Our ashes have settled on the cliff of pride
while the seed of today sprouts your frailty beginning.
We have at last seen the face of our god
which you have not even learned to utter
or never will at all.
Your intelligence gave you power that
failed the comprehension of our yesterfathers.
You built humans in just a sprinkle of *****
on to the skin of alligators and ants
on to the stem of a bee and the sting of a plant.
And you called them your sons
And you called them your kind.
The burrowed earths have no more riches
and they are left unpalatable to worms,
no more worms even
for even these decomposers
learn to tire feeding on your greed
no more shades of blue in the putrid waters
to which this bottle was thrown,
to which this letter longed to swim with your same species
that can never be in our family tree
for it has grown dead atop the impotent soil.
How we wished that your sons wished they
were with us in the time when
sparrows roared in the Kamagong tree when
wild boars chirped in the dancing bamboos when
the snow-like smokes breathed in the cone of Mayon when
the bangus and tilapia worshipped the nets of the singing fishermen.
How we wished they wished they knew.
How we wished they wished they saw.

The flickering fluorescent
Places accent on the life we could've shared:
Laughter creeping through every drunken little recess
Of the ****** apartment on West campus

As my sister sneaks off with her boyfriend,
Leaving me with the continued potential energy
Of everything I've known lately,
I can't help but allow the thought I've been
Repressing for half the year
To worm its way,
Like the first decomposers into a buried coffin,
Into my mind

Maybe you are really
Happy without me but as I sit here,
Forcing smiles and drinking beer, eating guacamole,
I miss you anyway.

Somebody turns off the lights, saying that
The flickering light hurts their eyes.
Somebody else screams at the dark, in jest
And I'm thinking that at least
The darkness is consistent.

The Earth dripped in through your body,
and there in you was the third fire, it
also about to fade, and me
also on its shore: subconscious and surreptitiously
begging those embers (smoking and cracking) to be
so much more than they ever were
in the form of a flame. Your thoughts
came out in poetry, dear. It was the way
those decomposers crept around
your frontal lobe that seemed
to say: “Remain. Smoking and cracking,
subconscious and ******.”

Sooner or later the world of clip-on bow-ties and bodies
will crumble—the society and class so high
that their calves'll give out and they'll stumble
through the blue T.V. screen light. They'll fall,
laughing and crying, on my carpeted basement floor.
And then, in a little moment of weakness,
light pouring in through too poorly closed blinds and
lips so close that those tiny little hairs brush,
we’ll all know
that that last hug goodbye
feigned its insincerity.

‘I hope I get addicted to cigarettes,’ I remember thinking.
‘What if I’m falling in love with her,’ I remember
just loud enough that she, through the window-pane,
could hear. Can hear. The Earth
dripped in through her body, the Earth
drips in through your body, semantics don't matter though
because here it is. And I
(Smoking and cracking.
Subconscious and ******.)
am still sitting here, on the shore of this third burnt-out fire. I’m focusing
my breath with my fingers,
not allowing myself to hope, but still waiting.
I’ve always had mixed feelings about
gasoline. (The Earth dripped in.)

Death
Is a fact of life
So what is all this strife
About everlasting life?
I think that would ****
I don't want eternal life
Because I don't want to worry
About where I go after wards
And
The answer
Seems quite simple
You go into the ground
And are eaten by decomposers
Who only get ten percent of the energy consumed
Why?
Do we have to worry about where we are going?
It seems pretty obvious to me

If dilapidated barns could speak a dire warning they would teach
Hard Winters and meager survival , the mattock , the stubborn mule and the King James Bible ..Tending fields long before sunrise , the smoke of field fires well into night , gathering to the clang of morning cattle , the prattle of laying hens , tolling of chain , the call of the anvil .. Drops of well water forming ripples
Do waves continue forever , do they return someday to reconnect with
their maker , wood buildings become footnotes in history physically entombed in past thought turned to laden misery , the farm has changed since we slipped away , now old barns seem to search for a master like a canine stray , Oaks are now devoid of their cover  , roots struggling for their freedom today , windswept leaves forging legions
An attempt to secure the forest floor , pinestraw , bracht , needle and twig called to war
Annihilated by the decomposers borne of wind , rain and soil
The breakdown of her subjects at the sword of power , the butchers of freewill and reason doth carouse  
Withered , stained monuments are collecting moss , crumbling like old barns and field houses* ...

Teetering on the edge of a precipice
prefaced by an ominous gaggle
of creaking timbers and the wafting
of rot from such great lows

The scene was drab and dark and typical
Nothing mystical or mysterious
about the drizzle or the salty spray
from a far off dark sea

The gulls gathered garishly
hungry with white plumage
that seemed unapologetic to the
plight of those still standing atop the heap

Iron tickled at their nostrils
while bits of gore fell from great heights
as the sea birds did their best
to clean up the rotting flesh

But the onlookers still gathered
placing pressure on the rest
to take the leap
into the heap
below

Where the wind would no longer blow
and the decomposers triumphed
under victory over humanity's last breath

While wanderers wondered what came first,
the eggs all cracked under the pressure
and the violence
and the rage
and the bitter anger won the day
while death laughed at gender
and gorged itself on equality
giving the ultimate soliloquy
on peaceful serenity

Flowers and honeysuckle
grew from their skulls
and their rib cages became
such beautiful lattices for the ivy
Finally!
Something good grew from humanity!

I wake up in the morning,
Swiping spiderwebs from the corner of my eyes.
All the flies attract the predators.
I brush one off my shoulder,
Not out of fear, but out of convenience.

It’s happened before,
where a thought sits and stews.
The sun bakes my brain
And the garbage inside attracts buzzing flies
Swirling around my head.
People’s mouths are moving but all I hear
Is the constant drone and thrum of decomposers.

And before long, slugs and snails and worms creep through my ears
Thriving on the decay,
The rot of my brain.

As with everything, rot comes and goes with the season,
And I simply wait out the stench of spoiling thoughts.
There’s the option to rake out the old,
Clear the paths of my mind,
But I’ve found that as soon as it’s cleared, it’s back again.
Like leaves in the fall.

But it comes and goes,
And comes again, and goes again,
And before I know it, the rotten thoughts are replaced by ones of hope.
A breath of peace and hope.
Life.
My brain blooms,
And the rain waters my face.

Instead of waking with spiders,
I feel a gentle breeze.

For all you care
You’d be so close to it
and
Guess what
you’d
never
Know
Never.

For all you want
It can snap you in an instant
Or
It can eat at you
Slowly
Just
Wait
Hang in there
The pain will stop
Along with your ability
to function
You may not want to follow the black-bricked road
But it’s an inevitable path, so been told
Because the end of the black-bricked road
Is death’s divine and dangerous abode

Everytime you cross any  road
Everytime you’re so high
You’re scared that you’ll fall
And guess what
You should be
Death might hit you as you fall
And score a bull’s eye

For there are instances everyday in your life
That death can snap you in just one try
And have you ever
Realized It?

As soon as you go to Helheim
As soon as you enter the underworld
Communities of death in our Percy Jacksons!

Even old civilizations knew death would come any moment
Hey, they were a lot of killings not needed back then
But they were prepared
Much better as such
Than we are
Now

We’ve got wills
items for hands that do not need to be filled
They already have a bucket of tears
For someone has been killed

we need decomposers to eat the death away
We need no reminders that
death might be here and with you it’ll disappear
Death has been here and is here to stay
And travels with us to this day

“Ew, I’d rather die!”

Just travel down the
Black
Bricked
  Road