Message

Probably you won't read this
in the next couple of days,
maybe weeks or months even.

But that precisely makes this wonderful.
That regardless of the exactness of time,
I am here discreetly reminding you
of your importance, in a place whose name
now nears an escape in your recall.

It is like shouting at the void the sky unfolds
to us every day and not getting a response
but the slow movement of clouds.

Very much placid and stealth
this message may be, but take notice:
under its delicate folds resides the fire
that have kept you and me desirable for years

of us knowing each other,
exploring and determining each other.

I am still here, and I love you.

Room 103

Under the red ball of light, the sole source
of warmth in this room which freezes
flesh and flaws, we make the fullest of connections.

“How many times can a circle go round?” you ask.
“Limitless,” I reply.

Lying we weave the wonder of wholeness:
my heart opens to human frailty
as stars explode right between your legs.

For the Girl Who Loves to Play in the Rain

Look! The rain has freed
itself from heavy, ashen clouds.

Come, take my hand
as we shall cleanse all pretensions
and share this sadness of the skies.

Forever we’ll hate the sun.
Together we’ll hate the sun.

The Telling

Just because the rain passed us by dry and wanting
for the sun to dance on the skyline more often, I can say
that it is time for us to ask more than what this city
of hanging shadows and silent wires has to offer.

But then let me ask you first instead to close your eyes
and see through mine. Just for this time.

Today, we are no longer lies at the tip of this city’s asphalt tongue
—leading us away, away from the city, out to the open—
waiting to be spewed once it has roused to collapse its concrete walls.

Before it announces itself by means of secrets
it has long subdued in shadows, let us discover the divinations
we have held dear in its very sleep.
Let us go. Let go.

Let us tell the truth.

Blocks

The TV flashes a face of fluctuating hues
as lassitude fills your eyes while you sit back.
This has been your escape from days
of discomfort: settling on a comfort
spot in the sala, playing your favorite Nintendo game,
Jewel Tetris. It is entertaining as I watch

your fingers dance in confusion
on the control pad, fulfilling your every
strategy. Much more fascinating than the graphics
and sounds of this diversion you play. I enjoy
your complacency found in no-new technology.
But sometimes even this contraption causes you

preoccupation. And so it is I
who boost you with mentoring:
“Place it here, move it there, rotate a little more...”
Then we both smile slyly as we witness
the mass of blocks on the screen
gradually collapse.

Mother, how I wish reality were as easy as such virtuality.

(For Rowena, my mother)

Blink

Stone eyes

that see beyond the deadpan faces
fixed on the Bread held up high,

whose color and texture is that of
human bones buried in the muddied
form of muck made after last week’s
downpour has crumbled earth;

whose stillness on Sabbath
mirrors the unspoken incidents that came
before the storm, those that befell without witnesses,
in the corners of this barrio
only lighted by makeshift street lamps, within
the dark shade of trees, the soft walls of shacks

whose owner has multiplied grace
for mouths gaping on hunger’s account,
has taught altruism in a lesson of wood
and nails, is the Word

became flesh; blink.

And the people shall turn into salt.

Snapshots of Rain

The roads mirror the sadness
of peeling walls.

Feet hurry and hide
beneath the thin
wings of parasols.

Their stares are not the only thing cold:
the statues,

they’d shiver
if only no one
would notice.

Paradiddles on roofs,
splashes in potholes.

I sit
in a sardined jeep,
thinking of home,

where
mother is readying
a bowl of soup for my return.

After the rain has ended,
the only one left to ask where home is
is the taong-grasa pushing
his kariton along the sidewalk.

Like an Old Book

I’ve read this Sunday,
I lay you on my chest
After the day’s chores.

From this recline
Soon I’ll be opening the pages
Of a dream where you are
A princess missing
One of her glass slippers.

(And I, a prince
Whose role, for sure,
By now, you know.)

So how are you?

What have you felt lately
Save from the rise and fall
Of this ribcage?

Aves

The reason things depart we don’t know.
How, for example, a pigeon nestling on a tree
takes flight straight off a forked branch
to the burning skies of sundown.

Or how in twilight,
my hand, like this bird in search
of a new habitat, reaches for yours
and grasps nothing but the plumage of air.

A Need to Speak

Somewhere in the conversation
we shared I find myself
unable to speak.

I cannot mention anything,
not even your name,
for you have already wandered
when I began talking.

Who shall hear me then
but the silence you drew
that made me solitary.

The next line is waiting,
waiting to be said.
Whose mouth to do so
we do not know.

We do not care
for speechlessly we have
become sentences
beyond comprehension.