Whatever Possessed You

Goodbye my love
Heaven has been wronged
Now our young bent arms
Don't seem quite so strong

November and all the frost bites
Deep as the snow flowers plowed
This bed is colder than blood or bone

Never knock on my door
Whatever possessed you, aaaaahhh
Somewhere there's an emptiness
Hold me tightly, I wouldn't dream of it

Beware my love
This tongue is a dying flame
My lies may fall like an acid rain
Maybe the sleet was in silently above the roads
You loving angel, you're skin and bones

November and all the frost bites
Deeper than the snow flowers plowed
This bed is colder than blood or bone

Never knock on my door
Whatever possessed you, aaaaahhh
Somewhere there's an emptiness
Hold me tightly, I wouldn't dream of it

- The Care

Opening the Animal


There were moments I found true freedom

In sin. To be exact, three: my wife walking

Out of our house and into another, a place I

Only imagine because I have heard nothing

.

From her since; masturbating one morning

To a naked, forgettable girl winking at me,

It seemed, from some magazine; and this man

Butchering a cow another morning, years after.

.

Opening the animal with a soundless, falling

Motion seemed to be a holy act, a blessed

Release: the cow, heavy with more love than

Its body could contain, was freed – how it reached

.

Down towards earth; how it rejoiced in the meals

It would make; how it longed to finally become

Grass. The man learning, with each fall of his

Hand, the weight of death – how he has to give

.

And receive, eventually. Among these, I remember

The girl with the forgettable face the most. I wonder

About her spread-eagled limbs, how they made her

Look like she was falling away from herself. I wonder

.

If she has since moved on to greener pastures: how

She might be home right now, making someone

Supper. I wonder where I put her picture. But mostly

I wonder what it was she was seeing with her one

.

Closed eye, when the camera shutters flickered.

Was it a vision of her own body stretching out

And aiming for the world, and farther, into the future –

a man and a beautiful, blessed house she will never leave?

depressives, rejoice!

and everything after

August and Everything After: a Poetry Reading (and Marian Poetry Society launch)

working 'em imaginary goatees


with Sir Joel Toledo a.k.a. Sensei and Ms. Mookie Katigbak

intermission

soggy Saturday smoking

.
.

(Thanks to Cor and Closa, shooters extraordinaire.)

It's back

shakshigishigishakshigishigiwhoooowaah...

Hullo, dear four or five friends and millions of secret readers. Just got home from a two-month trip through the time-space warp on Shaider's electric blue bike (Mighty thanks, mister space policeman! Had a blast. Don't forget to call! :p).

Now back

to regular programming:

Kraftwerk Zahl Ein

Syntax

Is the thing you first learn, twisting text,

Scrabbling words: A B.A.

Language and Literature

Student with a sure hand turning

The world quickly over, over

That semester I was inspecting the fallen

Cracked face and all

The while insisting on order

On the page.

Later you are in a cold room

Watching, world-wary sophomore,

Your country’s history dismantling on TV,

A documentary, how it was arranged

Into tricky poetry: Aguinaldo is not the hero

We were made to believe and keep

In our pockets, the precious face on five-peso bills

And they were not

Benevolent, only themselves: an empire

Expanding, but surely noble in trying

To glue back the world together

How they wanted.

At the turn of the last century,

An assembly of twenty houses.

Kafagway was discovered on a mountain

To be ten degrees cooler, igniting

In the heat-hating settlers’ heads

An idea: smooth the slopes with systems of streets,

Train trees to grow in grids, carve a city

On the mountain’s plain face, build a lake.

Commemorate the drowned. Name the creation

After the old village word for moss:

Begyiw. Open its arms to benefactors

And later, to summer

Vacationers who would take it, slowly

Apart again, like so many bachelors

Of arts. Later you leave,

Graduate, the room, mountain.

Later you are looking at the structures

Across an office window and the random

Punctuations of trees in between

So that the city is rambling on and on and on and on and on and

I still do not get it. You are ordering

The words. Be still.

Relax. What you are doing is usually starting: sorting your life through

The page. Later you will let yourself out and in

The world. For now, write

History. Make it

Scrambled and twisted like your country's. Feel free.

Only now there is a kid tearing open

A book way after classes and dreaming.

He might be yours in the future,

Which should be good. But this is getting ahead

Of yourself.


(Thanks to Sir Joel, Waps and Arkaye)

Words like violence
Break the silence
Come crashing in
Into my little world
Painful to me
Pierce right through me
Can't you understand
Oh my little girl
.
All I ever wanted
All I ever needed
Is here in my arms
Words are very unnecessary
They can only do harm
.
Vows are spoken
To be broken
Feelings are intense
Words are trivial
Pleasures remain
So does the pain
Words are meaningless
And forgettable
.
All I ever wanted
All I ever needed
Is here in my arms
Words are very unnecessary
They can only do harm
.
Enjoy the silence

- Depeche Mode

Reception

He would watch television soon after waking, catching up on the world lightly spinning
.
and headily, with the latest news soon forgotten and washed over wars and stars brutally
.
fighting for air time beauty soap commercials breakfast shows morning mass broadcasts
.
take all tragedy cruelty comedy beauty barrage garbage god in without blinking perhaps
.
only seeing static, both cataracts were growing worse, into a translucent screen showing
.
only shadows, blurred pain. Out of nowhere he would chuckle out of cue, missing punch
.
lines, while someone got left behind by the love of her life, a politician danced and sang
.
in a campaign ad, another typhoon drowned another poor province, ending credits rolled
.
and every time I would bite the ache back and laugh with him. I remember getting asked
.
how I saw death. Someone turning the TV off, I said and it seemed so witty at that time.
.
I would watch him as snow slowly came into the picture and ask to hear one more story
.
about him, the war, grand old films, the ground orchids he kept, wanting to stay tuned in
.
but he would only look at me and absently smile. During the funeral rain fell right on cue
.
and messed up the reception so badly I saw almost nothing, only people planting flowers
.
deeply in the grass. Yet whenever I rewound, replayed the episode I would always hear
.
a light laughter, on particular scenes, like when they opened his box for a last screening
.
of sorts, then the rain of flowers. Like I am hearing it now, soft and scratchy and surely
.
not of this world, this electric wound, as I switch to a station-less channel and patiently
.
search among the static, stars and planets for him staring at the screen as I am, waving.

for Lolo Kanor

Sci-Fi

It was about how each time we turned
the aircon on, or drank soda cold
from the ref to quench this heat
or, prepping up for a party in the ‘80s,
sprayed our hair stiff, we punched
holes through the ozone and let a bit
more sunshine in. Just how much
Robert Smith contributed to this
I don’t know. Luckily, the scientists,
saviors of the day, found out before
we turned toast. They banned CFCs.
I remember how as I kid I almost
flunked a final because I couldn’t
spell Chloro Flouro Carbons. It also
showed people being sorry in the whole
wide First World. They took the invention
back, siphoned it from car engines
and other machines using these metal
digital leaches, safely stored it somewhere
else, the postmodern shamans, sucking
the poisonous substance from this
throbbing urban heart. I remember God,
the universe and here we are at its center
warring with ourselves, both the virus
and the cure. I was counting
on shamans and their newfound magic,
science before we all self-combusted
but who was I kidding – who prepared
the potion in the first place? I fetched
another plastic bottle of iced cola,
flicked a burnt cigarette butt out the
apartment window, flipped channels
and, knowing exactly what I was,
raised my arms up high like an antenna
calling for aliens to blast me quick,
welcoming the heat.

Erasure

When you treaded mountains together.
Because you renounced your god
Marx, and have become one of
the people you used to laugh at
smoking in Session together
Remember. when you treaded mountains
with him it wasn’t you being Jesus just
you being drunk and dreaming
of revolution; not to save
but be saved. Safe in your urban ways
years later, you still dream. Sometimes
when the traffic is bad and you have time.
You wonder if he’s one more of the missing
they parade in rallies, his face a relic,
testament, argument, the equivalent
of an ad poster. You wonder
why he deleted you from his Friendster©
friends a month ago.
Was he trying to save you
from being tagged “Terrorist”
and dragged into the cause by
not being friends with you anymore
or do you think too highly of him? and he
has become your God and condemned you
middle class. Here in the country,
the traffic’s always bad.
Your pointer finger taps your chest
you can’t bring yourself to beat
anymore, searches for Backspace
there. between the quiet beats. of
some sad mtv© generic. you know
he’ll never sing. again.

Digital Deaths

It had girls in various stages of undress
and decay, this video I caught in the net
while paddling from the beach that was
this computer café. They resembled fish
I gawked at as a kid who went with his
mom to the market after Sunday mass,
cut up and bleeding, scaled, their gills
scooped out so I was sure they were
beyond saving, the girls on screen,
shots of them interspersed with scenes
of the band playing a song about them.
I marveled at how death is nothing
but death, only bodies in music
videos. While beside me a boy cries
out as he dies and dies and dies again
in an online game, outside the world
is plugged in to this electronic vein
sucking the blood out of those living
and dying in digital, I am visiting
your blog, a graveyard for your words
unread and wishing I brought flowers,
mourning the radiant epitaphs.
.
.
Comic Aging

You always arrive in the studio
first, the more popular of the cast
being fashionably late, keep in mind
the few segments you will be in
totaling less than ten minutes
but still you wait for hours until
show time. And still you wait
your turn for the bright lights,
canned applause. They call you
out for one of the main portions
along with the other hosts and you
excitedly ask a staff if she could
please put more powder on your nose.
You walk out and wave at the crowd
clapping at someone else, an upcoming
comedian whose wisecracks you
find offensive and you do not get
why the bastard is suddenly so
loved. Throughout the competition
you try to loosen up contestants,
asking silly questions and making
sillier faces and feel a twinge every
time someone answers wrongly.
Meanwhile, the bastard is cracking
up the house again. You deliver
a joke you made up that morning
while waiting in the dressing room
and nobody laughs. The klieg lights
start to feel oppressive and you
wipe your eyes with a wrinkly hand.
You look out at the audience,
afraid they might have noticed.
Seeing nobody looking back, you sigh
and pine for the old days, how they
cheered. If only you could watch
yourself. If only you could watch
me here in the couch rooting for you,
remembering, old clown,
big baby, I love you
three times
a day.
.
.
Ghosts

We were checking the mountains
for ghosts. Watch out for flickering
light, moving shadows, warned one
of us shaking in sudden awareness
of the cold, possible encounters.
Submitting myself to the spirit
I pushed off the cliff and let go
of your hand, hovered over land,
brushed the edges then plunged into
the blackness of forests, the heart
trembling with discovery. Then I felt
something jerk me up and toss me
to solid ground, and when I looked
I saw your hand firmly around mine.
There are other things to worry about
you said and we all fell quiet.
We were thinking about the men
who wandered the vicinity while
we ate dinner with striking miners,
their M-16s, and the pockmarked face
of the mountains. Fearing the worst,
I wanted to cry but you took my hand
and thumped it against my chest. I want
to tell you how that night I heard
beating chants, epics echoing from beyond
the trees as I strayed from the group,
before you found me. But I have drifted
farther than you could have imagined,
thinking of a radio script for acne
cream here in the office, looking out
at the tall, flat buildings, and you
have been gone for years.
Opening a window, I lean against the
black sky without wavering and see
myself falling on the passing traffic.
All this time I have always felt
your hand, that now I have no fear
or wonder or even flowers
on my desk, only confessions
to make, this version of faith.

entry

have recently gotten into reading your words
like they were letters, you write to fill me in
on your day, how you are, the edges of space
between we find comfort in, keeping distance
measured, exact, the continents in their place,
checking for small earthquakes, keeping still
as solid rock, your words, when beneath they
are liquid fire, relentless, roiling. and printing
them, in larger font for easy reading this time,
so i can carefully fold them up and keep them
in a box, maybe tuck in a shirt pocket for luck,
a charm, a paper amulet against the elements:
too much rain or sun seeping into my chest
can easily stunt the sapling heart, you know
how crazy the weather can be, this country. or
have you forgotten, when temperatures drop
to nothing, you pile on your jackets against
such sentiment, the snow, and work without
dreaming of warmer days and streets, sudden
rain, me, or anything to keep the cold from
burrowing into the marrows of your bones,
the words you bleed and update everything
you left with. faithfully, i hold them closer
and feel every letter, punctuation and space
collapse from weight and the rocking beats
and beneath the debris, the liquid core of
things unfold and flow through the cracked
skin, something gradually....................... wilt.
as you tiredly tap away at the keys, i hear
you play a secret song. each breaking beat
for me, alone when really the whole world
tunes in, friends and sad strangers and the
wife back home storing away the groceries
and logging in, longingly, to this electronic
......humming.

The Living Word

We are walking weird streets this
Wednesday, with sporadic shuffling
feet. We are lurching forward one minute
and holding back the next in a beat
characteristic of those who have tripped
terribly, scraped knees and want to dream,
secretly, again. I've never been to Taft
I tell you and you start pointing at things,
cardboard houses and kids, their jutted ribs,
college kids rushing to pristine buildings,
a pantomime guide letting your fingers speak,
ramble on until you mutter That's why. All I
understand is you make the third world
pretty. The gutter muck is sparkling, the dark
sea waving. We are toeing the edge as Jesus
walks on water trailed by lovers holding
hands. Our feet are dry and cracking
but we still smell the brine, however
faint, in our breaths, sometimes, how we
choke. We are catching our breaths,
sitting on some sidewalk. You are telling
me how you two broke up. I am remembering
how quiet it felt on the train on the way
here, only the insistent, rusty clanking
heart. You are asking if I believe in God.
On weekends, we teach kids the living
word and help build houses, you are saying,
if you want you can join us. It would be fun.
C'mon...I am remembering Neitzsche.
God is dead and I was there at the funeral,
looking up from the pulpit and madly
laughing until teachers dragged me away.
I was eleven. He would die on me again
and again: through Marx, the masses, friends,
workplaces, my ex, like two days from now,
on Good Friday. I believe there is no
greater pain, I am telling you. Yeah, those
children not knowing faith, you are shaking
your head, bead after bead of your sweat
flying and landing on my face, thighs and I
feel blessed, you are rising from the pavement,
face set against the debris of the fallen
city and I know He has risen, once again.
We are walking back to the station. Street
vendors are shouting wildly, bracing
themselves for when everyone flees
for beaches, the calm, hungry weekend.
Somewhere, a boy is bowing his head
to a customer. You are looking around
as if straining to hear a sudden secret
prayer.

On a monobloc outside my house

and drinking and getting
drunk. I am celebrating.
They are singing happy
birthday to you to me to
no one, really, to simply
sing. It brings them back,
memories, a lot of them
unpleasant, like clowns.
One made me blow
candle after candle
until I ran out of breath.
I’ve hated clowns since,
how they smile. How
they are smiling now
and singing, because it is
my birthday, one of many,
I drink and smile back
at you at me at no one
really, and accept this
is how future days will be
this is how future days
will be this is how future
days will be. An old drunk
on a monobloc, candles
burning out, an absent
singing in his house.
Make a wish, they are
cheering. I am closing
my eyes and wondering
how I managed to acquire
a roomful of strangers
all these years, all these
candles I am blowing
bring me farther from
you pressed against the
classroom wall softly
listening to me sing
when I had yet to forget
music. How we sang the
day away in the haze of
those dreaming in karaoke
houses, cut classes to
lie on grass, hold hands,
and watch the trees rise
to a gradual prayer,
the quiet lives of birds
tucked somewhere,
read each other books.
Later as I walked you
home I wondered how
our own would look.
How we would grow
a garden out of our city
apartment, how many
rooms, how to spend
the infinite afternoons
we would surely have.

(tapos na, haha!)

wanted: book lender

been reading Milan Kundera's The Art of the Novel, in which I stumbled upon notes on Hermann Broch's The Sleepwalkers. Now I'm intruiged and begging anyone who happens to have a copy of the latter to lend it to me.

Liked these lines in particular: "It is always the adherent of the smaller value system who slays the adherent of the larger system that is breaking up; it is always (s)he, unfortunate wretch, who assumes the role of executioner in the process of value disintegration, and on the day when the trumpets of Judgment sound, it is the (wo)man released from all values who becomes the executioner of a world that has pronounced its own sentence."

Bang!

horro(r)scope

March 14, 2007:

One lazy day won't put you off course forever, so kick back a little and forget about the rules you've created for yourself. Once you do, you will be able to find joy in being normal.

hahaha! "one lazy day" eh? see this is why horroscopes are, at best, a joke.

and to base the future on light lightyears too late? really now.

Quatrain Exercise

Soothsayer
In the sprain of my mind
your words are a soft, lightly woven gauze.
I have always doubted feeling good.
An ache of coming days. a mere pause


Churches
In the God of my mind
your silence is a sour prayer.
I was eleven when I stopped believing,
creating worlds we might die in.

***
Steps:

First line: Fill in the blank:
..................In the __________ of my mind
Second line: Write a phrase/sentence combining two or more senses (Synesthesia).
Third line: Write a factual statement.
Last line: ...a statement about the future.
Last step: Find a title for your work.

Fun.

(Thanks to Sir Joel Toledo.)