*
so it has been raining as if it is the only thing that could ever happen until hell freezes over,
but the cut-out hearts hanging on the ceiling brought this breeze full of tenderness and then you realize
that after all the shatterings, you still believe in
L O V E
¦
because there are lives that are worth-celebrating…
because you have seen reflections in black and white that are actually
the most colorful…
because the thighs, you spread them in some moments,
not just to submit your self…
because there are love and hate relationships that sleep
when it rains…
(surprisingly, tatay went there to listen to us, to me..)
because some old memories decide to die with the last flicker of candelighted
tables for two, three or one
and because, just because, you cannot allow any one to steal you from the
happiness you deserve SO much.
yes, NO one.
and the lights grew dim…
02.14.09
yellowbox
barotac viejo, iloilo
*talent fee went straight to singgit fund*
.
*
on why i don’t really do tags but Lionel has his brand of emotional callboy blackmail
* I was a thumbsucker until Grade 2. My Aunts had the biggest challenge of their lives convincing me to stop sucking my thumb when I was a child. They took the task so seriously like rubbing some siling labuyo on it but they would find me washing it well (using CHAMPION ang labadang pang masa!). I lost the habit when one night, I started thinking of a Grade 3 boy and I did not want to turn him off. Today, I realized that it was the earliest asset I had to turn boys and men on.
* My earliest musical influences: Yano, Siakol, Grin Department, Alanis, Guns N’ Roses, Skid Row and Manilyn Reynes. A 20 year old something musikero neighbor gave me my 1st Yano cassette tape a decade and a half ago. Until now, I still have this infatuation with Dong Abay. Manilyn Reynes, “sayang a sayang laaaangggg…”, because my youngest Aunt loved her so much, she sang her songs to me as I sucked my thumb to sleep. Mani introduced to me the last song syndrome.
*I don’t comb my hair. If I do, maybe, I am in-love or something similar to that.
*My constant karansos are all males. I have female friends too but since childhood, males get closer to me because of music and the kind of music I dig. Right now, my youngest karanso is a 16-year old guitarist. The oldest is a 33-year old bassist. And I love how they mock me. It shakes me, I like it when people find time to make me feel less comfortable with my self, it makes me want to grow up more.
*I don’t like get-togethers or ordinary wow-we-meet-again moments because I find it hard to explain to people what I do for a living. I don’t like writing and taking pictures of me working. Swear, it’s very very intresting but it’s just indescribable. And swear, I am not a pole dancer or a sepulturera.
* I did not find ease in letting others read my writings. One day, a teacher talked to me privately and told me I don’t write like normal kids. I believed her. In college, I won an oratorical speech writing contest. To think that I won over university professors, that the speech had loadshit of typos and that I wrote it drunk… I cannot get over from it. It is one thing I’d BRAG to my future kids. I love clumsiness, only a few can do it with style.
*I will forever have a crush on them: Charles Bukowski. Lev Yilmaz. Dan. Heather Bell. Amanda Palmer. Kim Bureros.
*I am single but not romantically-challenged. I have romance flash fiction in my head.
*I love it when people give me their old stuffs as gifts. Large-sized rock t-shirts are my pinakapaborito. I wear them to bed. Human as I am, I love brand new things but I carry with me this affinity with second-hands when it comes to material things. Maybe, it’s the stories and the sentiments. Oh and the scent.
*I am the best dishwasher in the whole world. Karinderyas please hire me.
*I can sound like others. (From Ruffa Mae Quinto to Marion of the phenomenal M2M)
* When I am bored, I write erotica. Mind masturbation.
*I have a feeling that I will die young but when I think of it, it makes me feel hilarious.
* Watching Jackass, jamjamjamming with friends and kissing for hours can make me miss 3 meals in a day.
* Majority of my soul brothers have respectfully asked me if I am into pot, slide or rugby. You can’t buy natural high.
* I miss flirting. I feel like a little boy now and my Catholic parents are too conservative.
* I am a proxy mother. Most of my income goes to my sister’s college education, allowance, boarding house and smart load. I look after a Grade 3 kikay, a 5-year old weirdo and a 4-year old Spiderman madfan. All you mothers who complain about one or two kids, shame on you! hahaha. I am good at managing stress, anger, libido and farting.I cook-dishwash-kubeta overhaul-floorwax marathon-pseudocarpentry-fetchwater-sibak nga kahoy?. There are people we hire to help us but I’d love to do chores and I’d love to understand how a P2000 salary goes for a helper.
* I cannot finish a 25-item tag.
.
*
I woke up with no arms. The nurse was a familiar face. Everything seems familiar when you are trying to nurse a broken heart. And the phone rang “I miss you, I have been seeing a lot of toy soldiers and marionettes.” Sometimes, the agony is the deception between pity and love. I was thinking that my legs were the ones to be removed because they have been running: away from anger because it destroys the faith, away from false people who hid in quilt, away from years in black and white, towards a calloused chin— because it is the sanest possession.Losing the arms was not easy, a man came to visit me and told me that I have been throwing dynamites into the ocean believing that I would find this chest full of my childhood photographs. I told him “I thought this whole keyboard exploded, it exploded and shattered my arms and there was a dog barking near the door and a boy dropped his feeding bottle and ran to me.” He said no, “you were throwing dynamites from a boat and you were wearing white.”
Then my parents came in, my mother looked 28, my father looked rotten.
My siblings brought baskets of things that I have missed when I was young. The baskets were empty.
then there was this sculptor, a familiar face and familiar scent. he brought a fish in a plastic, it swam slowly and its eyes lit on me like a spotlight and the police asked “why have you forsaken sadness?”
—
“Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person’s face as you pass on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. There are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing.”
— Miranda July (No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories)
for erman and tepoy
for answering my silent bomb that it is best
to jump off from the wall and betray the war.
*
*
full title: “why I don’t resort to Facebook or any Social Networking website when I’m sad and alone and cold”
the advantages of being single for more than a year
can be enumerated in many different ways
and patterns.
the topmost pluses, for sure, you know them
so i would be respectful enough not to list them down
because i know, you know.
but since i am aching to write it down, let me just
do a little typing exercise:
* you get to flirt around (in stealth or as openly as what this adverb means to you)
*you don’t carry the guilt of flirting around
*you enjoy solitude at its maximum level
*you don’t force your self to reply to every text msg or whatsoever
*you don’t have to get too jealous and too dramatic because you are jealous of another girl with bigger boobs, cleaner armpits and longer eyelashes
* since you’ve been single for a long time, you get too comfortable about it and you can do things on your own without feeling the ache of wanting to hit every couple you see with a baseball bat
*since you’ve been single for a long time, you get to magnet suitors from different walks of life and various industries and religious beliefs
*you are not being killed subtly because you don’t have to be somebody else just to please the other person
but one day,
you seem to suddenly want to give the status up
and you seem to feel ready of being killed subtly again.
and hell no, it’s not because of a boy from facebook who has this as profile:
Hobbies:
running instead of walking, skipping instead of running,
burrowing in a soft yielding not-chest not-shoulder, and
telling stories that mostly aren’t true but should be.
Who I’d Like to Meet:
Charles Manson, Colonel Mustard, Van Veen,
the man who hung the stars and
the girl who keeps them clean.
and hell yes,
i love how mischievous life is, sometimes.
.
*
above the grass, the sky was beautiful,
it reflected the gems from their eyes…
Purok Paghidaet
Kurit. Kwaderno. Kwerdas. Kalipay.
some of them are not going to school
in some days, their young hands murder mountain shrubs and trees
for their respective dapog
we asked them how to do it, their happy voices told us with no
dash of shame or pessimism.
one girl, stood up and smiled…
“nang tin tani indi na lang ni matapos”
i told them
“mabalik kami diri…ang mga drawing niyo, ipakita ta ni sa iban ha.”
one of our favorite moments is when i take photos of them
i’d show them how they were captured
and you know,
the smiles are priceless
like the clear sky full of unseen stars but you know
they are just there.
more pictures didto
.
*
she likes seashore naps and the view of everything from the bus window. she likes tiny moments and the small spaces between faces when people talk.
sometimes, she wakes up to that odd feeling of being a fallen leaf, an old tree, an azotea or a waitress somewhere-- talking to a taxicab driver about that random song on the radio.
*
---
---
and this. a proof that:
how you see LIFE is how
you actually see YOUR self.
*
*
***
maddening spurt:
----------------------
“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!”
-Jack Kerouac-
