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Poetry

Sisyphus, Rockstar

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...

Another War

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.

Three Poems Before 2025

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...

Una oda a la música

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sails of a boat that bears the shadows of blossoming antiquity Playful noises coming from the grasp of the lips, Lines withdrawn in the psalms of...

Cinnamon Rolls

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...

Retrograde

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.

Random Pickings

Dahil ba

Dahil ba ako'y bata Ikaw ay walang awa? Kung manlaban mahina, Murang-mura ang diwa.   Dahil ba di mo kaya Yaong mas matatanda, Sa akin ibalandra Ang 'di magawa-gawa.   Dahil nga ako'y bata, Naiisip...

SHARK WALL KEY

(Or Triste at the Santa Barbara Sea Center) Maybe it was the quiet desperation of the     sea horse, holding on to a spine of sea grass  inside...

Boyhood

The Santol Trees bear sweet or sour fruitsWe climb with our little hands and feetWe always scurry towards the treetopsAnd look down the world...

Born of the Earth

We were all once born of the earth— keeper of her breath, kin to root and river, to feather and fur, to the anito, the diwata, and the taw’t talun, spirits...