Wind from the lake below
Has brought the fine rain
That wet the stair railings
Between classrooms on Makiling.
As I step out after class,
The cold droplets cling...
I was seven
a war marred my hometown
Tíyo and the fishermen
soldiers
the deep sea
battlefield
a compound
of the sea’s little bones
of sable sands
in a wicked bottle
their arsenal made
the Earth mumbled
in tremulous waves
the heavens bled
scales
of shattered souls
to the flesh of my innocence.
2024
What do you want to say
to a year yet to explain itself?
The days are heaving,
the hours a diary made meaningful
with our ghosts: gray, tenuous,
prone to our forgetting.
Just tell me something new.
Or describe to me freedom
as an animal. Show me skin
moistened by worship,
waterfalls like...
May this poem be heard as a testament of Amorsolo’s “History of Philippine Music” and his artistry.
Winds already touched the glistening sails
of a boat that bears the shadows of
blossoming antiquity
Playful noises coming from the grasp of the lips,
Lines withdrawn in the psalms of...
A covenant was made.
You trod on my soil.
You breathed my air.
Here, tonight,
I am having dinner.
The hall would have fit in
Many exuberant guests,
But I only see myself
And my toddler’s chair.
The table is set.
Cutleries in their neat order.
I sniff the folded serviette.
It is your very...
The force of fate couldn’t fight for us.Venus showed me the way to youjust as I pointed her and the Moonfor you to gaze.He smiled down on us, mockingwith his crescent lips, whitened teeth.
Time runs backas our shared memories.
You had been here
You had come wading to shore
Wearing a raiment of corals and sea grass
And flotsam surrendered by the sea
You had been in this valley
Where you let grow
Cathedral trees laden
With words that fall and flow
On the riverine channels of my mind
You had...