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"my boy's got me tongue tied in two different languages
he's calling me baby on mondays and sinta 'til sundays
he's got me looking for him in between eskinitas
and cathedrals from quezon avenue to intramuros
all i see are his eyes
and 7,107 islands in the palms of his hands
and i never knew love could be so hard
when your words ran faster than your heart
makata is what they call you
a master of poetry and performance
you called me your greatest work
and you are a master of fiction
manileño is what you are
my boy's got manila's grime and glory
pulsing through his makata veins
he's got makati's lights burning through his irises
he's got the danger of manila beating in his chest
he's got the cries of san juan lodged in his throat
he's got the rhythm of the city in every step
my boy's still a boy
hijo is what you think you aren't
he's got three stars on his back
and he thinks he's the sun
he thinks he can change the world
himagsikan is what he wants
a revolution beginning with him
but tell me makata, manileño, hijo,
my boy
how are you going to save me?
how are you going to love this country?
my boy's tongue tied in two different faiths
my boy forgot to save himself"
Sofia Aug 2016
my boy's got me tongue tied in two different languages
he's calling me baby on mondays and sinta 'til sundays
he's got me looking for him in between eskinitas
and cathedrals from quezon avenue to intramuros
all i see are his eyes
and 7,107 islands in the palms of his hands
and i never knew love could be so hard
when your words ran faster than your heart
makata is what they call you
a master of poetry and performance
you called me your greatest work
and you are a master of fiction
manileño is what you are
my boy's got manila's grime and glory
pulsing through his makata veins
he's got makati's lights burning through his irises
he's got the danger of manila beating in his chest
he's got the cries of san juan lodged in his throat
he's got the rhythm of the city in every step
my boy's still a boy
hijo is what you think you aren't
he's got three stars on his back
and he thinks he's the sun
he thinks he can change the world
himagsikan is what he wants
a revolution beginning with him
but tell me makata, manileño, hijo,
my boy
how are you going to save me?
how are you going to love this country?
my boy's tongue tied in two different faiths
my boy forgot to save himself
sinta - darling
eskinita - alley
intramuros - oldest district & historic core of manila
manileño - someone who lives in manila
makata - poet
makati - highly urbanized city in manila
san juan - smallest city in the philippines, site of the first battle of the katipunan; the organization that led the philippine revolution against the spanish
hijo - son/young boy
himagsikan - revolution
Reggine Sumiyama Sep 2018
Here I scatter the ashes of our Wednesdays
and throw dirt on our names because we fell into a stupor of unsaid goodbyes and insincere apologies.

I take my time trying to unclench my fist,
after all, release is only sweet when you feel suffocated.

I always made sure to adjust my grasp to your comfort,
present my entirety as if you owned more than a half of what I used to be.
I remember you in things that have no heartbeat, but a pulse of regret and anger that devours it, and to think you swore you would keep me alive.

In Binondo, you taught me how to eat street foods, walk in the crowded places, sit still on taxi rides,
and feel beautiful even when you kept your eyes off me.
You believed in slow motion, and the magic of lugaw at 12AM,
I watched you in a fascinated haze.
Too unsure of the light.

In Fairview, I told you that I cry during movies and laughed at the way you spun me around in the theater. Hand on my waist for good measure. I showed you claw machines and photobooths,
at least remember me.
I held your hand the first time, bled on
a piece of paper you read on the way to Quiapo, and all the long rides have made me feel empty ever since.

In Ilocos, I gave you a warm kisses on your cheeks when you took me
to church the first time, head spun just at the right angle for when
I walk down the aisle in a dress with you waiting at the end of it,
not knowing that in 4 years, I’d come back at someone
else’s wedding, begging on my knees at silent altars to keep you
even with my faith hanging from my fingertips. You still left.

In Intramuros, I see you in every nook and crevice,
in the holes, in the walls with Lechon Kawali, in quiet places we
claimed are for ourselves. In street vendors, ATM machines,
and pedestrian lanes too dangerous to walk on. Nowadays,
I shut my eyes in the backseat, afraid to see a shadow of who
I thought you were whenever I am near.

In Pasay there are people to see and places to walk
through to cover the tracks of almost lovers, a pair of shoes
to buy, impatience on my throat, and kisses on cheek as a cure
for my silence and satiation for the hunger below your navel.

In EDSA, we locked more than just lips, ate street Palitaw,
knocked three times on wooden doors, even lit candles to be sure,
that we would keep each other for good. Someone must have
knocked harder, the wind must have swept our fire out,
and we were fools to think promises were as simple as padlocks
that rust and break in the rain. How I never told you that I pictured
us in a million other bus rides that night. The road could never
have been shorter than the infinite one you promised.

In Pandacan, you wanted a life with me  
with nights in bed, the sickening kind of happiness harrowing
the peace we always knew we had. You held me close
and by the early hours of the morning you swore you’d meet me
again when the clock strikes twelve on a different year. I think
you left your love for me in that two-bedroom suite, and
wouldn’t it be wise if I left mine right next to yours, folded
and hung before the stain of resentment covered it whole?

In between the hurt and madness, memories of us
unfolding without grace on the table, I loved you.

You knew what you were doing when you let go of me to hold
onto someone else that was never as sure as I was of you,
and I wake up in sweat at 3AM thinking I never really knew.

Now we are in places we’ve never been, and I dry
swallow the hurt that swells even when I no longer touch it.
There are spaces I no longer need to be filled because I got used to being hollow
even when I was next to you
and now that I don’t have to be there anymore
it makes it easier to forget you ever happened, and I will tiptoe my way out of these places until I no longer feel you everywhere.
fray narte Sep 2020
I.
This love was made for late-night drives and city lights, left hundreds of miles away. It was made for footsteps, softened by museum floors. It was made for crowded airports — your hand, still finding mine. It was made for sunset-lit kisses, as Intramuros crumbles in the background; the walls and I are both made of brittle bones and curiosities, falling away at your kiss and yet, I felt my purest — my softest whilst the free-fall.

Maybe I did love you more.

II.
Love, it was soft. It was good. It was home. And it was a lie.

And I loved you, I loved you, I loved you — finally with a kind that didn't hurt. And yet, I never knew how to miss you without wanting to rip my heart out.

Maybe I did love you more.

III.
"I wish I didn't hurt you."

"Me too."

And despite you saying it, maybe it was I who loved you more. I know my poems have been saying goodbye way too many times.

Maybe I did love you more.

IV.
But this love, it was made for endings. And I hope you comb through airport seats, looking for my face among strangers. I hope you see my name, fading with dying lights. And I hope you know I'll no longer allow myself to think of us. Tonight, poems won't be mourning you — it'll be mourning my wounds.

Your name is written all over them.

Tonight, your memory will feel the steady flow of my pulse. It'll feel each of my aching breath, in silence that once belonged to us. And tonight, your memory will hold me gently in its arms, for the last time. As if we weren't broken. As if we were still us. And I will slip away, one breath at a time — before the day breaks.

I hope your thoughts no longer haunt me come early, morning light.

And I know I say goodbye way too many times, darling — I say goodbye too many times.

Maybe I did love you more.
Crissel Famorcan Apr 2021
Let's meet at McDonald's
and eat your favorite food,
I know you've been craving hard for them—
For it'll make you feel real good.

Let's take a walk at intramuros;
A place of your dream date,
Let's spend our time wandering
around it's historic walls and gate.

I would love to get lost in Netherlands,
If we'll be on those tulip fields—
At least, for a moment in our lives,
A part of heaven was revealed.

But the best place we could ever be,
And the best of those plans,
Is to travel and worship God,
on the different churches so grand;
You promised to take me there
if time would just permit,
And that promise will forever be
just a promise unfulfilled.

Your words still lingers in my ear—
I still hear your baritoned voice,
Whispering another promise to fulfill;
that in another life, we'll get our chance to rejoice.

04•15•21
10:27 PM

—Crissy Morsel
Carl Velasco Sep 2017
I’ll never forget.
MiniStop, Intramuros.
2016?
I had long graduated, the mortarboard
now a naked head of hair. The gown
now dilapidated jeans, and an overfitting
shirt. The fancy shoes now knockoffs
caked with mud and grime.
The little store was hot. Small.
On walls: baby cockroaches took chances.
Trash bags dog-eared below snack concessions.
A brown goop spun, the tungsten overhead
made no noise. Was there music? Was there
some commentary about love or crudeness on the radio?

Always self-conscious, I retreat to
the inner racks. Magazines lay there vacuumed, unpurchased.
Outside the picture window, an afternoon beamed its sun kiss.
I think I didn’t end up buying anything, because before I could,
some college boys entered. At the instant, I turned to them
and felt curiously incensed. This odd duality of envy and sympathy.
I was you, I’m me now. I want you, I’m not you now.
To look that young yet mature, to have a schedule.
To saunter inside the store before, during, after class. The
choice to enter, to parade, to be so vital.

The college boys, their plackets, collars,
their image. These hot-blooded men finer than me, stronger
than me. All handsome, winsome, reckless and brimmed with
swagger. Me? I stood examining the force, the association.
We’re all merely similar men, and I’m at a similar age, and I can
be a similar form factor. Mimic their teflon skin; shed my stucco,
leatherbound flesh.

And as soon as I attempted to undermine their specificity,
I lost my own place. I found that there’s no connection at all.
Other than I know nothing about the boys,
and the boys know nothing of me.

— The End —