neighbors are sequestered
   reduced to sealed shut, hermetic,
      no sight or hindsight.

i'll run to where the sunlight is
   and wish for the moon, slumber
like a dead log adrift in the current.
buying myself love and selling its pleasures to defunct markets.
   trying to repair what is beyond salvation,
   trying to amalgamate what is perpetually
        scarred, sundered.

clangorous *** of metal, herding jeep
    and riotous chariots; mad men fill
the lines waiting for encumbrance,
     bardic in the streets of Marilao
hungry for something:
   give me a blank piece of paper
and i will try to reinvent the world
     with impunity and lostness.
the world gives back such awry stare
    and all imperative darkness reigns
supreme, mine are all emergencies
   as shadows are succored not,
retained in their caliginous thrones.

living alone
    yet not so much alone.
the dog outside does not bark anymore.
  the well-placed gnome of stone outside
      stares stonily across the thick space.
the nosy neighbor does not meddle
  through the rusted ocher grills.
the old moon wanes outside
   as the lift of light sways to where
there are no disappearances.
somewhere in the metropolitan there
   is a derby of fools and all mirth;
i wish myself there and curse my presence
      right then.
work does not fill me anymore,
    money does me no good. my soul
bangs the walls and slams the doors
     it threatens to leave without auguries,
and demands a new sense of necessity.

tonight, i will go out, drink at a local pub
   and crawl towards the ajar door of
  my father's car. smoke will caterwaul
the pressing scenes of the vicinities
    crumbling at the tremor of clocks;
i will open my dresser and discover
   all books dissipated, some naked
  in relished pages, others abeyant.

the curtain can fall later,
and the night too, falter evenly
widely spread across the sky.
    — all is broken.

In a room full of emptiness I was sitting on my bed with my back resting against the wall. All my routine work was completed before time as usual and there I was sitting doing nothing, staring straight ahead on the wall which was colored blue. I had asked them to do so because I loved this color since it always exuded the stress in me, drained off the disturbing thoughts and opened gates for blissful ones. But they never came.

What came to conquer me was lostness. This lostness maybe is productive if one is lost in a good thought, or, in a world of the past or the future, or, in his own created world, creative or perhaps destructive or perhaps peaceful. But I was always lost in a blank world. A world, where nothing existed. A world where no one walked on the streets. A world where no music was played and due to that I couldn't imagine myself dance because of which I couldn't make new dance steps. A world where I couldn't see faces smiling, where colors existed in their pure mixed form, that is White.

But if I give a second thought, I am thinking all this, about what it feels to be blank.! So it shows I just used to think ******* when this beautiful world of blankness came to me where I can create whatever I want and whatever I like, where miracles can happen. Or maybe a world will take birth to be cradled in my thoughts showing me my desires, aims or maybe those facts that are necessary for me. All I needed was Concentration. But I didn't know how to do so. My brain was now an expert, a trained and professional one in being frivolous. And then I felt a pen fidgeting with my hand. Then my hand, with the help of the reflex sent by the brain who, this time, obeyed the conscience inside it, started translating the thoughts into words. Words, they always betrayed me before when I took their shelter. But that was my fault. I only took shelter widout any hint of giving them respect. But now as the two best friends, my hand and pen, were trending together to make history, these words had the tone of pride while residing themselves on paper, and their look was inspiring when read successively. A guilt always resides in me for the precious time I wasted being lost, but the content of overcoming that lag progressively always consoles the insides. Concentration is all you need for anything you want to do or have in your life. Beginner I am, but, I dont want to see the end. I would just like to enhance it as much as possible.
MH

blood for blood.

it is clear, verily, this evening.
   the tabloids blurt the truth
    as the populace clutch
     the paper.

somewhere an explosion
   will be heard.
a child will be beheaded—
the land is tumescent with bones
   and compost rotting away, rotting away.

TV continues its comical static,
playing the music in contrapuntal satire.
  in the morning is a dog, trampling
the streets soldering a scale of metal.
  in the evening is the same dog,
sleepily cycling the humdrum town,
    his face a faint lamp, slowly dying away.

attenuated by either
   love or no love
i drag my sorry shadow across the avenue
   and a deathless cathedral is crowned
    by faithless ****** of crows.
god-driven or godless
  i awaken to the same strife-torn sky.

there is a love so immense
our bones are crushed when
it grasps us, yet there is hate
  and love altogether
intermixing, demanding another hue,
   a troubled one.

they burn the effigies.
they thump the metals
with lignified sticks.
they create a noise enough to
drown the world.
   blood against blood.
more hate to fuel more love.
lesser gods to **** all light.
the dark reigns supreme.

last night, the earth moved
and still,
  blood against blood.
  death peers through
the windowless hour
like an eyeless mannequin.

i look for you in the frantic hour
and found all loveliness gone.
the glint of the edge of what has once
  cut us laughing in the shearing wind
has died out — i dance to a music
  only i hear, bringing back the dead.

meanwhile, i ravish
   the streets mad without chance
and supernal, my bar-drunk soul.
   in the weekend, I will read my poem
to a dead crowd, drink more, jousting with a fleeting shadow, and toss
   the final cigarette into the
      stillness of the void and fade out;

it is blood against blood.
   the knife will slit.
   the gun will ****.
   the fists, clenched to the size
    if two worlds, will claim.

the earth moves, and you are not here.
the leaves abandon the trees.
the park-benches are heavily laden
with the yoke of the Earth.
the mouth of the gutter receives
the belch of a passing automobile.
the graveyards are tender
with bones.
the parking lots are vacuous,
and only the moon fills the world.

  it is blood for blood,
  love without love,
  hate with love.
i will look at the photograph
  of a woman i never touch any longer.
i will once more ask the gods
  what they have done,
but never the blur of answers to myself.

i am drunk without chance,
   and the knife invites.
   the portrayals of blood
     inveigle.
  the whims and caprices
    of the masses have no use
     any more.

it is blood against blood,
   hate against love,
and time
    is running
   out.

Suffocation; the torture of life without breath
Debt; the torture of being trapped without way of getting out

We signed away our souls and our very livelihoods
So that we might find treasures deep into the earth
In vain we gave ourselves to this cause
We became bankrupted and we became slaves to our toil
We inhaled our work and it poisoned our bodies
We owed our souls to the company for which we worked

We dig deep into the earth
In search of ancient treasures formed long long ago
Seeking to find riches beyond belief and beyond compare
Beginning a noble crusade for good things
But then continuing on to become a misadventure where there is little redemption
Oh what an ignorant odyssey we had begun!

In a manmade cavern, we dig for riches
Our faces becoming covered with black soot
As we invest into the dreams of the treasures for which we dig
And yet then further and further falling into debt
Until we are not only suffocated merely by the soot of coal but also by our debts
And as if the danger of this mine were not enough before the the mines began to fall onto our very heads

We toil for years upon years in this dark mine of coal
Losing all we knew and all we were for the sake of unsatisfying treasure
Our friends die day after day suffocated by the matter of our toil
We inhale our work and our lungs become so filled and poisoned with the soot of the coal
Many could no longer breathe or bear the pain of the poison in their lungs
And then they die in the depths of the dark caves searching for treasure in vain

Not knowing we had signed a death wish
To toil deep into the depths of the mantle of the earth searching for forsaken treasure
Believing that we were searching for good things
That we truly were in the midst of a noble crusade
Not even knowing of the reality in which we stood
That there truly was a terrible hell in which we were living

To this point we knew not of the soot slowly suffocating our lungs
And we knew not of the blood pouring out of our wounds
We knew not of the utter blackness that covered our faces
Or that no oxygen flowed to our ever so needy lungs
We knew only of the importance of our mission
And the necessity to find the treasures for which we were sent out

But the reality of this deep and dark quarry was a hell never before known
And the unknown need of fresh air was as heavy as a newborns need for his mother's milk
Yet we knew not of the need for fresh air
For our eyes were set on the prize
To mine the treasure for which we had so long toiled
And we forgot of our need to live and seek good things

Not knowing the depths of our manmade cavern and our lostness
Our faces so covered with dried soot and blood
Longing for new air to freshen our dying lungs
And longing for Holy Water to wash clean our coal-filled and coal-covered bodies
Yet we knew not any of this
And we knew not of the depths of our pain and our suffering

Yet then one day we break through the surface of the earth
We see the light of the sun, and we see good things
The light of day shines onto us
And a cool breeze blows onto our faces
Then we take a collective breath of the new air
A breath of fresh air more satisfying than a thousand breaths in the depths of the horrid coal mine

We see something we had not seen in years, freedom
And as our eyes set upon the world which we had nearly forgotten
We see the beauty that we had indeed forgotten
We realize the hell that we had clearly been enduring
And in a moment it all becomes clearer than ever before
The treasure of the coal mine had so deceived our hearts and our judgement and our very sanity

For we knew not of the depth and gravity of the terror of the hell we were in
We thought we were simply searching for gold, but we had truly sold our souls
Digging deep into the depths of the planet toward the core
And we lost ourselves in the darkness and depravity of the shaft
Suffering in blindness and lostness, unable to find any good things
Until finally we found the Light from above

Our debts had been cleared and our bodies had been made new
How sweet the wind was upon our sweaty, soot-covered, bloodied faces as we emerged from the cave
And then we were washed clean of all of our pain and suffering
The blood was washed from our faces, and our wounds were healed
The soot from the thick coal was scrubbed from our flesh, and our poisoned lungs were healed
And we were freed from the terror of our suffering

For out of the depths of the earth with squinted eyes and limp limbs
We emerged into great Light never before seen
And as our eyes adjusted, so did our understanding
The understanding of just how lost we had been
And just how close to death we came with each and every day
But the breath of fresh air, and the sight of new light resurrected us

From the great horror of our past we were healed
And from our ever-growing debts we had been released
We were freed from our self-imprisonment and given new life
And not on our own accord in the slightest
But by the great love of Christ Jesus
For Jesus is our great deliverer

on the way
to return sociology
to the library
i couldn't read the parking signs
so ended blocks away
at a salvation army

the kind with no books for sale
but an elevator shaft
running up, down
behind a drum-set altar
and a stage i didn't buy.

half-expecting 'the war room' ads
posted here as well
i let a stranger lead me to my muse
saying none would mind

Chuck asked me if i 'needed to pray this morning'
before unlocking -
i said, 'every day'  but thought
  not in his way
- i'm just begging him to play.

i read a psalm and kneel to test hypocrisy.
lotus palms connote release from suffering
wellness for all beings

and then  
i am here now
at the keyboard again
playing music i will never forget
even when my chainsaw body stiffens  creaks
the keys a saving home still  though shy
they hammer heart strings
broken, born -again again again.

praeludium, goldberg, well-tempered
minuets conjure Bach
in his stone church
and i cry for lost souls
my own lostness found
though convinced there is no static single 'self'
no 'soul'-rewarded other-life to justify our own
no 'god'- or science-demolished mystery
no metaphysic causa sui to separate
contempus mundi from the mundi...
no tidy verbal 'beyond beyond'
but that of Thales  Sappho  Gautama  
Laotse  Yeshua
Nagarjuna  Shankara
Duns Scotus  Hume  
Blake  Whitman  Darwin
Nietzsche  Du Bois
Tolkien  Stein  Merleau-Ponty  Sagan  Jong

but i will say we've sung the music of the spheres
in host-guest handshakes
stranger  xenophilic tunes
my earthling family hums my heart anew
as i begin  again
to sing my being into fingertips

skyward breath to lid-closed harmonies of hell redeemed
in Peter's vacuuming
request for 'Dixieland'
and Stacy's parting thanks
for 'we three kings'
Ruth's morning-making compliments and invitation back
my wish to share with them the love i feel
- from them, Gaskell's book
from deep within where no words win
authentic ownmost ocean depth of
less contingent love
historically embracing love
of errancy and freedom in our different loves
an atheist in love with vacuums
saucha and the music of human kindness
receiving gifts in giving thanks








.

These are the moments poets write about, paintings waiting. Quiet city streets at sunset, building, highrise sentinels of man's unquenchable thirst for conquest, and all of us together under one sky, waiting.... This radio screaming in my ear, Bon Iver, Conner Oberst, the other poets that wander these lost, lonely alleys. Sun's rays fading, as city lights rise. The soft blue becoming the strange azure, that fades to my indigo incandescent familiarity. This nighttime refuge of lost souls, wandering the frozen streets, and becoming something more than the sun can make them. That soft, ragged, imagined power coming from within each of us, in the open darkness of a concrete river. Nothing has changed but the light, and the new light makes each of us something more than we were in the rays that preceeded it. There is nothing to take away, nothing to subtract, nothing to glean. Just this place, this almost-lostness, betraying in itself the proclaimed divinity of dark. Stepping back, without looking behind, not knowing that the fear in front of you cowers before the monster behind your back. Just. Live. Be, let the being become you, and embrace this inner-self so few have seen, so few have touched, so few have truly loved. realize that all things wear a darker form, and the things that lay in wait under these city streets are dangerous. The way a chainsaw is dangerous in the hands of a child. There is no way to know who will get hurt, and once the chain of events is initiated, there is no way to safely remove the weapon from the hands of the naïve. Things that bite, hiding in dark corners, and laying wait for the lost, weary, and heartbroken. Lighted hallways, entrances into the other realm of indoors, torch-lit passages into forbidden and mysterious kingdoms. Every stairwell lit. The bannister to the lower, and upper, a stripe on walls as I drive on. Two million bulbs of nightlight security, and still this city finds shadows in which to hide fear. Dark corners for the lonely, and blind alleys for the lost. Every heart beating, fresh hot blood, and no warmth to share. Scared and alone, wanderers all, until the burn of the light we call home beckons us there. This passing of time, a gift, from gods unseen, and hands unheld. Colded fingers for want of a lovers touch, or the precious gift of familiarity in a foreign land. Alien landscape, and this, my unfettered direction of ambiguity. Directionless wandering for want of a chosen path, and no choice but to take the offered road. The fear secondary only to the loneliness, oh that curse that comes again.

you know
when i first beheld the icy greyness
of this giant sepulchral building
a giantness of Empty
a giantness of unrecognised surreal faces
a giantness of being sorta kinda lost
a giant lostness of slamming into glass doors
hurriedly breaking out
to a place i wanted to know

when i first beheld that giantness
i had never thought
imagined felt conceived
hell i had it all figured out
in what i thought was a deep deep experience

i had never thought
it would be that crisp
that quick
the creepiness of mounting heartbeat
pounding like a drumbeat
rising out into the rosiness of dawn
full of a wisdom of it's own experience

that it would be that supple
lifting me with effortlessness
like a wave of adrenaline
rush; gushing into my
guts; breaking out like
a furious river bent on
flowing with the vastness of the ocean
and the innocence of the sky

i had never thought
that is how you have a Crush.

The thing is, the lesson is, I survived.
Never mind the rust or the abandonment
or the sabotage or the self sabotage,
or the wandering in the wilderness,
bars and hitchhiking in the night,
the wrong turns and the right turns unrecognized,
or the helpers and healers, the jacklegs,
quacks, shamen and priests.
Never mind the things that came undone,
and the constant rearranging of fate
or God’s insistence in letting me stew
in my own juices. Never mind
the arrows or thorns or innocent bystanders
content to watch me bleed, those who
see me as entertainment or suspect.
Never mind the constant need for maintenance,
the broken parts, the ones I could fix
and the ones I could not,
the depression, the fear, the fight,
the checkered past, a perfect target
for any who care to shoot.
Never mind all of it. The parts that recovered
and the parts that never will.
The blood shed! So much of it.
So many tears. So much lostness,
darkness and fire. The wars. The surety
that you were never made for the world you live in,
the anger
I felt, uncomfortable with it every time it rises, and
the anger
aimed at me, a thing more comfortable to you,
more familiar,
but no less weaponized,
Never mind all of it.

I survived.
I found love. I gave love.
Some things I did, mattered.
At times, there is joy.

Don’t tell me there is no God.
I know better.
I survived.

Straying at the horizon she was, when I looked at her,
My prolonged desire started breathing with a stutter,
I could see her cuddled close to herself,
Her eyes filled with lostness but strong inside,
Cause shes thinking too deep inside,
A cupid in between came and struck an arrow with his bow.
I dont even know her much but still my eyes look at her with forever longing,
Is my soulmate spreading her arms to me calling.?
She carries a me inside her from before reincarnation, ah and look at that smile,
As if taking my worries whenever smiling at me for a while.
I am afraid of losing her now, but, I havent even have her trust gained,
Even if she goes away ignoring my silent but promising love, My heart is already tattooed by her name.!