January 2010
35 posts
1 tag
This I Learn About the City #10
I am telling you this from another city,
From where your voice and scent
Do not linger in despair: Only the past
Can warn you, can give you hints.
Memory, clearly, is not the enemy.
1 tag
Urban Meditation #12
What thrives in the past
Should not be committed to memory.
Hurt must be pressed out from the body
Like dirty blood from a dirty wound.
For forgetting is a process of renewal:
Everything should be drained
From the recesses of the mind.
1 tag
There Are Certain Things #15
Outside, a woman in the street corner,
lying on the wet pavement, beside the garbage can
overflowing with the day’s consumption. Outside, a woman
helpless between the acts of killing time and killing herself.
1 tag
There Are Certain Things #14
The girl thinks of home and the family that waits
for her arrival. The man tries to redirect the situation.
You know what, we better try this… The downpour echoes
in the hollowness of her mind, each droplet against the car’s
roof like the man’s lingering taps at night.
1 tag
There Are Certain Things #13
He reaches home. On the table, a secret
they wouldn’t know. A mother in bed,
a grainy portrait of a father hanging
on the wall. Here, nobody questions his reasons.
1 tag
Urban Meditation #11
When I tire out from slashing
your name on my skin, this skin the sheet
of this one-sided story, when you barely
reply anymore, when you sound uninterested,
the messages sent are coated with
resentment, and the image of your face
now in haze, the places of memory
slowly flaking, when the weep is a tear
is a moan is a whimper, I will not obstruct
(not once again) this body to disrupt
this...
1 tag
There Are Certain Things #12
A bargain is made: a confirmation.
A plead echoes: a consolation.
A door opens: an implication.
Yes, she is with me.
1 tag
This I Learn About the City #9
The man switches on his TV
and becomes the passive spectator
to the emblems of the city. Onscreen,
the scene slowly pans to a kid, staring back
at the querying reporter. Tell me about your sadness.
There: the boy and his blamelessness.
There: the absence of shame all over his face.
In his room, the man understands the story of it all.
1 tag
Urban Meditation #8
Above the endless pits and hollows
of the city, the memory of you scars me
as blades do on skin. These words drip
like blood on the page. But, it might just
be me who’s still stuck, hurting.
1 tag
There Are Certain Things #11
Later, the rain floods the near canals.
Later, the dogs run back to their respective homes.
Later, the traffic jam becomes the cityscape.
Later, the man looks back at the tires like eyeballs ogling at him.
Later, the uniformed students say dare, say go.
1 tag
There Are Certain Things #10
Many years later, she is smiling by my side, warmly
embracing me in a room in the middle of this busy
city, sunlight seeping through our windowpanes and
pulling us tighter towards each other. Yes, she is
the woman who graciously gives me a massage
that I consider fine, a tender kiss from my neck down
to the tip of my spine. And always, I go restless
whenever she is out of sight, out of reach.
1 tag
This I Learn About the City #8
Now marvel at these white sheets. Their creases
are our body’s arrangement, their red stains
your testimony of a first time. Straighten up
now and clothe yourself. We will end
this fleeting moment, together.
1 tag
There Are Certain Things #9
To salvage a year is to reduce yourself to what you are not.
What you are not is what is written on the page, because you find
comfort in what is not there. There, the series of lies, the words
and their approximations. Allow yourself to approximate the past
year: one family, one workshop, one major rally, one major blog,
one publication, two significant chance encounters, two romantic
...
1 tag
Urban Meditation #7
When a wound has no pain
and blood, no scabbing,
no hurting, cured by relentless
enduring—is it still a wound?
1 tag
This I Learn About the City #7
The story executes itself based on vantage points.
The boy positions himself on a patch of light streaming
through the window and revels in the privilege of sight,
the mere opportunity of intrusion. Across his window,
the couple performs the rituals leading to that hard fuck.
Each groan and grunt challenging the unsullied innocence
of him, the sheer tenderness of him. Until the boy claims
...
1 tag
There Are Certain Things #8
You should have told me that the next man who would say hi
on the streets might be the droning drunkard who disrupted
my sleep last night, who frightened the busy cat with its catch
under the piano, who perplexed the predictable pattern of wasps
hovering around my overhead lamp, for all of these become lessons
which I should take into consideration, find conclusions for.
1 tag
Urban Meditation #6
And I was the center of a maddened universe, kids and men
and ladies, all sun-baked, all with furious eyes, all strange faces,
inhabiting the confidence in me, wracking the nerve of me,
the frightful self in me, ganging up on me, cursing me, consuming
the whole of me, as if they couldn’t understand a don’t, a please,
a no, a stop; and all that came next was pain, and fear, and blood,
and...
1 tag
There Are Certain Things #7
Carefully, we listen to each other,
my mother and I. It’s nighttime.
I insist for a bedtime story. To ensure
a sweet dream, I say in a childish lilt.
Despite my droopy eyes, she continues
reading, her voice charming and soft.
You are mine, she assures me
with so much security. Only the two of us.
1 tag
This I Learn About the City #6
To become the absence of desire.
This remoteness that separates us.
There are no fresh stories to narrate.
We do not demand for comfort.
To avoid the touch that suggests.
1 tag
This I Learn About the City #5
We can only permit such fantasy to last for a moment.
For tonight, we can only see what is absent here.
Our bodies touch, the darkness sets in.
Between us, we permit such widening distance.
1 tag
There Are Certain Things #6
For example, the word you first curled up on my tongue
before it burst out into a whimper. Or when a sentence
such as I love you or I’m here would just come out without
even opening my mouth. Impossible, yes. As most
happenings in my dreams are. In the innocence of sleep,
I learned to play around our statements. When you said never
I knew you meant always and for every no an astounding yes.
1 tag
This I Learn About the City #4
You wake up and reality cracks
like a big slab of ice. You look
at yourself in the mirror—how come
things don’t change at all?—the sounds,
images are not the same anymore—
maybe a sign that you have landed
on the faithful shores of forgetting.
1 tag
There Are Certain Things #5
What are your plans? the man asks. Silently,
the girl stares at the lady in the street corner.
Does it hurt? She shifts her stare at the two dogs,
now separated, now being shooed away.
Don’t worry. She touches her womb. I’m here.
She thinks of fact and fiction, of before and after. Believe me.
1 tag
Urban Meditation #5
When a sin has no weight
upon it, no gravity pulling
it down, no thought evoking
remorse and anger—is it still a sin?
1 tag
There Are Certain Things #4
In this city that often cradles rain, two dogs
define the gist of comfort. One on top,
the other below. A group of uniformed students
laughs at them, cusses. There seems to be
no moral in this romance.
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This I Learn About the City #3
Now it’s easier to reason out the abstractness
of faith. Around the church’s periphery, the beggars
and the vendors, the young girls loosely
clutching their sampaguitas like rosaries.
1 tag
There Are Certain Things #3
In the nearby karaoke bar, a man forks
a sliver of meat from his platter, swallows it,
and gulps down a cold bottle of beer.
No one listens. No one cares.
1 tag
This I Learn About the City #2
The flurry of intimacies came next. When you and I
discovered the wonders of cutting classes, of dingy
rooms and cheap inns, of locked doors, of words
like wont and want, thing and twat, grunt and cunt.
When one night, you finally allowed my hands to rest
on the slopes of your breast. And the morning after,
all we had were those whispers persistent in our ears.
1 tag
Urban Meditation #4
When a shadow separates from light,
from a tangible post, when it exits
the blackness of the world, only
to trace its lines, search its form,
find its color—is it still a shadow?
1 tag
There Are Certain Things #2
The man talks about love. The girl pretends to listen.
Faintly she nods her head, faintly she agrees.
A yes, a please. The car’s tinted window darkens
her view of the outside. A final pull, a final puff.
The cigarette stub is ditched out of the window
and drowns in a puddle of water. The girl darts
her stare at the car’s windshield, the last traces of rain
trickling down like threads of...
1 tag
There Are Certain Things
In the meantime, she is here captured
in video, both for sin and pleasure.
What do you want? I ask. A question
she has been waiting for. Instead
she turns to the other side of the bed,
and silence suits her language.
Come here, I instruct her. Please.
3 tags
This I Learn About the City
At this intimate hour, I caress
the part of her body that lies
bare for me to touch. Face me,
face me. A puff of smoke
crowds the room.
Her shoulders quiver.
A command than a request.
1 tag
Urban Meditation #3
The night does not wear
any pretension. Above,
the moon like a slivered
fingernail lost in nowhere.
Here, propriety is dismantled
by sin. And the night moves
its sleek tongue across
the cityscape, stretches
itself out to the alleys
of the pursued, the pursuer.
Then tactics of silence. The modes
of survival. A demand for ethics,
the notion of lust. There at the end,
we know what to...
1 tag
Urban Meditation #2
Because you are here
beside me
in a cold room
in this city,
a blanket tugged
at your chest,
a cigarette burning
in between
your fingers.
I focus my video
camera on you,
and say Smile, the third letter
pronounced like an r.
2 tags
Urban Meditation #1
He walks the streets
and meets the residents of the city:
a fetus in the banner story, the beggar lying
under the rusty shed, the blind lady belting
a Whitney Houston classic.