i remember going back to the now bleared moment, where it burgeons in
its ruinous hands. they demolished the hearth long ago and the dearth only fills
the air together with the splinters of what
was once yours — the wind is much tenser there, and there too is the bleak behemoth-shadow cast by the towering bell of the cathedral juxtaposed to the many a pompous mango tree enshrouding it like parasols to young, tender loam.
we were akin  to those moments of death,
lauded by the assuage of its avid fondness — when it has died, we can hardly tell that it were stripped out of life
and when it continued to live, we denied it
inside us that it was no more than an ephemera enjoyed. rain obscured the
dry land seeking till, and sooner than we
knew,
        the leaves have abandoned the trees
and we were underneath a shade of
       our own.

it was like waking up to all white fume
or a long washline — masturbatory, feeling something stiff like a hand gliding
over a monsoon of emotions, the affect
   jazz and the crunch of fragrance
forever like sandalwood;

on my way to Dumandan, i conjure an inward miasma of thrill, unfurled yesterday, today, or was it before when our eyes were fixated on the passing of things in myriad ways without any relevance to what has died, say wilted,

like a flower going away in closing seasons,
children in hurtling speeds at twilight,
gates welcoming a resounding sound of
rusting hinges,
slow rise of night, its vertical climb,
  shadows collapsing on the Hibiscus
and the Poinsettia from the Cordillera,

   dreary men taking out *******, throwing
them into metalloid beasts, verdigris
   painted, grisly caravan of steel and
      worthless scraps —

past neighborhoods thinking about
the simmer of onion and the hustle of
the feral over rooftops, clinking wine bottles undulating full to empty — both
unaware of acumen and only dizzying
ourselves mirroring each other eye
  to eye and bridging this unclose-enough
    a gap in between,

    because you need it,
    and i want it, or simply in reverse,
a sidewinding thought through dunes
    of afterthought.

   because you have to walk my side
    of the Earth and I have to meet you
somewhere halfway where we can both
   lounge at each other's steady presence
while the flyblown dry air ravishes
      the piquant morning, all-telling what
this distance meant from its
                peak up to the very last
   traceable steps where i found you
      and you found me, trilling in the neighborhood like how void
    stills itself into all the mood of the     Earth:

    all moony and
                 fretting in the disquiet.

a nuisance
scraping the sallow pavement

is what it was.

P ondering the truth and throttling
A cquiesence like it was a familiar
R use to be outplayed by vision plodding
I rises holding us against the
S ubtle egress of omens.

W arble no longer, paradisiacal birds.
I   gnite no longer, city buoys.
T his is where they come to salvage ire.
H arbingers — dark, something fire

L eaves on damp graves
O ver grasslands lay quiet, felled dew
V ermilion   eye seeing all
E rupt in a flash of a gun.

synagogue bells jar and outside is the
  color of green, mist enshrouds moss
  macadamized in young wall;

beating back to lips, a paler hue of scorched red,
     a moment twists, hurries back to
the shell of a modest hour,

  rearing in its tender arms, tantric ***
of rain and tendril. tenuous wind swiftly
purloins sound
      submerging the world in picker-patter,

the moon fronts and the sun
     behind — this is my world and within
its breast, the riverrun stride in between
   stone packs its smell of mud

clotheslines full with heavy fabric
weighed down to intent and inertia,
  dragged down to sleep and dream
as the hourly siren tolls somewhere that
    does not have a beacon, a name
  even, blaming only the shadow frittering
  back to its console, pinning us
    down to the calm weather we sing
about in the afternoon —  reaping
   in the twilight,
        a cold-mouthed Hefeweizen!

driving at Kennon (treacherous zigzag
   resembles hopscotch with death)
as i play Morrissey on the radio and the
woman sleeps, sometimes waking up lamenting the death of moths I ran over, splattered on the windshield, "Poor little creatures!" she said. no, baby, i am the poor little creature and so are you,
    relentless against the dark
  past Urdaneta — her being mineward,
i play with death as i turn the headlamps
off (pure blackness, nothing as if falling
into a bottomless pit as void sits on its
throne waiting) and on (all white as pains
  now, trucks flare up and down the bend,
  the tumbled boulders keep meting out
   some forceful way of disturbances,
  our collapse, the afterthought of it all)

i sensed from the beginning that the
old moon will wade out and soon the sun
will throw dissipated shades all across
camps with bonfires dead and stilled.
at the height of all, it becomes so
hot that the birds leave the trees together with the flowers and the Cordillera cannot cry any longer.

my woman wakes up as if rattled
with different pains, her face floating
past the mountains dreaming at the verge
of birds in the morning—
and it is twilight and still the same birds,

now it is the night and you
cannot see the birds anymore,
neither a hint nor a trail of
where they have disappeared

like the glory of Rizal in Luneta.
the lightsome globules in Paris.
the lions of Manila, now a town full of cowards as alleys fill with ******,
the kids laying flat on their bellies
as the lawn takes its revenge
on the rest of the surrounding,
  
         beheading the tree, and the
       birds fly farther and away.

pulling hair, mounting the scathed creature — feelingfulness straddles
the lovelorn fringe of shadows coming
to a feint.

under the canopy of the guava tree
i reminisce dissonance of claims

drunken recall or some ill fortitude
and borderless as it seems,
capturing the eye.

mirage dazzled, writhing on the
darling loam, fisticuff of birds
swarming ecliptic passages
finding a hidden codex somewhere
in archaea — women pulled from ribs
and men wrought out of tears.

but finality in all series of things
seriousness, or was it
lackadaisical thought offspring
blooms walls of drooping eye?

air-tight space, its coalition
with inward breaking penumbra
of shadow,

i write a poem so as not a poem
but an antagonism of sorts
to the end that does not smell of sandalwood but

the fixation of the word
as scent plays with memory,
a fragrance of spring in all that is winter
casting

a shadow upon me, you,
if not all.

rinsing my flask, this late afternoon
and scouring to steal anything from my father's humble tavern: Chilean.

bought on stolen wine, this daze,
pacing itself carefully, as masterful as
a leering puma poised to strike

with a dull blade duller than stab-wound,
nobody heard this primal man cry in the
woods and i'm no dangerous man.

just a shadow that fits the sizable hands
of the world cupped, the afternoon is slain and the hue is its blood:

something the brush of the wind
sensuously brings a roulette of red
  blue, lavender, viridian,
plucked out of the vermilion
wading out as a debris forgotten waltzes
with the river underneath the kamagong— an answerless enigma amid all
    perplexities,

are we but nothing whilst we live?

i yield damages—

"On a marble bench, dreaming:
    I can never hold arms of war
   but i can cradle the artillery
      of love."

some excerpts of boyhood.
some lines written so long ago as
a distant dove hovers, postpones
the herding word,

yet so near to me as a crouched dark
clenched in corner, knowing all the bends and turns of the road.

if i am braver than all — imperative
enough to toss the fear out of night,
or to wring broad daylight of birds,
why must it decree me?

remembering it rearing all the stillness
flown in the wind, the storm of my
younger self crossing Earths in all sides,

treading the tightwire something still
i am the wind and the peril knows my name, making wounds real again.

when i look at you
to say something in pace of rafts
on rivers,

cadencing
claptrap swerve of wording
in tongue's avenue

         is its nature—

    spreading contagion of ill pride.
seeking diadems in fields of night larks
   singing heavily, unapologetic, eulogizing
   mornings none we could take,

  whirling inside our bodies like
     stirred poisons in vials. past the unreadiness of moonlight waxing
    stellified are the waters now, clear
in first light,
    
      like fish underneath our bellies.

when all of the home, or underneath
the bed, or even throne of dream
  all lay with life of felled bodies,

         — lest I feel forever the joy
              of the fall,

when all scrumptious light bend in
incorrigible water, strangeness pursues
all dark;

    soft, soft,
soft, encircling in cage
   the soft,
soft, aloft hills and dead pools
  of sweat
soft and supple      skin
  raged thud of fragmented name
on walling up lips

        love is man and man's prison sees
to it all silence when everything is set free
and we have no use for them anymore,
    
     imprisoning us, the love–

There is so much     space demands
and it isn't just     minding it.

Feel        space
like how you feel a hand glide
over your breast and      ****
   your intricacies with surgery-precision.

There isn't much     space when
there are two people in the room.

Heed      space
and soak your body into various calls
like       coming
             into world with fullness,
you     arrive and take
     space,        therefore, you are.
lewd   fat air circumventing past
  open windows announcing more

       s p a c e

on the fryer or inside the common
heliotrope of dawn lies     space
and its absurd eyelids submerge the
  soul into inconsolable mouths
    with the droll of a wilting word,

  there is much ado said over
certain vacuities    and its sole kinship
  is always its emphasis.
  it takes being alone    to sing beautifully
       yet a marginal dance of    swan
meandering    in    space takes    two
     (as mortise
                       and tenon)
  each without,      senselessly moving.

Too hot. Tousled paper-thin music. 23. Nothing else matters but the conscious: psychic, physical — I arrive, take space, therefore I am. Nothing hurts deeper. Stays. Dagger to gut. Always, the dogs are, always. Much harder for the soul to plead in front of inviting cathedrals. Fire in this side of the Earth. Running. Out of time. Running out of time.
                     Crossing criss-cross of cars.
    Curious cat gets run over, bones break,
    brains splatter, blood dries faster than
    water.
          Flattened by things: menials, stereo cool. Subcompact breathing space. Clinging on to dangerous playthings is
recherché to the average. Death is nice.
Twice of it, better. Breathe fast. Live faster—
Short moments believable. 23 ~ 55. An equivocal calling to mind. Gamblers here
have no parlay. It's senselessness against
another throb of it. Nothing accrues for
greater victories. Slam the ride, deface
the labyrinth. Take it. Ride fast. Do it slow. Pace is everything. The tempo is infinite,
dance wears away like chip on the old floor. Out of cigarettes.
         It is splendid enough to remember
the horses that jumped past
fences of pain than having to mount
   them in all separate mornings,    severances, all that.  There's no magic
in farewell. There's no lie in that.

i see graves in centrifugally waiting
faces
     of vain.

    mortised to sleep, somnambulist
   of this prickly road,

   i kneel to pick flowers
   and throw them
  onto the face i long for
  understanding my eyes
     my mouth
        my body
          steelwork of soul,

   tossing as if a toast
     to our end-fate afloat
  in a raven's wingtip:

      we are all deaths
         wa
     iti
         ng.

Wilfredo

from above i know you saw
what my hands are capable of doing

in front of the hospital,
a fistfight out of pretentious rumbles.

language of war
sabotaged my silence — trickled,
pried my squalid mouth
with jibing
        lips

once upon the nascent
   stance of night
(that is
  over the libidinal moon: i have my
way with colored forget)

   a dog walked this Earth
hunting for something — the drunk
    applaud of night swings the ides
  into an endless dance

    you turn in your grave like
  the replicate of an oncoming wave,
   bringing the ocean closer
   to the burning
   of my
    
          mouth, wordless —

Doring — not much has changed since
you last spoke.
the children are still deep in the mud.
the bellhouse at Poblacion still rings
when it is 5 PM and the ubiquitous bazaar
   sit on the cornerstones.
however, when the white angels began
     latticing you to contraptions,
the furling scent of your homely perfume
      has gone dithering. grandpa Mario's
revolver is somewhere hidden wreathed
    under a wrestle of things we do not
use anymore — lottery tickets ( 4 AM, grandpa would fall asleep reeking of
    ale as the lady announces frail luck
over the somnolence. kitchenware longs
for the ****** of your tremulous hands. the Lazy Susan is attended by only a bundle of rotten bananas, Mario's old
nauticals: whiskey bottles, scotch, goblets, unrest of glasses. we still
buy pandesal near Beng's piano maestro.)

nothing much has changed since you
last spoke. mother held your hands longer than imagined trill of Maya outside tightwire. it didn't flood in the swelter of
the cataclysm — years ago it was deathly silent when you were sitting on the rocking chair waiting for the flood to subside, your grandchildren laying cold on the aged floorboard, rescued by
zigzag of newspapers. it was the lightest
of darknesses. nothing much has changed
    since you last spoke and in your
silence we heard the most immense of
voices. the streets remain pockmarked.
ocher pots festooned by wily flowers,
stems of hope. your hands tryingly gripping whatever
     was brought to their splendidness
looked like forever smiles.

Doring — the nights are fuller,
my sweet old etcetera of chores.

we all lay quietly in the mud for now.

so it begins when it begins
    blasé grass serrates
past herds of carabao dreaming anxiously
  of the day's toil;

the countryman stilts through
   mounted in gray mountain
with dippers, casserole, mirrors
with imprints of ******* clad women
    and women who are (really ******* clad) ready for bathing work,
    collections of red days and even
    tenderly the ***** sing attenuated songs of rooming-houses —

  the crunch of basil over the afternoon.
waft of a pasture's death my eyes well
    up rivers and ponds of elation. dog days, feral nights limp behind rusted
   kennels and makeshift asylums

   there is nothing left of the world
(this small world
            that only rises when bellows
  of festivities harangue the many streets
             bending in them, the curve)
  men moving from neck to neck
    of bottles — (in the north there
      is only four corners of bottle: gin,
   pristine brook; in the Visayas is
      the redolent Vino Kulafu of the same
   potency) plucked out of the vermilion
   and on benched careening on half-painted gates crooning Sinatra
     gets stabbed, bloodied on the floor,
named after elegies; native chicken held
     upside down and beheaded as many blacker days stifled; what do you make
    out of this?
    
      carabaos, equines, hens line up
   the slaughterhouse behind the
      TODA; you know a fine day when
         it happens — breaking eggs
  against the lip of the kaldero. crumbled
    archaic sensurround, barrage of
      simmer round the clock cycling
before the child wakes and wails to suckle
          our mothers, faster than repose
  of milbrightlions of stars falling asleep
      to silent radios, leaving windows
   open revisited by the eve of cold.

it is not the tier of enmeshed leaves
nor the zither of green. none is their duty
to discover the lunar hook of moon.
   — the old bamboo is the mistral
danseuse tonight.

whatever the etcetera
of it, whatever the birds demand from it.
a sling of breath is far-flung into the sky
announcing merriment before the child
beheads the tulip,
      before the creature chokes the pistil,
        before the light enters slow-churn
           of synthesis.
  
  hearing the giggling of bush in
  the mire of wind, heaving in all kinds
  of sleep, the children, the weather,
    together; synapses drunk in translation
  and we feel no longer the secret
    of a guerrilla behind the foliage.

  it is only the heraldry of the world
  when the morning unclips its wing,
  as monsoons continue their bushwhack
  amongst petty citations.
          past oceans gleaming and
    away from hills dreaming —  by the
river, dead of heart, riveting silence
    of land, past the battered bridge in Marilao tracing deathlier waters,
  
         all gone in recall, something
i scour to find only pining away from
scarcity of remember. it is never their
    duty to bring back its image
  to dance with me again.

drowned the Earth suddenly.

  underneath honest light,
                                  all
   submerged. this cataract of feeling —
waters pursue beginnings. cradling them
to unknown ends, washed by the shore.
        gluttonously the night swallowed
all — parliament of birds warble no longer.
             midnight, the   Moon
claws the supple skin of organized stone
  displaced
               where all the edges bloom
forth torrid froth of dappled light which kills no less than a brief life of matchflame. tenuous spar of wind on
the unserious twilight; bulge of death
in the stream — a body haul, rafting
  in compost; stench of all topple like
resins held loose in vats. rat **** becomes
           as inviting as moulding bread;
tantric music for no instrument, hoarse
cries unbeheld —

            until the flesh no longer flounders
pressed against sleep-shaped youngness
hewn lissome in the hours of no succor,

       modeling silence in the thrill of
this enthusiastic space,
           hands scouring muddied
  obscure, atremble,
      shadowless hours fill stomachs with
the plump word of rescue yet none
  of these fingers unwished the
ingenuity of dull gods — this twilight
  nor twinight could ever grive
in forethought, striking bells to signal birds
         to arrive again so we could feast
in  silver  fish, with bare hands scaled to callouses,
    
      looking at it twice-over, this battered yolk
of whiteness, with deeds of the viridian
   now atrill in new fragile woodworks

       lurching and
         ameliorating as we all
    stutter and sing
       haunts dabbing open
  lips of small wounds that
   wish to shut quietly,   almost
every threat of gray     or pummel of
   wind startles the flyblown ornate,
  
   hurrying us back to cornerless homes
where all photographs washed away,
    very few hang
               swayed by verdure
  of the gradual throne of sea
        curving perpetually the several stars
we have ignored for a while,
     where everything quite begins
    again to enthrall with a melodic
  leitmotif of the most tender of
       instances loose
            in mouths
                 and in endless recall
                  
                                               breathless—

there is nothing here, much fill of
the vacuous – just tired mesh;
a precise ruling
     of chaos, like how my mother told
me over folding clothes that i have
   my own way of destroying things.

dizzied and then clamped by my
way of default fixtures past furnitures
and a break on the lip of the wound
having knelt on a shard of glass
   age 7 in familial entrails —

knowing how heavy my steps were
by looking justly at worn-out shoes,
pieces of the Earth jammed on slits,
  their countenance earthen, exhausted
from the mundane. walls chaffed
from childish gnaws, drunk on turpentine.
stock-still hands of an old watch with
   dents for portrayal of agonies

in the dresser, clothes pretending not
  much to do

  and when it started to place its
  affect, i have learned enough to love
   was commonplace for hurt,
  and that there is a false horizon
  staring back through tough heads
of protruding nails, giving back a dignified
  image of contrition — in the mirror
a furiously slaughtered conjuring
   of what i once held in my hands
vivisecting to discover evidence
  fingers painted red, running the fugitive,
rogue without emphasis,
    
               hurrying back to home
  photographs nailed to their stations
  with cases fractured, deep into halved
   smiles, mother locating me with
an old chipped drinking glass, telling me
    i have my way
          of ruining things.

twelve and raw i was
when vaudeville came to town
over the grasslands lay the trapeze,
the fire-monger, the carnival clause,
the whir of metal.

it was the twilight of the Earth
and its men chortling
in single splendid dome
of temporal gleam;

yet now,
banderitas and the lowly
   signs gone, wavering are their
     beacons — rivers amply dead,
and no summer fruition —

this town's lack of circus
   brings night farther to day.
the river makes bride, the muck
  of clay. street vendors pulse with
different tongues. spit and spatter
   spar cleverly downhill
and still no dancing of olden days.

nights i lay, hearing the steady phoenix
of imagination. was it this town's proud
  call? the festive moving?
    sun meets moon and underneath,
the roulette spins in my mind like
   an elusive daydream
   mounting the carousel and steely
     tetanus beams,
        beating  around   an empty home.

take this sea and multiplied wave.
rid of ripples or cerulean announcement;

when you lose something
you chase its sound.

fleeting, sometimes flaring
yet far yonder deep in void
****** in black.

i hear it.
i hear it walk
the sea
as the sea walks me to
its
    brink.

naming my father's victories
past monoliths trapped
in glass case

and tracing my mother's tenderness
across the film negatives
we've no use for anymore.

yesterday was
a victory for my kindred,
while i still drag the augury of
yesteryears lovelessly
athwart the narrow corridors

yet this
man is still the wind

or a bamboo in duress
forced to
breakpoint.

the dinner clatter in the
kitchen mellows down to
wary dregs. my brother laughs
affording atonement
and everything at the verge
of palpable revelry,

i the unspoken yet
heard. my mother often wonders
from who did i inherit
such mood:
all dark
and trudging the infinite.

everything in its own defeat —
but we need not be that
with common travail.
take as a word is to say
the world is flat
and streets fat with fools.

from downtown,
i have here genuine
beam bourbon —
we want it to slide clean,
desire it to crash rough;
streets will
echo old haunts and
we
will be larger
if not bolder
than hounds.

are we all but strangeness clad
in this feigning of wisdom? our whims
exeunt our graces and just pretend?
are we not all this caliginosity underneath furious light? are we not all
    that spurious talk and no inimitable
quiescence?
  are we all just nothing framed
to pithless flesh? before
there were shadows fitting figures
  not their own — discomfitures rehearsed, contritions tell-tale.
      
we are something the moon or
if not so, then moonless
yet never the aureole truant — always searching.

Earth fosters all
    singing upstream
        the affect of
green — certain
    thingsthe
g
allan
Try
         moreover once
and folding the ineffablewater
    d
ownthe
            hill
the hands of the world
     fondling   t
he universe
      like a totterin
Ganimal
     doused in an amalgamof
     fire
   tucked in our laughter
       sweet summer
    surmise of all warmth

the afternoon's gravest inset
into a summation of yellow—

all strangeness purely sing
mellow of birds,
cacophony of trees,
the automaton shadow
fleeting underneath the shade of brows
and foetal natures
candidly bring

a yellow
   in all of the afternoon.

electric — conflated with
the doldrum of once ignited feeling
on the russet table work
and the stringing aroma of flyblown
coffee painting the morning something
earthenware;

i imagine
  
     women lounging
and displaying their flamboyant dresses
confessing a dull promenade
parading their attenuated *****. reveling
a queendom on recall and this bane,
  merely resolute, gives itself a new
meaning as a hand of forgive

   men resigning their bags on the corner,
grunts, heaves deathly serious disallowing tomorrow's arrival into
  a throb of being in place, folding newspapers to a club and smiting fervently along with the endless waiting,
  
   verses lying cold on the froth of the tile
and the wind ripening the brew of
     contestations — punctuations in their
cupboards still and reserved in hermetic
   space curating silence, giving dins
     their polished ends,

   open for all: churlish boys,
   naked girls, faith-used women, strife-torn men, usual suspects,
     rebels and the overwrought –
  never closes like a hand in cold
      or a rose, its face occulted by
identification sideways torn, inside and out struggling,
      scrunched to squint on some pale light through chinks on the battered
     wall, sipping coffee,
   mmmm, that
   morning ripple transcending the
         heaviness of the city before me.

tracing the stone throbbing in silence.
they're just shoes.
they're just letters rid of ripostes.
shades fleeting tell no significance.

again, they're just (more than) shoes.
insignias emblazon carnage.

the Earth is prone. it's just land
seeking fill. supine on bed,
it's just
a
land
seeking
fill —

they're just shoes
worn by
flesh and by thinning air.
light toppled on the grave of my fingernail. it's no paroxysm of macabre.

they're just
there, sitting idly,
like beasts in final stands
limned by sudden emergence of woods.

just some
of its non-existence,
my mind's concept of I and
all things refuted
    its sorry
plaything.

slipshod toboggan feeling
before nakedness reeling
past dried vandals on walls
  colorway harum-scarum

entrails of blinded sides
  open to eyes and their
possible misconceptions

such that
baring all is showing less
and showcasing more
   is no other than pretension

going guillotine
sick or sane in one
asylum afloat
like flotsam there
  and jetsam here

   hoarded onomatopoeic
cacophony: street beat
  back to basic superstition—
no continuations or ellipses
   tell-tale that gamblers all
and losers swell, the jazz needed
   to synchronize in tune,
an off-beat gyration in split-screen
   flat affect. exeunt.

dissonant is what it was.

that foreverness of din.
criminal—
  aloft, eluding some captive way
    of emphasis.

  scraps of papers fold
and truth is rarefied. hammered
for its malleability is its common trait.

truth and always its never ever.
the men mumble words as if
  oceans whirl in their palates.
the women hide their thighs
  and think of fornications.
the children learn to pilfer
      stray coins in the keep.

dissonance is what it still is.

there's a slow moon over the aubade
     over the culled garden.
     over the cloverleaf curve
    in Balintawak. over no trove of truce.
  caterwauling noises flailing
      belch of automaton metal. mendaciloquent glower of lampposts
    to die early, abandoning EDSA—
we cannot name figures any longer
    of the same axiom, equation,
    salt, crossovers.

the edge of green,
   egress — conscious permission
of some inundation or cataract

  and the raucous facelessness
  of passing figures. army melancholia
in situ — past greens of dread
    and red, some blue of course (in
    dapple of sunlight bordering
      sublimities)

  i submit to its silence and no longer
     ponder its requisites. draped
by fog, helm of pines. the zigzag of
      deliverance swindling the disposable
line of fast-paced time-hover.

       there's no god here. only the
wind, the trellis surmising a component
    of nothing and happening,
  and all ephemera cycling across
   seasons forever changing and their
obsolescence of ways to retain their
    positions until air frizzles
  no
     longer
   than a bated  breath.

dark as dark — held secret
in TV's hoarse static. lining up and
scuttling across the thoroughfares,
vineyards wrung out of blood,
stomped, crevasse pithless.
willowed and scrunched up, a camouflage
of sorts to masquerade proper terrors.

ripe for Decembertime. magnanimous
assault of buses athwart carts jaded
somewhere between the bend and the fang, shadow upon *** of shadow and
the jiggling of loose change in mired pockets igniting a cadence of dithered flame. later, the lights will cross-fade
into criss-cross. x marks the spot
of burials. content with locks secured
by keys and vice versa. hermetic word
sealed shut in the eyes of the sleepless
children. naiveties suckling our mothers.
songs stifling our fathers. bamboozle
of radio intensifies to raw warfare.

our dangers go to work,
unfurling age. septuagenarian is rare,
and in any common rate, death teems
full in the disappearance of mornings
promising river-flown stories of
how everything was once in our hands.

i left the spigot dripping last night
and now the whole home is submerged —
archipelagic scraps of tatterdemalion
things line the floor like dead bodies
and poesy atrocities. but i have not
in mind, this disfiguring lament.

1     Take for example, a fine line
       darting towards your *******
2     And bend it towards the direction
       of genealogy or analogue fire
3     Henceforth commend contention
       and differentiate beyond hapless
       extensions of body to body
       mirror to mirror
4    Where all axioms define the universe
       and there is an epistemic
       afterthought looming past the
       arithmetic of things such is that
       of a steady punctuation mid-birth
5    Take the corporeal and eat Suns,
        thrash the Moon like how a bed
        is meant to be whacked by the
        spanked edge
6      Cold resuscitates flame and flares
        congeal all frigidity — or at least
        arbitrarily, remember it by whim
        caprice and then fade out
7      As misery clots in the same vein
        pulsing with different blood
        which we shall ensconce with
        laughter — a drunken hilarity
8      And then oppose the dictum
        that forced us to the point
        of recalcitrance, rousing hungered
        heat with memory of waking ice
9      Recount what I said about
        such opposites complementing
        each other in precise farce
10    In this exact exhibition faint
        upon recollections — going far
        inverse to poles only tells another
        distance covered by wide strides
        and a place nearly forgotten
        rekindled by newer ones.

trees sunk in dolor as i teach
what i could to the flowers and what they
might say to me in seismic lunges
of dark upon quivering fig
   will tremble the environs.

the boughs mimic the serious mien
of sundials — men have forgotten
the primitive yet go rushing murderous
waving bayonets claiming the silence,
  the ruin rising above the phalanx.

my glyptic words rise above the foliage
telling all macabre presses against
choked light. the heron,
  the  nightingale, o'er there yonder
hills tryingly enunciating something
   in the hollow: they have traded
us for mere soil.

dinggin ang lagaslas ng tubig
na pumapalupot sa bisig.

handa na ang bukana.
kasabay ng pag-alon ng damdamin
ang
     p
     a
     g
     b
     a
     g
     s
     a
     k

ng lamig na dala ng pag-lisan
o ang init na lulan ng pag-dating

papalapit ng papalapit
sa nagngungusap na mga mata,
sinasalamin nang iyong banta
ang aking bibig.

bilugan, hubad,
   tahimik.

suds fall on black like endless snow.
tarnished paint to spry—
engine's diminutive breath
clout of metal coil, ballasts of portent...

defacing the fog and giving
it a brand new meaning. beside the rice fields in sullen Bulacan,
i ache for the frog defecating
on this tortured piece of land.

birds in migratory V-positions cleave
the azure, vanishing behind the tough ornate. to whence they flee
   and to where they shall land
on their poised talons, i do not know.

   underneath the dermis and over
    it, a long stillness of waiting,
  trapped is this
     man of Earth.

i.
the Hibiscus is the paradisiacal
armistice of quagmire and wind:
leave it there anchored to Earth.

ii
when it rains, it bows to no one;
when it genuflects to no bird,
  it trills on the red of the moseying hour—
nobody sees the Hibiscus.
  only the children of the vandal.

iii.
last summer we had makeshift
bubble machines and in the high-rise
  of the twilight's cradle, we ran
viciously against the humdrum town
  blowing bushels of laughter at
the dreary populace — the brooms
  to a sweeping rustle, unsettled dust
mounting the ether.
         we hurtled across the
infantile roads like they owed us something finitely attributed
     to our locomotives.

iv.
  the Semana Santa had gone by
and the season, no matter how promisingly redolent with emollient brush
   of wind and laboring silence, held
no reprise — the Hibiscus,
   it is not alone in the quiet verdigris.

v.
  somewhere amid the hubbub of city,
there is a pendulum of line biting
   the shore of waiting repeatedly.
only steel scaffolds erected and no
   flagrant scent aroused. peregrinating
in the haloed hour, the nascent furl of
    belch from vociferous iron-clad beasts
in all of EDSA

   and when i look at people around me
they look like gumamelas, finally,
    yet i am

        not coming home.

this is when
we keep on keeping on

our fingers laced and kinked
to some incited cold

gives us no unction – i leave
you with irreparable harm

trudges across flame, guesses
the assailant of aches.

when these crosses straighten
within the whelm of your mouth

i will curl them again in sweet,
successive manners of graceless joust

and then when you come before i,
or is it i before you — whichever,

this music is never a notice of
ease — only rescue without warning

or attendance, seeping underneath
pallid floor work, lips puckered

pursed to attenuated form of bow
and mine eyes arrow through

your triple deeds arraying
and i can never ignore how immense

the moon is in the river of the same vein
riverrun, away, wayward—

lisps of white and red
and soon obliterated when both our

avenues close and we walk
home, hands separately yearning.

our old appendages are our contemplation of our peripheries.

these minor playthings we do not touch
anymore. rusting alphabets moored
to the toppling refrigerator door. we have always been the curious kind;

before the sun sets, stills itself in unperturbed solace, we the lonely hunters of ourselves sift the word
and the ordeal: the last aureole perishes
  and here flowers the nightly pulchritude.
our age are servitudes circling around
  with elliptical utterances. we have no crutch but our brittle bones slowly chiming in the music of something we
avoid: only too well a mercy we cannot
  bequeath nor receive.

  so breakable and false, this what we
do, these that occur permitting desires
  to speak blandly of themselves.
the hazards of the existing numerals
   and their foreboding syntaxes:
how we burn bright and fade out,
   all of this briefly shattering
after a colossal fall – its trenchant elegy
   repudiates with contrapuntal music.
eyes, the contraband of visions and
   stifled breaths reared in capitulations
like tailgating a beast on the tractable road
     to snare it to its death, yet untold.

carve you, me,
made godly a being from
kink of Earth when all
hands and the leprous
sneer of folding pavement sway
swing a swift embrace,
bringing a face
when you read me blind,
crooning a tune
when you reverberate me deaf,
touching me warm
when you swarm me coldly,
fevering me a saltine sweat
when you chase around
a fleeting image,
preening through the impedance
or was it a dance
when you move me, limbless—
leitmotif lures
    to nets of waiting
when you break the hue
   of an adjusted format
telling no lost piece; oh, you,
i, our strangeness, our fondled ways,
  our being taken away to care
for only rogue night. our
   having chanced upon each other
in between mellifluous slowness
   of paces and our frequent sojourns,
  looking for something
     unfamiliar.

in the rain striding past closed stalls
and bottle shops, my head the
flickering lamp, my fingers dead candles,
my eyes the last flare of splayed days.
i roar like a lion — stubbled, prowling
the deserted streets but flinch at the
first sight of shadow. revisited by old
haunts mirroring strange voices, distorting their claims — in my retina
is a woman sitting idly sewing lissomeness strings to bed and we sleep.
   i wake up quicker than any light.
lift words, chain them and sing steel songs, carry volcanoes, herald ravens.

i can't stand the populace, can't live
without them. i squat next to the fire-hydrant and imagine hounds *******
at the world. once, the sheen of the little
sightings festoon, borrow the moon and
i was once levitated into meaning. now,
i want to hang my head next to the old cypress and scream, "Forever, the peril."
   but i am the thrall of the sea.
immenser than the leviathan of ache
  the last scream of the perished hills,
forever, a clout on the grey-faced asphalt dazed into the lenient whiteness of paths,
    i still sing steel-songs, solder volcanoes, chase the salutary ravens—
  i see myself cringe but i will not cry.
the woman sleeps and i am awake,
  a gentle hand will whirl upon her
lithe figure and then gone. i am the
   tear of the cloud in their exhausted tier
but somewhere here, i am as perpetual
   as waters, tracing the end.

there are so many of them
  and there is only less
  of me —

gondola in Venice,
  H-bomb
and the knife of Bach;
a steady collision in Q. Ave
as the fizz of the afternoon mirage
settles with the ides,
the torn elephants of
  Chiang Mai
the red blood of Golden Gates
   the froth of the repeated wave
at the lip of the ocean,
  city buoys lacerating
the skyscape

and your coming in here
  ransacking all;
appeasements and
  trivialities — there are so many
of your photographs here
  and only less of me,

looking at all of you
  and weeping it
later. sounds like these sounds
hanging by the edge of the bed
reducing woes to a hair-trigger.

i look outside and there
are women, cat-called by peddlers,
stopped by cabs, inside and outside
  of cars with sometimes lovers
hot legs and all that,
simmering in the highway
glancing at them now
   lamenting them later,
what's a dull boy to do in a dull town
  with clothes dull wielding the
     dull word?

meanwhile, there's so many of you
and there is only very scant of me left.
light voyeurs through the interstices
   of the huddled masses,
panic screeches through the maddened
  streets of Vito Cruz.

   the night is all black and stark
and the heavy behemoth of existence
  prods underneath where
rats, rodents and vermin run
  plodding the highway with sleek varmint
    demeanor. a lady passes by with a
string of fragrance dangling upon
  her shoulder-blades.

what's a dull boy got to do in a dull city
  with a dull heart?

there are so many of them for my
   territorial hands cannot name
and there's only one of me:

     unheroic
        impinged
small
        half-drunk and
half-believing

  that there's something
a dull boy ought to do
   in this dull city
with dull words but it comes
   with an exorbitant outlay.

dog-leashes are expensive,
    moonless hoots through opened
windows hefty with price.
   moon-blooms again and again,
missing all hurt trying to repair
   the ravaged — i look at young
girls, old women, fine and complete
  and this thing of being me
     on the market marked: sun-stifled.

there's so many of them
there's only a sum of me
that's often small and burgeoned
bringing the question
  
what's a dull boy to do in a dull city underneath a dull moon
       within a dull crowd?

dark leaps when
there is the frothing light
beaming a sizable aureole
on your face
this evening
and its palpable brigade.

dark is having your
inwoven dress free
from swaying
pressed against raucous
facelessness of things
rogue and renegade.

and when i have you
not, shining the light
and its intone,
wind felt like
stabs or
i in attendance
of a crazed vaudeville—
trapeze is the hinge
of the void
afloat, upstream, space-hovering;
a display of love
   and not so much
is shown of the vertigo
trapped in a square,
a face
impinged in the seamlessness
of this fabulation
when you've gone
quickly fading out;
    
     light is my remember,
o, dark my
     forgetling.

past wavering lights
  B. Serrano and Bagong Ilog
love struck us down — sees no votive
clearing of the fog or a word sharper than any blade wrought from frays.

i have a photograph of you
somewhere in the ken of my silence
  and on it paints lightsome hue
and sometimes pale when it rains.
KM 24 on a blue alloy and underneath,
   a Baguio — some memories we keep
almost left by the last carriage homeward
   from too much fire in our hands
  only tremors could extinguish both
striking a balance and counterbalance;
the frequency of the electric and the
immense decibel of lions drowning
    the disquiet. some places or some
looking back makes you want
   to lose yourself in slight wonder and when

a memory comes back with the dreary
   weight of its forgetfulness,
we fall asleep traipsing the steeples
   of our dreams of each other
all-telling, still dizzy with the pirouette
  of some distant longing bracing
the fall, triggering our darkness
  and shooting out

   ourselves, small,
love striking us down. arraying a triplicate
    of hazy trails forking all roads
and we cannot find each other again;
  throwing stones rippling
multiplied waves by the sea arriving
  at separate mornings beneath
our feet,

   bends on the bludgeoned curves
of love and hate ascertaining something
   so unsure as a door agape and swiveling
  in tense wind, tender is the night

  and love continues
to smite us down, locking in, predatory precision,
            running away, and away, and away
   from the ache of it all.

there has to be a way
  for a defunct quiet
to find its life pilfered
against surrounding scenes

   when i have your silhouette
plastered to the squalid wall
  when all else kinks in the squall
of the moon and
    everything is small.

  say, when i have you
in my retina and you hear
no communing display of text,

   that is my defeat:

a long night
wordless and slipping away,
   you, going far
unhinging from the verity
  that none has been left cold,
brazenly damaged,
   going farther and farther
streets fat, chance-ridden
   riddled and all too secretive,
verbose as quiet
   still and idle.

mutilated
   as the light obtrudes;

like a fly trapped
   in a spider's lair, waiting to be
     devoured—

my hungover soul, dead,
drunk
    from drinking all
the sadness
    in the world.

Soar with me, the young
     we are a flock of marvels
       roaring vertical

claiming it, the laughter
  and so years go running around

the sturdy, brindled narra, trilling of birds,
existence born from

dark inwoven vision seeking clear,
   pure — smiths a dagger.

when you told me
some are the abeyant,
  in that terse communal,
some out
   of print

     Radio
Body English
    Silent Radio's
writing of an english
   Body cursive and lithe

i arranged all things:
TV, escritoire, left a place for
   a machine, drone of minutes
and the fixed gore of absence
  all wounds avulse, words
to wring realm of bones.

image of men is no huddled God
  in the synagogue pew;
this is the distinct cadence of
  the indescribably beautiful:
when words continue to bleed
they will never go out of print
and they will mint something in the soul
without a word, or a gesture,
   or an insignia of attendance.
their benign  dreams   prowl
    upstream,

     your dreams,
i willingly go, rising, falling
   riding all the darkness.

raise high, the roof-beam
mounting the fiery stream
   burning the windows, burning
  the death-devout silence,
    burning the disquiet on the pyre
of ourselves — darkly halved,
    lightly complete; the operant
rose is ready to roam the immortal garden and no petal will perish,
    no moan of thorn will be heard,

  raise high, the roof-beam.
  your lifest breath and all that is not,
   emerging supreme against all
smallness and rotund, no bells bellow
   the bickering name, or the defunct
subterfuge of O God dancing to
    sew His name augured. raise high,
the roof-beam the monolith of your
    body's never-ending groove
waving me across all the world
    no sojourn could annul — once
mortally blessed and twice naive.

  it is our rite of spring, what the wind
wields a strange horror's sound summoning a dark-trilling raven.
  waters princely kneel in the sheer
dark's afterthought when my clothes
    fail me evermore. it is our life
singing separately: morning, and the divided evening. the knowledge of scepter is passed on to the ignorant
  now all-knowingly removing all dress
and the glint of crystal-moments.

  raise high, the roof-beam, o luminous ire
   fulgent light and our foetal coil
      an angel to whisper an arrival
from the fall, the roof-beam, raised
      high forever.