J.R. said the man in the helmet said, “Goodbye, my friend,” before shooting his father in the chest. His body sank, but the man shot him twice more, in the head and cheeks. The children said the three men were laughing as they left.*
-Daniel Berehulak, They Are Slaughtering Us Like Animals, New York Times

Manila, goodnight.
The world is watching you slowly die.
Tattered truths & losing sense of life
captivate your battered night. Mud hurls blood
streets batted with horror & blabbed
anonymous spirits ghostlier than ever.

(Even ghostlier than your Martial Law days)

Manila, tranquilize yourself.

Your rest will be disturbed by scourged souls, thunderous cracks of guns,
bullets hitting flesh, motorcycle tandem arrests,
people’s holy shouts shunning shibboleth sounding death.

Hear them not. Sleep well.

Maggots festering wound. Manila,
on your knees, worms stich your broken nerves
healing gunshot wounds with peace.

Your night will be a train of madness
shattered by lies through morbid holes in skulls
& confessions in cardboard signs.

(Justice today is served cold, so cold)

& everything from that day on is simply to be known
as a cold just.

Truth decays. Life smolders, vanishing.

Your nights will be unthreaded from memories
for no one dares to look back to twisted arms clenched
by plastic strips, head bowing to ground (instead of ground
bowing to head), ground kissing the body naked swarmed
either by grease or blood, the body breaking gossips
among gossipers & gossamer among spiders.

Weep not, dead men tell no fiction.
Their bodies are the shocking truth, forsaken
shocking headlines hissing morning papers
peppered with mint or lies.

Manila, goodnight for your night will be remembered
through vigilant myths & nothing more.

Often cold bodies, freezing voices from limbo,
can’t speak nor bothered the living.

Again, Manila, in your arms, dead men tell no tales.

The killing spree of fragmented morality,
mortality, fatality, vanity, sanity, insanity, apathy.

Manila, do not move. You are now sedated with fear,
stronger than cooked methamphetamine of crooked realities,
no less than a drug making your anxious, bothered
in the darker & dimmer night
in dimmer  & darker disaster.

Manila, walk with your graffiti walls.
Your gutters will be banks of blood. Daylight traffic
will erase your night’s unwelcoming sphere. Last night
persists as tiny figment of imaginings photographed
& again, nothing more.

Everything will pass like hyacinths of Pasig River.

Everything will pass like one’s eternal passing.

Everything will pass like a chilling December wind.

Everything will pass either a typhoon or a butterfly fluttering.

Manila, goodnight. I am afraid they will ****** you
in your sleep. I am afraid that everything will just pass
like your breath losing hold of your lungs then your heart.

I am afraid that your death, my dear Manila,
will just be a neighbourhood rumour passing
& everything turns into a fiasco of a madman who believes
that he is a messiah, was he a messiah or never he will be a messiah.

Manila goodnight, I will watch you in your sleep. Your sleep
will be a thousand fold peace. No more of your sons or daughters
will be killed at least not in my memory.

Manila, here comes the night. Sleep,
sleep holy in the hidden lair of my mind. Your
catacomb will be wreathed by flowers & tears.
Incense will be fragrant burning bones. Your life,
your tired life will be a gentle ebbing of time
like your Bay’s sunset beauty, like your lively street people
like your once known heritage, your life
in the busy daybreak of your kindred sons.

Goodnight, my dear Manila.

we live in foggy car windows, spitting out white lies that turn in vain,
white lies that turn black
like your hair, as it caresses your shoulders
like my hands, as every cell in my being reaches for you
but the cytoplasm current is too strong, and swallows me whole
like if your words were quicksand
i would sink
i wouldn’t fight the pull
i would let each needle and thread stitch me to the right side of your brain
with no anesthesia
nothing can hurt more than tiny paper cuts that we don’t know about,
you are the hand sanitizer and lemon juice that drips into my open wounds
i try, and try to shake you away
i don’t recognize my own bed when i sleep alone
my dreams are more of a reality than the actual person laying next to me

i feel the cliff under our feet, i push you first,
but your sweaty palms grab my wild fang t-shirt
and i’ve never felt more alive than when falling to my death
leave the world behind
i don’t know if that is a blessing or a curse
leave me behind?
i don’t know if you are a blessing or a curse
let my lungs fill with each particle of quicksand until it overflows into my throat, spills out of my mouth
onto your lap

babe, i’m not trying to fix you even though i always try to fix people
you like me with makeup and rose petals
i still take rolls of tinfoil, clump them together, and swallow them whole
to fill my aching hunger, the number on the scale means nothing when you are dyslexic
please don’t see me with hives and weeds
that grow from my ankles, straps on me
with a ***** on the end
begging you to call out my name
with mouths open, and gentle kisses in the elevator after i met your mom
pull the bandaid off, rip my onion layers off

i still feel more at home
on crowded buses where i am the only, white person
white person walking in low lit alleys with gazing, men
men beckoning me to come closer till their hands slip, in
in hidden closets dating the opposite, ***
*** in unfamiliar places with temporary, homes
homes in hospital beds and drugs pumped into my, veins
veins in your arms, is where i am still trying to feel at home
trying to feel
trying...

honey, i’m sorry if i held your hand too long
if this can’t be as good for you as it is for me
cut me from my shambles
you didn’t have to say you loved me
i read it between your poetry
yet, i still hold my own hand, draped across my torso
sometimes gravity pulls my hand up my ribs, to my breast
so i can feel my heartbeat
maybe this time i won’t forget how to...breath
i will stop digging up my own grave
just to inspect my broken corpse, to try and rebuild this temple
the bricks don’t fit anymore
too many fragments taken away

like my body was used for science
the doctors diagnosed me with a hypothesis
it read if with you, then without me
what is a hypothesis without the theory?
theorize goodbye kisses at red lights
research the car filled with the smell of *** and morning
question **** stains on my sheets
or tear stains on my shirt you wear

i cried for the first time with you there
you were laying next to me in bed, my arms around you
you were asleep
and i wiped my tears on your shoulder without you knowing
i cried to the rhythm of your breathing
spoke hymns in your ear you would never hear
confessed my love, gave you my all
your eyes never opened
weaved your hair in my hands
while i unthreaded stories of my past traumas,
giving you one piece at a time
your heart never flickered
tinkerbell lost her flicker when she didn’t get attention
but how much was too much until it suffocated her?
my thighs in knots from straddling you

This is the ladder---your first steps into the height. There are no apples. There are no angels. There is only broken shadow and socket; a rounded house of milk and voltage. Now, as you unscrew the bulb with fingertips, listen for the sand. It is sand from ancestral beaches were all families of glass have been blown. A beach where dinosaurs are continually struck by lightning. Continue swiveling until the blown-out bulb is free from the ceiling. Come down, but do not look down. Use the eye in each shoe to find the lower rungs. Place the old bulb in with the dish of pears. The new carton of bulbs are close by, sleeping. Unwrap a fresh bulb from its onionskin pajamas and ascend the same ladder previous. Using your musical hand, insert the threaded end up into the unthreaded beginning. Turn gently in the direction of sunrise until snug. Pull the chain, for the light of God's echoing equation will now sing. Squint and descend.

Younger days over,
She and I, what tapestry,
Innocence loomed.

Younger days over,
She and I, what tapestry,
Innocence loomed.

I hung my apron to dry
let the wind carry it, cradling
cloth with branch claws and
dancing legs all the way to hell
and back, embroidering glory
in each stitched parsley leaf,
I unthreaded each with a brittle needle
used each thin thread to create
my own tapestry.

the shutters are kept a jar closed this morning. i will only see out of one eye. my own blue light vibrates, hollows out my greying stomach leaving space to think - - you should’ve reached out but i can’t get my hand past the edge of my bed, so i use my hands instead to harden my molten tongue and soften my clenched cheeks. a sour gap between chin - - belly. rolling a mushy blade of grass between my fingers - - stretching a water bottle - - kicking the end of my bed - - do you feel empty? she said. I said  - - like unthreaded needles? like tupperwear unfilled?  - - is that empty? you felt like silk disrupted with the crease on your forces and i tried to collect the other day but you weren’t even there it was some other guy i only see you when i buy bags of must i miss the hugs you gave from ear to floor but now you’re cheating on me with yourself and now i’m a zippo without fluid and you’re the first *** packet without a number and without a warning and i'm without - -

She is a foreign delicacy,
delicious mind
I find
in lines of poetry.

A definite reality,
but I imagine she
scribbles out verses
veraciously,

places each of these
in this internet society,
exchanging altered perceptions
for artificial digital connections;

Full fruit flesh
rich with juicy wetness,
deep thoughts
of deliciousness
as I wonder
about the wonder
of such a creative being.

The plate is mine,
a porcelain palate
open to dine
on one delicate
verb at a time.

To dance and unwind
in the way the words
unroll themselves,
unthreaded yarn
ready to re-roll
and then unfold
once more.

I am a friendly
interloper
there
where
I go to explore
weird worlds
I have never seen before,

and this is
a rough draft
of gratitude
to that fact.

made of maple wood               
are unthreaded fasteners              
ten down in strike, pins

No one crossed that threshold in quite a while
Doors weren’t knocked twice in light
“ Rain” , impishly she said when saw me surprised

The only knock my ears were aware were of my ration’s load
Her galoshes confirmed the miry road
The muddy lane to my forgotten abode

I asked her if she was mistaken
Emptiness in my voice left her soul shaken
Rambler, she travelled the roads that were not taken

Brown her braids, drops from the rain they confined
One fell on dusty floors, contrasting the view it traced a line
Disparity of salt void on the floor but abundant on the cheeks of mine

Glanced my old house with her eyes, she broke the perfect stillness of her face
In her new world I seemed to loose my pace, she asks me “ What is this place?”
“Dream”, I told her, “ Of solitude and life without race”

It wasn’t only her visit that looked strange
Antipodal of my dreams, hers were of different range
She travelled because she was happy only when the scenes changed

Odd but the solitude seeker me liked her company, she unthreaded me with questions until there was no light
Stars shined, shinier the moon, shiniest her eyes in the night
She asked to stay over. “Rain”,  impishly she said when saw me surprised.