beyond text

encounter 1

2011-01-04T05:32:00.000-08:00

a sudden hiss on the grass

and there she was --

her eyes plumbing

the pit of my fear,

her tongue forking

the space between us;

my fingers tensed and

a whiz whipped in the air;

then, a thud muted

whatever she wanted

to portend;

not even a faint moan

could escape from her mouth.

my knees trembled

and the hoe i was holding

fell,

its handle

landed a final kiss

on her broken skull.

blots of blood

2010-12-16T04:17:00.000-08:00

Blots of blood clung clotted onto to the leaves of gray grass – a sea of gun powder scent assault my dreams like mad soldiers. Pressing fingers, triggering thunders that burst skulls and splinter hearts and crush dreams dreams dreams. Of silent seas, of green hills, of kites Kissing rainbows back home. Each morning I awake with the scent of gray grass and blood upon blood tail my nostril breathe deeply said my monk friend and I did and bullets crisscross my chest. Come to me. Taste my blood come. Be with me in my dreams dreams dreams.Kites kissing clouds, hills embrace me with your foggy green grain. Sea singing singing singing lullaby.

06feb2007/ 2:30pm

life is just a wink

2010-12-16T04:05:00.000-08:00

A sudden thud hit my groin –a nameless force so strong that I lost the light. And I lay there on the street, baring my breast to the beast roaming around in my dreams. Why can’t I slay her? Why, with all the powers of silence and sighs, can’t I slay her? The moment I think of defeating her, she lurks with the fangs that glitter under the wounded moon.

No one needs death. Dying is just a trickery of sorrow, pretending to maim, to numb the senses. But even in death, metaphors hover and haunt the poet. Death, therefore, never settles anything; it only sharpens whatever dreams have blurred. Symbols strike their targets so shortly that they fade the moment they assume meaning.

Cotton candies taste like wine. Try them with your eyes closed and feel the clouds swirl in your throat. Extend your hands sideways and you’ll know how birds learn to fly. Flap your hands and your face will bathe in fog – so pure, so blue, bleeding like a bloodless corpse. Imagination is not fond of mimicry; it conjures only what is real but yet unrevealed.

‘Why should your body lie on this forlorn street my child?’ God asked me. And I felt that my skin is of the earth and on it crisscross spiky beliefs and ideologies of self-righteousness of bigotry, of maiming, of killing.

Survive! you who fit this wretched world the most; but bear the brunt of the scourge of impotency. Emmanuel, your god is in you. Summon the demon, let it prostrate before you, but bear in mind the bareness and barrenness of this truth: prostate gland can never desecrate what is sacred.

Scared of scars and scarcity, the economists hurl holy rocks against the howling wilderness of hunger. Why can’t they turn these stones into bread? Why can’t they turn these wastes into waving waistlines of wisemen who visited Jesus in the manger?

I can no longer dream of a white christmas, my measled toe is burning with love of Africa. Mandela, how many prisons does a man need to gain the world market of ideas and orgasms? Why can’t we eject our souls like a cd?

Spring sprouts like tubers, but plumbing needs tubes and plastic straw through which the public trust will be sucked and pubic hairs will be hot oiled and groomed.

Some of the giants are really gigantic, like the tsunamis braved by muro ami’s. But even then, the vase of roses still tantalize the eyes of a lion. And the sea shells, the sea shells just lie there like my body, waiting but not expecting anyone. Just there, ready to offer the songs of the sea for those who understand why do an abandoned corpse decompose while a moribund composition uplift the soul.

10.

Enlighten me my friend: is life really just a wink?

31 january/ 13 february 2007

buffaloes

2009-11-06T00:25:00.000-08:00

water buffaloes
cavort on top of the hill,
dust and grassleaves swirl.

morning walk

2009-11-06T00:00:00.000-08:00

beams of sunlight
piercing the canopies
of acacia trees
embrace me as i walk;

love, your breath
twines with my footfalls,

ricocheting into a poem.

crow

2009-11-05T23:56:00.000-08:00

a crow folds its wings
and pecks at the ripe guava,
little leaves tremble.

O, wind, tell the tale of a young boy in Tubod*

2009-11-04T16:00:00.000-08:00

That day on the hill sunlight leaped and laughter rolled,

a fate pregnant with a tongue tingling to be born,
O, wind, tell the tale of a young boy in Tubod.

A crumpled leaf on a wild vine glinted like gold,
inside, a spider still refused to greet the morn;
that day on the hill sunlight leaped and laughter rolled.

Tender fingers tiptoed on the vine to the fold
where the spider lay asleep – dreaming or wayworn?
O, wind, tell the tale of a young boy in Tubod.

Suddenly, something whizzed and the grassblades trembled,
the dust -- pummelled by combat boots -- echoed a groan;
that day on the hill sunlight leaped and laughter rolled.

Blots of blood clung onto the spider’s silver web,
the threads sagged heavy with a dragging breath, forlorn;
O, wind, tell the tale of a young boy in Tubod.

Can a concrete cross lighten the loss, bear the load
raging in the mother’s heart left to wrath and mourn?
That day on the hill sunlight leaped and laughter rolled,
O, wind, tell the tale of a young boy in Tubod.

*Tubod - municipality in Lanao del Norte, Mindanao

dusk

2009-11-03T23:12:00.000-08:00

(for ayel)

 The trees
and the mountains
are watercolor patches
spreading on oslo.  Gray.

But not the gray that evokes
the pain of dusk, the pang of

parting.

  Because we know, we know
that the green leaves – in unison
with the throbbing of our hearts –
  still sway with the wind
behind the thin satin mist.

       From where we sit,
beneath the leafless Narra tree,
I see  rays of gold-orange light,
faint beams  already yielding
to the power of the  spreading twilight.

      On my notebook,
shadows of grassblades crisscross,
marking territories the light
cannot traverse – gold and black on white.
Lines as thin as hair,
lines as thick as pencil intersect,

 just like our fingers,
 just like our breath.

everbloom of love

2009-11-03T14:45:00.000-08:00

gaze into me not with the eyes that fortress
a lie, just like the glint of dew that conceals
the tinge of dark in a decaying petal;

gaze into me with the heart that bares
every faltering breath, just like the bud that bursts
into a flower in the silence of dawn.

there is no other choice, as long
as we long for an everbloom
of love.

dream

2009-11-02T05:43:00.000-08:00


there is a village
in my dream
named Dream:

a home where
wild lilies bloom
   free

where  no bullets
dare defile the spider’s
  solitude
and communion
with the grass

where girls can swim
in the river     pick up snails
and come  back home
 unafraid        unscathed

come with me
let us dream
and build  Dream.

biting tang of truth

2009-11-02T05:41:00.000-08:00

the sugary words
with which we sting
each other like wasps

harden into knives
slashing our hearts

which we vow to shield
and be tender with

and soon we sniff
the biting tang

of truth: anything
stung stings back.

calumet can

2009-11-02T05:37:00.000-08:00

what ant on earth showed you the way
to the treasure i buried
beneath our bamboo stair?

not a faintest sound did escape when,
one by one, as fast as father’s whip,
i slipped my coins into the calumet can.

did the sweat of my palm betray itself?

day, i was a hen: scratching the earth,
pecking every grain
left to die in the scorching rice field.

night, i was a knight: dreaming of new armor
for a coming fight. yes, i would be wearing
a pair of new khaki shorts and white t-shirt, come june.

but that horrible morning, i found the jaw
of the indian warrior in my calumet can deformed.

the world swirled and i dashed off to the plaza;
there you stood, pretending not to notice me,
hands digging deep into your pockets.

as i stared at the dicer’s fingers raking in
my precious coins, i prayed hard to god:
may the earth swallow you alive, manong*!

----
manong -- Ilocano term for brother

ode of a paddle to the sea

2009-11-02T05:34:00.000-08:00

gently disintegrate me
waves of primal womb, with the salty fangs
of your froths gnaw me into a tiniest dust

lest the sailing moon smell
the scent of my rancid solitude
that sighs for death beneath her golden hull.

i once waded against your current
whipping whirlpool upon whirlpool of youth
on the virginal azure of your flesh.

but your wounds heal faster than a whip
and i, ah, how swift my robust breath
succumbed to the smallest of your ripples.

now a piece of broken pride, please
send not my body ashore. just
gently disintegrate me, my beloved tomb.

i stopped and stood still

2009-11-02T05:31:00.000-08:00

one morning, manong and i
went to our swidden farm
to pick mushrooms.

“arm yourself with a stick,”
he commanded while demonstrating
how to whip right and left
when walking along grassy trails
to scare off snakes.

“but if by chance we encounter one
just hold your ground, and your guts
will send the snake flying in fright.”

when we reached the first bunch
of bushy bamboos, we saw a tudtud –

a worm-like snake, wiggling
its way around fallen leaves
and tiny blades of grass.

holding my breath,
i stood still at once.

when i looked at manong
he was just as small as a mushroom –

scampering amid the clouds of dust
his bare feet spewed out.

long live the peasants!

2009-11-02T05:25:00.000-08:00

lying on your threadbare banners
beneath the canopy of smog,
you hum your dreams of home, of land
against the cold fence of the DAR*

all the pains you endure
i endure like the crown of thorns
that pierced the Saviour’s soul;
and my heart weeps: rage, rage.

a, tonight, this rage will explode,
i shall witness the final set;
my heart will dance: long live ely!
long live eraserheads!

---
*Department of Agrarian Reform

magic

2009-11-02T05:20:00.001-08:00

cast

a stone
into the sea
and see
how the salt
gasps
into a gaping

wound.

don’t blink;
it heals quicker
than a wink.
not even its froth
can glance
at the magic.

our words

2009-11-02T05:14:00.000-08:00

the rivers freeze
under our chilly gaze

the leaves rustle
at the slightest quiver
of our scorching tongues

and our words break the earth
into million gaping wounds

zigzagging
in a dizzying speed
to devour us

the moon sings

2009-11-02T05:12:00.000-08:00

last night
i dreamt of home –

as my soles kiss
the verdant hill
where i used to nurse
my bruised knees
and broken kites

the moon sings

and my shadow dances
with the blades of grass.

a father's nightmare

2009-11-02T05:09:00.000-08:00

when i see her eyes looking

but not seeing, fixed
but wandering.

she’s everywhere but here,
seeking refuge where i don’t exist
or where i am dead

or just a twig
she feeds to the flame
blue with her wrath.

she has mastered the contours
of my anger and i still grope
along the fence of her defense.

isn’t silence sweet?
then why the muteness
my voice has summoned drown me now?
where is the shore
of this imploding sea of silence?

how can a clever plan fail?:
trap her in a minor encounter
where even her faintest meow

is enough to unlock her lies
and the torrents of diatribes
i have long nurtured.

but how can i bear her empty stare,
her frozen gaze that sets me ablaze?

o, how i seethe seeing her lips smirk

flash of flesh

2009-11-02T05:06:00.000-08:00

something in your hair stings like rust.
the soot black night? or the scent yet unnamed? or,
is it the tickle of the naughty silky strands?

i don’t know. but on that rain-soaked night – armskin
against armskin, the flash of flesh – under your umbrella,
something in your hair stung me. and now:

i crave the gasp of hunger in your mouth
i crave the surge of longing in your breast
i crave the wave of assault in your hip

i crave the grip of death in your thighs.

a, my dear stranger: like your umbrella,
unfold me. bathe my creaking ribs
with the serenity of your inviolate oil.

jack hammer

2009-11-02T05:00:00.001-08:00

the jack hammer thundered

and devoured every sound

except the ticking stabs

of hunger in his temple.

the mounds

of earth

the scaffolds the cement mixer

the trees

the sky

everything

everything swirled

like top

and went dim.

the jack hammer plummeted.

beside it, his body – another robust

muscled-machine lay busted.

tomorrow

a new pair of hungry hands

will hug the jack hammer.

the project must go on

blade of metaphor

2009-10-30T07:21:00.000-07:00

write yourself nakedsift through the crisscrossing strands
of the groin heart brain
the attar and stench of words

and embalm the poor’s wounded hope
with word 
 with sword
  with blood

split the spell
of ads sermons polemics

melt the fingers and the tongues
that choke the songs of the fist
and rebirth of the grassroots

Of what use are these eyes

2009-10-27T08:22:00.000-07:00

As I lie beside you tonight,
my eyes are fingers caressing the spines
of books on the shelf. The letters melt and seep
into the crannies of my cracked palm;
suddenly a river gurgles – a drowning without shape,
a weeping without sorrow.

Where is the dust, the ovary of my poetry?
Page by page the river flows,
bathing me with blood and gunshots and banging anvils.
“Let the river fall,” you whisper. Your eyes deep as forest night,
your voice subterranean as forest thunder.

I clench my fists and the river falls,
breaking into million laughing shards of bust made of dust.
Can termites swim in the river of metaphor?

But the river I let fall and is broken.

What are those sounds?
Falling debris of letters against the pages?
I smell a legion of fangs gnawing at the ceiling, at the cabinet,
at the window, at the wall – at my brain and my groin.
The scent of cow dung conjures a cobweb of memories
in my nostrils. And I smell the whiff of your hair,
I devour your misty breath.

My joints creak. Weeping, my hips succumb to the sod
into which I sow my tales. Of what use are these eyes
that can’t pierce through the salty waves of your ocean,
my primal womb?

I long for the odor of brine in your breast,
for the drowning aroma of deadwood
in your armpit, between your thighs. Tonight,
I wish the books fall over our undulating bodies
and bury our breaths with all the world aromas,
until our dream is lashed by the next lances of light.

desaparecido

2009-10-27T08:12:00.000-07:00

a loved one has disappeared

and failed to come home

after seven years

waiting is a jumble –

an unknown jungle where origin,

destination, and present place of waiting

all melt and blend with the mist

that hug the ferns.

a fusion of pastpresentfuture

that disintegrates

at every moment of plumbed sighs.

no shape, no color.

neither coarse nor smooth.

not a straight line of finding

that follows searching

that follows losing.

neither a single stab

nor constant thuds in the brain,

or in the heart?

waiting is a cobweb

of despair, rage, death, hope –

a crisscrossing of obituaries,

candle lights,

confetti, burnt garlic and onions,

formalin, fresh paint,

colostrum, navel, fontanel, diaper

combat boots, truncheons,

family photos, baptismal

certificate, college diploma;

a numbed knuckles of knocks

pleading every gate, every door –

military detachments, jails,

government offices, television stations,

hearts of barangay officials, ngo workers,

priests, nuns, neighbors,

owner of the factory

where the desaparecido worked

and was last seen:

“my daughter –

help me find my daughter”

i, a framed frown. a searing sea.

a cascading hill. a parched rainfall.

assaulted every moment

by rotten breath, heaps of cigarette butts,

rusting thumb, gun powder.

granules of sweat, blood, phlegm, semen.

plucked nails.

i, a crumpled hand floating

between a door that has forgotten

the warmth of its frame

and a candle aching

to be lit –

No, Allos, Your Words are not Dry as the Grass is

2009-10-27T06:37:00.000-07:00

Here, here are his words,
dry as the grass is.
- Carlos Bulosan, “Epitaph”
-----
Because dry grass easily blazes
at a light kiss of fire,
and its ember quickly turns to ash,

No, Allos, your words are not dry
as the grass is; they are the lullaby
of the rivers and rice fields of Mangusmana
that cuddles the joy of your innocence –
a memory that parries the assault of winter.

No, Allos, your words are not dry
as the grass is; they are the laughter
of the hills and plains of America,
green splendor that caresses your back
when fatigue and sadness assail
the plantations of apple, peas, and asparagus.

No, Allos, your words are not dry
as the grass is; they are the elegy
of our anguish and rage, a peal of poem
amidst hunger and terror, a cataract
of blood gushing through our hope and dream.

No, Allos, your words are not dry
as the grass is; for

when did the poem and heart
of the people’s poet ever run dry? when
did the desire and hope for the birthing
of a new world ever run dry?

o, we dance with words, we sing with the light

2009-10-27T06:20:00.001-07:00

o, we dance with words, we sing with the light
dauntless in the dark, unfazed by the storm,
every grassblade we touch tinkles with life.

no pebble nor sand weeps under our feet,
the wind, as our mind rages, doesn’t mourn;
o, we dance with words, we sing with the light.

before the blank gaze of a dying child
we heave hope into our undying Dream:
every grassblade we touch tinkles with life.

our words convey the rhythm of the Heart –
a pulse that guides our march to a new dawn,
o, we dance with words, we sing with the light.

like the Sun we respect no fear nor flight,
yes, blaspheming even the tyrant’s throne;
every grassblade we touch tinkles with life.

in our glorious quest to crush unfreedom
we offer all; we face death without fright.
o, we dance with words, we sing with the light
every grassblade we touch tinkles with life.