Explore more Articles in
Poetry
Bloody calligraphy
I hate squawking,
Issues on mutilating the truth.
Backtracking the ruins
On my nails,
Bitten.
Seismic cries revolt
Where liquefaction of dying words
Come to steal breaths,
Eyebaths from bouldering graves.
Brewed illusion
Be mine tonight.
In my vineyard
Of flowers, berries and leaves,
Sweet and bittersweet spells
From your lips,
As we burn the night
And free the...
What passes for us
I see montages evoking regrets,
noble architectures dipped in pastels,
pale peaches and cream, reticent with their
secrets: are the things you tell me after
the rain. Together we look at pigments --
ochre, sienna, umber, sentinels on
lily-white walls, tactile yet taciturn.
What passes for us in-between: moments
of walking,...
Asylum pieces
at 53
my sinfulness pervades the daily news
and “justifies all my childhood abuse”—
i thank all for the times when I can choose
to turn to earthly and heavenly hues
and true forms and movements and sounds profuse,
and fall out of the war of wordy views
to forge...
My only sin
Nothing
in my garden of chrysanthemum
can make me smile
not the clutch of winged Monarchs
perched on my rosals,
neither fishbones nor the trees
I had long since abandoned
the cello for leeches in the lawn
and for the din of infant years
For at the top of my voice
I can...
Excerpts from Aswang Love
The following poems are part of an in-progress novel-in-poems that tells the story of two aswang lovers. Clara is a manananggal vampire and Santiago is a shapeshifting weredog in 1936 Cutud village. They fall in love and try to live as ordinary humans...
Ghost knocking
She left him nothing,
not a word, not even
a single letter. But everywhere
he turned, he could feel
her cupped hand riding
a plank the shape of a heart,
brass castors and wheels
of bone slowly churning,
searching. He closed his eyes
and saw letters carved in reverse
against wood, her hand
making...
