The sling gun,
On the shoulder,
So thin,
So frail,
Green tee shirt,
Hug the lean body,
Under the bushes,
They walked,
Ignoring the mud river,
The orange ball,
Seem to fade
with the darken sky,
Beam mutely,
On the poor brown soil,
Gray grass,
Above the knee,
Tickled the sole,
Of the frighten rebels,
That they smile,
Wind so strong,
Pungent,
Dead cancer of corrupt republic,
A b-plane,
Just passed,
The boy,
Made an act of shooting,
A bird in the sky,
They laughed, as
It banked,
Already on the foggy
Blue mountain.
When this cold be over. . .
Cold World
1
Hoping when this cold be over, it wrapped him almost, perhaps
This was the life he had
He guess
Even before
A man who seldom spoke
Some would think
He’d already gone
After the tragic night of O 4
He walked down the road more often
and went into the place
where all these pain had started
Stood at the same spot where blood
Stained dry
And his son breath ceased
Reside a terrified unclosed red eye
That looked at his blown hate face
Oftentimes he sob like a child
It broke him in glassy shutter
It took him awhile to found his wife
Down the glowering truck
Blood tears line down on
Her half burned face
Stared horrified to afterlife
He just went at the ATM booth
Left them there holding to each other
The House
2
People buzzed around
The bird on the crumb
Children passed from school
Road fillled vehicle gridlocked
And honked impatiently
He walked
One step at a time
He almost had seen his house
The way the dog await his tired master. Even—
After all this year
After the bomb had exploded and killed them
That he love
Nothing left on him
Only the house knows his pain
Memories
3
And the memories that not his
Anymore
The laughter of his child
His brave little son
And the sweet kiss of his wife
Who hugged him
Loved him, cared him after
All the shit-happened on his life
But now what he had
Was this lost
Dawning
A stormy night continued and
it rain nowadays like it hasn’t stopped
That easy
For days
For weeks
Sometimes for months
Ruining everything, even his entire self
It’s Time
4
He turned the knob
Went inside
The emptiness hugged him
He let the door ajar
For a reason
There’s always be a reason
He snatched the half finished whiskey
at the kick-staggered table
Took the gun at the side
Even
He
Don’t want it to
Happened
The cold muzzle
The metallic grease stayed on his tongue
That would be the taste he would
Always remembered
Sweet like honey gasoline
” It’s time. “, he muttered
Released the safety chamber
And let his thumb would do the rest
Yet he wish he had
More courage
He put it back to where he took it
Poured another glass of whiskey
Then drunk at the dark
O God..O God! Let it go..
And the rain knocked his roof
Hard deafening rain
Like it broke apart the whole world.
Such a waste. . .
My wife insisted me to watched
Me Before You
And she hadn’t watch it
Until I give myself a break and sat alone
On a chair
And when I finished
I remained rooted on my seat —
Shocked…
And then I think of the novelist who poured
A cup of tea
Dubious filling the words and sentences
How the story goes
And those moment
She smiled that somebody like me
Had been shot a point blank bullet at the
Back of the head
And can’t stand on my chair
Unable to wipe my tears
Not for the people in the character
For Christ Sake
That she had no right to do it
Yet she did —
Winter Solstice
Winter Solstice
It came unexpectedly
Few people walked
Below the gleam moon
Shivering beneath their fur coat
I stood trying to figure out
A black contorted image
Down the yellow orbs
On a restless red dune
Which I stared
As they passed
Waving a friendly gesture
Greeting me with unknown tongue
Still I am naive as they spoke
Urdu
Arabic and Punjabi
I’m on simple universal
language
Nostalgic longing
From this dry winter cold
Consumed a certain pause
Not far from the bush
Hears a lone bird larks
Singing gently on that shade
Howling at desert breath
Tonight . . .
Solstice startled.
An Elegy to a prose
An Elegy to a prose
It was like a whisper
My wife delivered the sad news
“Your grandfather was gone.”
And so he was –
Her eyes were sad
Touched me gently on my back
She knew how hard for me this
He was old—
I thought he never go that fast
The moment I started to noticed him
He was like a relic , he talked about the war
How the Japs chased them
at the river and hid on water lilies
All night long
How they’re lucky to be alive
How he befriended the American soldiers
How the world war 2 started
How it ends
The indifference over religion
Muslim and the Christian
That are killing each other
How they Killed hundreds of young idealist,
painter, journalist, artist, and even common people that lives under extreme poverty
During Martial Law
They called this event as :
” Dekada Sitenta″ ( decade of the 70s )
The darkest epoch on us as a nation
How Ninoy shot dead
Who said, “Filipinos are worth dying for.”
How my uncle had survived
A gunshot wound on his leg from an ambushed
Had joined the New Peoples Army rebels
Taking up law at University
There they indoctrinated him
“Our army are not human
They were dogs”
He said to my grandma and
they discussed where he
Walked limped
For the rest of his life
“He wrote a long letter to
Imelda.” , he narrated over and over
” A LOonngggg one. ” ,
Grandpa said exaggerating –
Then we giggled.
The first lady Imelda Marcos
Help him paid the hospital bill
For exchange of his ideology
Grandpa supported him
The brainy in the family
Decayed with the system
Sometimes he told us,
How he
Comes on this land
How he
Answered the migration call
In the South
My Grandma and him
Still in honeymoon when
They walked away from their home
At Aklan and settled deep South
To a land unknown to him
He loves democracy
He went to street and joined the protesters
To end up every injustices
I always saw him joined rallies of the leftist
Even he had lots of grey hair
On his head and have a
wrinkled face
He went to street
To overthrew Marcos
To impeach Macapagal
And even the Estrada Administration
He tilted the land
Grow coffee beans and avocado
Ate and drunk the wealth of his toil
He sniffed the salted air of the Celebes
As he stood at the cliff of Matutum
Sometimes they sold fruits
In the public market
Those days of the early 60’s
While my mom was still young
Then we are born
My cousins and us –
We sat at the table
Trembling at dawn
During long vacation
Grandma prepared hot milk
Then grandpa walked near beside
Stared at us
Preached the narrative of his life
He was proud, and strong
He loves us even he doesn’t show
I could felt it hide at his snobby eyes
As I perceived
He was a learned man
Even he didn’t go to school
Our pillar collapsed , my knees gave up
I sat on a bench
My body drenched by cold sweat
My eyes drawn beyond
Like I search things in the mirror
Tears starting to appear at my eye
I could still glimpse
Those time when I was a kid
An innocent face
Staring from the reflection
At the clear pond
“Eat it..eat it..eat it..”, my older
cousin whimpered –
Holding his fish line with a dying
Red worm,
Wriggling down the fresh clear water
Salmons circling at the cold
We wore straw hat and checkered polo
the entire place were awfully cold
It’s the saddest place in the world
For me, yes,
I knew the feeling, I am used of it
There’s nothing beauty on that place
Only those big large trees,
Farms, cattle ranch, turnpike roads
Thousand acres of Dole pineapple
Plantation owned by American Co.
How the land change its color to a
Fiery field of red blades during harvest
And the rain coming almost everyday
And the cold
If my parents allowed us to curse,
Maybe I would love to mutter ;
” DAMN! This place and DAMN! With this cold! ”
We forgot time went by –
It was already 2 in the afternoon
“Let’s go home!”, I don’t recall who said it
We walked briskly
Hold big salmon on our hand
We were afraid
The sky already given up from the dark
The rain started to pour again
Then we saw him
He was there
Signaled us to halt
Tending his carabao
At the muddy pool
At six in the evening –
We all gathered on the sofa
Only the flickers of light emitted
Down the city of General Santos
He usually sat at the dark corner
Of the house
Listened the radio transistor
And the song started to sung
Brother
Louie Louie
I cried silently in the dark
I don’t know why
What was it on that song
That made me really depressed
I was 6 or 7 years of age that moment
After then –
The radio announcer talked about
the cold front,
The storm build up over the Pacific
Rain came
And with the storm
And we startled at the loud roar
Of thunder
Inside the room
We laid there side by side
No electricity
No candle light in the dark
Then
There’s this song
Played again in the air
Brother
Louie Louie
Damn the world was torn apart
And with this song
During school days, he went to city
At school, he asked us sometimes
How things going…
He bragged about it
To his neighbors
At Tieza about his grandchildren
We went there occasionally
There was these shelves with 30
Or more books
I sat there reading during
my primary years at Public North
Elementary School
Read carefully
Those stories about the Greeks
The Trojan War –
The Arabian Nights –
The Filipino contemporaries –
That’s the reason
I love to stay in the library
Wherever city I went
Hand gripped a yellow
Mongol pencil –
Scribbling some words on crumpled papers
And hide it somewhere
At college he went to our house at Silway
He is very ill
My mom and us cared him
He watched the 6 o’clock news,
Trying to know
What was happening around
The whole world
I read silently Doveglion
Near beside him
I already had a family of my own
He was very weak
I knew his end were coming
I touched his head often
Kissed him on his cheek
Looked at him with his fading eyes
With his weak breathing
How I love my old man
My son likes to play beside him
He was on his death bed
Then my wife
stand right in front on my workplace
She looked at me in the eye
I knew a painful consoling smile
Of people who tried to say
That… It is okay…
Life should be these way…
No one lives forever…
She whispered softly on my ear –
” Grandpa is gone…”
Even she started to hugged me
Even if she didn’t say a word
I knew it would come.
And I wasn’t there beside him.
I wish…
I be at his side…
And say…
How much we love him…
How much I thanked him…
How he taught us to be brave…
I wish I was there so…
I could whisper… It’s OK Grandpa..
And…
And…
And hold him firm…
And feel how he still hold us back…
Even he’s already gone.
most of the time, it goes like this
He woke up
And went outside and took a bath
In the dark
The wind is cold and it seemed rain
may come early this year
At the table, he had nothing to think
Putting a hard pie in his mouth
Drunk a glass of tap water
After an hour, he was on the road
Walking all the way to his school
Often times, he stopped and breath
Throwing his gazed in the sky
Then he walked again for hours
He felt tired but he had too
At the class
Some students were laughing
Had nothing to worry on their lives
They circles themselves
Admiring each other
Far in the corner, he pretends
To be reading
He had nothing to share
Much better to stay away
The bell rung and everybody were calling for their mom or their dad to pick them up
And he went outside the gate solely
He didn’t opened his mouth
And most of the time…
It goes like this —
~~~
And he went at the parking lot
And worked there, instead of opening a book
To write and sing or play
Sweeping every car glass for just a piece of coin
It’s already 9 in the evening and the road is empty
He thrown his gaze in the stars
Before he headed into their house
He removed his slippers and went
At the table. The same pie he ate at this early, still he grabbed it
And drunk the tap water from the pail
Climbed into his bed
In the dark he pretended to be asleep
When his father walked in and sat beside at the bed. Tired from the construction site
Put a blanket on him and kiss his cheek and went to the next room
And he opened his eyes
Looked at the window, rain
Fell outside
He looked at it, how far he could
Escape at this
A mosquito hover and bit him hard
His father snoring in the dark
He prayed silently before he closed his eye, life can be ironic
And most of time —
It simply goes like this…
Repost
unborn child
I asked myself—
What if, you two didn’t left—
And die
You came out on this world, where
I could touch your cheek,
you snort as we giggles in my gentle arms.
We can walk in the park on our lifetime,
The fireflies passed
smelling the grass under the stars
But life is unfair, sure it is—
an early moon at our doorstep
I whispered, “I know death
better than life—
There’s no doubt about it.”
~
I won’t be laughing the way I do
And smile sweet
As a sunflower envying the entire blue sky
At night. The wind bleakly blowing
along the greedy fence
Light from the tower down the lonely mountain
Across the south goes on and off
On and off gloomily
Like it was a sad song
Where you can see sole trucks
Bumping on the gravel road
and the driver longing for bed.
Tears like leaves
fell down in the pouring rain
at monsoon season, everything
turned green and sadful
perhaps
I’m the saddest person
In the world, I don’t pretend at all
As I closed my eyes
You two was there on my lap
Innocently caressing my chin
Feeling the deep breathing on my chest
with all the universe…
Let’s go out and fight
Let’s go out and fight
I hold the rain
that is pouring down
All night
hammering my roof
I’d like to go with a fight
I don’t have job
I quit
I am starving
reading a sun also rises
You knew;
I am asking for a fight
Cold seeping down the
mattress
outside flooding with
all these hardship
some were
in pain
and other don’t
understand
on what they’ve been
through
some felt it a suicide
like war,
alcoholism,
depression,
isolation,
insomnia, etc
People were fighting
were dying
we knew,
they give their best fight
I was in the road
walking with these tides
drifting
like a river
like in a blue ocean
Lets go out and fight
I’ve seen light that flicker
I’ve seen lights that flicker; pulsating
undying,
flooding,
They’ve—
shone against all odds:
conquered against this perilous
time.
This sparks can never be unkndled.
It gives its lights.
It offered.
This darkness that succumbed no more.
There are lights that can never be rested.
It can be everywhere. Elsewhere.
I’ve seen lights flicker, pulsating
Undying,
Flooding,
Growing,
Bitting all that is not right.
Bitting them that is in the dark.
Bitting— And then
Winning—
Like a lion in the desert
Like whitelion that roars.
July night sky
Everytime I went outside at July night
I’ve thrown
my gaze upward
trying to find Sirius
the greater dog
flickering low in the sky
I’ve seen star in the heaven at
night like this
a night so silent and grasses kneeling in the lake without
light from the moon just this stars and Sirius
blinking at
a massive blackness
thunderclap of snake tongue burst out
and licked the woods
frog lifting and fireflies moving back
inside their holes
I’ve seen stars that is long ago; ancient
and immortal
they’ve speak of light along with the dark
They’ve shine through time
They’ve shine until our ages gone.
Everytime I went outside this July night
I’ve wonder
about this light
shining bright against all dark
flickering low in the night.
