long live the peasants

lying on your threadbare banners
beneath the canopy of smog,
you hum your dreams of home, of land
against the cold fence of the DAR.

all the pains you endure
i endure like the crown of thorns
that pierced the Saviour’s soul;
and my heart weeps: rage, rage.

a, tonight, this rage will explode,
i shall witness the final set;
my heart will dance: long live ely!
long live eraserheads!

alien

let the snow melt in your palm

(to petals)

pick a pinch of snow
enclose it in your palm
and let it melt –

there you’ll feel
the dancing waves of bundang
and bisik rivers;

the shrimps prancing high
as the ripples in diponglo laugh,

the bursting of onion sprouts
beneath the alip-ip in kalasingan field;

the buzzing of salagubang
before the night spreads.

caress the molten snow
against your cheeks
and let it whisper –

and there you’ll hear
the raging breaths of the bones
of our ancestors trapped
underneath the dam, calling at us:

“sons and daughters,
never forget, we’re waiting for your return.”

memory

Nothing is ever deleted from human memory. Every experience, whether sad or glad, once accommodated by the mind, stays there forever. Just like a child in her mother’s heart.

Of course there are experiences that we forget, especially the ones that cause us pain. But they are not deleted; they just recede. And this is an inescapable trickery of memory: those that we deem erased just suddenly surface, more vivid than ever.

Like guerrillas, unwanted memories assault when and where they are least expected, always during vulnerable moments. Some with the stunning sharpness of a glass shard, some with the lulling gentleness of a moth’s wings. Either way, memories carry just one mission: to disturb and inflict pain. Yes, memory is more cruel than it is kind.

So we resort to deleting, only to realize that it generates the opposite of what we want to achieve. Instead of slaying the enemy we just make it fiercer. The heavier the stone we crush upon it, the stronger it becomes, the more entrenched it turns. Escape from it? The farther we stride away from it, the larger it looms before us, the nearer and more taunting it stares at us.

What do we do then? Nothing, just breathe. When it attacks, welcome it, face it smiling and without any resistance for from resistance it draws power. Let it coil into whatever shape it wants to manifest itself – just let it be, just laugh it off. Soon the growling monster will become a cooing child, so tender and helpless that we want to breastfeed it.

So since we can’t delete a memory, we must just dilute and befriend it. Just by doing nothing, just by accepting that we are god and demon at the same time – a creature called human that can wrath, gloom, love, and lust.

poetry

I will miss the blackboard
and the chalk,

the faces
and the eyes
and the hands
and the voices

of my students
who always talk
to each other

while I talk about poetry.

flash of flesh

something in your hair stings like rust.
the soot black night? or the scent yet unnamed? or,
is it the tickle of the naughty silky strands?

i don’t know. but on that rain-soaked night – armskin
against armskin, the flash of flesh – under your umbrella,
something in your hair stung me. and now:

i crave the gasp of hunger in your mouth
i crave the surge of longing in your breast
i crave the wave of assault in your hip

i crave the grip of death in your thighs.

a, my dear stranger: like your umbrella,
unfold me. bathe my creaking ribs
with the serenity of your inviolate oil.

garapata and latik

The man gobbled up a plate of latik-laden kalamay
While his dog nibbled in its paw a bunch of garapata –
Those blood-suckers that kept on thriving
Despite the tons and tons of anti-flea powder
and lotion he had poured on the dog’s fur.

The man and his dog, together they bit,
they chewed with a click and a clack
from their bleeding teeth. When the man sneered
and its gums the dog bared, a passing geek
as if bewitched, couldn’t tell which was the beast.

The man raked the floor with his tongue
for the crumbs of latik that fell from his mouth;
the dog scoured its back for another bunch
of grape-colored bugs. And they bit and chewed
with the click and the clack of garapata and latik.

buried bones

The waves bring back buried bones to life. From beneath the crampled carcass of the lake seethe the songs of the dead. Bones once quiet now lay scattered, tossed away from each other by the current,
by the fish.

A skeleton wails for a lost pair of ribs, which are not devoured by the silt but trapped in another’s coffin. There lying with bones much whiter, still glued to the laughter of the living. The pair of ribs still awaits, certain that completion will come: they feel the tickling of the waves’ tongue in the navel of the hill where they nestle.

our words

the rivers freeze
under our chilly gaze

the leaves rustle
at the slightest quiver
of our scorching tongues

and our words break the earth
into million gaping wounds

zigzagging
in a dizzying speed
to devour us

i stopped and stood still

one morning, manong ang i
went to our swidden farm
to pick mushrooms.

“arm yourself with a stick,”
he commanded while demonstrating
how to whip right and left
when walking along grassy trails
to scare off snakes.

“but if by chance we encounter one
just hold your ground, and your guts
will send the snake flying in fright.”

when we reached the first bunch
of bushy bamboos, we saw a tudtud –

a worm-like snake, wiggling
its way around fallen leaves
and tiny blades of grass.

holding my breath,
i stood still at once.

when i looked at manong
he was just as small as a mushroom –

scampering amid the clouds of dust
his bare feet spewed out.