it is not that we are far away
but there is   this stilled candor  that
   there    are   spaces,  gaps,  turns  and swerves   that we   cannot   close.

   as in  a star in  its throne will remain
to be  lit in  diadem of white, cannot be touched    or you   in your silence
   with the drone  of such  tired machine:
  moon's all  round and  all i saw, yet not
    always   the visible,  encircled in flesh and
without  so much question, the  mind's a
     quicksilver marauding to  motion all
things  except   your own   parasols bending
    to such   airlessness,  and  to make tractable, this  unstable   mirage

  
      of you,    fulminating in such bright auroras  persisting within the day when you
    arrive  not with   hands but with chains,
   machineries  and not   bones,  no such lissomeness of skin love-hewn but  walls,
    not   the earthen  night  but only brindled   silence like the world whispering ssmething
     close  to the   ear not   love but   pain.

these faces on the wall that have no eyes,
the young children with blood escaping from their hands
   as they    pick up a mound of the Earth and  throw at genuflected  roses.
these battered men   in parks   searching  for light
   and   my woman   is no longer with  me.

it’s all  vaudeville:  this obnoxious working of continuance,
these redundant  flutings,   these  unprecedented fluctuations.

opening  the yellow gates  to death
as the  automobile churns the  last of its exhausted snarl.
   we    are children   peering through   glass cases
as   death laughs at his   hopeless  clientele,
    sad,   desolate   progenies   in   working-classes,
in   parks,  in factories,   somewhere along Mendiola,
  or  just treading the waist-high  hellish   froths   of   Dapitan,
    there’s   always   death in   the nooks   of the quiet
and from   where birds    stir in  sidereal circles,   death
  with his hands    resting   on the   cage,   chases us  back to  our homes.

death   the changing of the   gatekeeper.
death  the   telling machine.
death   the dentist.
death   my next door neighbor.
death,   this boorish broken-winged   Maya twitching in  front
   of my dog’s shadow  shot out of the Sun’s  shameful recoil.
death,   my loud and loutish muse,
death    the   truant,
death,   the   copious  fog somewhere in Kennon Rd.
   death,   in my   hands through   darkness    and  light,
death   through troves   of enigma,
      death   through   undisputed clearings,
death    the   long line  of red beads   in EDSA,
  death  the gates   of Plaridel,

     it’s the moon   following you,   trailing your measure,
i hold   my woman’s used   shirt,  pick up her photographs
    and there’s no tender movement left but  the still-seeking   lion
prowling   the jungles   of my  heart,   seared by  lovelorn undoing.
  
through   the  bottom of  the sky and the  unchanging roof-beam,
  the weathervane ceases to  a sojourn  and the  wind is  trapped
    in   a place  where we   cannot   utter any word  between the  gnashing
  of   our teeth – through the wasted   years,  through  the sleeping in  and out
  of   homes filled  with beatings,  to cathedrals swollen with  tribulations,
      and to   the vineyards     wrung   out   of wine,    my  lover,   walking  through  fire,
        sound     silence.

and so you go
emptying the room, Evening/Morning
playing on the small, grey radio.

it is not in the way you navigate with the most immense
of eyes I have seen,
whose lips torn with shade have said always,

this
was meant to
fall – when yellow trees outlast greener ones,
i cannot.
we cannot.
you cannot.

and many before me, all the doors have closed
shut, voices cornerless searching for flesh.
i thought it would **** when you first moved
back to where we were once trapped,
like an arcade fire waiting to confide in smoke.

at last, the books can now be read –
first to go are words, and yet in the next moment,
we will not let each other be
strangled with days,
            years, spurning, striding out of windows.

our discomfitures are made clear
when I dug my hands deep into the grave of your own,
and in pure wonderment, neither the lights flinched
nor the darkness congealed – it is only enough
   that when you closed your eyes, they will never
open to me any longer: our waiting has only become
  our most obvious limitations and we have been
  held    we have been taken in     we have fallen in
      we have learned each other    we have unlearned each other

and somewhere in the next room,
   a door slams – someone is tiptoeing masterfully not to topple
  the Victorian, not to
startle the oncoming  shadow of the transfixed   furniture,
        careful enough    not to still the voices   that I long for
and fracture     this man,    this being    myself   and all that staleness.

it is the wrong  voice in the evening
   and only the silence impales with   surgery-precision.
they   all   have feet    thighs    calves
   drunk in merriment   looking at their lacquered   nails
fixing their    stockings   and lamenting their men
     in   all the   roominghouses    of the world there   are but
  silences    that ought    to be     fragmented

   but     not   tonight – there they go marching like   a sad
  army waving farewell   with bayonets in   their hands swaying   like
   light from a candle’s  anxious  flame-tip – and they promise   me
   kisses    and they tell me    temporal   splendors   I have no use for
     it is    not your    tenderness     of   your     being    here
     but the    assault    of your     being     somewhere  else.

there are worlds underneath words
swathed inward, swirling from
rondure of moon.

of all that i have loved,
you are the only one living

here within the lining of my skin,
or thinning dermis of turpentined walls,
same as the ponds have their
   curved silences, i have nothing -
a river bled of its source, living in wet verses.

what the turning of days might
bequeath you, as cunning as the mayday
of evening with its susurrus, is what
brims over diminutively, a glint of star.

i believe in the empire your love
spurned from all that is ruined,
drained of their excess. how i have loved
to trail you, across the crisscrossed roads
and receive such fullness no purer than mine:

all your sweetness that is for me,
the implacable honeysuckle and the dew
of mild beginning, i believe them
   all
breaking loose around me, perduring
   still, lorn and born only of visions
all yellow and filling up trees so as the assault
   of light spreading maps through the  sky,
      looking for its home.

it happened this morning
the air ripe with contention.

the unsustainable weather with its
impertinent grip on the bell-hand,
no light could shed the shadows unbeheld
(umbilicus of steel, remotely the
       dense crowd letting each other
    go, searching out fringes of moon.)

days and their forlorn bannerets, from farewells wrought
    into the world by a steady hand
 i say to all:

 labyrinths with no hint
    of darkness
(stillnesses immensely froth out,
   searing the islands of eyes)
the turning wave of the sea
     slants into the mountains, so we shrivel
  whatever is left of our implacable themes,

  i have here, my heart as clear as a rose's
     geography, thorns the clarion of trifles.

feet–dance–bounty–when–it–is
your–engine–that–sings–nondescript
music–shadows–left–wrung–out–of
drunk–in–dense–marshes–of–life;
your–gyrations–foretell–my–weight
as–in–the–home–of–verses—
strophe–by–strophe–endless–is–its
undulation–stamping—imaginations
two–fold–in–flounder—

it—is–like–you–are–deep–in–the–grass
and–the–wind–slurs–summer's–penitence.
    with–your–eyes–purely–the–tenseness
  of–days–like–dance–and–stillness
     meeting–at–the–edge–of–silence.

your night-rose, sweet
yet such honeysuckle hides   in your
    girl-graces,

in the gravest mirror of my eyes
  rises    the frailest rose,

       its unmindful bend and its
return to my hand's deepest grave —

        o, the wind sleighs my hair
unearthing its roots — in this summer-gladness i am
      one with the morning's terminal
   flush, its beforeness is my sleep
       brimming with the waters of waking
    and you, whose eyes
             inevitably, the day in the horizon.