A million sparkly little pieces

I want to write lines of how you lit the sun with your hands and your mouths,

oh your many hands, and your many mouths.

Yet they escape me.

I never can grasp them.

Because these lines—

They instead glide down into the very center,

Where the phantom of your mouth is still felt even after hours,

Where they beat, beat, beat.

Warm and tender and bright,

With me, they beat.

I want to write lines of how these phantom lines

Pulsed, pulsed, pulsed,

and pulled at me,

and tore me

into a million sparkly little pieces.



*This is the first poem, in fact, the first piece of writing, I have done after a good two months now. It must mean something. :)

A lost story

(or Murphy messing with me for the umpteenth time)

The Dream King, a.k.a. The Sandman, a.k.a. Oneiros, a.k.a. Kai'ckul, a.k.a. Morpheus, a.k.a. Murphy, among other names - my favorite Neil Gaiman creation, among others. (Illustration by Yoshitaka Amano, in "Dream Hunters")

I remember I dreamed about a great idea for a story last night, or early this morning. It might even be a whole story, although at this point it has already been lost.

I remembered waking, getting up, and smiling while eyeing my little red notebook and a pen that were both sitting together on the desk beside my bed. I was feeling triumphant because I have caught the idea/story in that place where it is difficult to hunt and actually capture something- that realm between sleeping and waking.

Apparently, however, it had all been in my imagination because by now, it had already been four hours after I've actually woken up (I wrote this first on the little red notebook at 12 noon today) that I remembered having that moment, if it was a real moment, or that dream, if it were indeed a dream.

And also, the little red notebook? It wasn't anywhere near the desk at all. I found it in the very bottom of my bottomless sack-bag. And the pen? I found one from another room.

Damn. Murphy is messing with my head.

More on Murphy next time.

The blue is not here in Iloilo

The final poem --

* * * * * *

Words escaped from our closed lips,
drifted out of the open window
(Open them, you said, because the car stinks.
I said, I didn’t notice, but alright—
Let’s. Besides, we should enjoy December.)
and got smudged into the black canvas outside
much like the green, yellow, red and blue
Christmas lights
that streak past the hazy highway
as we drove by signs and stores, and houses and trees,
and memories and drinks,
and kisses shared on doorsteps and under sheets,
and on these familiar streets.

Every letter, every phoneme,
they tried so hard to clutch at the rolled-up windows—
unwilling to be left behind,
desperate to be listened to.
Perhaps they would be much like the sticky little black fingers
of ghost-eyed children as they clutch at our t-shirts and jeans
(or my hair, if they were hungry enough),
should we bother to stop and get down
at that corner of Javellana and E. Lopez
where they stand close together like death’s little army,
several months’ worth of dirt their armor,
a biting pang in their stomachs their only weapon.

But then, I knew they would be much more like the children,
should we happen to pass them again a bit later
when they’d all be lying asleep on Marlboro boxes quilted together,
wrapped in nothing but their diluted dreams,
fingers splayed open for a kind passerby’s (or Santa’s!) gift—
weak and willing to be pried away from the car windows
by our indecision and pretend forgetfulness
and be dissolved into the cold biting air,
indifferent if they won’t find our ears.

And so all we hear
are the hum of orange streetlights
and the ring of blurred figures and vehicles that we pass.
(I’d say the streets also have notes of blue,
but blue was there in Roxas Boulevard
and not here in Iloilo.)
These sounds, they are the swish-swash of rain
pelting down a taxi’s fiberglass window,
creating rolling stripes of gray and yellow
on your face while you held my hand and looked at me
too long an afternoon ago.
Much like now, when you would take your eyes off the road
and your eyes would ask me questions
whose answers I wouldn’t, at the moment, dare unveil.


And so I turn towards the vignettes that we pass by-
my favorite madwoman in her peach blazer and yellow shopping bags,
walking perhaps to McDonald’s, ready to seize sundaes from reluctant hands;
and there, see there, a motorcycle splayed on the pavement, its rear wheel still rolling,
nearby a TV crew with their rolling cameras and microphones and extension wires,
one policeman drowning in an aftermath of a frat fight.

And all I hear
is the rumpling of your hair against your baseball cap as you adjust it in between gears, too many times in one block alone.
Did you speak just now?
I’m sorry I was too busy listening for those words flailing outside the window,
their clamor must sound like that poor high school boy’s last sighs
as he held out his hands against the glint of knives and eyes
there in Magsaysay Village,
where we, too, once parked and travelled each other in the dark.

All you hear,
I know,
is the sound of my sweat gliding down my temple to my collarbone—
It feels warm and then all at once icy.
Are you hearing what I was saying?
Or is it those words that you hear?
Those words, they now flatten themselves at the rear windows,
like wet pages of newspapers plastered on the glistening asphalt of Luna Street
several typhoons ago.

Those words,
They must now be shivering
like I had, so long ago
when your hands left my breasts
to close the windows.



-END-
12.12.09, 17:36

Ode to my Yosi Boy

For people who hurt there is one thing that they reach for to ease the pain that they feel.

Some people reach for the phone and talk or text to their friends, telling them they are okay when they actually aren't, perhaps only saying so to assure not their friends but themselves.

Some people reach out more personally, like going home to curl up in daddy's arms or cry buckets on mommy's breasts.

Some tend to be less vegetative and rather let out the [party] animal in them--perhaps they would reach out for that bottle of Red Horse or that videoke microphone and belt out "I Will Survive" or "I Did it My Way."

Still, for some other people they reach for a variety of things--some opt for the steering wheel and the welcoming wide stretch of the orange-lighted highway at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, for some who believe in God, they reach for the rosary or the Bible, and let themselves be comforted by the Holy Word.

Some, on the other hand, instead of drowning their tears in beer or sending up prayers into the Heavens, or letting whoever is in Heaven take pity on their road-racing souls, like to simply fog out reality in a blanket of cigarette smoke. Smothering themselves in intoxicating tar and nicotine is a way for some people to breathe freely.

But what happens when that single thing that you always reach for when you want to breathe suddenly turns out to be a reminder of the allergen that had set off your asthma? What do you do when everytime you inhale the sweet, menthol taste of tobacco and everytime you let that taste take over you, you remember how somebody used to do the same thing to you? What do you do when instead of smoke rising above your head, you see his face and instead of the cigarette smell, you smell his hair?

What do you do?