is this vacated cocoon
 a concatenation of a gradual
    obsolescence of a distinct
      machinery

    when it lulls me to sleep
 so obscured

   grip like vise, then lift as if
 passing a levitation
 
            submerges something
  in the throat
       rammed like inward canopy
   of hand, links like leaves and leaves like
       leaves still.

   paying hindrance to stasis
convolutes a mirror to steel and mangles
       the bile

    not minding me when i fall
asleep to its last, faint recall.

para sa Kidapawan*

Diktador ang makinarya.
Maringal ang langit. Walang ulan para
sa pasasalamat. Ang ating tanging pagkakakilanlan
ay pumapaimbulog sa bawat sugat na nagsara.
Muli nila itong bubulatlatin.
Hindi paham ang gatilyo.

Mabilis na matutuyo ang pangako
kung pawawalan ito sa katanghaliang tapat.
Tanaw ng nakabiting ulo ng araw
ang lahat ng nangamatay. Kasabay ng hangin
ang pagpapaluka. Hudyat ng ulan galing
sa ibaba – gigibain ang makapal na barikada
  ng katawan atsaka muling uuwi sa asawa’t anak
na may bahid ng pula ang kamay. Dulo ng kuko’y
kapiraso ng mundo. Itim. Hugis buwan. Ang pagputok
    ay isang rekoridang laging gumagapang patungo sa tugatog
     ng isang alala.

Dadalhin nila sa bingit ng pagpaparam
ang babasaging boses – ang mga bubog ay
isasaboy na lamang sa lansangan.
Lumalaon ay dumidiin ang bulahaw. Inutil
lamang ang pagtatalik ng kamay at bakal.
   Umusal na lamang ng dasal sa likod
ng kakahuyan at baka dinggin ng bathala
ang panayam. Walang iisang dilang tumatabas
  sa dahas.

kung saan sisimulang hanapin
ng mga mata ang isang lugar kung saan ang lahat
ay iwinawasto ng nakaraan ay lingid
lamang sa kaalaman.

bago mangapal ang dilim ay nilusong ng mga kalalakihan
ang nalalapit na katedral. Naghahabol ang papauwing liwanag
na masaksihan ang kabalintunaan.

wala silang nakita,
katawan lamang sa lansangan,
tinutubos ng kasaysayan.

this deep devotion in abstract tends to break loose
  reclining in air.
it may be even that the face is water
  and the eyes, basins. should the heart endure dank
seasons, there will be new skin thereafter.
the favorable light sways outside the house,
  stilled settings of rife adjustments, the objects are in
study: the fluent is stone. the trees automaton.
     demand for sought after thrills, the plenary hall
of moon. wider than any light, drunkenly, frothing by
  the gutter of this body.

sometimes when solemnity incises
   there is image of death in mirrors. yours is diffident
surrender over the haze of hastily contending moments
  and such truth is that the escape is yearned for
by a body – stiffening to become so rigorously false.

listening to the infinitesimal sound of body
   take this music to the trees, their lignified arms akimbo
yellowing, grandiloquent from the seizure of old fevers,

    the maddened, thorough tune mistakes your
    anatomy as cartography. if your deepening, secret parts
   are known, we will assume all conditions
and give variables for metaphors.    Sometimes escape is coveted
by    the   body, its indistinct signs neglected as beacons,
   there are   other  things happening, say, a hand meeting a face,
or the feet converging in trembling altitudes. A limit is set here.

“Today, we make a man out of you.”

  Was what I may have heard in the pitch dark, blindfolded, hearing a mechanical arm swing and in full force, smash my hamstring. I was made that day. And for that, I thank them not. I celebrate myself this way, in the full-turn of a dream.

   Was what I may have felt somewhere in Bocaue when Sonny brought me to a ******* in the middle of the night. They wore the same, seductive dresses in the crimson night. They had their flamboyant maquillages. Bodies like curved spoons. Heads billowing and airless, their hairs frozen, held intact on the skull. Their skin smelt of berries. Sonny took two and I took one for myself. How am I made that night? Never touched, never held. Fair enough, I disappointed her. Her name in the Filipino language is asusena. A man’s a man when you cannot fool him into the trickery of a device that does not appeal to him.

  Was what I told my nephew while whetting a switchblade. The grating sound made sweet music to his ears. He was intent and keen at observation. He just got circumcised because the much older, paunchier kids made fun of his boyhood. You are the wind, Calvin. He smiled as I maneuvered into the blank, corpulent space and swung around, pretending to stab someone in clear air. He lauded me and believed that I was a master at that – which he may not have seen, a master at pretending.

   Was what I may have noticed when you and I were in a cheap room staring at the white ceiling talking about cheap lifestyle. The nomad scent of your hair wafted, almost trying to describe the difference between inhale and exhale. To inhale was to take you in, and to exhale was what you do best. The word “****” lingered by the cold metal of the doorknob and the hinges seem to collapse in their trade of swivel. You were taken into the thrill of the void and I was caving in at the edge of my world. I wanted to kiss your beautiful face
                   but a man knows a device he cannot control.

           and  so
I     heard
      myself
sing      into   the wilding   air,
                        let     myself
                         diminish –

darkness excites. caliginous walls
    flounder. deepening are the blue grievances.

i should have killed you
  in the stale air of nothing; when it was said
that it takes less courage to love.

a hoarse cry in the obstinate woodland
  insolvent, pressed against the foot of hills.

the quietus in spite of artillery
over and over the deep, droning sound of it.

tirelessly the flowerheads swing forth
newfangled skin and engravings of pious woodwork

tremble in the maladroit wind. the indefatigable purple
   of the very twilight – its slow onset, flays from the air

once it gets into the vertical; I will not speak
  in front of mirrors and curse the fragrance
of camphor and its foretold departure –

everything that is not much of its communion
   living at the small altitude of my feet;

blood rises clean, emerging
  from the earthen womb as I am not hers yet,

I should have assaulted you as a marauder
   arrives in the deep, blackening night

                        of total surrender.

o, good lord of the streets
where a phantasmagoric sensurround

banishes the scream of youth –

a carburetor snarl taken
   as unction of name. was it

your name that you whispered to my ear,
   him dearth in the quietus.

first to go is grace,
  what soon follows is bravery. a makeshift moon
of course, hanging by the earlobe of

her; I’ve been wanting to bite to break skin
   her truly frightened symmetry
of a  storm which is an  onus of  pain -

o, good lord
     help me weave way later
     when I’m down on my contrabass.
Scout Albano tonight’s a dark
   expanse of    regret

resonating a deep and hollow throb.
    women on flay, cigars in mouths chucked
like busy streets on a noontime sun, the soot clambers
   the billboards and their frozen, extant smiles

      wring out the poison and drain:
    we have no imposed god, an announcement to ear
  shot into the flay of the bone that persistently
      aches - like some unreal drumming of squalors.
            
         we are ruined with echoes of many names that haunt us
  with their gaping mouths
              in   frightful  angles,    but

when we’re drunk, Marc,
   this will all be over.

The peril of this thing is to imagine you in the
     word marvel.

Anything that must point towards the Sun
     must be tender with meanings

in the dinnerless evening
of the leaden chapel of silence there is always
a fury in its own movement say,

a touch of a hand on my svelte upholstery,
machination of an enigmatic discourse towards

fluidity of bedazzlement simply by saying
   you want to go out in the center of which
   pulses with a different life but with the same name,

or to briefly wonder
   if the word marvel is its own fault and
accurately measured in longitudinal  fashion,

so innocent on the passenger seat now groping for
some warmth from the black subcompact with metronomic sounds,

the mechanical work of this droning disfigurement
   is that even in wings

you    are relentlessly     going   and going
   crossing points   and delineating   crosswalks

with more   x-ed  angels  lamenting their   able wingspan.

Unable to give birth to new conflagration – grace of prayers is nothing but
   sadness stilled in sandalwood and simply this poem,
a letter of intent to crush your face and fracture your bones the same
     way you do with mine, in every evening where

the final squall of the throbbing moon is a realization of the answer:
I am the one who wants to drown you in total darkness,
    and my final word wanting to scar.