something like pale rose

her fingernails' color is the color of her fingernails
something like pale rose -
no shade of paint can touch them
nor can add to their already naked perfection
yet i am whimsical -
i toy with perfection with toys of perfection
like a soft kiss stolen on one of her nails
as she sleeps, and she stirs a little, smiles a little
shatters the world a little -
a small butterfly dipping a leg to break a still pond
invoking a whirlpool pulling at my heart
pulling a whirlwind invoked out of my heart -
blowing me out of Oz into a magical land called Kansas
landing on an evil girl and her evil dog
leaving her magical shoes for me to loot from her corpse
and they could have brought me home
if only they fit me like
something like pale rose
fit on the nails of my lover



2019.dec.17

negative thunder

for my third and final wish
i wished you were god for seven
days and you rested for six.
still, you did not disappoint,
on the last day you created
negative thunder, a deafening
silence that preceded a pitch
black lightning, mute
and muting, it absorbed all
the unnecessary noises of
the world, and it is the perfect
gift to me, i cannot ever
ask for more



2019.oct.14

i do not remember ravens

i do not remember ravens
perched or flying overhead,
cawing at my steps, each twice
as heavy as the one before.
shrillness weaving into song-like laughter:
haaa. haaa. haaa.
so unlike -

i do remember rain,
light and forgiving
but absent these days,
weeks away.
i am yearning for -

i remember some words,
reinvigorated on my tongue
like rediscovered treasure,
they taste like the season,
a middle-aged spring,
of melons, cherries, or -

of other words i remember slivers,
they resemble dismembered notes
at the tip of my tongue -
unrealized like a bell frozen
at the midst of pealing,
a wind left to fill a sigh left hanging.
they taste like ash,
fragile paper crumbling,
insistent as you,
to remain unremembered.


.:. Osaka, 18 years later, sequel to a quiet wave farewell



2019.jun.03

godson, i was an hour

... too early for your baptism.
I shall tell you of the world-state at these times -
these times when you could easily fit into
the crook of your mother's arm.

It is the infancy of 2019. It is 3:37 PM.
Cebu traffic deteriorates, yet somehow
I overestimated it, here too early,
though without worries: church yards on weekdays
are premier parking spots. Near-empty,
uniquely peaceful, possessing that hanging
sense of divine security -
who would steal a few steps from God's front door?

If this was the 90s, 00s or even the early 10s,
I would have found an empty pew on which
I could sip into the solemnity as if it’s liquor.
I would have sincerely tried to make
sense of my soul, again,
I would have tried to fit my jagged faith
into that perfect Christian mold, again.
Justify my fate,
to adhere to the rigid parameters of religion...
I still would not have found answers, again,
still it would have been fine, at least
I would have assembled a poem or two in my head.
I would have freed them into paper sometime.

But it is an infant 2019. It is 3:39 PM.
I've long made peace with my jagged faith
and its cold relationship with religion, and
there's not much drive towards writing, these days.
Instead I entrusted my Ford to the church, to all
its divinity, I sank feet, alternating into a few
hundred footsteps towards a cafe.
In minutes, I had the day’s 3rd mug in hand,
coffee in mouth, bitter numbness in spirit.
Soon after I had exchanged a half dozen
messages with your father.
My muted phone was a harlequin, juggling, dancing
in binary, its games and entertainment laid out for me...
I scrolled down some in Facebook and Instagram.

All while encouraging time to crawl,
this child year, second after second
further inwards
today,
5PM.