R

One day

she came home with a new religion, Rhian Ramosism,
built around the entity
The Awesomeness That Is Rhian Ramos,
and this posed a challenge to my agnosticism,

I mean, my occasional dabbling in
Gemma Artertonism doesn't count, does it.

"Holy shit, Rhian Ramos," was how she put it,
and with the internet as my arsenal I sought
to learn of the holiness of
The Awesomeness That Is Rhian Ramos,
and from there I divined a connection
to Glaiza De Castroism and I just happened to know
the High Priestess of Glaiza De Castroism.

So I lit some incense and sent a prayer,
"O Masterious One, will you grant me wisdom
to be enlightened?" but the Masterious One,
while knowing of
The Awesomeness That Is Rhian Ramos,
could not reveal everything,
she has not seen everything,
but she believes,

And I understood at last how faith must be like.
I understood I have to find it within myself.

I thought of investing in a full set of
trench coat, hat, and sunglasses:
I mean, I've never secretly traded coin with free will
for passage granted by a Pinoy movie ticket. I mean,
never since The Cuteness That Is Beth Tamayo days.

Here I am at the threshold of the cold,
the dark, the movie house, The Church Of
The Awesomeness That Is Rhian Ramos,
and the fear of having Filipino blood sinks in,

O God, what am I doing, what have I done,
I have sold my Filipino soul so now
I have to cast my vote for
The Awesomeness That Is Rhian Ramos
should she run for president

one day



2015.sep.22

rain thing

this planet seldom does this -
  rain thing -
when i’m with -
  whatsyourface -
it makes for rarer moments

of quiet contemplation, or
secret introspections
imposing onto

our small talks too
small for my tastes.

man, you make me feel like
a fisherman

hurling hook and line
aimed at that -
  moon thing -
playing for that one chance
that gravity gets
a brain fart and lets
me catch you -

i mean catch that -
  moon thing -

and i wouldn’t know what to do then, would i.

except, maybe.
grapple at my chest and
find a latch that opens
it. rummage for my heart and
hope it’s a document

full of words for things
hanging or
falling from
the sky,

and you.

can i crumple it and toss it,
what’s another crumpled heart amongst
the growing pile of my crumpled hearts.
can i start over again
can i overwrite my paper heart

eradicate the contamination of you.
totally, this time.
resist to not write you in this time.
tell me
will that make me
better?

can i be the fool with the empty heart
hanging on a line hooked to that -
  white round cheese thing -
hanging from the sky, wondering

what am i doing here standing like a fool.

but at least i'll be at peace
amusing myself with something like
giving things silly nicknames like -

  "moon"

  "rain"



2015.sep.16

weep, angelically

i want to touch you as much as stone
can desire contact with skin.
but i need you to close your eyes
a little bit, blink, because your stare
renders me immobile.

i promise this won’t last a moment.
i need you to not fear the half-second
darkness of a blink, the consequent
easily-forgotten brush of cold stone
lips on your cheek.

you can leave the weeping to me.
it is with much regret that i’ll feed
on your absence and send you far,
far backwards in time, but maybe
that’s when we belonged together
better, when maybe i was much less
harder. much less colder, and moved 
shamelessly under the gravity 
of your gaze.



2015.jul.01

demonym

what do you answer to?
you are nothing like my world has ever seen.
we are not from around here.
we are mere passersby overwriting each other’s
footprints amidst the traffic of us.

the thing is: i can inhale you sometimes,
within a short window in your wake,
when your scents feign interest in my skin,
when i sit downstream of you in this aether.
but what will they call us?

we could walk away unnamed,
shelved to neglect for something more acceptable,
folded between seconds to be increasingly
compressed, brittle, and yellowed in time.



2015.jun.05

slender

You half-expected
her to run.

It is midnight,
after all:
the clanging of the bell,
the prophecy of the tale,
could have turned
jeepneys she ride
into pumpkins.
Her entourage
into a zoo.

She is an Unexpected,
you’ve accepted that.
You’ve come to terms
with her not being one
of your delusions, not
another faerie trick,
the moment she stuck
around past sanctioned time
of having to be
together.

But she makes you
want to believe in
a little magic.
You kind of hoped
for the witching hour
to affect her somehow,
to leave you a glass
slipper that sets you
on her trail,
on a quest to find her
outside sanctioned places
to meet in,
to try, try, try,
to win her,
somehow.




Then you discover
it is you
being undone.
Your shields
dissolve like
leaves in the wind.
Your worlds
disperse like
sand emigrating.
Losing yourself to days
molding into morrows.

Still she makes you
yearn to believe:
that there’s a glass
apparel to leave
in your wake,
a trail for her to take.
And you try, try, try,
to hold on
to that slender hope,
that impossible slope,
that somehow,
somehow,
she likes you, too.



2015.mar.18

stacks

are we done placing
inches between us?
our meager attempt at evading
consequences of locking
eyes too long, the fear
of falling within few chance
brushes of fingertips,
the wayward scents and sounds
of one trespassing
on the other’s senses.

we’ve begun placing
time onto the distance.
stacking up seconds like playing
pawns and royalty over checkered
boards we play on, venue
of a platonic dalliance meandering
in a masquerade, gambling on charade
to wed with hours and tone down
passion to fondness.

are we ants building
a sea wall of crumbs
in the face of an ocean bent
on realizing our ruin, against
an implacable desire dwarfing
our reluctance? we've begun
covering the inches leading
to two roads diverging,
each cluttered with its own flavor
of loneliness



2015.mar.12

gems

I came to work that day to find they determined
I’m made of sapphires, like many of my co-workers.
There were also ones made of emeralds, aquamarines,
a couple made of fire opals, and one made of rubies.
I wanted to say, “Yes, I’ve known for ages that I
am made of sapphires, but can I be made of emeralds
instead as that’s my birthstone?” But someone else
beat me to it, big nice dude wanted to be big bad dude
and made of rubies, not sapphires. They proceeded
to shred his defense, through witness after witness,
through exhibits A through Z, reducing his erstwhile
spirited complaints down to whimpers, proving him
beyond a doubt made of sapphires, so I kept quiet.
I instead started to think of legal means to break
into a house somewhere in central United States, one
that’s prone to be carried away by a tornado and
slammed right onto a flattened, evil, unsuspecting
witch in a faraway magical land where I could bump
into a trio of odd fellow travelers who would happen
to harbor similar longings like mine and would gladly
walk with me to where a wizard is ensconced because
said wizard would grant wishes and I meant to ask
him to turn me into being made of emeralds instead
of sapphires, I meant to ask him to swap my heart
with a second brain and it would be better that way
because all these emotions for you are starting to
take their toll and get in the way of thinking
logically. But we all know there are no true wizards,
only poets and their blurry lines between truths
and lies. I contented myself with absent-mindedly
clicking my heels together and listened to
the clinking of loose sapphires in my feet.



2015.mar.06