Ripped Apart

This is a perilous season.
Some content may not be suitable-

In color or black-and-white,
they are still dead.

Why count bodies in peace time?
Something about parts and whole.

I agree. This is more than just
an inconvenient fact:

keeping your feet away
from blood-soaked pavements.

Today, I ask, while watching TV-
Were the bodies covered by newspapers?

The Issue of a Singular Act

The rains erased what had been
a whole picture of you.

Reduced to myriad pieces
on the marble floor like a puzzle,

I see no single match
to light a fire inside a room.

A broken voice is insistent.

The need to act is a reaction
against the sound of tick-tock.

But the seriality of my singular act
is no match.

Am I enough?

El Nino comes

El Nino comes-
dry ground gets buried by
rushing flood waters.

In the calm morning

In the calm morning,
father lifts up his dead son
from the flood waters.

Another Dawn

Dawn breaks. I rise to wait,
for this curtain between us,
to be set aside.

As the light exposes the horizon
of our thoughts, my wish is
to see your eyes, brilliant, again.

I wish to welcome you back,
to walk with you, with joy
that belongs to pride of possession,

to revel in your details-
black hair and eyes, on your fair face-
clear, distinct, once again;

to enjoy a small talk,
with your sanity back,
strong, no longer shaken.

But a gust has yet blown again,
the cold is back, in your eyes-
but I will try again.

Distracted

To fall asleep on this seat,
on a long haul flight,

may appear to shake you
off my thoughts,

but the air turbulence
will shake me awake instead.

The airplane's ceiling lamps
are all turned-off

but you are my reading light,
spot lit on the laptop,

my fingers
busy on the keys.

Maybe, it's the best way
to ride this disturbance:

you-
distracting me.

To My Brother Jonathan

'Tis not when a heart beat goes full stop
and eyes then lose the power of its stare,

Nor when the sheet is stretched to cover up
your full length, no longer gasping for air,

that my pain like skin scratched by thorns
ignored when running away from hunters,

can now rest, bleed and cry for attention.
There never will be a good time ever.

To nurse loneliness like a wound,
and dress it everyday until it dries,

is to hope a healing can be found,
to finally say my good-bye-

We have few words for each other,
but love is not bound by them or any other.

Rainy August

A sunny 8am did not
come true,

the sky looking grayish white,
the color of the bedsheet.

The weatherman did forecast
lots of rain for August.

As clouds keep shifting,
a gust hits the window pane

just when I looked away,
your body still warm,

after the doctor said
you are gone.

Dump Truck

I missed the dump truck this morning.
Now, I am stuck, counting garbage bags

the neighbors hate to see torn open
by scavengers. I wonder should I

be sitting here, checking
your pictures on Facebook

or be ridding all this
trash? But your smile, new company,

longer hair, without me seated
anywhere close to you-

I can't keep on piling up all these
thoughts and keep missing the dump truck.

No Better Time

It was a matter of bad timing.
Einstein asserted enough about spaces
and for you it meant no vacancy.

Death happens here regularly.
In this vacuum, there is no room
for the sound of your agony.

In a purposeless universe,
disappearances are just too far
away from us,

like nebulas signing off
above our night sky beyond
my span of attention

as your dust is dispersed
in this air, demonstrating Einstein,
his physical laws.

There is no better time for gravity
to bring you back to me.

Friendly Skies

What if I were thirsty and 7-11
ran out of styro cups?

What will hold the overflow
of words, stinging to the ears?

This is an escalation
of the weather's status.

In Manila, a government man aimed
his thermometer gun

to those out in the sun too long.
Its laser hit a forehead.

But this is not Iran
where standing up could fetch

a stray bullet
from a hostile sky.

Get out into this rain,
umbrella-less, to be counted

as ex-warm bodies
under this red-shifting sky.

If I were in Boston,
I would say,

'The snow has mixed
with mud'.

Mobile Church

The jeepney has an entry way and corridor 
leading to an image of Christ above the windshield.

Here, a poor boy serves like a sacristan. 
He cleans the passenger shoes as if to make them holy.

When his service ends, he raises his palms 
not to pray but to collect for alms,

Before his altar, he looks up  at the Christ
gazing down on those seated.

He leaves but another passenger gets in
with his own Bible and pouch.

Glow

While the flame was there, she left,
like smoke dispersed by the breeze.

He is left with embers, wavering
against his breath, the wind.

Remaining seated,
he watches the death of a glow.

Independence Day

A holiday excuse is coming, flags notwithstanding,
do you recall the answers to serious questions
from your last exam? You failed again, thinking memories
are so volatile and your recall of the national anthem were
like a game of jigsaw puzzles, singing the wrong lines at the wrong time.
What did you do with that Chinese media guy now
that you are in Hong Kong? Right, it has nothing to do
with Disney world. Don't shake my hands for now.
Everything American seemed to have caught a virus-
their peanut butter, stocks, and airports.

Another Project

Hands, clapping, voices, boisterous,
high-fives, and a document, signed:
after this, I worry about you and me
if we are to see each other again.

Soon, this room will host others,
after blanking whiteboards
and removing papers posted on walls.
The hours had been logged, accounted for.

I am losing you like a re-assignment
to a new room, another set of numbers,
deadlines, late meals, delays,
and change requests.

Maybe, you are like another project
I need to close down to move on.

Homecoming

The dinner is cold,
a seat remains vacant.

I wait like a wife
for a knock

on the door
of my thoughts.

Perhaps, tonight,
like a husband

words will come,
to spill like seeds.

Lost

He confides
'She only has a few days left.'

Fighting the loss of breath
I ask, 'So, what is next?'

As he lays out what to expect,
I lost you in the details

of many new mornings-
mourning.

The day you leave
I will be somewhere else

looking for you in places
we have been.

A dead poem

His poem
lifted my eyes

to the ceiling
of his ambition,

from where his lines hang
down to expose a body,

twisted,
breathless.

This is not a love poem (again)

The sort you'll find in bookstores
and greeting card racks,

with nice colors and illustrations,
with words, simple and sweet.

It doesn't have a dried rose petal
with leaves and stem on the page.

It doesn't come with a bouquet either
wrapped with eucalyptus or rosemary’s.

It doesn't know how to start,
and not sure how to end.

It's like that nimbus
hovering in your sky,

but never letting go
of the rain.

To Return

To return is to shuffle recollections,
to superimpose images

against what is seen, what is felt
under this different sky.

Where we stood has been altered.
Before us are rocks, black

against an earth, browned
by lack of grass and trees.

I fear the rains took away
whatever is left between us.

I can plant seeds here and there,
if you let me.

This side of the mountain
can return its color once again,

its past and present will be one,
if you just say so.