POEMS: A COLLECTION
Poem1:
STANDING BEFORE THESE BAMBOO CULMS
i feel a dwarfness
i know is due
to a comparison of heights
and strengths
between our bodies
and perhaps, our hearts
(but where yours are, i do not know,
for aren’t your bodies hollow?)
and yet, i see you
standing before me,
bodies of yellow poles
propped in this world
of concrete and steel –
bodies firm and resolute,
to carry the weights of men
and their devices
for a giant paint job
of a young building.
and i wonder
if your hearts are here
inside your poles, only quiet
and stoic,
or is it back
in the soft grounds
where they uprooted you,
singing songs lost to the winds.
Poem2:
BARBIE LIES DOWN IN THE BED ALONE, NAKED
She’s got her party
dress hurled on the floor
red and ruffly and
all, black nylon stockings and
newly bought pumps
tossed in some parts of the
room like
pollens or berry dust.
Now she thinks of her mother, who
had TRAVEL AROUND THE
WORLD WITH BARBIE
stamped on her head
too, only she had long gone
out
body twisted.
Barbie thinks if
daughters truly become just like
their own mothers. They
get beat up just
like that, their lips bitten
by angry teeth, their faces
throb after willful
hands, the same
hands that cupped
their breasts, draw circles
around their hard
nipples,
the same hands that would
plunge under the
blonde hair in great
pleasure.
There are curses
for him in every
tick
of the clock,
but still
in the end
she’ll fall
on another
of his pleas —
again
and
again
just like her mother.
Poem3:
HOW DO YOU SAY SORRY TO YOUR BLUE-BEARDED LOVER
a wet tongue to paint great landscapes
on the whorls of his ear
a slight brush of the hair
on the naked nape
that slowly bows with veiled surrender
a sweet violent push to the minty fields
of warm warm grasses ready
to hug you both under a lovestruck sky.
Hold his hand like how he used to
hold yours
tighter than any man
you ever knew or made
love with in the dark
let him sleep soundly against
the milky-whites of your breasts
while you bask
on the juicy apple-
bite you made
behind his back.
Poem4:
HAPPINESS IS A MORNING DEW
OF
blended rain and lanzones scent
when dewdrops morph into butterfly kisses
h v r n
o e i g
over pillows and purrs.
The taste of toothpaste
on tongue is as blissful as the
yellow sunshine
when stares and sighs
are served
with a cup of tea.
Poem5:
ADMONITIONS TO A SNAKE
Oh, spawn of Medusa,
who poisons the air
with your terrible hiss,
You will not lay a kiss
on my lips
nor will you lay one
on my toes or heels,
though you are emerald
like the fruits
of this mango tree
or the brooch
on my mother’s chest.
I can never desire
your eyes, like swift
poisoned arrows
turning me to stone
or your thick, lithe body
coiled in that fruit-laden branch
you’ve claimed your throne.
Now I tell you,
this is not Eden
and I am not Eve.
A long brown stick
stiff on the ground
could send you back
to the earthen soil and dirt
like the fallen angel
you once were.
Poem6:
HOW TO LOOK THE WAY YOU LOOK (ON NORMAL DAYS) TOMORROW
Get a cup
of water.
Put ten or
a hundred shards
of ice
you have
just splintered
with a knife.
Stare
how
little
by
little
beads of liquid
form around the body
of your cup,
like seeing life
spring out from nothing.
Carefully place
a spoon (could
the one he always use
when you have meals
together) inside your
cup and when
the time is right,
press
the already cold
silver steel
on your hurting
puffy eyes.
Poem7:
A SELF-PORTRAIT TOLD BY THE SUBCONSCIOUS
The face is where things of fascination thrive – an
immortal map of some sort, like the lips that is plump
and pink as two shrimp-meat fitting together
to hide teeth of imperfect shapes. This pair
of shrimp-meat can broaden into a smile
not like Helen’s for Troy
or Mona Lisa’s for Leo,
but that owned smile, genuine as a
possessed cruise ship —-
grand and pride worthy;
With these two laugh lines on each side of the mouth
resembling the curves of a
canoe cast on a pure warm shore; and two dimples like
miniature comets posing with their tails, and yet they still
come and go.
Poem8:
AFTERNOONS at the LOCAL CAFE
The black ant scuttling on the crown of a bitten starbread,
one end of the blue straw bent inside the mouth of a Coke bottle, beads of water
slithering on its body
slipping away like rain water on a mother’s breasts,
the closed yellow highlighter on top of an open dictionary,
the word slither marked with yellow,
a slate white paper full of scribbles, four pieces of clean unused tissue paper,
a rose petal stolen from the church altar,
plain simple people carrying their own plain simple food
unknown faces
passing with a smile
or a nod.
Poem9:
DADDY
Swish swoosh swish
letters to bottled heartbeats
Tell angels and saints
to paint their nails red
and still keep their halos and wings.
The hibiscus red lipstick
stashed under piles
of radish white KLEENEX
may turn the palest pale white lips
into a pretty O of Egypt’s Cleo
suntanned and skinny
inside a big dark room
daddy closed with a bang for good
to stop midnight worms from creeping
over some infected rose.
That’s what daddy
told
with a bang on the door
after a lot of swish
swoosh swish on the floor,
the hibiscus red lipstick
perfect on the swollen O.
Upper roller lower roller
Upper roller lower roller.
blueberries and sweet bananas
sing with The Donnas in your
low-waist pajamas,
Wait for moon
tonight, when it
is an orange
in a basket,
swallow whole
a jawbreaker
and pretend to be
a virgin mother.
Swish swoosh swish
your little girl’s fading like a reef.
Poem10:
TO STARLA: A LETTER
Starla,
Revenge is a lazy form of grief.
I heard from your cousin Nena today that you haven’t
been answering their letters
since you’ve left for Japan to
marry that wealthy businessman you met in a bar.
I know, since the day you told me
about him that you are going to
leave this place without you
turning back.
It was freedom for you.
We have two lamays
here in our place now.
First is that of Aling Gemma’s husband
who was hit by a truck after crossing
the highway drunk and happy from
a whorehouse.
Aling Gemma is still known to be
an abortionist, yet the neighbors here still
shut their mouths. She is pregnant
with her 11th child before the accident happened.
There are whispers that her latest client
was Selima, your childhood friend,
the one you ran along with the
other children in the palayan
near our shanties
and play your Loko-Loko Kabayo.
Selima left their home a year ago,
three months after you have gone away,
to live with Andoy
and came back with a bulge in her belly.
Her father, whom you dislike for prohibiting
Selima to get along with you
and for giving sermons to anyone who
happen to pass in front of their gate in the early mornings,
now has gone hiding inside their house,
too shy to even come out at night
to buy a lapad at Aling Maring’s.
He was caught peeping at his
neighbor’s banyo.
The second lamay is that of
your Uncle Ramon who died the other day.
The last months of his life
he suffered by coughing blood.
Your Manang Tinay took twice
of her usual laundry load
with the hope of getting more money so Dino
and Bong can still attend school.
She is now thin and her
breasts are twice more sag.
I know they were not good
to you. That you often pray you
can just run away and let them know you
can stand on your own.
But is there really no space inside you for the ones
you have left behind?
Don’t let any hatred change you
Starla.
Care is still the best payback.
