days when all you had to do was
arrange the furniture and watch the passing
of shadows in mellifluous slowness – ready to catch
you in heft of mesh.

nothing keeps her in place.
that is what you said. you said you were
always moving
from the north up to the south,
and at times the north of no south
that refuses to be held close into straight paths.

you gave it no unction – this abstraction.
christened with the water from
your measures, slipping out of grips,
from where you are and where I found you in,
retained in some sense of placeness,
almost cuts with the sharp dagger
of wind in mornings when you peer
into the putrid landscape of Manila asphyxiated
by the rise of smog.

her sorrows remain untouched and intact,
given urgency by the emptiness of her
hand. he had to be elsewhere and you
were in the midst of nowhere but the hollow
oblivion of your home, and I took it, I took it
and I fragmented it to gather from it,
a sacrament or say, the looming of dangers for
  mine to situate in defeat,
and I placed you somewhere like a new truth
that you’ve grown fond of,

like the only voice you hear in the night
is yours, and gathering that indistinct sound
from the stray of light was the
lover having left an impending need.
my father proposed to watch a film
with my mother and I see potential
in something that had gone away even before
  the empty din of the sea played its exhausted
machinery, telling me something known and familiar,
which I refuse to utter because it would double
its terror.

we ought to meet somewhere, you said,
a bridge, a tangent, a straight path
or a perilous curvature. you will never break
as the sparrows close in,
as the disparage quavers,
as an old man stops his engine somewhere
under a bridge beneath rondures.

we ought to meet somewhere,
you said. a word tamped into shape,
lugged into narratives,
so easy
breakable
and false.

1
Corrections. You drew a straight line and noticed its crooked part. Arrhythmia, was it? Or picket fences for us to blame? The seismic consequence of righting out wrongs. To even realize the thick light
      shining through like some stray decision.
                               The hot mint of touch carved out by concern, and to forbear a slight chance
            at miracles. We have no concept of heaven, this strange wall between us. When I look at you,
   I see myself at bay, multiplying weaved tears for scraps and metals. A mirror of the sea breaking
            amidst the sea. We have no sense of what is right – we only have sense of feeling.

We twirled between the sheets and broke the circles,
   the air in between collision produced silence. Gossamer. Clear. Sure and exact. Where are we headed?
                 We are crossing each other’s worlds with nothing but heavy bags of ourselves waiting
   in stations rid of the populace. Implication: this is the part where I fall asleep standing
          and you carefully traced your steps back to the source.

2

dark swerves to more darkness. Faults. There is a place for all aches a finger, or say a hand where I sense yours, should be. It is here, in this finite silence.
                         I notice peripheries to give them their apt intensities. Say, driving along the freeway,
   you in your night-old shirt, and it starts to rain. I will recognize everything, pile after pile, fade after fade, quick to match this disappearance is your head out in the window
                    celebrating the world and you tell yourself: I do not know, and I care not.
     And I begin to say it without saying it, and you ended it without ending it – this curious case of contention, part yours and lonely selves waxing in complete space
              to the edge of our seats, brought to the brink of all fear but you were braver and I am much
to myself, a trickle of rain descending from inflorescence of leaves.

3

I am looking at the subtle insufficiency of maps, and the enigmas of things their own structures
     eluding touch. Somewhere along the way, we get lost
                    but you remember then, somewhere in the vast terrain,
     you remember where we set foot and marked it with some vague memory of origin,
               coming back to it still untarnished, knowing it was there all along,
and you took it in your hands and tore it apart – your face swollen with satisfaction, we
                     trouble ourselves in the dearth of feeling – what’s left is a naked word
        splintered in the pavement. You told me you will never come back to this
                                strange place.

4

a singular impedance of movement was all it took
       to romanticize what it meant like to be still as your brindled face this evening.
I always held you like a child would, a blanket in somnolence. Rays of sun searching
                 for mouths of flowers – heat becomes its negligible end: sweat pulses
   through open integuments drained of their poisons. The voice from the thickness
         of quiet translated: the moment suddenly hits its sojourn, and goes through
                   gradual dissipation.

   you have missed tonight’s highlight simply because
                  you were mum as a nurse in your camphor of white departure, and I cannot overlook
  how the stars begin to wrestle each other, telling an allegory of darkness and hearing a catastrophe
                begin its fusillade of entrances taking form in tomorrow’s tabloids
  you know not about.

         They say when you hold someone, you transmit something and might leave a thing
worthy of hypothesis. The sound was made clear and I did not flinch.
                            You were asleep the whole time.

Kalakip ka ng dagundong ng hangin ngayong tanghali:
    Bago ang lahat, kakapahin ko ang natitirang
    init sa upuan. Iyon ang aking galit. Inukit ng iyong bigat
ang paglubog ng buwan, dito sa aking gabi,
tumatambad sa silid na walang durungawan,
  isang batang namumugad,
gumagapang sa walang-malay na gulugod
  ng pagdaralita. Bulahaw ng radyo at ang binulatlat
  na pagkakataon – matapos ang lahat ng ito,

ang tulog ay may angkop na bigat,
panaginip ay kulata, dala ng hangin ang bukas
  na walang pagkakaiba: Dinaanan mo na rin ito

kahapon ng hindi man lamang dumungaw
para kumaway.

everyone else sleeps while this weather
takes a peculiar turn,

decides to chronicle with a mild kiss
of drizzle on the loam.

you did not know the name for
the mortal perfume of the Earth in the heat

of contrary figures but knew the nascent lunacy
of things and the dangers of their pursuit.

the gripping contravention holding things together,
a piece of the sun against the urban sky

and your apparition splayed as cold silhouette,
forced libation of Earth to soothe its machine,

sharp impressions accurate with details,
disseminate through the static conveyor of messages

the intact hieroglyph of your movement
in this odd weather.

all quiet this afternoon, the sky
pulses in its unprepossessing limit

surveyed the intersections with the wane
of tired eyes. in this side of town, yours

the gray-faced pavement, mine the stones left
unturned, pillaged by the children of suspicion,

thrown and must have hurt something,
a bird hurtling in its pace, or a mangled body of a cloud,

wingstalked, stifled to the brim of impinged labor,
  depth of sleep is measured by the weight of dream.

all quiet this afternoon, the naked body
of the sky is blue, spun around in penetrating tone.

quick is the flat motion of the quaintest of feet,
this afternoon in Poblacion, heavily veiled and demurred

the vertical climb of morning past the cranes, the monoliths
screaming broken litanies – strange skies are insipid now

thick with the froth and rekindled petrichor,
you told me you had a view of every inch of world

from the 31st floor and now I circled to cut corners
and fold my love for cold fronts, monsoons, storms.

you said, at the end of the rotunda,
there will be a shade for me to seek asylum in,
and it took me in without hesitation in that blank
moment left to my own device,
not my heart’s control but yours,
I drew a line for you to cross and pithered in excess.
     you have gone far enough,
    this March afternoon – you said,
   there is potential in this, smiling, you in your
  tattered jeans and timeworn Chuck Taylors

staring  indefinitely at fretful space,
in the falseness of things, you have gone somewhere,
  I in the shed, inched along where
  you stopped to dust your clothes.

kung ikaw lamang ay iba sa iyong
   sarili at hindi itong anino
na may hawak na balaraw,
  mala-dagitab ang bilis ng iyong pagkabig
sa akin,   sana’y naririto
  ka pa ngunit

ikaw   at    ako
ay hindi   ikaw   at  ako at tila
  ikaw   at ikaw  lamang
na sana’y dalawa; waring kumpisal
  sa harap ng salamin,
kung mayroon lamang kasiguraduhan
at walang bahid ng alinlangan at itim
na katahimikan,

puspos ka ng pagdaramot
kaya naman
sa init ng paglisan at sa pagiimbot
  ng distansya,
ako’y tupok
    na
   tupok