i love the music
      of rain.
  it is like you
  are nearing and
  i, behind walled silence,
  waiting
  for the sound to
  billow immenser
  until my worrisome
  body bursts
  with a certain gush
  of anticipation,
  and it is you
  in all that is the world

and when i peer through
  the window, the earth
  is soaked with grace
  as the trees are stuporous
  in their roots,
  as the flowers bow
  in acquiescence
  and the peripatetic air
  foams an amorphous figure,
  your silhouette naked in
  immersed wonder and when
  i close my eyes, only exists
  your touch and i am one
  with the world dripping in
     wanting, trilling and naked.

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.

body haul
   in slouching orbit.

   x sight. jesus christ in
              staccato
    running through desolate pews,
     bicycle on sinews of blood
       scraping macadamized walls
         rearing pains
   everybody's a stranger
    in the celestial hall.
  what part of this do you not
      understand?
   i will say it without saying it.
  everybody's a
      stranger. arithmetical concatenation of stringed lies,
       chalk faces smile at me
   through heads of tacks;
  midnight's passover:
      before dawn, its eyes
     squinting at something
   named demolition -
this evidence of stolen-into-place.

learn silence
and unlearn thought's blear.

must you love.

love its workings,
  its affectations.

  simply by saying
  that to fill a heart
  with all that is clear,
  pour silence into
  the hollow of it
  until it raptures
  and emerges
  complete, hymnal.

this is how i remember you
meandering by, plainly,
like the mouth of the morning
and its slow auburn,
telling me something
i cannot understand (something enigmatic, enciphered in a cornered circle) yet prodigiously
delivered to me, at the verge
of speaking, divining in me,
an intone of solemn invitation.

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?

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—

let startle inlight, if not so lifted
in peregrination, a lavish seeing.

two eyes are worlds in
tippling axis.

taking deaths,  a wreath would a candle,
a prayer would a body thumbed down
to wisdom our backbones break.

to see    death    like a rush of flowers.
great the sight of such illumination.

swiftly going to god's dark behemoth,
  metaphysics of bone clenched—
   darkling like obsidian

a complexing fault of road
     as the same vein of Earth aspirates
       the wind — whose exigent fire
  cleaned her bones back to
     pulchritude: her face a diamond
     in the rough — never to speak
  yet to clamber with summarization,
    realness and revelations of roses.

a word's rearing
in light's mid-step. foams through
brine and saltwater's tedious
and redundant swarth.

an all-ending music:
silence
is
all.

it is where i punctuate you
and another syllable begins -
it is you (eros
     in
       thanatos)
others,
   slinging, meaningless.

what it meant, first time, felt,
the night blacker, moon daresay zither
of birds asleep somewhere
stone whetted by air, lingual and sharp
with reticence, that obscured
     thing of beauty at the edge
      of forget— ah, our memory
  that picks the derelict, so much is truer
    in abandon: tear-shed, stifled, watching
  the word dart through the carapace
       pulverizing a sensible universe
tracing the line of shadow
        immaculately awed.
    inward gush of blood as always
    and a smile feigned,
  running across the turgid avenue
     burning bright, the rebel,
             fading out.

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.

If then a departure demands instruction
and your body when in pace

as signal of movement – elocutionary when
asked, a sworn answer force-defined

take enough space from ocean
and anticipate a barbed wind

within the finest day.
remember: contest all, if not

then sever what is yearned for:
a love, or a misguided another

returning for but not twice-over
a field but the densest perfume only when

accounted for. Foresight is to pull
the      weight away and transliterate

judgment: it is raining and how all
piecemeal and dragged heavily

within a home without furniture
awakened by no touch but of search

enough a call – a chain operates when
it desires to launch you out of

every territory of sleep –
wordless beside every morning.

2002
Dearest Klara,
  hope you enjoy
the poems as you dream to write
      one poem
happy birthday*


There are still many books as though
   parliament. A miscalculation based on coordinates
in a wry scene.

Two bookshelves creating a labyrinth, enough that you
are alike. Juxtaposed to scent are many words
and the day is almost done. Ignore fragments once,
but never overdo. I can outlast moonlight’s procession
into a dark cathedral by the window.

On this side – reason; the other, hesitance.
This is no heist. This is what belongingness refutes.
What willingness bandages. The absence of sentries
  made for easy rapture. You slid your hand into the dusty
fort and in between them, the paperbacks ached.
  “I will do it.” and after that, cursed at the farce.

Slid into your bag – you, surrounded by the tense air
of silence. A dilettante at being a fugitive. What is it that
you stole?
   Your body, elsewhere. Flailing. Failing. There are still
many marvels in the scene, but says precision is key.
Cuts as if contravention. This was as calm as painting a child
  in his early years, the hue of anomaly.

Quiet in amplitudes doles out a mystified sense of completion.
I can hear an ajar mouth unwind a soft humming.
   It was time to go – tomorrow when we rise with no memory,
  it will be all but one and the same fault together with many others,
     as if your face that day and your image now
          compels me the cold of a foreign city. Riddance.

You are at it again, pretty sure, this time, challenging a wave, or a tension in space when from a vertical, trying to reach ground safe. You always were.

In deep collision of structures, the agent here is something that stops you from stoppage. You go, lessening the trauma, impelled by a similar origin to overwhelm and afterwards leave famished. As long as there is enough moving ground for you in a subtle field effect, it is very sure you will last longer than any rain in this moderate climate. I can imagine all the broken twigs you stepped on, making a dull orchestra out of. Your day-tired wander-wearied jacket after, and all the dust that remained within the sole of your boot when the Earth trembled – kept you still within the splintering of finite objects.

You are at it again, heeding the call of the world, assuming a shape of a moment you said you had in your hands, small enough to fit a chamber of a gun, and when fired, cuts through, is deep, meeting an attempt to touch secret parts but didn’t, only scored, and when realized,

taken as document within conversations.

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.

the world underneath
the thatched bowl
of night
is waiting for
vernal beginnings.
sleep is
transit.
dream is the
locomotive.
the wind blows through the window
with a sequence of perceived ends.
my only moon reels through
  everything's impending newness,
  trailing a far-flung equinox.
clock's fulcrum turns a page
  and the now dislimned words tumble, scouring to be seen but
   denied of emphasis.

if only we could singlehandedly
blow each of the candles on the
night's banquet, we wouldn't be this restless in waiting.

its stillness presses

    urgent,
      such heavy ardour
   and svelte

  a mouthful of birds crossing
   bodies spangled with wetness.

   again, i gather a roundness
    of rose —

      i echo with the bell of
         thorns:

  with such quivering announcement lay
      slither sprucely
          the drizzle — i have always
    anointed her with grace none
      the fumbling of emergency
         cannot mouth.

i can feel its presence
and we need no dark to
grasp its attendance.

a rudiment:
darting through,
my death, imagined.
rivers continuing,
pressing stones now atilt.

memory's rigodon -
  heart and mind,
  puppeteering quadrille.
this is where all of ourselves
  go, purloined, deep
   in rumination.

  the passing of all things,
  taking with them,
  our laughter. and it continues
  in our body, endlessly taking
  space and displacing our
  inward-breaking haunts.

  it is no fate nor
   solitary consignment:
  it is natural,
  it is default: pain is.
  and wherever it goes,
  lovelessly, we are
     dragged
       along.

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.

a room full of grandmothers,

night-gold —

espials of eyes
syncopated.

take this thread and fissure
me love-struck.

tenderly the walls are white,
the mood: all malaise of trees in autumn.

Christ's redness in hymns
**-hum angelward as rain

brings a discalced memory
close to sand by shores of repeated waves, where the gull tirelessly
          punctuates
the water with its centric beak.

all youngness and beautiful
rising like cunning equinox,
slow auburn of eternities commits
  to angels denied.

sharing something a memory would
espouse in lips dry like tropics,
  looking down on familiar abandon,
reaching out with their hands and making
   no sound, felt yet always, in tender
     hours of night.

rose alone, cannot grow.
my hand on your hand,
the twilight of this
inner whirlwind.
palm brushing off the dust
of a dream,
your tear on my cheek
slenderly needing all of my rivers,
is your reflection,
my tender night,
      rose alone cannot grow.

i watch the tiny hands of rain
fritter back to your breast.
i witness everything seek its
asylum, in your arms, where
no love breaks, only sings,
laughs atremble,
  and i see all the roses, alone yet together
in all-consuming silence, needing
  your transmissible voice to
make resonant, the day or
    the bend on our roads,
like saltwater, like complaisant
  air meaning only one word
through all the roses that
   spring in the field
of the ephemera: your
too sudden image claiming
no sound yet all of my language.

Should it rain tonight –
I shall escape the overbearing
hands of clouds
slice into the wind
divide the night
soul and body
rummage to the ground
and fall asleep
in one of the quiet corners
of the world
form an ocean of carnations
that would blossom in the viridian morning.
into the sun
i will leap ripe into the wind
until the horizon is incarnadine,
prancing now, in a singular stride
of laughter.

afternoon's glint on the mirror-pond,
  a whirling specimen of fire,
   ocher-speckled, Sun's insignia
     vessels deep into the clammy water;

furiously swaying like a pinned down
    beast reluctant to be held—
  Makati traffic jostles the silent grieving
    of the asphalt. simultaneous burst of
      chrome on the metal bodies,
      oh, the coming and going,

  children laughing vibrantly without
    memory of scathing pasts and
      boorish origins— tossing coins
      beckoning the heaven in pursed lips
    and clenched fists tender with years
      dwindling along with the turning of
    the calendar's page, the sudden leap
      of figure lamenting the absence
         of language;

    i walk the street festooned with dried
      leaves and forlorn seasons,
    hurling no amaranth to the entire
       Makati cityscape.

from
there is nothing to fall against this evening.
the sound pace divides lavish moon
in half, and inside a glass,
in clenched circles.

what slipped away glazed
this fruit with old glint: patent of territorial
anguish.

speeding right on by this evening,
the lift of morning borrowed from sweat.
I am tugged at
by a moving thing

sundered there, seeing whose anonymous
  back sways with flaxen hair
laughing freely into the wind
   and gone with it

to
everything brought to the edge
I listen to metonymies:

want* for running into
fear for holding a hand, a part of something
   now in union

light for the clearing of the path
  cluttered by feelingfulness

and pry open their meanings,
back into the fitting measure of waiting
as the slab of Sun lies like a dozing beast
on the streets where we surface
like the sound of falling

feet strong despite changing winds
  when mantling the living rivers
  of gradually dissipating lives

running away
even when no one was looking
we are headed to where
   we found ourselves
occupying spaces.

morose thing now,
this thing under umbrage
  of a maddened machine;
who is reluctant to give way,
an ecliptic passing of
an even madder woman.
this thing now,
under the pretense of shadow,
this form,
falling out, whiplashed, broken,
whose name of music is soliloquy,
this amorphous figure
   that gives so much    cadence
  to    things
     that    hold onto   long and monotonous
    enunciations like a bad hangover from
       a slackened night’s slug.

like the S on swooned
   or still the S on the double-grinned,
    parasol-intoned, punch-to-the-gut spoon;

or S in  seldom
     saved,   structured such  selfishness
saluting   sordid stories   soldering
       smashmouth  Suns   surrendering
   smoothly-sailing    stars,   supposing defeats
     similar to   sanguinaries such sweetness
         sings   surreptitiously.

my poised mother stances
to behead the onion—
begins a murderous sound brigade
of simmer in the home.
the fizz starts to assault the restive
pulse of woodwork,
the red plush of air in the heart of cauldron — little child you are no longer
  a boy; the furniture is arranged and
the nail is hammered to its deep oceania.

the feeling of stillness,
  a saboteur.

a stasis of dark flounders a steady lark.
headiness of scent peregrinating
toughness, the countenance of walls.
i am always the egg smashed opened,
cracked, bleeding clear, yolk gallops,
  slides like thigh upon fault of pond.
i begin to understand the curious case
  of feral, the benign death of rodent;
the cupboard infested with species
  running around China plates.

  the quietude starts
to confront the little house
   of moon — the silvery mane of water
trapped in the Earth, listen to its bell;
the shiftless rotund of its footfall,
    these are the hooves of it, rummaging
   past the minutes like a horse.

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.

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.

sangkutsa— sana'y kartada nuwebe


      stove -- so much inner blue
            in this gruesomeness,
          still soft is the orifice, maiming
         the speech whirling in warm press;

     hand -- to just blindingly toss out
      in wording it so that then this is true:
       we once had each other in the
        simmer of feelings, leaving
         our shadows crazy-eyed in
     elegiac silence.

      rawness -- boiled to a broth:
        thawing largeness, tipping away in
           and of feeling.

    final stages --- half-done in waiting,
      half-undone in wanting. darkness
       condoles with the aperture of
        clouds twitching to rain tritely
   against the tiled floor. islands of
       wet footmarks make the traverse
           viciously slippery on my way
    to your side of breathing.

     all of it -- hand's gentle breeze,
      salt of lake-eyes, melee of tactical pressures sizing down spots gleamed
       and honeyed with ires. a hiss
  on landscaped neck where a peregrinating perfume sits, feverish with
       desire and nothing else,
    blood boiling, whistling through the pores are the saltine sweat
     poised, almost
                               for the mouth's readiness
          in consummation.

The immediacy of the ambulance turned speech into stone,
  and the gyratory red and blue which is still unknown to me
  grips with bewilderment.

Passing your decrepit home in Santolan. The slovenly lawn
that welcomes an oncoming figure, sometimes I.

The love will stay there,
deep into its sepulcher – fingers of grass sprawl in arbitraries;
answers unknown to ourselves, questions leaving
themselves carefully placed in irrefragable order,

the brooding future that strides a fugitive,
straining our place – the warmth of its absence
oblivious to us like a pretend fireside casting shadows, aslant,
on any figure trivial to us.

we begin to shiver in the blue of night, darkening around us.
the moss-grown silence securing its station somewhere unseen,
but felt,

like this individual morning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Where else to begin

but from a repetitive scene where
light smothering the fractured windshield
is the face of a mother

and the brute agony
of a totalled vehicle, the countenance
of a father?

But which ruin takes its station
amongst all moveless damages?
What narrative to assuage than appall
    which has not been drawn before,
 say a line to daze the day into genre?

In transit we have no words for it,
  nearly giving meaning to a god and
  fray itself drunk with a lesson.
What space here remains vacant and is
  an invitation to a marred face,
 pressing against the upholstery but makes
 final its formlessness?

 What space is here that sits
     with in an acoustic? This silence again and again,
  a sign of a spectral dawn again and
      again released from what they spit at me

   those who are but vigils in pried open yesterdays
         decomposing from where I lay with them.

I. You wrote no manuscripts but somehow, whenever I move to inch myself over the sofa, I can feel your soft blow indent me over the edge of this quiet. The quiet disquiets the quiet – is something you would have said over *******, over lamenting the death of a lamppost outside, over wanting to be stranded underneath the awning of a dilapidated canopy of trees outside. Over the slowdance and the turntable, over Belle and Sebastian.

II. I left the faucet running just in case you were to be awakened by a myoclonic ****. It helps to hear the sound of water gushing as it protrudes calmness. I would have intruded you, but your absence first lifted into the vacuity of rooms unspoken of. I inspected the impressions left on the bed and left the tousled sheets as they were. Questions discerned. Answers disarmed. Somewhere between inquiry and certainty, there is a body hauled right out of the alarming bedazzlement. We were both gutting each other as the light from the television spilled right onto our naked bodies, stuck in a fucklock. And then I got up to the slain body of the morning.

III. I muse you over Wittgenstein – separated by a makeshift bookshelf. I felt a revulsion for slender straps for watches. The face you wore that day was white. Now you’re as pale as a July tapestry.

IV. I bought new venetian blinds today.

V. Somewhere along the steep ***** I heard the machination of an arrival. The dogs were randy outside. It must be you, approaching. I fingered the slats to reveal a little source of Sun. It was the daily paper. I have forgotten all arrivals are the same.

VI. If I were to blueprint this house with my sentiments – we would be sleeping apart. Your bed, of cold metal. Mine, of sandalwood. Erasures last longer than revisions. I know your presence as the familiar clangor of the same instruments you use for preparations are the same ones fondled. Right after the investigation, your immaculate neglect transfers itself into a sly translation of perfume from a day’s work, winnowing my faculties.

VII. I made a blueprint of this house with my sentiments – you somewhere in the outskirts of town, I deep within the suburban. I have a question for balconies I do not want to answer. At what height should be a balcony situated? What if the scrumptious fall is but elevation?  Will the intensity of the Sun pulverize the very fixated shadow on the corner of my parched shoulder? If not, should I take the balcony down?

I wanted to revise the blueprint, but no. Erasures last longer than revision – I dream of cities expunged
when the day ends.

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.

Tangential   is  this  dispersal
  of  things.

Greased   like    chain
slipping  from   the   curve
of  the neck

it   is
mundane   that hands
  have no   sense   of control
and  abandon
  is kin

as in  a   home
  furniture is   desolation
made absolute   by
  a   visitation.

better   it  is to
know   the finest   day
  is  only  death  in the  afternoon
like   piecemeal metamorphosis.

Nothing  like
this     oblivious  day.

much that I rue this place,
you are this night’s bleak behemoth –
your full volume of absence
displaces the air.

where darkness asserts its terrors,
the heart knows no clearing;
stroke slow at first say, accuracy
  of all knives absorbed or when you
said remember, remember – supreme over
this tower of silence, like the last of your life
before you slid into easy sleep – drowning,

nothing can drown you, I say, this afternoon,
pulling at the sea, both of us, separate,
  your moving in all places,
as if pushing me further into the taciturn water.

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.

there is something
                        that needs to be done,
revere in the plot
                 or a merciless yelp of rebellion;
the night consolidates
          into something no hand could grasp
no eyes could pare
          with stabbing vision, paring the skin
of it, leaving it flayed
              hurtling in the corridor like a child
razed by high-rise of sun
          the bucolic ornaments of downtown
seething with hammered words,
       it starts to rain, diving into the gutter.

there is something that needs to be done.
tonight i look past the haze of the window
and see a vision gyrating, like a hand of
hours full and whirling, preyed on
an iron-wrought webbed without relent
from a tarantula's sepulcher,
a seraph denied of flight.

this is what needs to be done;
all-kissing twilight of paradisiacal twining
a name extolled in all that is quiet,
dismembering parts of you
as i try to once more assemble the night
and give it your flair, your tonal voice,
your riverrun hair, your leap of faith,
again and again the vaudeville of stars
  propagate in the starless morning
necessitating unsung surrender
heeding patterns, fluid lithographs
    drawing a new caricature of pain.

the moon follows
with its silver hook

a fish in the water
swimming through
the debris --

when i am in the avenue,
  it sleuths in similar pace,
its nearing blear
   in my window.
its distance
   in the thoroughfare.
  it shines its
  white face, presses its
  luminescent hands
   the size of two worlds against
   a jungle of fraternized lamps
   stealing all light
   creating the dark's progeny:
      a shadow enters frame.

only the mellow moon
knows the loneliness of
my melody.
the wound of my tempo.
and sometimes it sings to me
through the embellished amaranth
of starless sky: its dull crescent,
dips its voice into my being
   creating ripples.

and through all worlds witnessing
  its tight clutch in the distance,
  choking all that is lost and
  sends it back to its
  origin, is i and the moon.
  our secret entreaty in all
  the windows of the world,
  gazing at each other,
  romancing pains.

air pours alive in stringencies,
fall of tor and expanse.

mazy-eyed,
casts a syncopated hook
amongst tulips beheaded

by the toppling of a leaf
bracing for departures,
something else holds back,

furrow—
the thatched morning's serious mien,
the arrow, whirling in trajectories

one with the dive into red cauldron
of infinite scar of water,
Śiva, sighted footfall of the condor's

verdigris, this simple rustle
of your scourge-gowns
insists cadence of flutings;

i am one with beginnings.
swarming poultice of the inflamed grass,
obscene lines of shore in twilight

unfazed virulence spreads
like an epidemic of kisses against the
pulsing loam, cries like breakwater

lorn the fault of men, death at one's
trembling hand — sound the tribulation
of slender bells to a gather of pallors.

it is a stopping in-placeness
like crests of *******, a beautiful woman,
shiftless weight of light on glazed    collarbone, Śiva, the enigmatical paradox

beleaguers a concatenation of
unloose chandeliers of appurtenances,
the unblinking aperture, widening in sky.

deep within the prowling dark,
  in the stillness, these hands
    forage the steel scaffolds
       of pain.

in the stillness --
    the rain and the floor,
      the toppled silence,
    sleeping in the flurry of
      these contestations are
    no petty solicitations.

i want for only a hand
     to pacify unquiet eyes
    dizzy with questions.

i want a kiss to take in its flight, your splinters - woodworks
      of a name's recrimination.
i want feet to stride past
    the torrents of such distinct
    cry, outward, as though an outburst - the stars wrestle the
    wind as the shadows are loose
      in their own leash.
i want only an ample body quivering
    skyward, giving in to sliver
   in a multitude of glass,
     like the tiny fingers of rain
   crashing into the earth blind
      with force, roadless, tender
   with the night's tenure,
      amongst livid walls,
and then only ripples, to pulse with the many gilt days of dozing suns until these eyes awaken to
   the brew of an unfilled sky.

gravitate in me
   ever so
    s    l     o    w       l        y
  and ineffablycontinuousforgetthehaltandpressonlikeahandtoapageturning­adayandforgettingthenight,

   a featherlight detritus,
       or matutinal climb vertical among
    hills, this is you in most fervent memory:

    snowing now endlessly,
     i slalom through the obstacles
       of you without no clear sight
         of tomorrow.

these dank stares throttle
         clutch my seeing night, the ***** color of the mirage
  outside
                            stills     her   face  calm   like the weather
    of trees,   unsaying      quietness   erupting
         in a groping    yellow     yawn   of
                         splendid     sun

the   sharpness   of   this   incident
    she is    tired      of   all   and of   me,
              stretches her    bones   crackle,     snap
    out     of    ponderous    limit
       staggered      by    the   unsuspecting    blow

rising      from   a tense   moment  and  ending
        suddenly, with   an  obsolete  stare.

the droning image before me,
a wetted silhouette hushed in loincloth.

all are tiny currents with their immediacy;
confound careless grace for warmbound sweat
of the swollen world in the heat of an uncollected moment.

dartle I may in delight of frenzy, cold air nibbling
at my feet. river runs pale in the narrow grey-faced street.
knee-deep into the water of no rain, simply a dream

of wide hours. mind you in the **** of minutes
and fine-tune this machine infected with body english;
basking in the flood of midnight – this swirling fish

in the permeable navy: a nautical breath tender in its rasp;
a trifle on the things and their undulations. remember you
in that stolen night, face to face with walls their blackened meanings

faces pining away in transit – if the plenitude of voices
in the station would merge and form a whole new world,
are we to drown in the sound and emerge mute with wonder?

I squint at the city across the balustrade, its sibilant air
of disgust – I recognize mooned tapestries and see myself
as one of the lights, the appropriate tension of hands that

have    their own silences held to themselves
like how I ***** you in light.

we are each to ourselves, selected amongst the few –
yet you cannot help but
be mortal.

you, mortised to sleep.
I sick behind white walls that will never
bring your laughter
back to that small frame in front of picture windows.

I look at the world around me
reduced to a grey-faced elbow room,
as the flickering lamp lays out
all the sorrows we forget in our sleep.

who are you?
I pucker up and pull this bottle
snuggled in my clenched fist
and I cannot help but think of any other
thighed upon the cold brink of this bed,
I cannot unthank the existence of flowers
that refuse to bloom in the Sun,
all the more the birds so clearly far better fate
than this enigmatical.

we are each to ourselves and selected amongst the few –
I am the same bar-drunk soul
you met years ago, and will perhaps be
that in all the hours that lay before your callow eyes.
when it is time to draw
the knife,
blinded by the glint of your bones,
wired to the same mind that has once
had me tippling over furniture.

you are this very distant portrait in the
mausoleum that I told many people about,
wanting to go there but my feet can’t – there is a slender
thread eyeing in itself a margin between
the two of us.

and now you turn in your great wave of motion,
next to me, pressed against the sheets
far from being tossed out of sleep.

and along with you, the wind drags a cold, lunar tail:
they are marvelous in their slowness,
and the dark grows more immense than the probability
of you sinking and I, emerging,

turning, turning,
breathing,
so much the turning
and never staying still – there is inimitable life
in this dreariness,

half an elbow,
knees pared to moons,
collarbones and all that music
hung on some frail home,
sovereign of nose
and that whiteness to a paling mood,

almost at the verge of leaving
but cannot because there is conscience tossed out of sight
like a living work of guillotine

immortalized in this sleeplessness that begs
for more waking hours,

continuing in darkness, your eyes close and close and
close like the many doors
that have disappeared
    before me,

     and the frailest thing that
we have
       almost, if not always
loved.

once
it
          has snowed—

  helm of pines

whiter      than
      doves,        wind-flumine,
   trapeze of
       boughs ache the

                                   lark, bowed—

  inward, curve of  Earth,
      gentle ray     of light
   lifts
        like hands     holding
    
     the sky above, birds roared

   through
               the interstices,
  strophe       by strophe
                homes thwart fires in     hearths,
                 no warmness

                   gilded the vertigo of pinecone.

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.

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.

it is all too sudden
without preparation

when i start to write.
say for example,

the night waxes
superior over everything.

verdigris walls emerge
vandalized by breakable light
and the sounds ever so small
in the hollow belly of
this evening --

like a flowerless jar
and i am to put in it,
words the structure
of roses.

something
like
this.

i have already something
  new and sublime to say
  about love.
as two people on the bench
   where the birds are
unashamedly perching right by,
  pecking on the cheek of the world
soon enough now, the hand of
   which mad drivel shall tear
   this photograph in two
  and with a hand on the knee
   as a gentle stamp to
  a reaching-for-and-out epistle,
  we are far away,

and love is as sad as the
   flower that has grown
weary of waiting for the sun
   to fulminate altogether with
    its eyes staring in the
   veranda of hope wide-awake.
  and love is as short as the
   sudden jolt of bones, atremble,
  as though you have fallen
    completely into,
   but have only fallen out,
  partially, one foot first
    out the yawning door
  and into the heavy premises
of a heart's trying forgetfulness.
  to have heard once, the call
   of a tame voice through
   the wild hand of trouble's immensity, and to have held it
   once so shortly bold thereafter,
  with leonine eyes i see only
  a small distance i cannot seal
    with one kiss. i need a hundred more of you and a thousand more of this before i can fill your nebulosity with a million star-like
   kisses traced only by the
   white hand of time that continues to punctuate our
   sentences right even before
   our lips quiver to speak them
  softly like how i first sank
  in you and you in me, a flotsam
   of memories.

i have something new to show
   about love with mine eye's
  unresting shutters capture
moments held loose like a mother's
   frail child,
this photograph with your hand
   on my knee,
  cleaved into worlds from the
  silence of our eyes and
  only longing
     speaks so much the straightforward,
     we are far away.