Today I woke up 1AM
and felt like playing FIFA
I thought I was about to be robbed cuz when I rode the van...
but the guy's earring was sparkly
and I was the only one left in when we got to the airport
My bags were heavy
and they allowed my ID
to enter so I went to the departure
and played FIFA again
loud people are annoying
the lady in the food counter is pretty
My flight made me feel nervous
the old woman i sat beside kept talking and reading the magazine, i just kept nodding
When we landed I swore my heart skipped a beat
when i didn't see my luggage in the conveyer belt
I ate at a dimsum place and felt like they ***** my wallet
But more ****** was the guy who tried to rip me with a 700-peso taxi ride
I went to another, only got 170
I rode the Baguio bus
another old woman was beside me
she was creepy
but she told me I had a nice personality
That was the best thing a stranger has ever said to me

A place that reminds me
of the softer memories buried deep,
deep inside my head.
Those indistinct blurs of pine
and nothingness once again
gain meaning as memories from
a thousand miles away,
from another land,
come rushing home.
*What the time fades,
the cold brings back.

Imagine   hot
water           music
            traipsing  down  my  throat
when you   had  your  sharp   tongue
      shoved    down   my  throat
with   contestations    simmering   in  my   sinews,
  a  few   of    them   scandalous
some    true    like   the   sudden fleeting   of your   crepuscular brow
   to   two moons   paler   than   the love –
or   the    long    traverse   to the   treacherous
    roads    of   your   skin   mapped   out   in excess
your   lecherous   debris   sprawling  everywhere   like   words
   to   a   book   or   silence  to   an   early  morning    commute,
your     undulant  bursts   outmatch   the weight  of   my
     steady  anchors,  imagine   this   cold   wind  sinking  deep
into   the    bone    at  4 o’clock   in   the   afternoon
   drunk    in  front   of    faceless  crowds
hunting     for   purpose,  discombobulated   erudition
      in    sodden   corners   and cheap  thrills,

imagine      the     scrumptious   twinge   of
     the  Sun that  mangles   its   arms   to paint   a new
moon   for   us  both   and    think of  this   as   a  consignment  to
  oblivion    when  the twists   and  turns   of  the road
     remember  only    measures   of   steps that have no  names
       and   not   the passengers, where   one   wrong   forceful
  shot   at   fate   could   mean   the   end  of  all things down
   below  an ocean  of muck   or   just  stale blackness and  ravines
      of    voices   bellowing   to call  out departed   ones

where   you   are just   as trivial    as
    driving  in  Kennon Rd.   at night   without  maps
and   beacons,  only   far-fetched   city buoys,
    the  frigid     wind,  the collapsing   bannister   of the night
cloying   the   turns   sharper than  how  it was to   first  see you   leave
    in   the morning,      bringing   in  the  fog  for the first
        light   of  reality    to   burn.

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.

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.

1
There are more penetrating people if not the death of, as in living in this very livid moment of the unsure which is a surety.
Falsify me. Growing heavy with the absurd. To face you, me -- more mirror the blank end of a chamber, or if that you must **** me, do it at the plaza in front of my mother. That if you must lament me over the lapped up moment of some false life the invented and wrong, do it. Do it. ****** me the unassailable truth that is, I am capable to splinter this moment and that it still lives like a sprawled body spilled from the mouth in the bathroom -- it still lives: you have to be quick.

2
Once have you been startled by the form of absence as a letter slid underneath the soft and warm pocket of your mouth like it was the first time to have a naked body pointed at you, all with it trying to predict you in a sterile room, and is more shattering than an aggravated twilight.

   Who, at first thought, was there behind the trigger, and was he/she drunk with any other pretense apart from the face that he/she hates that common meeting within the day’s fine-tuned crosshair?

3
If you listen to it carefully, the music is a mosaic shifting the hypothesis into a pallor of a question back to it again with its basic agony of becoming so bent and so small on paper – which is to say, that we are, if to listen to a droning sound, becoming of it delving deep into the center, checking our own weight like our name after a fall from a high place, they said they would.

4
I have left something in Baguio that I cannot take back – a monochromatic caricature of my face shoved into a crevice waiting for a revision. What have I furthered into?

Established friendship in secondary school
created each other projects in English and Math too
became seatmates for some time, many years ago
until I have developed a thing for you.

Years had passed without speaking a thing or two
until our story began like many lovers do
it started in Baguio while I was working in blue
experiencing your warmth makes the feeling new.

Staccato-***. Can you feel the damnation in the
    trickling water of minutes?  This fragment considers
   revising but in the next act, I will turn you into a miracle:
        a cloud of a sigh into rarefied air, and that is all.
   The ******* of women hang in trees. Consider this statement
     a ruthless compunction. Flesh in the market, I haggle prices
         with the butcher. I’ll take one in exchange for a love
   christened with portent, I gave it no unction – fresh as a fruit’s glaze
      in spring, or the crunch of dew somewhere along Baguio in the morning,
            intestinal roads frothing with excess of fog. Consider trees
   in akimbo past your sweltering window – the panes in feverish heat,
        what are you to do but splash water? Bathe. *****. Sully.
            We have no inertia in this feetless adagio. Wind is sandpaper.
  Pain is tactile. I am a ******, paving the way, crucified on no longitude-latitude.

I miss heading home from grandmother's house
Drifting to sleep as my favourite song plays on the radio
I miss hotel staycations and my most-worn blouse
And my parents being there to guide me to where i had to go

I miss watching afternoon cartoons on a summer day
As my mother turns the AC on to keep the heat away
I miss all my childhood pets whenever i see the scratches on the door
And yet i cannot even remember some of their faces anymore

I miss fast food birthday parties with those cardboard hats
I miss the hectic mornings of the first days of school
I miss dancing in the guest room at Kat's
I miss fearing the deep end of the pool

From playground fights and Baguio kites
To simple lunches at the mall
I wonder why i was ever discontent when i've had it all

Moments that i took for granted
Times i won't forget
It seems like i've lived such a life
But it isn't over yet
With precious memories like these, there are still more to come
I'll stack them all like bricks that form into my own kingdom.