Exact is not the word; the hurting is felt in many places. – Joel Toledo
Mending is necessary as these respites from fragility will no longer do.
Mind the volume dial as it floods you with constants and firmitude.
Long before right from wrong: language stolen from the secure imbalance
of beats and verses; long before left and right, and weathered volumes
of the sciences and the arts, of gestures and obstacles. The manner by which the heart responds like a birthright to a favorite tune quivers with significance
and all that is good. This grace, that immolation,
these strains. Nearly four decades since the first Beatle fell,
jostling the world’s slumber and hustling dreams far away
from what made them relevant: spectacles and submarines
careening on unsteady waters, the difficulty of deciphering love
and heartbreak, visions of healing.
An angry young father bearing the weight of generations and lost crops.
The alleyways right before midnight reveal many methods of coming undone:
calm, hunched over aluminum and glass, and of bringing yourself back to life. We lose count of those who lose their way, frail digits too many, reaches and grasps too short—the resolute sunlight endangers the visions that blur all too quickly, too sharply, creasing the fabric of these manufactured hues and contours. The same way a thin, glistening blade already knows your least favorite name years before it kisses your coarse skin.
There is much to fear and learn from old myths, old
tales of the road. A purple haze going dim,
the death of the blues on a sparkling motel floor, overdoses, slits, and hangings.
A harvester of sound embracing the dark in real time next to our status cuisine.
A trustworthy riff gone rusty, juxtaposed with console machine guns and beheaded creatures, reduced to a child’s rhyme. The Lizard King, babbling, bloated,
and mad.
Perhaps a story closer to home for a change. A wooden door guarded by idols
kicked down in the dead of night; the sound of pages ripping, a steel chair flung against a wall, the nature of metal slicing through a delicate hymn, an inflexible open palm illuminated by a yellow strand of light magnanimously taking center stage. Torn cloth
and a young girl’s soul learning its first lesson
on how to properly break.
Roel Sta. Romana Cruz
Roel Sta. Romana Cruz, 49, teaches literature at the La Salle Green Hills Adult Night High School. His short stories have been published in Philippines Graphic, Philippines Free Press, and Story Philippines. He and his lovely wife Agnes are full-time butlers to two defiant pups, Bruce and Harley.
