snaking through a modal-jazz fine-tuned evening
      this soft huddle of sweat and tender bodies
     it was purely girls strobed, fired upon by the oncoming *****

of a maddened hand;

     slowly becoming inured to this droning of the blameful balm
of evening, always when    ennui   starts
    to   wane I will     start    the   car
and take myself to the   edge of   everything

and all the  suddenness becomes    inept
  and I myself

a   shot   in the  total  dark
making    it   final

            somewhere in Quezon City
given a   levitation and    you
  
      are     somewhat veined to my wall of disgust
the same as
     finding    an   old,   forgotten   thing
you
     have no    use    for.

pointing easterly,
azure skies of course
   this afternoon.
washlines drenched in
  high-sun,
precise contraptions
    deter spread of
anomalies seen daily.

  you tell me
hare's the fool
  you had once in your
 fledgling hands and died.
hare's foot
   is luck more than
imaginary.
  when no one is looking but
always i, keening in the total
    image -- it cannot
be you, impossible
   under ineffable skies
and twilight-erased  mud;

moments are   disavowal.
   you    like   the sound
so withdrawn   from  contestation,
  so easily your accurate self
liking   the   captured  dissonance.

you know   a fine day when
   it happens,
slow ****** of the vertical,
   highest  time to quit, bid for
a sequestered   place   free
      and absolute in variables: x is the lie.
all the intimate
    dark   you   pulse  with   the life
of   beautiful  horses

          gaining lightsome distance,
an approbative signal of technicolor
    painting   your   face  with   all
       things basking.
                     truant.

it is much like rain this hot evening,
          prompt in arrival to assuage default
                  settings

   like most days when in the intimate dark
          which love I clutch and whose
              hands i ****** shatter before me

    between the moment just arriving
        and the press of disappearance

     this body that dartles onto the leadened
          cathedral of  your heart, the jaundice
     of your repeated self accumulates

           to harangue this true evening yellow
    starting a burlesque of moon, flushed

         in the punctuation of mildew. grass
   its fragrance the first time and the last,
         translated - a revision of wind's gesticulstions. else it was strangely always
      pure dusk, wide-eyed, awake in futurity

    dare the hands clench and the feet
       mingle with swift pace much like
    rain    this   evening      forgetting
      a jammed, rusted   parasol
  
          your first time underneath the world,
       Summer ending in a blink of an eye,
          a stab of bated breath.

done over this afternoon I only have one image
and about you were many other surly things

all wrapped in the sudden heat of happening
through the clear eye of a diaphanous world.

inmost spring of an unreachable bud,
a raw material for hurt kept in the after-hour

of a dwindled morning charged to dark
moving with precise instep

rummaging for completion
underneath an untamed sky

left for claim but not entirely as to be free,
no remnant of the hour’s expensive thrill

where I do not find you in me,
as I am still down on your able ghost

pinning it down to where it will never
meet its breakable place:

a wondrous dawn, or the fever of Maytime afternoon,
  in your most excellent clothes

or else it was simply desire

scent of the newly-bathed
hot off the ironing board clothes, pulse of radio

  your smooth, round
  perfume   wafts

into my  distant home,
  making your absence

total    
                         keening
  through   the   anger   of   the feeble wall
  in front of   me

your    smell
   I     love, my love when it is time
I will    be   less than
    soul  when it   meets   body’s  persistent
     pleadings,      

lay  down    eloquently   bold
          for   mine   to    stray   thinking,
    here     engraved   to  bone
like   pompous   woodwork

again    and    again
   your   scent
making

your
   absence
total.

moseying on to senseless expulsions
the width of the hot, throbbing room

pulls away and cannot parry
   thrusts

breath stabs double angst
shuddering to speak only hands know
language, scent evicts
all names

goes   to   a   deathly  departure
  through sad, flittering windows

forgets    who   he   is

We rarely go drunk, or perhaps that is I, when I told Marc that all people are nearly up on exits
   and barely exists now is feeling – he started swinging a running joke between the two of us

facing the planetesimal – lights their strobes of secret I am on my 7th beer and still nothing
    when being listened to by frantic fret of fear because indulgence is key to demise

when it is said to pull apart but didn’t, I halved the 7th beer and felt my gut cloy itself with
  the muck of fat from pork rind and stale chicken

I deem myself incompetent in the slug, gild of attendance: freckled wall with dotted red,
    linoleum plastered, defaced somewhat, Marc moves to Hannah and I further

the dark with my groping hands – I do not smoke inside my car.
         Ortigas is unusually dull, minutes trickle slow like *** or un-***,

whichever it may, I quickly said as I stole the mic from his hand the words I imagine
    to become filled with the purpose of frayed upon exactitudes.

He always brings his knife with him and I always ask him even if I knew
  that it’s somewhere in his acid-washed jeans – I have always been fascinated

by the lives made better or worse by knives. I remember Gabriel and I talking
   about Holden Caufield when all we ever wanted was to fall

immensely in love with girls we  chase around   in sophomore year, Gabriel
I do not know where you are and listening to Radiohead now reminds me of

something   strange   with   unwilling potential; perennial silence permeates
        Ortigas and somewhere a couple is hot and *******

whereas I, asleep on my 9th beer, probably my last,
         willing to give   up  for  a   laugh or   some     sense  of place

  while I hear them all
    laughing   in front of my parked   car,  poking fun   at   something

I   can   barely identify.