One last time, my forgotten friend,
poise your calloused hands
and dig your battered heels into the dirt.
Left behind by the new world.
The others, glam dolls and pulpit idols,
have all long gone.
I watch as you reach the top,
as a slow, hazy blues chord from a...
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Lines withdrawn in the psalms of...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.
Like a shoebox cramped with preserved
Fragments of quite a life lived by—the letters
From a childhood friend, puppy love remembered
A ribbon, the first book gifted,...
Gipit
Kapag kawalang-wala,
Nandiyan mayâ’t mayâ;
Pagtanggap ng biyaya,
Wari mo’y nagsabula.
Sino?
Nang ihain ang dalág,
Nagsipasok ang lahat;
Ay, sinong maghuhugas?
Isa-isang lumabas.
Bugaw
Iyon bang batang-bata
At tiyak na sariwa?
O iyong dalubhasa
Ngunit medyo...
The chisel as creator
Lends shape to wood, to stone.
Shape being the truth of character,
Reality of body and bone,
Sculpted fact of form,
The confidence of matter.
The...