Nov 9, 2008
I've walked the plank so many times,
I could have been a ballerina―
dancing on guilt trip wires because
I'm graceful when head over heels,
tumbling. "Look Ma! no hands!"
Look what he did, Ma, they're broken:
promises written on bones
too heavy to carry this far
out to sea. So I drop anchor
where dreams go to die.
I lie, dead still,
his name chiseled off my back
with an ice pick― because
I needed to make holes
to breathe again.
Perhaps if he had a backbone
I would not need to carve my own.
It costs too much and I should be
saving the tears inside cups
for him to drink; and forget
the time the water broke
me open, spilling hopes when
no hands were on deck to stop
memories from seeping through
the cracks where our smiles used to
be.
Update: Have go-see at the interesting poem-reactions this piece has churned @ SL Corsua's blog, Unguarded Utterance - "Postcard-Sign (Off) Language" and Blue Rogue's "Dive" @ Extraplanar.
May 23, 2008
I have replaced you so many times
In my mind, changed your age and face.
Today I imagined you five years old, wearing
one of my shirts that fell all the way down
to your knees. We watched TV for a while and
when a dog was shot in a movie you asked
“Is that puppy sleeping?” And I said, “Yes, for his own good.”
At nights I would tuck you in beside me,
watching you sleep softly still, until
I realized that whenever I stand still
the landscape stretches and reveals new things—
mountains, previously dots on the horizon,
loom and threaten to crush or force me to run;
and so I run in the other direction
forgetting, keeping the memories in the dark
closet, where the cat, Milky, liked to sleep.
Later, I asked you not to go near her as she had
Just given birth on my newly washed towels.
Later we found that the kittens were stillborn,
flesh stuck together, like a foreboding feeling
that couldn't be shaken off, only buried,
in a shoe box grave under a willow in the yard. Though
Milky came every night to look for them in the closet anyway.
During fiestas you would speak to me as a pig would speak
before it was slaughtered. Your voice drowning the
busy chatter of relatives and friends preparing meals,
skinning sausages with sharp kitchen knives, slicing
fetal curves of garlic, crushing them into pepper, and I -
would choke on a throat full of water
and watch you trickle on the metal basin
full of raw dinuguan.*
*dinuguan - "pork blood stew" or "chocolate meat" or "chocolate pudding" in English, is a Filipino savory stew of blood sausage and offal simmered in a rich, spicy gravy of pig blood, garlic, chili and vinegar.(from wikipedia)
Labels: dark, death, female, poetry
May 7, 2008
He is kneeling.
Joints locked in grief
as he looks ahead
to the altar where
he imagines Celtic knots
unwind from the crucifix
and begin to tie themselves
around his neck.
He reaches back
on the church bench,
fingertips finding it
suddenly riddled with scars-
names and serial numbers
that once belonged
on violet wrists.
His eyes close
as the requiem starts
to unravel the invisible
skein of a memory:
a red-hot iron branding
cold skin of a son
that could've been.
The bell tolls
for his last supper,
its mournful knell
breaking the glass casket,
spilling his conscience
like wine poured into chalices
that were her fingers.
His shaking hands clasp
in repetitive prayer for
his eyes to see in
shades of gray,
so he will not remember
the yellow ribbon his daughter
is tying around 88 stones
of an unmarked grave.
[This was written for a writing prompt in 
workshop forums on the subject of racism.]
workshop forums on the subject of racism.]
Labels: dark, death, poetry, sad
Jul 4, 2007
In his basement, cylinder posts
were pile driven on her cheeks,
so that she, a Picasso blue,
could turn on the sphere lamps
every time he came in to finish her.
Never satisfied, he kept painting her
until her sight dimmed upside down.
Cones of brown split an eyebrow while
shadows crept in geometric progression
on her bottom lip-- broken lines
silencing what was once a mouth,
so he can keep her off
the market until he dies.
[this was supposed to be a rewrite of this poem but it turned out differently though]
Labels: dark, female, poetry, sad
Jun 20, 2007
She eats moon shards on Sundays.
Quickly, when no one is looking,
she plucks the moon from the sky,
then snaps it into little pieces of jagged light.
She promises to save fragments in her pill box,
but then presses them on her tongue;
resolve dissolving like wafers.
After all, she could always choose,
from a host of Sunday moons,
to chew more holes in her eyesight.
Labels: dark, moon, philosophy, poetry, politics
May 30, 2007
She slept
after dancing all night
with fraternity men
a pack of party animals
doing the swing
with her
after dancing all night
with fraternity men
a pack of party animals
doing the swing
with her
guts
between
their teeth.
between
their teeth.
May 24, 2007
For Nellie Banaag and Leticia Ramos, who died in a fire set off by five gunmen who wore bonnets and poured gasoline on ballot boxes then set them ablaze. They were found hugging each other in a toilet where they sought refuge. Nellie was a high school teacher and experienced election canvasser while Leticia was a local poll watcher of the political party Kampi.Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit."And those people should not be listened to who keep saying, 'The voice of the people [is] the voice of God,' since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness." [by Alcuin, Charlemagne's adviser) c735-804: Works (1863) letter 164]
The Exorcism
From beneath the charred remains
of the school, we found her
clutching the soot-covered genitals
of her killers- faces neatly wrapped
in fabric with holes for eyes, folded
and slipped into the pockets
of leaders who gagged the exordium,
that took centuries to ferment,
labeled, Salus populi suprema lex,
we found the absinthe bottle
lodged in her spine, a cork
to seal in posthumous air.
When we pulled the stopper
from its neck, it spilled the cries
of her last moments, flames
gushing forth onto our feet-
rising, louche clouds of gas, boiling
the eyelids off our parens patriae,
revealing its bone chalices
filled with the liquid lacrimations
of a million sacrifices locked away
in ballot box caskets of a nation
burned and buried alive.
They screamed for an exorcism–
not of the dead but of the living,
to purge their obdurate flesh
of the pungent tang of blood
staining the rubble,
rising from the ashes,
the grave no bar to their call.
From beneath the charred remains
of the school, we found her
clutching the soot-covered genitals
of her killers- faces neatly wrapped
in fabric with holes for eyes, folded
and slipped into the pockets
of leaders who gagged the exordium,
that took centuries to ferment,
labeled, Salus populi suprema lex,
we found the absinthe bottle
lodged in her spine, a cork
to seal in posthumous air.
When we pulled the stopper
from its neck, it spilled the cries
of her last moments, flames
gushing forth onto our feet-
rising, louche clouds of gas, boiling
the eyelids off our parens patriae,
revealing its bone chalices
filled with the liquid lacrimations
of a million sacrifices locked away
in ballot box caskets of a nation
burned and buried alive.
They screamed for an exorcism–
not of the dead but of the living,
to purge their obdurate flesh
of the pungent tang of blood
staining the rubble,
rising from the ashes,
the grave no bar to their call.
"Let the dead speak!"
"Let the dead speak!"
Let the dead... speak.Labels: dark, death, philosophy, poetry, politics
May 15, 2007
I am your masterpiece in stone.
An age-old obsession shaped
with chisel, mallet and rasp
transforming beauty to flesh,
so that you may have me
dance on raised platforms
from sunup to sundown-
lost in city slum shadows of noon
and pyre-bright night markets,
face painted to hide alabaster
skin and cracked lips -
mended and broken several times,
providing the rouge used
to color the sunken cheeks
and pasted smiles I flash
devotees laying offerings
in a metal box at my feet,
forcing me to bend before
the bed that is your pedestal-
bowing beneath bones of men
to get my share of applause
you swore will earn me a husband,
head served on a silver platter,
blindfolded and bound to
a ritual of clamped mouths where
I am brought to my knees
to learn the face of every hard rock
thrown and embedded in my flesh,
mapping stone paths that will lead
to the temples that created me-
so that I may carve my name
on every post and lintel
until they finally crumble
into the dust that fills
my hollow structure.
An age-old obsession shaped
with chisel, mallet and rasp
transforming beauty to flesh,
so that you may have me
dance on raised platforms
from sunup to sundown-
lost in city slum shadows of noon
and pyre-bright night markets,
face painted to hide alabaster
skin and cracked lips -
mended and broken several times,
providing the rouge used
to color the sunken cheeks
and pasted smiles I flash
devotees laying offerings
in a metal box at my feet,
forcing me to bend before
the bed that is your pedestal-
bowing beneath bones of men
to get my share of applause
you swore will earn me a husband,
head served on a silver platter,
blindfolded and bound to
a ritual of clamped mouths where
I am brought to my knees
to learn the face of every hard rock
thrown and embedded in my flesh,
mapping stone paths that will lead
to the temples that created me-
so that I may carve my name
on every post and lintel
until they finally crumble
into the dust that fills
my hollow structure.
Feb 21, 2007
She churned their smiles
in a wooden bucket,
stirring constantly memories
while sprinkling arguments
at sordid intervals to bring
about those tear flavored regrets.
She kneaded the frustration
into elastic patience,
quietly stretching back and forth
to the point of almost breaking
into halves of forgiveness.
Almost.
Sometimes she left the mixture
in the oven long enough
for the dough to turn into
scorched black hate-crusts,
inedible had it not been hidden
by honey-glazed vengeance.
She never ate what she baked.
instead, she served the feast
in silver platters, waiting
until the soiled plates broke
so she could lick the leftover
crumbs off their stained fingers.
Then she would wash her hands
and dry them with her apron,
smiling at the sated heavings.
She then puts away the flour and milk
before they could watch her
turn a little of her soul into
a pillar of salt.
