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Distress Signal

mayday, how many bodies does it take to build a pyramid? crash land in memory that the factory is not born a tradition but from the barrel of a gun while fine print scribbled by jesters in courts have one hand in the currency of greed and the other in the capital of will.

ii. mayday, this is a state of emergency, the body is bared to surrender community for self, slaved to birth things they could not call their own all to shoulder a promise of tomorrow as tainted feet stomp soiled grounds.

iii. mayday, this is a haunting, across borders share a name of a ghost stilled by a shared past, a hollow filled from the margins abound to take the center of the city and so this is a march in May, an act to name history’s pages as rightfully their own, to paint roads in forgotten red, and finally lay bare the conditions of peace.

#poetry #laborday

to walk in footprints

how does a mouth claim to walk tattered feet, to pledge allegiance to the ground where sweat seeds soils to feed tongues with gnawing teeth;

where toils bring harvest for ivory children while calloused hands are born from earth to earth.

ii.

no “I understand” will ever be the hour hand submission, a body’s surrender in a crossfire, the suspension of divine to make gods out of bullets.

iii.

you see, no matter how hands embrace the sand, no amount of holding will baptize your feet to walk across the ground where they are buried — that they inherit.

#writing #poetry #BigasHindiBala

behind closed doors

I imagined the phone call when a chorus from your lips grew bigger than the room.

Perhaps there are melodies not meant to be sung but today I learned to listen —

occupying memory, diluting the linearity of time.

That night, in between the questions of where you were and who your company was, I rang to your chest,

taking the broken record in the faults of my head into speech.

And in the corridors of language, we sat across each other’s room.

#writing #poetry

per se

it is midnight; a recollection

the taking; to dwell

in ofteness -- regret,

an allusion of

that is to say,

a dangling of letters,

the mechanization of language

to be held by tongue

that is to say in ofteness, there is

you

beloved

#writing #poetry

nth time

the first attempt at love was to study your name, carefully arranging each letter in tongue

afraid that it will slide in too far for a swallowing. when you decided to rest between sharp teeth,

carving space my body willingly let you do, latching to every fiber and bones, i in turn

cut an ear or two for your dusk coaxed voice, and savor what's left of nicotine from my lips to yours.

#writing #poetry #love #belated #happy anniversary

in a foreign home

when you speak

your language, a

root mangled under

your tongue, you

begin to step outside

a door, painted with

blue, red, white, gold;

you realize you sit

between door knobs,

unfamiliar of your own

roots, not welcome

in another's home.

#writing #poetry #i long to better speak tagalog #and bisaya cebuano

why was six afraid of seven?

the story begins with a mourning mother:

there is a house above a hill and

its teeth gnawed when mouths bared

while hands mistook drowning for sanctuary.

how does a body lose itself more than once?

when six conceived her child

the house built for shelter creaked its roof

and brick by brick led up the river.

when a son is baptized by seven,

the house with ruthless hands and sharp teeth,

the mother counts to remember

how 7-8-9 are more than just numbers.

#writing #poetry #ChildrenNotCriminals

wavering

Two years before, beneath starlit skies, he was on a highway to a promise.

Two years before, beneath a log clad house, I sat waiting to be held.

“Talk to me,” his voice echoed across the room, the kind that seeps into your bones and rings in your ears. My body remembered this melody all too well: A broken promise of composure. “You know how it takes months before I can come back so we get to have this kind of conversation? Talk to me.”

But I did.

Listen.

I spoke between tongue knots, between salt-water touch, between long pauses and between the days you were oceans away. Two weeks ago, I slept unannounced; another broken promise. One week still, you worried of my silence, spoke how it meant complacency – a silhouette of misplaced idealism – and how anger took off the blinds, allowed light, allowed sight. An emotion against injustice.

You sighed, a resignation from silence when it became loud enough to fill the room. In the space between us, on your bed, an ocean divide made itself comfortable. Moments then, you stood, and your hands found its way to the switch. Just like that, darkness. I closed my eyes as you descended into the sheets, and it wasn’t long after that our bodies welcomed the sea that drowned us to slumber.

It was noon. I reclined to a foreign chair and across me was an unwonted woman. This unfamiliarity felt like a memory that didn’t exist. The woman and I spoke casually until my lungs suddenly sought for air. Bed. Dim-lit. You. My body remembered the drowning, but not what breathing underwater felt like. I turned to face you and although the room still felt heavy from last night’s exchange, I could still trace your light-feathered face while you slept.

On some days, I try to count the number of times I have apologized – I already lost count. Apologies felt more heavier than the sin itself. I once showed you a mug, inscribed there was “sometimes, silence is the best answer.” Now, I’m not so sure. Truth seemed elusive with dialogue and time, and in this room, I could only wait for you to wake.

#writing #prose #flash fiction

lost in translation

Gratitude is the heart’s language of approval but “thank you for everything” sounds awfully like a good bye, the closing door after the seven o’clock dinner outside. A tell tale sign that the ocean of efforts had ceased to bring the shore the comfort it brings after being burnt by the sun. That instead, it wants to breathe. And I do not know if the waves have been too careless to drown you or that you have gotten tired of saltwater, or that you lost me in the sea of sarcasms, bad jokes and constant apologies. But I swear I tried to find you, and I thought I did.

#writing #prose

elsewhere

between touch,

his thighs, are

unfamiliar roads,

cross-road puzzle

not meant to be

solved, not meant

to be crossed;

sometime after,

he finds himself

back in the forest,

holding a theory

of belonging:

this is wanting

to wander

in obfuscation,

being just is,

being half-lost.

#writing #poetry

white ink

covered, paperback

splattered and believed

that meaning is found

in paper: the vows

made in script hold

life in fingertips, how

words held hands,

words made worlds

but

dawns are ripped pages,

and hands that burn

are ash scattered fervor;

for

ink do not shed blood

ink guided by white

hands bleed white

ink in white paper.

#writing #poetry

bedtime stories and other tragedies

Under the blanket of the moonlight lies a four-wall cage called home and in the darkness of the room you welcome the swallowing sheets.

Here, you practice the art of maneuvering: your spine upright in a haunted house with ghosts for dreams and bodies for bones, you do not pray for blessings nor salvation, here, you pray for a god to be out there, to claim what’s left of a half-owned body.

Here, the monsters have a bed, they cut with their tongue, hold you with hands for cages then profess love as if pain was needed first for comfort.

Here, unheard are lullabies and tales, they live between the shackles of your mother’s mirror and your father’s shadow while your body is mapped with scars. Here, you spend time tracing the lines making meaning out of the wreckage.

Now, no longer can you count the days hoping for the dead of daylight, for the rain, for no longer do monsters in the closet remain in the tendrils of the dark.

---

This poem was published in Today’s Carolinian last December 2018

#writing #poetry #published: tc

rust

I am made to bleed from the reckless drift across the playground — the first kiss of my open wound, a quest to search the unknown and hold it between my hands.

The world, they say, is the way it is, like baby teeth falling out, like a phone stuck in hand, as if it were a distant memory I have just uncovered.

I am made to bleed from nature’s period of estrangement; a life-time puzzle given in the midst of uncovering, a search for pieces that I am meant to build.

Puberty, they say, is the way it is; the baptism that I am capable of birthing change, an oracle reading of a promise I never made.

I am made to cover scars in reaching the boiling point of life — the drying of new blood; its letting go of ideals and settling in the recluse of, “the world is the way it is.”

Menopause, they say, is the way it is; a cage, a denial of entry. A way to cut my limbs, a self-induced amnesia, a game over.

And all the while, I say,

I am

than

just

bleeding.

---

This poem was published in Today’s Carolinian last October 2018

#writing #poetry #published: tc

rekindling home

In the cradle of the cold night sky, the blanket of Cebu's city lights illuminate a memory of home. I find myself between the fractures of a hand I hold from afar and the four walls that kept me away from my family. I chose to rekindle the former, the gentle reminder that home can be shaped like a human body, that warmth need not to burn.

#writing #prose

midnight refuge

this scorched body becomes no more in the refuge of the night shackle and dark embrace

it seeks fortitude between moonlight wanes and waxes, estranged by twilight beginnings.

the rubble are troubled ruins and ash-bone scatters: it is the fill of the body, a chilling, ghastly reminder

that failure is not an apparition but a demonic possession. it takes hold of the hollow soul, of scarred skin,

taking parts of the body to be less of itself, forgetting your own name, leaving a blank-slate shadow.

and when the alarm clock dusk breaks the slumber with warm waking lights,

you find yourself in the litters of an unfamiliar room, beneath the sheets that swallowed you whole.

once more, you fix your body to brave against the day, and once more, you welcome the burn just to feel warm.

#writing #poetry

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