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Lines withdrawn in the psalms of...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.
Kaibigan,
Petmalung lodi ka na dapat ngayon, paalala lang
Baka kasi nirarayuma na yang akay-akay mong salita
Sa taludtod; apdeyt apdeyt din pag may taym.
Wag na wag...
For Mariko
This inconsolable distance
Between our lips
Separated by unfamiliar cities
And impassable seas;
This insatiable wonder for the unknown
That grows every day in morbid anticipation
Of the smell...
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...