Take salt for sea. And blue for feeling.
Litmus blue, say it will, squalid yellow
are the dead and the living continue on,
  swept onward.

Take air for flight and space for descent.
  When you are held, raised into this,
you will fall at last – take a sudden slither
   of skin as farewell, catacombing mist
  as    salutation but

   you      go    ineffably

whenever, well-paced,
     well-oiled,

you will continue on
  despite
     final   exhaustions.

Here is where the oncoming figure knows you.
   We have no realization of time. Of how long
   it will take for us to both decompose. This is
   already a peccadillo. Mirrors brand conclusions.
   The body lets go of its weight like anchorage.
   How I measure warmth is a device that does not
   concern you. Light inches and asks me how soon.
   Already a blunder, an inner life revealed –

Between this carefully studied distance where sometimes
   lines are crossed, a remorse is hoarded, exclusive
   enigmas of hope. Contort this body if you will.
   Between the barely-living and the already gone
   is where I windhover. Sealed shut in hermetic space.
   My desperation becomes a syntax of waiting

and there will be all beautiful horses, and faces in transit
   everytime you pass is an announcement to where
  I cast myself into a miscalculated sonority,
  hauled out of, loosely identified.

1
Fails to realize the momentousness of the ordeal. Syntax means nothing. Delineations weak. It is all obsolescence, this one. This thing that has no name. This agreed-upon assault of objects. Its loose fizz into the air. Buildings without balconies, or balconies without height – a plunge will mean that there is only little ache left to wring out of some futurity. Arrange the furniture, you said. Take pictures of the sullen victory right after. There is no place in there but only spacious silence. Like meat before it goes into the melting ***. Like light before it reaches its tippling point. Hence, let us both agree to this once again. An end. A limit has been reached. In most days you say nothing. I wait – concealed, overwrought with time’s unloosenings. I do no waiting at all. I do wait at all – this made moment is your new retreat.

2
This is an old woe with a new name. I ask you things, you answer me endless. Endless as in quiet is infinite. There are so many places in this world fat with stillness. Feelings flatten and fall at last, here, its exoskeleton. Keep it in your drawer with your DMs. To make a metaphor out of you means I acknowledge your disappearance. To keep mum about it means I take it inside me, deeper and deeper. Do you dream of fish now? Or waves? Or the undertow you take with you, dragged in miles of feet through dunes of sand? I ask you again, and you show no signs of being uninhabited. Although there is sometimes the warmth of pressing sheens, you take them as the passing of buses – you emphasize the waning. Although this has been written, there isn’t so much writing done here. If I could be abject like say, a washrag in your home, there would be little difference made.

3
To keep myself intent is declaration. To quote otherwise the world that you breathe in, simply suppression. It is much imaginable that way, much more attainable, resolute and quick with sense. A new kind of wailing. What I want, I destroy by earnest regard. There is a paradoxical way to cultivate this thing: and it is to leave it there, thriving in a space meant to contain it, alone. Nothing will be retained – it will always be one, and never two. You believed me. I asked you again. Your answer compressed everything to shadow.

Kamay

Heto, kung mararapatin lamang.
Ipagkakatiwala ang sandali
tungo sa laman ng salita.
Heto, kung ipagdaramot lamang,
at ipagsasawalang bahala ang dambana
ng iyong katawan.

2. Kurba

Kung abot-kamay lamang din naman
ang buwan ay ipagdaramot na lamang
ang natitirang liwanag.
Sa palad ko nakahimlay
ang talim ng iyong buto.
Hindi na mangingiming pang ibalik pa
sa tahimik na daluyong ng oras
ang mga kamay na ito na walang pagpapatawad.

3. Mata*

May tupok na anghel na bagong hirang
sa loob ng malaking puwang.
Walang paglalagyan ng ligalig,
marahang pagiingat lamang,
kung tatanaw sa kabilang kuwarto ng halinghingan
na para bang nagtatalik ang nais
sa hindi maangkin

nangungusap nang walang karampatang pagmamalabis.

in   my   side
   of  the Earth
I    was   not   tilted,
   realized      and    emptied
my   eyes    are   spigots
   my mother    left   open  to thaw
the glaciers   of
        supper

   zenith   visits   the   Summer
most   often   than  the
  wind blowing    through   the
curtain     of    my    eyes
   where   I   always   see   the dead
smidgen    flowers   all   over
   the    ricefields

             this   measure   of
tomorrow –    to  have been incarcerated
   in   the   past that   bears
no     arms    to
       this   very   Saturday    afternoon
fish   breathe  now
  in    enigmatic    means
    pulses    of   rivers
tangle     joys    with
    naked    boys   of   brindled   youth


    see   once   they   jackknife
into   a   memorized    depth
            pellucid  like   my   memory
of
      uncollected      afternoons

Insouciance     first   fall
   we    took    the   night      half-illuminated
   dreamy     stereo     sketchy   static
   through     ear’s  round   bell

smile  we    owe   it  
      slanted,     bendable   light  moon
  becomes    another    genre

   to    listen     lilt
  even     before     methods   of   lip
   procure     shaded    meaning   cohered
  on     a    closed    door –  opened
finding    a    semblance    of Sun
     there,     veiling
a     traffic   of     cirrus
    in     the       elongated    road
   of          blue     skies

it    was    time
   to     point-source   a   home
taller    than    grass    in  Summer
     pinpointing   scenes    to     exact
a    long   divide    and    make    it
     by      punishing    it    post-peak,
let    it       drift    with    unrelenting
     quickness
       past     mouthed    rivers     and   from
the       lessening   fog
           of       the     same     morning
i
     will     puncture
it   true,      eyes     set   forth
    into     your   absence

*you’ll
bloom
you’ll
bloom.

in some paradoxes, space happens when two people
               are close but not close enough.

after hours of demand, the presence occurs in many ways.
ubiquitous objects rend the veil of vicariousness.
             there will be a repetition of days in here,
an assertive swing of dialogues to make ends appear as though
    real and accurate.

in a brief candleflame of silence on a Vietnamese restaurant’s rooftop,
    there will be noxious space conscious of: we are waning.
the way words leap from fences of teeth and venetian hairs.
        air becomes a fat mound of fools in arcades and then in an instant,
  it feels as if there is no more space left to move in, so they wear
     each other’s skin and shed right after the ballast’s fall.

   when done explaining a dream, sleep goes to belabor a bell.
soundless beside them, stiff as a body dreaming for itself.
   in some paradoxes, what is imagined is most real.
  there is suspicion that this lacks sentimentality. it is as carnal
and as commonplace as a hint of touch from a closed-in expanse.

  that time at the market when you had your hands fretting
for shapes of perfect fruits, taking them in your careful hands
wary enough to not beat them senselessly to the pulp of their
   glazed figures – the prices start to inflate and you wonder why
  people still remained when at the first sign of difficulty
       you   start   your   furlough.

     and also sauntering with maimed pace, that of autumn’s slow
reprieve, making your way past decrepit buildings,
   you stop to take sunsets not because they’re marvelous,
   but because you easily forget – and accept that there are
   also    things  wet under   the rain  and not with tears.

when in another paradox, things point to their source
when doused with oblivion – starting to breathe on its own,
occupying space
          leafing through days when   something instantly said
    rushes back   searching   for   its  holder,
              to  be   given,   stolen,   or say,
                                     left   to  die   on its   own –