outside the mellow moon
swells - honeysuckle circle
of supernal immensity
athwart the window
shoved into my eyes
undisputed, sempiternal lallygag --
   rolls away into
   the tapestry
   as the mildew starts
  levitations, blowing into
     our windows.

a finagling
       conception

faces start to blur
past dreary old Manila
and scaffolds cool to touch
like one of the many daggers
of love struck relentlessly
against the rib
mercilessly genuflect
as the rain mocks
the tears of a woman used bone-deep
wolfing down at the door
heeding these transcendental howls

baleful eyes ****
past the throb of the strobe

remain wordless

i taste it in the moment
yet why kneel?

the lowly moon
verily traipse still
scalding hot light on ill-tempered motor hums
the snare of the muffled sound
the ecstasy of its incandescent flare

streets fat with fools
streets fat forever
streets squandered
by tiresome motion
in perpetual hymn
the wingtip of candle-flame
swaying like
a skirt of that one girl
i kept looking at
in a pub in Chicago

moon bellowing yellow chorus
singing flat tones
of death
mine to hear pining away from
its cunning edge

i've none to offer
anyone
but
despair.

in here fires an obvious chore:
he says
it is
from Sagada

its appropriate turmoil
sinks in the sinus,
leaving a trace of bitter
in my tongue
encapsulating my world
in the cerebra now sweet
candid electric
feisty and almost psychic

there is this
instantaneous lightning
shaking my jungles loose
out of birds on tethers.

this is something real,
he says it is from Sagada.
my dreams there made
nailed in exiled silences
behind this lamp
drinking beer
cold
warm water music
in ear.

sloping in a manner
  where outside the brindled
  world, light bends
  like all else in loose wind

  i can almost see
  and make out with what
  secret blueprint your
  body works in its
  mischief - or with what feast
  welcomes the bounty of
  your secret passages.

  take this now. a pint of ether.
  or something real like
  this look on my face harpooning
  your eyes unknowing of their
  consequences.
  just the subtle hint of
  what my mind tries to
  unclose in you makes
  all shadows of my body frenzied
  with tantric thought of doing
  this and that and so much more
  than just
        this and
               that...

  like squeezing juice out
  of the freshest fruits
     or watching the rain
   taint everything in picturesque
     detail - or ****** of
   butterflies on a clad flower,
    or what the sea haplessly tries
   to engrave on the shores with
    its frequent, frothing thrusts
  
    or making it all perpetual in
   motion trapped in the bona fide
      moment. say, i will
   feign a moment of
       colliding into you and
   feel your surrendering force
      imprint small indentions
  without confiding in the exactitude of this domain where
     i have you lured into my song
   like a child put
       to sleep.

still swollen:
      moon in eye
    lips murdered red
      with the crimson of
    maddeningly furious bites
       the crunch of bone
    turning in bed - air and moment
     stopped and in between
       the hounds spread
    darkening rumors,
        dropping once again are
   eyelids from too much
           heaviness of unuttered
     words, unperformed verbs
        seething in between teeth,
   cheek pressed onto crumpled
     ******* from groping in
the dark knowing only its
       frail rescue

    these tiny fingers still
   ache from touching anthropomorphic fires,
        the ears still swollen
  from distinct susurrations like
      o's and h's and their
     sweet campaigns
   my heart's well engorged
     with a whelm of promises

       in the morning there
      will be i and you,
    our love still throbbing
     in the loom of it,
   as we go on leaving -

i like how your eyes close.
voluminous quandary of
a naked rose.
the agony of the brine
beating through the night.

i like how your eyes swallow back
to smallness
and then open
like a gossamer flower in bloom.

i like how your eyes flicker
their transluminal joy - i like what they do to me - so quite a new and tender thing. under the ocean-liner of your skin and the waiting islets of your shoulders, there i am drunk underneath the twilight of your wide eyes, outwrestling pains, and then closing, outlasting the nightfall.

i might have awakened
you from your
unperturbed sleep.

i am sorry i do not know
my way around.

i am quite unfamiliar
with everything.

only with you
a couple of times,

a hundred moments
briefly myself.

"No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax — This won't hurt." - hunter thompson

but it did, Hunter.

and the silence grows fuller
like a plane to Nicaragua,
  or the sudden surge of quiet
   after two bodies have already
     fallen from the vertigo
      of pleasure.

   treading the barbed line of
    living as the wind acrobats
    and mangles itself into
     a dagger - a sharpest edge
     of memory's telling:
  
     i am endlessly searching
     for something i cannot name.

     scouring for lost things
     in the pocket of this
     realm. tentativeness
    a tenfold - sink or swim.
     mind dwindles somewhere caught
  like a flailing fly in the lair
    of a relentless tarantula.

furiously this night grows
    insectile in its habiliment,
  buzzing and drilling against the
   walls pounding on them like
a man would, angered and hostile
   behind narrowing faces of wall
    in steep confinement.

tiptoeing
     through shards
        fire
            song
              light
        ­         no light
                   silence.

this won't hurt
under secret strobe and
cigarette haze
this won't hurt
underneath the parasol of
influence as the cosmos rains
weighing down eyelids close to
pavement
this won't hurt
this won't hurt
won't hurt this,

won't this hurt

shaft of light through
tassels, clinking cutlery,
vacuous space
varnished petrification
of wood,
monotonous whir of the fan
and the cessation of the clock
(i give it taps to test
  its life but time has
  given up on me)
the surreptitious chirp of
bird and the flirtatious advancement of a shadow.
Hugo's crucified howl
in his kennel -
the bristle of broom from
the outside, sun raking through
a mound of dead leaves
scattered across this humdrum thread of the world.
ceramic persona
being formed into something
   ephemeral: say a household,
      or little stone-men,
a sturdy house of epistles
   or just a nook for a free dove.
first to go is the sound
   of the afternoon and the next
     is i, wearing 2 day old jeans,
starting the car, revs it like
   a beast in stupendous heat,
     raves the avenue and brings
with its deceitful snarl, the weight of all trivialities, enclosed somewhere in the dark annexes of the compact subspace,
   wishing for a crash,
   a collision,
   a time for smallness,
   or of being
   nothing but
   air, or the clock that died on me, or just
    10 AM, nothing else.

this thespian ardor.
aokigahara-
jukai, suicide of morning trills.

the wind howls
like a hound
  (sans the totality
    of sound, as the truck
     slurs its final groan)

bespangled crown of the NLEX
festooned by pearled light
all across its furtive stretch

the heaven in my darkness
says Now as silence is drunk
in funeral hilarity. the truancy
of populace says Who as the
morning beckons with its blue entry becoming almost whole (and
ethereally exponential)

Pildira sings like a bird
  and self becomes so
quietly rational;
like my heart, (the metronome,
    settable configuration of
labile fortuities) gropes
   a perspicuous vision and plants
it to mine chest.

Pildira flutters like an
   old butterfly in this new morning and i, with the net of
   my hands cold with song, will be
songless in the moon without stars, or stars without moon.

these blatant exhibitions
of frailty

man is need
man is want
man is punctuation
man is ellipsis
man was
and still is

an aged man leaning towards
the ATM, eyes squinting,
body in slackened cursive
drawn by little light,
commandeered by mechanized voice

enter
the
amount

the price
of
existence
wanes
slurs
laughs at us

what does life mint
in the blank paper?

man is want
man is need
man is slave
man is punctuated
survived by no ellipses,

only by a continual drudge
of need
want
fools
all.

the mere bookend soon became the fury of beautiful beginning!

death so small when you
have the world in your lightsome hands.

the way your face crinkles
at the glare of a word's
furious light

and the way your eyes
widen anew like tapestries
and the bird of syllables
stills itself in
the woven shrub. unwrapping with utmost care is your mind's calloused hands, revealing a spar of darkness and light.
unsealing you is your yearning's
fingers, like autumn to snow's enveloped remnant.

oh how the world
sinks in its solitary axis.
oh how the comets intermingle
in orbit, greeting each other
with flamboyant punctuations back to loose fluidity
for us to drink and revel in.

what joy is the sight
of you, reading.
what bliss is the sight of
reading you, as bold as the word
is in sensuous print,
yet shy as a daffodil shivering
in the wind,
unheard of as a hurl of a voice
in the zenith,
trembling in your hands,

the word of the world.

mind's collective.
a primary congregation
in chiaroscuro,

white axis
tilting black worlds
as stars lean
towards their gaseous disappearances.

mind's prison.
blood surging in staccato,
thumping like wild animals,
trundling underneath the womb
of genuflecting hills.

a cityscape is innervated
by electric wires and their
secretive jolts: this plunging light laying leschenaultia diadem
on my head naming me king
of shadows thriving inside
bells telling all buoys
with their rotund calisthenics.

all words elope stagnant rivers,
vexing truths out of horizons
painting them without color,
like the image of a dove trapped
in mirror's water, reaching
forth kingdom come.

here is the cold
heralding my bones.
shivering in the cranial
are the spine of many visions.

here is the announcement
of it in mid-step:

space is our station.
movement's tenure is endless -
a separate illusion
bleak like an unwanted behemoth,
gnawing the skin like
a raged lover would
in summery heat of body.

here is the miracle
of its pursuit:
mind extricates itself
from frame morphing solitarily,
squandering the mist
of this inward-breaking commune.
like a prisoner swallowed
by a garrison, lapping in recalcitrant afterthought,
eyeing for conflagrations.

the ghosts of many days.

here are the many eyes insidiously cutting through insides, gutting them out of their poisons and their moribund steps, assuaging none.

before the step was the flesh,
and before flesh was the emptiness,
keen with its marble eyes
like sizing down an already
thwarted opponent.

these pallid-faced buildings
peer through the sleepless concrete
like fathers searching for children.
like crows scavenging for
truths behind myriad lies of death.

here comes the marauder thieving
again, the gutter's chagrin.
underneath stirs the deathly
**** of rats, the deep inset
of petrichor hiding behind
the overcast of a death foretold.
streets continue to emblazon
their nameless turns:
George Street bayoneting through
Pitt as a ragamuffin dog slithers
past Castlereagh, scrounging for
bones with forgotten pains.

the ghosts of many days
weaving the loom of sky
tender with sound of labyrinthine
flapping through the hollow
of dawn as my fingers
clash in battle, rearing this nailed triumph.

apparitions tracking me down,
chasing me with vivid light
through uneventful avenues
forking without meaning
past the hammered cinders,
away from the frozen barricades
in stiffening cold,

ghosts of many days
coming back with unprompted tongues
and their pertinacious susurrus.

smoke ascends
into a thin streak
hauled by wind's crane.
tacit coruscations peer through
the cityscape without lasso.

revealing
light's snickersnee
and then guts the silence
with it,
pares it back
to an ember's nascent form.
in the womb of death
is i,
lips puckering to blow
a nebula of a new world,
ingesting all its hell
and expires
a circumambulating heaven,
sealing all fates,
a sepulchral nativity.

rain glistens the gray face
of asphalt in this lurid eve

as the trickle-song thumps
the chords of metal,
the frequent hum of a passing mobile, a trembling moth in sight
pursuing the stillness of this
      eve

i remember once my hands touched
multipliedly the work of bone.

this too i remember: when you
were hesitant to say anything
yet eyes were as consenting
as a portent of rain, and as crude
as any language shouted
in between the rift of river
and hill -- there is much to remember in the field tumescent
with aromatic carnality.

it is without speech that everything desperately tries
to signal me something incipient
like an unknown flowering left
to be unearthed.

tonight it rains endless
with memory. the moth
unfolds its fictile allegory
without having to cocoon
around an unfazed inset of hot glow
in this eve of reminiscences
summoning you through
this flight of esoteric moth,
through the rain and its ephemeral burst of bloodless ripple,
through the sensual globules
of lampposts telling me of
a once familiar batting of eyes
and disappearance of darknesses

when our bodies made fire
during the eve of our discoveries.

my little hummingbird
moving towards a stasis of light,
holding a simple secret, a bell's machinery!

       trilling on wiry breath
      or my mouth's plumule,
        my chromatic bird,
       unmoving as a bud translated
        in reticence, plucked from
     the mire of ground's vastness,
       speaks only so timid of my
       hand's agronomies,
    glazed by a moment's fresh glare: your unending eyes that see
     yet do not hear!

      take my hummingbird and fly
    with it! take it away from the peripatetic and plant it soft
      to your mouth's jar!

it is in dove's ways how i love you

and it is no common sight
to take glory out of what this
life ever so defiles with its
uncouth hands.

in the way that i soar with my
unnameable wings over your
territories finding shade,
clinging with the wind, my mothered world in the eclipse of a day's turning - where together with the fleshly rivulets i am unafraid
to trample the night with lithe sound: a wing's flutter echoes
through the caves of your mouth deepening in primeval silence. stones woven earthly, intricate as a bed of mendaciloquence where truth lies stripped to the bone of the very voice of it. oh and what solace waits for me yonder hills that recognize my stretch - even the shadows rejoice in their fill of my passing elegies yet, no love
shall die! night arrives drowsily over these planes that seek me, and i cascade as gentle as a pond girdling your ample fish that i viscerally own, thriving inside me, whirling in graceful fire.

the morning takes me with you,
its duty speaks where i was once
sterile without path - you take mine flight and hover past everything, spreading garlands that would name all of them, ours!

my love,
  when the winds of
    change ravage
the boughs of this union


i will cling onto you
as though startled
   and frightened,
like ivies weary of their
    vertical
          climb
  
   like these passerine fingers
   moving closer to the
     leaflets of your soul,
    perching in warmth,
       my little summer,
   my winding aubade welcomed
with  bird-song!

like men in parks

let us

greet the oriole-filled
morning with an ineluctable smile
and go merrily with argenteous waters and their rustling freedom,

be as flowers are, thirsty
for life, quenched by sweet ambrosia from the Earth's
hermetic vessels,

sojourn and watch slender fulminations of dawn ******
against the oleanders, the cypresses, the children tawny
with laughter, and the sparrow swift in wind's deepening hush

sing with the string of birds
and wait for women for us to
gaze at in their lush pelisses
as the heavens gather a mound
to graying, reckoning rain through
sills imperatively shut
as rain slowly announces its arrival

like men in parks
treading gently are
the passing flight of herons,
    their unnamable wings
truncating their
       journey as the day closes
its wide eyes and sleeps!

i listen to all these
dying cadences, these internal convocations that i,
dazed into the fullness of flesh
and realness of bones and their
fantasized congregations on
my body,
these whispers recollecting
sobriquets that in oneness,
shall unashamedly endure ---

this tough call
singular in silence and in tenderness,

that in this readiness
you will give back what is mine
to own

these sudden and indelible
thrusts, these nebulous stares
that pulse with the life of
stars, and the ineffable echoes
of your caves that summon
my foolishness - these vibrant nightingales in hiding!

all that is the sea
  
         in
               one
         full
                    wave:


      the fritter of each line
      reaching for shores,
      the multitude of eyes
      in in phosphorescenr sand:
      memory etched
      in flumine! erased by
      the arrival of blue hands
      rinsing all, leaving foam
      of passing tides already
      full with derelicts.
      sibilance of breath speaking
      its origin and now
      i swim past all ruins,
      moss, seaweed, crush of
      light and opaque contest,
      lifting with the voyage
      of a ripple, and back to
      your breast,
      i dream of fish!

the pall of a long day
in sheer white burden
lay inexplicably all
deaths unrehearsed

gargantuan immovable and relentless

like the wide wind cutting through
the blink of an eyelid
or a mortal's fragmented word -hands fret for amalgams
of all brokenness cupped to
the size of all that is loved
in hundredweight

casting their heaviness
upon all of us, pinning us down -
mildew to grass as the hours
draw emphases

             (displaced
               stilled, looking
               outside the
                 window.)

it is like the many nights

sleepless
intone of light
on the tiled floor
and surreptitiously
under the
influence
wringing out poems
while looking
at
8th and 7th street
fondling darkness
like virgins on
the absolute
a mutiny of
dead cigar butts on the
corner as "kuya Louie"
passes by with a wrench
half-drunk with "Emperador"
half-mad with ars poetica.
other sense of self
somewhere brash and brazen
awash with modern
sensibilities
as this night deepens
whiter like the color
of new bones
to fledgling movements,

just like any other night.

"when you cannot sleep at night,
you are in someone else's dream"

how many hours shall descend
bringing in a cavalcade
of dim twilight's press
  on the soft, aqueous levitation of body?
is this liminality's gradual
hand nailing me
into flesh and stirring
me out of this oceanic crawl
when all you have ever
done was sleep me away
and tell me
of these
susurrations of soul?

i have no answer to
this solitary condition -
say, taking you by the hand
and somnambule in cosmic field
of no thought's ethereal working,
or as in playthings are freely
laughing behind whose hair
flails without a face, i wonder
which beauty holds true,
my wide wakefulness,
like the only key pursuant
to its inimitable hole.

i am infinite in someone's
thinking, who dare not
say something,
who daunts back to breathless
consoles, and springs back
dizzy with a gyro of questions,
  i am all hunted answers but
  where
  is the votive voice
  that searches me?

he is not writing boldly to say
that this is for
someone,
anyone,

only for no one.

all but one have so many names
that intertwine themselves
to their own reclusive triumphs.

this is no inner life
or an outward deaths

this is
something only purgatory
claims in prayer
or in the hell of each living.

go on death and gladly begin!

not for someone
not for anyone
not for everyone

but for no one!

what to make of it that
this togetherness is sterile?

ah, what fortuity!
clearly no sizing down one's self
nor seeing one's self through
eyes of others,

just merely being
and coming to be,
without a trace
of
going.

entering the gradual hour,
this wraith without announcement,
without wreathe, without the
song of bells nor the fracas
of cathedrals.

are you always like this?
have you already deciphered
the enigma imbued on the twists
of our roads? have you already quieted the anthem of emptiness?

when silence befalls you, do you trill on the same bough after your tired flight? with what weight of water do you scrunch the already dampened foliage? outside windows and all openings there is only the old moon's wane, and in this uniform exactitude, do you speak what remains to be said? what are only these words that remain so small in us? why have we not foreseen their deaths?

why must you go in the irretrievable dark and emerge with
only scarce light? why must now your languid bones rattle underneath the ground of this formlessness and speak to me the languages i conceive on my own
and not from your once brazenness?

before your rigor was the sibilant stridence of your once wry smile.
we cannot find it in us anymore,
and somewhere yet again, inside of us, rallies still with its mayday and its warfare,
something only a shadow could
only ***** in the total dark.

herein lies common fault - loosely hanging on a speculative conjecture
     than exact detail.

mind's prison- asylum.
you go in to see furtive showcases
of the many names walking without
faces. you went in without invitation. only or abstract solicitation.

there is something that sinks
deeper than marrow, blows colder than December winnow, something that burgeons beyond naked sense.

inside this lair,
conflated you are with bent question marks to their distinct, curved smallnesses. you peek into the window of my eyes and inside this airless vault, we are both
heavy with staring at each other
dripping and bare-all, yet
this rigmarole of eyes contain
their visceral silences still.

i stripped them all of their voices
and they only look at each other
with onerous eyes, pondering
about their places, answerless
and just whirling in capacitous space --

figurined affectations
weary on their pedestals,
high-pouncing in their
formless wind,
whimpering in their places,

like a woman imagined
in leitmotif - chords
outstretched to symphonic wrestle,
lissome fingers touch
gossamer ground
lips wovenly shut to figure
out in silence, its language.

this is a showcase of longing,
yet, wildly it goes
with its urgency, into the
   unrests of my cerebra,
imprisoned there, slumbering there, thieving and thriving there.

sa may dagliang liko
abot ng aking ligaw na sulyap ang
sabungan. matatas ang kanyang
ngalan.

"Cockfighter's Rendezvous" kaunting
lakad lamang pabalikwas sa
MERALCO kung saan isang mahabang
karagatan ng tao ang pilit
na inaalon ng bayarin, kaltas
sa sahod, bulag sa paroroonan.

ayon sa mga akda ay mayroong
Kristo sa sabungan. siya ang
nangangasiwa sa aliwan ng mga
drayber. ang matalas na tari
ng kanilang hagikgikan
ay lumulubog sa haba ng
pantimpalak

naroon daw si Kristo
habang
ang dagundong ng batingaw
ay tulog sa tore.
pitikan ng pitikan ng yosi
kung saan na lamang maisipan
ng pagod na kamay na may samyo
ng dala nitong lansa,
at matapos ay papasok ng muli
sa simbahan kung saan
kasabay ng pag-danak ng dugo
ang pag-kubra ng nag-wagi.

hawak ni Kristo ang patay
na manok,
nasusulat sa tari ang
linya ng dugo.
alam ko naroon si Kristo.

hawak ni Kristo
ang mga baryang kumakalansing.
ilang pirasong pag-asa
para sa pawisang drayber,
para sa parokyanong lasinggero,
para sa baguhan sa aliwan,
para sa llamado.

hawak ni Kristo ang lahat,
at siya ang panuto
sa pagsusulit ng ganid.

pauwi na ako. wala na ang
alingawngaw ng sigawan.
Lunes nanaman at ramdam
ng lahat ang bigat
ng parating na mga araw.

real is the form.

here now is a colony of words,
or an empire of assault from the
many truths that smite us.

our hearts gallop altogether
past the prairie of imaginations:
this movement, this locutionary,
this waltz adagios its way
to a pace that knows no sojourn.
let us raise our clenched fists
always angelward.
we are young in this agronomy.
our hands remind us of their increasing responsibilities.
our inner light realizes the throng of our shadows - away from the dark
we go pursuant to all effulgence.
let us unpin our juvenile wings
  from the clasp of what startles
us back to our flawed origins.
a flumine of flawlessness awaits
the steep end of our possibilities.

let us not neglect this.
let us, hand in hand, straightforwardly, break from our nascent states and unfurl in a craze of the so many things that capture our potentials.
outside my home, the streets are vacuous, famished from the twirling laughter of children.
once, the grass is giddy from the lightsome meanderings of our superfluous feet! where did all the days crawl to? these limbless serpents that pillage the fruits of our sageness.

i look outside and the mellow moon
enters with its lithe figure
through the hollow spaces of doors
to lairs where the youth are sleeping, unmindful of what dreams log onto the papers of their souls.
heed the call and do not let
it go, running off into another hapless length of waiting.

real is the form.
there is no lie in our rawness.
the voice inside us is tender
with message, purging our poisons
into detox and preparing with
new energies, our
flesh for our consigned ventures.

the voluminous pages are still
white and new, words besmirched still yearn to be written - there is no getting realer than the realization of our clarion call:

real is the form
and in the blank veranda of green
we sift through wordlessness,
gaping our mouths now,
contributing a verse,
     or a song!

here, there is not much to look
at. in this 3 AM tapestry,
the moon cloaking itself
in profound dark, stark and unseen,
stars borrowing their coruscations
from their white mother
in choreographed intermissions.

only a swan-song undelivered
an a dwarf carved in noiseless stone. the bougainvillea casts
its webbed shadow on the concreted canvas. soon, the night will turn
rattling in its black bed, and then clamber back to its resignation
and the identical day of yesterday's inception will revisit
us through interstices of leaves,
forking these illuminations
without allegories nor travails,
just light and its lenient pedagogy.

there is not much to gaze at,
let alone speak to, in this
deepening spectacle. only
this swan-song that remains a secret between i and this indomitable figurine.
the moon stilled in its lulled repose, stars minding their own
saturations, as the day is in close transit, nearly opening the door of this pale fixture, entering with affable demeanor greeting me
through a hundredfold of anonymous eyes heavy with discernments.

this, only a feeling,
or time demanding to be owned,
desiring occupation
for its relevance is something
that space tenders us.

amongst the peerless lampposts
stabbing the silence with
daggers of light bent to
infinite smallness, so breakable
and so falsely fabulated, is this
scene demanding a name:
flooded are the elliptical interstices my heart's waysides, close to bursting
with waters rendering me repetitions of ablutions, pain is as thorough as a mother meticulously
thwarting dust off of sacred things.

these abated breaths rehearse
their oblivions.
these hands pardon their
callouses for holding too tightly,
the craggy exterior of something
that quavers to be freed.
and the soul turns to leave,
crossing a fine line of distance,
midway pivots to squint at a still vibrant recollection then
pretends as if
nothing has happened.

an accumulation of
the not-so-distant insofar as
a whelm of cafard..

it is something that my hands
have seen with their drones,
something that bloviates
with intermittent speech,
a reaching-for-and-out hauling
of tempests as these

shadows renegade the dark
and join necessities of clarity
to combobulate their hue
into white without any trace of remembering, whatsoever.

yet in this scraping perimeter,
everything is within reach
yet unmoving - teeth do not gnash
anymore to grit their cadences,
mouths are swollen with something. a name perhaps? or a random memory of something we chortled about?
or were they bitten off by the fangs and their unrelenting incise,
suturing the lesions and removing the scabs of these wounds?

something that is purulent in laughter is just as crimson as in pain - these photographs watermarked by an effloresce of blood from which has lived once
in this world full in movement and in flesh now gone.

man emerges from this
darksome ether.
  this: time suspended
  in the ballpark, without fetters.

i have dreamt the truth
  of my vicarious call.
is it not that my measures secure
   these constitutions
      of ineffable fruitions?

it is likened to our heartland's
     acrimonies: dreaming in the
  misty vale of sleep is the word
     and its insistent void,
  riddled by amorous intent
     of barefaced realisms.
  there is nothing here but
  subservience of fantasy's    burlesque fanfare
    on broad vaudeville.

man sinks into the bottom
  of this, rests in the
soft hands of this earth-woven
word - a poem's importunate nativity where all supremacies
     are born ceaselessly!

ito ang siyang giit ng hangin.

ano mang tindig ng puno
ay kayang baluktutin ng
hampas ng latigo nito.

binabalinguyngoy na ang
mga bato sa
lalim ng dilim.

ito ang siyang giit ng buwan.

ano mang sagisag
ng dilim ay kaya nitong burahin.
hayaan lamang ang pag-bagsak nito
sa hubad na imahe ng lahat
ng bagay na lasing sa katahimikan.

bumubukadkad nanaman
ang bulaklak ng pag-iisa.

ito ang giit ng pag-ibig.

ano mang saplot ang suot
ng pag-tangis ay kaya nitong
hubarin -

hayaan nating bukas ang mga bintana,
at damhin ang lahat, abot-tanaw
  at papalapit ng papalapit,

tulad ng hangin,
tulad ng buwan,
tulad ng pag-iisa.

dagliang sampay ng kamay sa balikat
na wala man lamang konsepto ng
pag-iingat.

itong bulalakaw ng halik
at ang haba ng tarima.
ang sikhay ng dagat ng
pag-agos ay hindi mapapagod kailanman, sapagkat
ang daluyong ng bawat sandali
ay mistulang hangin sa bukas
na mga bintana. inaalis ang bigat
ng panaginip at ikinikintal
ang gaan ng
pag-gising nang muli

sa iyong

piling.

i see him straightening the
ruffle of his native clothing,
putting words of truth
inside the empty parentheses
of mendacities -

it is through his leonine eyes
that i see the pointlessness
of men. through the
TV's hoarse static i can hear
his voice occupy the space
of obligation without swerving
to paths made available for ease
without clear trudge.
    sir, you make it painless
to conceive these cutting truths -
death trembles in these taut attestations. in half-lighted periphery i can see the shadows
threatening to cast us into damnation, and it is in the bright ray of your speech that i have started to uncover the beasts
  and their diminutive language.

dark as dark these ploys could be,
  now that they are whiter than
  ever with their transparencies,
you have handed these people
  flames to torch effigies
   and use their glare to light
  the intransigent paths
    to this nation's true calling!

    spare us from the debaucher
of this once sacred land, the contortionists   of these ill fates.
and preserve our just tillage
  over these archipelagos!
save us from the vertigo of these
   mangled, twisting roads!
give our speech obdurate
   magnitude so we can hammer down
the lies thrown at us and cast them away together with their wretched demagogues!

    let us once more, be brave
    to withstand the eye of storms
    and emerge wizened like
     trees in the summer of
    our old, resplendent memories
     where everything is
   and nothing
         is speaking loosely
   of something far from our hands
     to hold, like
   prosperity,
        or effulgence - altogether!

I WILL CAPITALIZE THE
EXCLAMATIONS OF LAMENT
AND KISS YOU WHOLLY

as if nothing happened,
everything rearranged with
careful hands like furniture
in a household

I WILL SURRENDER MY
SUPERLATIVE ARMS
AND THE GUILLOTINE
OF THEIR REITERATIONS

as if everything is ripened,
everything repeats with analogue
flame and reappears unsullied
as a chastised vestige

I WILL TAKE THE SUN AND
EAT IT, SWALLOWING THE
DAYS AND THEIR APT DELINEATIONS

and whisper to your ear,
the night where everything
emerges fresh and anew, glazed
like budding of fruits hiding
behind brambly walls of leaves,
as speakeasy as a salutation,
as formulaic as a synthesis
of light,
as unprecedented as a salvage
of lightning at the back
of silver hills,

take you in my loving arms
and tell you
everything i feel.

our bodies are worn out
of transitions yet we cannot complain, because with this,
our supplications are temporal
or forever, it is much to our liking. numeral once more
are the aches of toil
and soon enough, there will be
a spark to put an end to this
darkness of living our lives. we cannot complain anymore. our soul cuts itself in our movements yet we go unaware of it, barefaced with pride over the things we own, things we want and do not need - we remain to be the culprit to our own soul's demise and what do we do to fend of their emphases? we cling onto things without thinking their affectations, and we blame the pressing happenstances of our deprivations - bereft of soul's spruce, lights flay over our homes to illuminate what is touchable, what is frantic upon sensorial matters. we dwarf ourselves down to the size of our own shallow ponds and like fish struggling to subsist, we flame in the water and drown in potamic navigations of our tired limbs. we search for meaning yet we resign to what circumstances allow to pass through our structures. our soul is famished over the drought of our landscapes - we resign to its surrender because we are frightened to smallness by the weight of the duties we neglect to ourselves.
this mortal flame is close to dying
and there is no enkindling it
to its full glare.

what have we done!

i brace
the impact of this death-collision,

my eyes search the
emptiness of sleep
yet there is a hanging invitation.
a counterplot to my figure's
incessant clamor.

to dance upon the
slenderness of this road altogether,

lighting our cigarettes,
mapping out our deaths
painstakingly.

we know not its macabre,
we pain not over
its toxicities,

takes it closer
  to lips and then purses
a blow of haze curling over
   our brows,
we cannot contain its ballistic call,
its ruthless honesty knows
   no stoppage.

we call death like
a finite answer to a fold of
questions!

i bathe myself with
the music that i alone, hear.

i heed the flinch
of my heart's centrifuge -
gyrates purely without
a hand holding it,
in a lonesome,
contrapuntal waltz.

i lie naked yet untouched,
this aloneness.

even my words prosper in
the tumescence of speechlessness.

hurrying back to
dimming light
is my body ready to feed
the wick of this dark.
traipsing the
bareness of this pantheon
is my soul,
and no one else's.
solemnity scales the stars
and transforms them
into margins to fence my own universe:

  i am the only celestial here,
   spinning in a thousand days
     of restlessness.

what seduced me into
writing is the veiled figure
of the dark that lifts
its hazy image through
the blinds of this acerbic life.

i annul the language of god,
   the normality of men
  and the sage of old.

let me pour water into this
pale jar, and in it,
high with hope, shall rise
a cornucopia of scriptures.

an inner sense of life
and a depraved longing
  for felicities,

these words test their capacities
and sprint to the length
  of no return.

i am no man's island
  nor a flame's hearth.
these promontories remain dearth
  yet unafraid of fleeting.

if i go unread,
if i am to be forgotten,
   these shall all remain
     and only eyes ready
to seek seamless lights
  shall turn the pages
   and start reading.

****
sharpens
clears
the smoke
of obvious
hesitations
after
the
spar
of senses triumph
over reasons
and now here
lies
everything
(real
  and earthen,
ripe for
  taking):
feelings have
so many names
and we try
to adjust
it into singular
etymology - something that
is easy for us to make
  and break
like

****.

through the lips of
the horizon
a purple parasol
of attenuated *****
  spread, flagrant is the crepuscule.

these are the exiled
  in the heliotrope world:

trees saluting the length
  of sprinting air to calm
  these undulations -
  painted are the leaves
  with blame.

lips sinking to find answers
hidden underneath the
derelict of sweat, noisome moan
after quieted breathing,
heavy with the undeniable boulder
  of craving's weight -
  tongue naked, freeing itself
  from the oubliette of flesh,
  finding what is still to be
   tasted in a covetous harvest,

it is indeed strange to be here,
  in this absolute hour
  of absent resoluteness.
to deny want and embrace fullness,
my eyes ***** these visions
   and then dive through steepness.
  no words have to be said,
  only their significations
   held secretively as roots
  are unseen flourishing in their
    obligations to this flower,
    your flower

  underneath the twilight
   of bodies crossing each other
  out, love's derivatives
    ensue.

the wind of this love
is clambering the spine
    of want -

the gentleness of it
  sings to me, an oncoming ratio
  of love's reign:

   all of it is to less of me.
   love on its knees,
   weeping to be discovered
   and hurled into the readiness
   of bodies, the intractability
   of hearts ravaged with   instinctive roars of need,
   the flight of words
   soaring with flame,
   forests shaken loose,
   wringing them out of birds!

  what question to bare it
  when i am already tenderly
  hurt with love's assault?

   and then memories scavenge
   through the ruin of all:

  who is behind these
     wounds?

there is always,
yet sometimes, the light reclining
on air.

this is the gesture where
the music is born.

a twist of a shadow
unfurls like the first touch of
autumn's hand to pry open
the flowers precisely without hunger yet out of effulgent kindness. this matutinal flowering
    is dislimned by the pressing question of a quotidian sun -

  without reason of imagination,
  these words burst out of
   the silence like blood through
   the steel vein of the world struck with a hoard of lightning
    as the following of rain in
  fusillade extinguished the waters
   reduced to sound - no reprisals invoked.

   it all begins like this,
   with only love glancing
   through windowless homes,
   searching to find inhabitants:
    these intruder words
    sleeping, awakened, now stir
   madly in the dark to make
      light through and through.