POETRY DAILY
PANITIKAN
POETRY
useless, small time empties
for the hour's league of
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Nature needs no answers. It is only people
Who feel or claim it our duty to solve riddles.
Nature does not even question. All is guesswork
That leads to what we don't get: The joke is on us.
It is people who ask: Is there a better way?
We build, rule, and obey some to prove we are strong.
We can't get enough of control. When we pause yet,
It is but to appear wise after things go wrong.
It is people who need answers to everything.
We race not only to get somewhere first. We have
To get where everyone else had chalked "Caloy Was
Here" to carve over our own reasons to believe
In reasons. Nature is not broken, neither does
It break anything. It is just people that pass
The blame on other people, never owning up.
Nature we measure by how near our time is up.
JUST SO THERE IS NO MISUNDERSTANDING OF DAWN, AND OF THE ETHOS FOLLOWING
The boy who delivers bread, his bike horn squeals
The old man next door, his stickbroom hisses
The husband in bed, his hard-on menaces
The wife beside him, she alone breathes
The bread boy dispenses four for pesos ten
The old man fumigates neighborhood
The husband buffs car to a white-collar shine
The wife, her table rich in sunlight
UNMENDING WALLS
I called out twice, as loud as I could, but no neighbor answered
My wife’s tinola’s already simmering, bereft of malunggay leaves
I stretched up the concrete fence, reached out, pulled, broke off
The tenderest, prolific branch that made it in our sumptuous lunch
Next noon, there was no tree, only phantom swaying in the breeze
MARUSO, MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE*
Loud, drunken voices from the street
Abort my midnight mission to bolt the gate.
I don’t want to be seen about my business
To secure my abode. I go back inside
And take comfort. I cling to my own beer
For protection. That’s right, outdrink them
Through dawn. I’ll be at work next day,
While they hibernate. When I get home,
I’m beat, but with beer money. I wonder,
What sustains their nocturnal bacchanalia?
Just as it gets dark, steeling myself
From probable gazes, I slip out to the corner
Store to score beer to replenish my armory
For another night's vigil. As I repair
To my gate, they are pregnantly rapt
Over the blare of Guns N’ Roses. I breathe
A sigh of relief as I imbibe the first gulp
From my mug of amber elixir.
* More like “Tonto Trips Nights In Panic”
CEO (Cheap Execrable Officer)
Eight hours a day in the office
No, I don’t have the exact count
In minutes or seconds that went
With nothing like well paid service
Yeah I can do the math right, sir
But I won’t, I’m no longer at work
I got beer for the weekend’s slack
For Monday, my earned hangover
OH THE TASTE OF MUD
1
The taste of mud won’t go away
It doesn’t fill the hole of hunger
It feeds more the weight of thirst
It sticks for appetites to lick froth
Of lean seasons thrown in, or cake
Of what old rain left off healing
2
The taste of mud recalls rage
That of one God bleeding the sky
To whip the earth (to cleanse it)
Into muck so perfect (friendly
Poison) an olive can leaf at ease
For this pigeon to pluck old news
HOW IT’S BEEN DONE
Lurk, or slink toward blood or bloom
Would you? Soul is mostly everywhere
It pleases you, or puts you ill at ease
Stalk, or kneel in sorrow or in awe
Won’t you? Mind the marriage
Of scar and rose
Arise and run after your heart
Or be stoned, or turn to stone
Lazarus, Peter, Judas, Cain
THE BUTTERFLY AFFECT
It will take scores of years to chart what I’ve been up to
In, say, that ten seconds of eternity that led me to touch you
The truth is I waste time, oblivious to whatsoever comes close to bliss
Until the butterfly is laid to rest, that only then I’m prompted to kiss
I settle for the moment’s reward and leave to some other bird
The next millennium’s crumbs of promises or curses to be had
I’m alone as before—no, I keep company to what the clock empties
Or says it empties (like I lie when I say your lips I don’t miss)
DEAF POETS SOCIETY (for Juan Carlo dg Toledo, on his 64th birthday)
Your big brother claims he doesn’t understand us
Our passion for words and the words for our passion
But I do believe he gets us and has it too, more than
He cares to admit—like you have it still, only now so mute
BEATITUDE
I am awake again, but I will not startle the rest
That own their sleep or are owned by sleep
I will play the polite spectator, peck at any worm
That happens by; I keep the legend to myself
My needs are simple: the precious dew of dawn
The glimmer of sand, the mute pride of petals and leaves
I will master each supple bit of light and bird-note
To line my pockets with before morning claims her pulpit
I know my time is up when the epoch of community
Slips out of its drowse and gurgles prandial pleasantries
I step aside as each citizen commences to grind
To the perpetual tune of “no pain, no... grain”
They spread a picnic for a symphony on the mount
While God and the pigeon (that I am) fold for a nap
CONCEIT KNOCKS ON HEAVEN’S DOOR
One day you will find me comatose
I shall not be privy to your thoughts
“What a waste” or “Serves him right”
Vie for the top of the latest poll
Before I collapse I leave these thoughts
“The purpose of life is to live it”
“Life is simply what happens to you”
“My life has always been about me”
MISSED CALL
Cellphone registers a missed call
Number unknown
Caller didn’t even bother
For a full ring
But now that my attention’s
Caught completely
(The basic tack is to dismiss
The whole thing as unintented)
With my directory of mankind
Condemned for good
I contemplate the many times
God must’ve hung up
Disconnecting communiqué
Never meant for me
ANCHORED CAIN
Here I stand, head full of butterflies
Fat chance one will be named after me
Sired by the marriage of earth and sweat
I’m something else frying in the sun
It’s hardly Eden I’m exiled in
Though the incidental flowers are
A sight to lure away sweet eyes
From scraps of discarded appliance
Motors speeding by outside the gate
Proclaim directions I won’t take yet
I’m that child still at a loss at what
To do with his concept of the wheel
I rue not also my flightlessness
I'm ready to dissolve in the sun
YET GROANS THE MEAN MOMENT... 2
She who you once made a chance bride of impatiently counts down the days
To her widowhood, severed as you are even since ages from her embrace
YET GROANS THE MEAN MOMENT... 1
Prophet or fool, your stink leaves behind the same disposable calling card
Poet or hack, what you sell for nobody cares about at the checkout
SEED
Spontaneity, they say, is how things work
How stratagem by itself tends an empty plot
Pass by a flower, leave alone its color, its scent
On your merry way you meet someone groping
In need of a special report; your smile, if returned
Might yet mean it will grow in another’s garden.
FISH AND TELL
Lone fish waits to be fed
Water plant shares the bowl
Roots brace for the nibble
Of fish belly-nestled upon
One of four limestones gray
Water stays unchanged for days
One man waits to be told
Of his purpose in this world
When something as if pulls
At the reaches of his mind
He feels his thirst (so like his need
For a scratch in the back) slaked
One man minds the fish, feeds it
After changing the water—a feat!
LET THE GOOD HOUR
Find it in the late hour to aspire
To solitude, thread a few words leftover
To fashion a prayer with
But know at times only after “Amen”
Worship begins, and “Alone” even
Might let a demon legion in on a whim
Or find the hour too late to let in
A league of angels’ wings, for words too
Few leftover to fashion a prayer with
Worship usually ends only after “Amen”
While “Alone” may aspire to but
What it hardly knows of solitude
Better just to let the late hour transpire
Best yet you with the late hour expire