even with the faithful sun now
sparing with her dawn strokes and kisses,
the naked earth breathing and pulsing
with underground seas and rivers of fire
now flat, still, and cold against my naked feet-
even with those throats i once savoured deep
the dance of snake tongues to music wet and sweet
seems to have forgotten the shape and taste of my name,  

i have not lost myself,  
still i know my place:  

*i do not belong here.

my gaze could no longer trace
the shape and space i claimed for my own
in the wide shifting canvass along with the stars
when and where as a child i vowed to become a man.

midnight strolls under the mango trees
where spiders inspired my fingers to weave
about how and when and where to touch a woman-
where my lips charted my chosen path and press
about how to flow soft and gentle as do butterflies and bees-
i know i stand but i could not find my feet
buried among leaves brittle, brown, and quiet

and there, in the space where once resided my hunger
after all these suns and rains now stands immaculate
empty and desolate, my roots shrivelled into dust
perhaps transformed into these breaking cracks
gaping as it consumes my reason to go on being
with a smile i now find myself pore by pore forgetting

is it madness to confess
i crave for the sadness
i have known, named, and matched
to follow the rhythm of my heart?

like old flames with their burned out fate
of my sadness i have not felt of late
have my tears lost its salt for her thirst
do my sighs no longer suffice as cries
for all that remains in me, and dies?

where could you be, mi tristesa?

while most prefer art on walls
of quiet houses, solemn museums,
along lonely hospital corridors,
i decided to be a walking gallery
with my canvass skin bare to be strummed
by needles with the stories of my dying

i vowed for no words or names
for they can be a reminder of a tender voice
growing into an acacia of silence and forgetfulness

my mother asked me why, of all images
twisted horns and roaring with flame
i trapped a demon (ah, it speaks with my name)
i would have chosen a butterfly, i said
if only life was gentle like wings on summer winds
and so it was outlined and shaded
in and with the memory of ****** skin howling,
like my innocence once lost, never to be reclaimed

perhaps i will never discover
the name of the woman who holds my pen
faithful friends keep faith that i will
though i do not really know how, where, or when

feasted by time, poisons in my heart and veins
my face has remained a mask
for my smile who has almost forgotten daylight,
from my eyes the ****** in my every gaze
sleigh of the mind for what i hide behind:
of mysteries and deceptions born
in the loving state of trust and rejections
into demons i seek to keep in chains

inked, so i could go on dying and writing

ahh, even those of my blood
my friends true and few
would blind themselves
twist their tongues to speak
of how i deserve and that i will
find again my reason and my smile

but how can i not sentence myself
to what remains of my days into shadows,
of my nights into secluded and distant isles
for though i have only hoped to sow
seeds to bear sweet fruit for smiles,
i only have the harvest of tears
from all the names i claimed to love!

for even if each of my lovers proclaim
that there is no regret nor to blame
for how our story came to its end,
the distance between us is a wasteland:

*where even silence fear to sleep, with eyes
bled out of their tears and could not weep.