Jellyfishes she said, jellyfishes are funny
They dont have a brain you know?
They just swim and eat and swim and eat..
They might not even be afraid of being eaten.
Doesnt that sound like a live worth living?

Brood of the journey,
Offspring of adventure;
Cradled in a crib
Of boat rides and bus drives,
Rocked in time with teenage nursery rhymes,
A million miles per hundred hour,
Marking dashed lines
Across the Philippine map
From Region IV-A
To Region V,
For four summer daysprings
And five summer nightfalls.
My umbilical cord recoiled in loops,
Through the roller coaster road,
Under the waterfall expressways,
Bumper-to-bumper with the hills,
Baby on board;
Pulled in my diesel pushcart,
Back to the womb of my motherland
And into the water that once broke
To give me my own air.
But I haven't breathed better until
Now that I swim again in her salty seasac.
How I have long starved my feet
Of her creamy sand
Which the skin between my toes
Suckle like breastmilk.
How short it has taken
For her colors to change
From seagreen in the dawn,
To aquamarine by ripe daylight,
To turquoise in the afternoon,
And to teal blue by dusk,
Upon having me in her arms.
I was as happy as a clam
When a welcome party was thrown
By the fish residence
And I was reunited
With my crustacean playmates
And their echinoderm pals.
During my stay,
I had the whistles of the sea breeze
As my morning wake-up call,
And by night
The sky is my ceiling,
Decorated with star glitters
And one would fall everytime
To turn off my night light
While the waves would splash
A cool blanket on me.
I would go on treasure hunts
To find the lost seashells;
Raiding coast-to-coast of the boundary,
Declaring tug-of-war,
Jumping in with both feet
And holding my breath,
Fighting the careless Captain Current
And his crew of buccaneers
Attacking in foams and spumes,
And I was unwavering,
Unflagging,
Yanking the *****
To victory.
With Merleau-Ponty,
To be free is to be situated;
But with these marlins,
It is dancing on the ocean floor.
Take it from the jellyfishes
Who just go with the flow
And follow the tide
Whether if it meant
Being washed ashore
Or sinking in the deep,
As long as their tentacles
Are free.
One day I visited
The underwater kingdoms;
Parts of Atlantis
Dispersed into an archipelago.
The Coral Cave,
Land of the soft and stony;
There lives the family
Of jelly-prickled corals
Who are all slimes and tickles,
Among their relatives,
The rose reefs,
Who are red as petals
But rough as thorns.
The Boulder Territory,
A colossal chamber castle
Filled with all the bathroom stones
To scrub your feet with,
But which upon being rushed in
By the cavalry of billows,
One would bruise themself
On the cliff floors
For fear of the enemy,
The barracuda;
Patroling the dark areas
Of the vicinity,
Lying in wait
For its next victim.
In the neighboring island
Just beyond the shoreline,
Is the Seaweed Seabed;
The base plantation
Of the seagrapes,
Natively Philippine Caviar,
Which are saltwater explosives
In the mouth
That come in bunches
Of crunchy, jelly green beads.
Last but not the least,
The Pebble Desert;
A torrid terrain
Of dunes and dunes of pebbles
Pink, peach, and pearl,
Cool in the eyes
As pastel *****
But hot in the feet
As burning coals.
Sometimes we create
The most beautiful things
To be mirrors of ourselves
Modeled from our brokenness
To cast back
A better image of us
In one piece
And be looked at
As something worth loving
If not something perfect,
And God must have been
Truly in smithereens
As to put together
A whole world of a looking glass
Reflecting His divine entirety
For us, His fallible caretakers
To see Him as someone
Worthy of our love,
Aside from perfect.
And I know that
He knows me too well
To know that
What I really mean to say
Is 'I love you'
When I would rather
Simplicity speak for beauty
And let majesty be mystic,
Than bother forcing
Some not-quite words
To fit His creation.
Sadly,
Even the starfish,
The child of the ocean
And the sky,
A blending of two worlds,
Yet still goes out on a limb
To be a part of a third one,
Can't stay too long
Where it doesn't belong,
And we all have to
Go back at some point
To the place
We just couldn't call home
Because we're always looking
For somewhere else.
But I have come to find
That home is not really where,
But who you're with.
So I shall never have to worry
For the Earth is three-fourths water
And the body is fifty percent of it;
The ocean and I
Will always share
The same whole.

Turritopsis dohrnii: A species of jellyfish that can revert back
To a sexually immature state when its injured or dying, making it biologically immortal.

A jellyfish,
Nothing but thickened water
Some genetic material
Polythene bags and paper glue,
Is granted immortality.
We, humans
The heirs of a billion evolutions,
A million grains of life,
Crumble like sand castles
Scatter like sawdust.

The universe taunts,
Laugh until your shadow swallows you
Your every breath was a thousand last breaths,
Puny mortal.

I take it for granted
Your brittle teeth
My hammer tongue
Jittery throat
Don't try to speak
You don't want me to listen
My ears are waxed with distortion

Hands off
You don't want to touch me
My skin is smeared on poison
Don't even gaze into my eyes
You won't find truth
In the eyes of a Gorgon

This is called
how to
go deep into sea
with harpoon
and spores of magic
mushrooms
for getting nothing
back  home.

Yes, because we are
vegetarians
and the turtles
and jellyfishes
belongs each other
as my typo
and
i.

quiet thunder, a roaring breeze…
bright darkness, a shadow of light

a shot of wine, a sip of coffee…
a quick kiss, a long wink

never ending legs and stubby stilettos, piercing light eyes tamed by a smoky halo...
clumsily impeccable hair, that familiar perfume in the air

the eyes hear,  what wasn't meant for the ear...
the obvious, oblivious and the unspoken understood

a shoulder to smile on, cradle the bizarre…
bathroom mirrors are the place for tears

easy come, a comfy go, strings attached…
filing voids, where there were none

tentacles are wings, jellyfishes float in the sky…
birds fly underwater, singing ballads to whales…

random words, does not a poem make
i've no clue why I write this... maybe just a weird take.

A mantra song I do not remember the
meaning it holds- repeated over and over-
in a lotus; no, thighs too big they become
forest, as tonight's dream swings with time,

as your tomorrow becomes my relief, as the
red star winks at the hidden moon; shy
****** curtain, laundry's cheap perfume,
underlined flaws and jellyfishes on a tiny

plate, melting candle, lavender, sweet green
tea and salted butter. Nostrils reek of *****,
bathroom break, do not be late, please wake
up early, earlier than ever. When the east

comes, let's fall asleep with the lights on,
we are not even the moon; souls do not need
sun, or vegetables, or green things growing
happily like someone's five year old- not

my parents', never- they lost the four, the
most important before a five- an incomplete
puzzle, cut neck of a giraffe, eyes black like
coffee black holes, who does not want that?

Chemical terms keep saying hello to the
tiles, count me in, let's have a drink, glasses
of sparkling mineral water. I prefer it clear.
River; never does flow- becomes a yellow

lake. Pretty pretty sands, no one is unique,
a diamond and a thousand more- a pearl, a
wounded shell, mermaid's sadness and a
knife- bubbles covered ocean; sunsets and

fireworks, a birthday, reality and a nymph
with a wing; the bells are calling us as if we
are not yet that cow, grasses greener than
green, numbers of dead things are

increasing, as heartbeats keep piling up like
the books you bought but never read- they
cry at night, especially when it is moonless
and cloudless, like tonight from the

baseball field; where the moths talk about
jealousy and sleepy handsome bats at nine
p.m.- marching chests, a lonely festival, a
ghost house; where lives begin- End.

This unjust globe prevents me
Being in a place that deserves me
We go on protest for this every day
With all the talents, the world is unfair
But we need our expertise in the reality
Despite unfair rules, we should justify
There is no point in a painless victory
Those fought hard remarked in history
Seeing the dreamland from far is easy
Who cares when you can’t find an entry
A boat is needed to cross to the other shore
If you can’t find one, you should dare to swim
No change for better without any threatening
On the way to glory, wild waves are roaring
To be great, one should accept the challenges
No good records in history for the jellyfishes

And my boat, afloat
Between two worlds alike

the sky is the sea
and the sea, the sky

the stars glide like pirate ships
the turtles abide the celestial law

We wish upon jellyfishes

and the pulsars sent an electric tide
pulsating like waves to ears

Lighthouses are spheres

And the muse of whales—
Ethereal quietude of space

"We wouldn't give half a penny for our own thoughts" :
they softly spoke, while feeling kinda bored,
as, perhaps they were even a little lazy like gummy jellyfishes
on land, when they knew that they nonetheless must have been the curious ones who stared in a slowed up tempo at the ebony book cabinet,
while they were also the ones who didnt really know
but who actually did try to guess which books
were installed there like a bunch of paper soldiers
waiting for better heights,
as the moon was a not so accidental,
bluish celestial body that shone
through the open windows of the closed house,
and, o, yes they mirrored the impressive impression it left behind,
before they watched themselves when grabbing a random heavy book out of the big closet
with the intention of ridding this mysterious book of being unread as the face of something like a future time,
however, the first few sentences they dug through
were so **** tiring, so sleep-inducing, even, that they must have decided to put the boresome book aside into an eternity, before they started reading the actual shape of the moon
as it beamed them blue, until they whirled down together on the red sofa that even glued them a little later down on a soft four-poster bed in dreamland,
that supposedly brought them a dream that read:
Tomorrow, New Day, Tomorrow, New Chances
if Allowed By God, but tell me, what did it even mattered to them or to Him, as if it even could hve concerned a gruesome thing like their very last song in life to sing?