siyudad

09/1/08

*

 

i.

some days he is the broken seashell and

he holds himself to his own ear to better hear the ocean tremble.

some days
he is torn apart by sharks and machines
while bystanders on shore capture him
with waterlogged cameras.

ii.

he’s afraid of dripping saltwater
on his old brown notes about her.

 

iii.

her life is of redundancies and

pseudo-orgasms

 

iv.

 he drank the night away alone

in a table for two,

he sounds like typewriters,

looks like melting snow

 

 

v.

 she’s been watching movies about

happiness, misspelling the word

in her head… happypenis

 

vi.

they’re going to get a room after

he hails a taxicab

 

 

vii.

his uniform, ironed by his beloved wife

shoes, shone by the city rain

 

 

                                                              iloilo city sunset trapped by: Vansen

 

 

                                      

                        

           When You Walk Around the City- Boy in the Bubble

 

*

7 tables in a kapehan: a tanned guy with shell anklet and a guitar case, a couple studying Medicine books, an aged woman with red hot lipstick and red shoes, weird-dressed guy with tunnels, guesswho, PDAing lovers, the catnapping sekyu. dunkin donuts, corner plazoleta gay. 2am.

 

 

 

.

tugpo

08/31/08

 *

 

 

 burador by: Pantat

 

Blue Skies- Ella Fitzgerald

 

 

You become human when

you stop letting your tie roll around

You become human when you cease
looking down, you cease lusting for
landings, you die with the wind
sleep with the hums of
birds that have been calling you names,
wondering who you really are
why unwinged, you soar.

You become human when you melt
some of you as the rays pierce
and the clouds drift somewhere far,
to a point you stop believing
that there is a sky
and there lives its owner.

You become human when you fear none.
never scared of dead tree branches
may wound you because greed for
immortality will stop you from finding
your place under this sun.

You become human when you give up on
flying all the time
and move on walking
barefoot.

And you are  free to be a kite once more
when the world spins too much
and all you  want is to
stare at it from above

 

 

 

close your  eyes
throw your  self downwards

and hear no sound of

shattering.

 

 

 

—

perhaps, some of us want to jump off the bridge to the thighs of the water

because we see the blue sky from its surface.maybe there, flying is not 

a hallucination.

 

 

 

.

pagbuya

08/30/08

~

 

 Legesag-UnderByen

 

 

  

                                            thank you jae, for the photo and the care

 

 

everdearest bogus,

 

it was last year when i let you go

it was letting go of those whispers when i crumpled you

in pain.

it was setting free of those wishes only you and i

knew under the covers, in between the roof 

and the ceiling.

it was you who knew me so much when laughing

people went home and i slept versus knocks on the door.

it was me who wished to be you sometimes.

it was  us who wrote poetry against the walls

when candles flickered and the town spoke no

crickets. 

remembered that day when i lit my eyes

and placed you into a bag with the rest?

 

sending you away did not mean that i wanted to evade

childhood throwbacks or i escaped from these weaknesses

i still sit on. you made lives softer, you made us little kids

drinking the rain straight from the sky,

folding papers to fly across the clouds

and keeping stories at solitary dawns.

 

i miss you, sometimes,  bogus

 

still, your name is the most beautiful

 

 but

 

i have stopped crying so hard

since i let you leave. 

 

 

 

-

but swear, a child will kiss you in due time.

how’s your hole?

 

.

kapyot

 

~

 she grabbed her headband

grabbed a piece of her sanity, stole a thick book

she sat near the window and picked

Concepcion

a humble town which smells like eternal waves

from the window.

it has been days, she refused music

it has been days as an arsonist.

so that  little boy with curly head,

breastfed by his Karay-a mother

pulled a roll of her dreadlocked hair.

she laughed, she laughed. 

the mother cupped her breasts into her bra,

rolled down her blouse and apologized.

the boy with curly hair and long

eyelashes pulled her dreadlocked hair

again. she smiled so wide and gave him

a candy. “diin kaw mapanaw?”

 

she pouted, folded her arms and announced

“Concepcion”

“kamo nang, diin makadto?”

but she saw suppressed tears instead

of lips cracked with an answer

then she noticed her eyes shook, like

little earthquakes in her heart for

the past nights.

 

“i am going there, to where i really belong.”

she wanted to ask her how did she find out:

if did she choose sunsets over dusks

or did she take baths from deep wells,

did she pray under a tree or did she believe

in shooting stars.

 

but the bus stopped and the boy with

curly head who pulled her dreadlocked hair,

waved his tiny hand as the mother tilted her

head and said, they were steps away from

where they really belong.

 

 

 captured by Ai Siroy

 

  

 

Up North- Catherine Howe

 

 

 

~

less travelled

 

  .

 

 

balod

08/29/08

~

“The gift is yours

to keep or not to.

i can no more reclaim it

than the sea disowns its salt

for, love,

how do you

UNBREATHE

a breath?”

-Neil Garcia-

 

  

bugsay by: G-boy Apil. 11 years old.

 

 

Call me the Sea-Ferraby Lionheart

 

 

 

 

with her skirt, she caught shells

dead shrimps, she sang for the sea gulls

and the mermen.

the cold waves swept her toes

the ripcurls they left were 

replicas of those years

which paddled her to coasts,

those hair which wrapped her face

 

those

rafts of bamboos, twigs and twines

when clouds fell

with the weeping soul

 

and the fish

rose to kiss

 

the sky

 

as she blew the lamp,

raked the hair

of the fisherman’s sleeping wife.

 

*on the sand of San Roque poem 08-27-08 

 

 

 

 

.