is
when you wanna crawl back to your mother's womb
with a thread and needle
so you can sew
that
vaginal opening
shut

They say shallow graves are for shallow people
But in your case, you need not to be buried

You carved a ******* out of my icy heart

1: shallow beach

our little talks
have always been like
little waves,
secretly desperate for height,
something passionate surfers
will never learn to like;
and like a lonely muddy puddle,
desperate for depth,
hoping that someday
it'll swallow up all the boots
stomping on it.


2: gutter

our exchanges have
always been trippy as ****.
every word we say floats above our heads
and we would smirk as we watch them position themselves.
they form these neon swirls
that our pupils **** in for us
to share a nirvanic high.
as we see the post lights beat different colors,
our monochromatic mindscapes
dramatically turn into psychedelic voids.
on this elevated surface,
on this gutter,
on this place most people perceive
as a spit spot,
and on this cemetery
for cigarette corpses,
our chaotic souls
have found a dwelling place
and
our cluttered minds
realized its capacity
to be eloquent like a fluid pen,
to be sad yet tranquil like somber nights,
and to be embossed like keloid scars.


3: airplane

our
conversations
taste
exactly just
like the view
from a window seat
on a starry night flight.
our sentences never failed to leave
trails of cerulean glitters on our tongues
before they came out of our mouths.
but as we moved above
the dots of city lights,
we could only think of how
depressingly ephemeral
everything is.

4:  mind palace

our intertwined thoughts
built a helix bridge
connecting a place of infinite stairs
to an abandoned house of mirrors.
i can't forget when you told me once
that i was your favorite trespasser.
but to me, you're just one of those strangers
who tiptoed his way to get in
just so he could try to figure out
which mirror door led
to my most honest labyrinth.

5: rainforest

every time our letters fall like raindrops
and land as paragraphs on the dry earth,
the petrichor is sniffed by pine trees  
and as they happily sway,
they discover their capacities to dream.
they aspire to be the blank moldy papers
that only the two of us can fill.
they desperately want our words
tattooed on their skins.
our hands, their spine.
their home, our minds.

6: dance studio

we agreed that we were the world's
most horrible dancers
because we danced with our
two left brains,
not with our
two left feet.
i could only come by night,
and you could only come by day,
but our opposite timezones
never prohibited us to miss
this dazzling performance
only our minds can make.
sitting cross-legged together
in front of a wide mirror,
we see
two people
dancing
two different genres
but somehow magically
complementing each other

7: bedroom

we made our discussions
with our spontaneous feet.
each aimless step
summoned a plethora of paths
that we promised we'll take
i can't seem to forget
how happily  lost we were;
not because we are products of a consumer-obsessed era,
but because we are products of the realization that the Earth is made of unlimited wormholes that we can zap through to discover things.
i can't also seem to forget
how our days would end with our toes touching the
chipping paint on your wall
while we stare at the photographs we took by the sun;
while we listen to music as our souls spun.
it has been our personal routines to remind ourselves
that we are not slaves of superficiality.
but as what i feared...
we expired
just like the stardust we basked in.
we used to bleed dreams,
but now, what are we?
we have become two cogs left to tarnish
in some corporate machinery

Patay.

Nagsimula sa wala.
Nagsimula sa bula.
Kailan kaya kikislap
Ang natutulog na kulisap?

Sindi.

Unti-unting nauubos ang yosi
Umiikli na ang pagkahaba-habang pisi
Aking tinanong nang masinsinan sa sarili
"Sa pagsindi ba talaga nagsisimula ang pagsisisi?"

Pundi.**

Ang ilaw ay biglang namatay
Iyon na pala ang huli kong silay
Ang mata ko'y tila parang pilay
Hindi makalakad tungo sa inaagnas **** bangkay

we are the cogs
in the machinery
that will speed up
our extinction

People die because it's easier to live without a body

"i love reading people."
he said

"i love writing fiction."*
she* said

the sky bled pastel;
the angels must be stabbing
each other again.

I’m a step c l o s e r to the finish line
I ran exhaustingly just to be fine
But before I knew it, he was there
He was the winner, and it’s so **unfair

we are the vertex that opens up an asymmetrical parabola

Mentally asphyxiate*
You don't need the lack of air to *suffocate

When I rejected you, I was saving your life.

why do we keep on insisting that we should build a
bridge
to start this affair

when we both know that we can walk on air?

i am the immovable object; you are the unstoppable force

Doesn’t matter how long or deep
True intentions are so hard to keep
The aftermath of trusting
Is always your faith rusting

In the head of the pisanthrophobic
Doubt will always play the hysteric *****
No hearts will ever pass through the filter
**Because they all deserve a spot in your litter

so far,
my life has been a series of

extinguished   flames,
pity    parties,
crossed-out   names,
clogged   arteries,

temporary   highs,
unread   notes,
hollow   eyes,
anti-jokes,

spoiled   egg yolks,
abandoned  homes,
invisible  cloaks,
& inarticulate  *poems

so far,
my life has been a series of

man-made  clouds,
endless   to-do lists,
void-like   doubts,
blinding   mind mists,

hollow   entertainment,
playful   silhouettes,
forced   amusement,
mad   architects,

rapid   comets,
dead   mockingbirds,
repressed   vomits,
& disposable    **firsts

Every time I look at you,
it's a sin to blink.

"why is the sky blue?",
asked a blind man whose mindscape
is devoid of hue

You were the fisherman
I was the bait
She was the fish

You were the ruler
I was the meter
She was the inch

You were the hunter
I was the bullet
She was the deer

You were the drunkard
I was the bottle cap
She was the beer

You were the singer
I was the song
She was the ear

You were the eyes
I was the duct
She was the tear

You were the magician
I was the illusion
She was the debunker

You were the future
I was the now
She was the later

You were the passenger
I was the shed
She was the bus

You were my lover
I was your other
There was never an **us

Don’t hold on to what’s pseudo
Don’t hold on to thin threads
Don’t hold on to blurred images
Don’t hold on to stale possibilities
Don’t hold on to half-baked cakes
Don’t hold on to broken earphones
Don’t hold on to fake tattoos
Don’t hold on to loose knots

**Just don’t

the hurricane year died down
my crows flew away
leaving your chewed flesh on the ground

the soil was hungry
and you were the meal
i watched as your pecked body face the deal

"vanish before my eyes"
were the final words to heal
my hanging heart and confuzzled feels

i went to bed and slightly mourned
painlessly crying
i was null and dull

the next morning, i brought a shovel
i thought of exhuming you
but instead i visited the devil

i went to his hell with a bottle of Absinthe
we clunk our glasses together
and drank from it with blithe

we celebrated your absence, we celebrated your death
we celebrated what we carefully worked on
since you and i met

You were once the piece of skin
that got stuck in between the threads of my words

So don't ask me why my poems about you
are downright slurred

Foot half-dipped,
I was convinced
that you were a safe sea to swim

But not until
The undercurrent pulled my heel
"You'll be facing the kindest of all deaths," said the swallowing transparent teal  

The liquid filled me
As if I'm its long lost home
Life happily slipped out of me, hushing my bones

After a year,
they found my body
and in stabbing disbelief, the people stared at me

Turns out
I drowned in a puddle
Not in a sea

Turns out
Instead of testing the waters,
the waters have tested me

(inspired by Petersen Vargas’s “fourteen boys”)

1
here’s to the boy who
i unknowingly married
when i was a kindergartner
only for him to unknowingly divorce me
inside a moving train
thirteen years later

2
here’s to the boy whose
once-euphoric image
instantly floated away from me
as the heavy riffs
of an underrated rock band
ignited a crowd surf
that only moved from east to west

3
here’s to the boy who
had the courage to ask me why
i was good at spelling
but never had the guts to ask
me if I liked him back

4
here’s to the boy
whose memories never ceased to haunt me.
from the questions about cigarettes to the questions about bra sizes,
from the diary entries to serial poems,
from us not happening to us never happening.

5
here’s to the boy who
treated me as an eyepiece
when all i ever wanted
was to be
his favorite specimen

6
here’s to the boy who
i turned into a melancholic four-chord song
when he proved to me that
white roses and love letters
don’t work well as bribes

7
here’s to the boy
who decided to sum up
three years of
our one-sided,
on-off
relationship
by responding “when?”
the night
i finally had the sanity
to tell him,
“don’t cry. i loved you so much.”

8
here’s to the boy
whose hand i held
for it was about to
be sliced thin  
by my razor-edged ribs

9
here’s to the boy who
i wish i met in another Earth

10
here’s to the boy who
hugged me
backstage
and threw tomatoes
at me
frontstage

11
here’s to the boy who
is two-dimensional,
but is a million times human
than the people i know

12
here’s to the boy who
plucked the right strings
when i began humming
an unfamiliar tune

13
here’s to the boy who
collects broken hearts
for his own pleasure,
but was very disappointed
when he wasn’t able to break mine

14
here’s to the boy who
left me alone on a boat
so he could swim his way
towards a luxury cruise ship

15
here’s to the boy who
knows too much
about me
but too little
about her

16
here’s to the boy
whose sighs inflated my lungs,
and who later on taught me how to build sandcastles
out of his cigarette ashes so he could eventually
blow them down with his exhales.
(not because he likes to destroy what i’ve built,
but because he always enjoyed
the sight of me basking
in the powdery white-gray ruins)  

17
here’s to the boy who
convinced me why
i shouldn’t procreate

18
here’s to the boy
whose brain i wanted to unspool
so i could crochet a beanie
out of his to-die-for fibers

19
here’s to the boy
whose outward boffs
made me wish
he was my creator,
and whose own silence
drowned
out his pulse
last September

20
here’s to the boy
who made me wish
i had a ****, bigger than his,
so i could show him more ways
to squander masculinity

21
here’s to the boy who
told all his stories to me,
and who hated math so much
but was better at it than me

22
here’s to the boy who
i broke off midsentence
when he thought Richard Linklater
was directing both of our lives

23
here’s to the boy
who lavished me with his
words and inspired me
to come up with
this spin-off

24
here’s to the boy who
was vindictive enough
he didn’t entertain the thought
of depriving me of a body

25
here’s to the boy who
thought he had a slot
on this poem

The calm after the storm is a transitional heads up for another storm


* *

You're a year-long torrential downpour
that I managed to survived
And now I'm hoarding my goods
because the next one is about to arrive

Who knows when,
who knows how long
But one thing is for sure,
you'll just be a drizzle in comparison

I always knew that
I’ve been throwing rocks into
*A ripple-proof sea

Funny how physicists never mentioned
that there are such things as
walking dimensions




Because the irony has always been this:
We may be occupying the same space
but we don’t coexist

Kung kailan ako mapagbigay, doon ako madamot.
Kung kailan ako malinis, doon ako nilulumot.

Kung kailan ako gumagalaw, doon ako paralisado.
Kung kailan ako malaya, doon ako limitado.

Kung kailan ako makulay, doon ako monokromatiko.
Kung kailan ako mapait, doon ako romantiko.

Kung kailan ako masipag, doon ako tamad.
Kung kailan ako magaling, doon ako nilalagnat.

Kung kailan ako malinaw, doon ako malabo.
Kung kailan ako matalino, doon ako bobo.

Kung kailan ako umaalab, doon ako upos.
Kung kailan ako puno, doon ako ubos.

Kung kailan ako maayos, doon ako magulo.
Kung kailan ako puro puso, doon ako puro ulo.

Kung kailan ako mayaman, doon ako mahirap.
Kung kailan ako nandyan, doon ako mailap.

Kung kailan ako nagbabasa, doon ako nagsusulat.
Kung kailan ako kalmado, doon ako nagugulat.

Kung kailan ako sigurado, doon ako nagtataka.
Kung kailan ako sumasagwan, doon ako bumabangka.

Kung kailan ako nangangaso, doon ako nangingisda.
Kung kailan ako umaatake, doon ako dumedepensa.

Kung kailan ako hypothalamus, doon ako atay.
Kung kailan ako buhay, doon ako patay.



Kung kailan ako tao, doon ako hindi tao.


Kung kailan ako ako, doon ako hindi ako.

A conversation with an imaginary stranger:

"You'd drink, too, if you knew the world half as well as I do."  
A drunk actor once said.


"You'd drug yourself, too, if you knew his world half as well as I do."
I retorted.