Hames

We fail to keep promises

just as we are used to

stare like goats. Upfront

confronting strangers.

Inside this hallowed cavern

with  a burden of care while  

we share those empty gaze.

Needing to belong.

We don’t even dare

to twitch a smile- as a sign.

Filling void spaces to fit.

Caged and restrained

our little freedom.

Moving and hurrying

to destinations, crowding

one way streets like ants.

Knee to knee. Side by side.

Wanting to repel, burst

into the open, running away

with the world past behind us.

We fail to stay as we are.

Outpacing each other.

Chasing the dust cleared

of promises we can’t keep.

Finding it hard to believe

it was only inches away,

that we ought to  try

mending this great divide.

You will find me here sitting

at the end of the sentence-

like in a breakwater. Waiting

for ships and vessels of words

in this twilight seeking

the meaning of this impending

darkness.  When

it anchors and begins to unload

subtle images of this lonely harbor.

Watching the past

sinking down

along

with my heart.

And the sky will once again-

dotted by inkblots.

Smeared into the face

of this teary evening.

While time slowly

freezes, then fades into

early hours till daybreak,

unfinished.

When I am not

being able to say

goodbye.

Mid-air  in my waking dream

are clouds and clouds away.

Like migratory creatures

homing their way into

transient frontiers.

Lulled by the rhythms

of the humming steel.

It churns anxiously, and

earnestly of home.

While the hands of time

back paces into

a counterclockwise.

The book of days

Suddenly flipped

to a journey of old memories.

Of  some silky threads

of years slipped through

in a hindsight.  As if

I didn’t left yesterday.

Then, something in me

fluttered like a fly.

Or is it really?

Touching down

this imagination to a farce.

As I watch the blue sea

became the bleakest

monotony of rust-colored roofs.

And the bumpy runway

made me remember

of the past.  That is much more likely-

today.  When nothing ever happened

to the ones I left behind- yesterday.

The gossamer of traffic.

Life entangled mazes

survival in the loop.

Sleep walking and heady

as the smog filtered

in my nostrils.

A reality I denied to believe.

Have I gone too far?

Too fast. Too soon.

As if I didn’t left?

People may need. Two different things:

A warm blanket on a winter night.

A cold water on a summer day.

That was easy.

But the book says otherwise

that people need three,

actually.  A companion.

And this, I can’t hardly achieve

without a sacrifice.

Lukewarm

in a room I shared with another.

Living thing.  My search for warmth

is in its dying. My search for coldness

is also in its dying.

So I wake up

each early morning turning off

this machine-sucking

life of the other.  In the comfort

of my own breathing.

Hoping that the easiness

will boil down

into two different things:

People may need.

While warming winter.

And cooling summer.

Without you.

Flipping through a newspaper  is like a world

in a still shot of words. A night sky of falling stars

against the backdrop of inkblots and faded graphite.

Filling out the whiteness of pages parched with yesterday

scenes captured and distilled in silence.  Here, where

its blackness became a cure to this ennui.  A distraction.

A flotsam of unhappy events, of somebody’s tale.

The never-ending saga of tragedies and its epic struggle

to survive. Looking for signs, of parallelisms

which might ephemerally keep that connection.

While tomorrow is another news rolling off the press

harping that life will still stay relevant. Each day.

Either way, we will neglect

this guesswork.

Swimming in the stream

of people encapsulated

in their self-made walls.

Jammed in traffic

of clues and hints,

lip synching the same

old line of self-defense.

A justification

followed by explanations.

Why do we choose to stay

the same?

For you, love is

a crossword puzzle

deciphering codes

stitching words.

If words would say rightly

the true meaning from the heart.

Then, we don’t need

a second chance

to feel as if the world around us

stood still. It will only leave

a language that we

both understood eversince,

that day we met

for the first time.

There will be a single spark of light.

But not from the stars. Because even them,

they have shied away and have forgotten.

Here, only from my birthday candle

casting shadows waltzing the wall

and the chilly wind whistling a tune,

sending wisps of wishes, for tonight.

While the rest of the world snoozes

in its deafening silence. Getting used

with the normalcy of tragedies.

And in their lukewarm sympathies.

In the quiet corner of the city, littered

and battered of the rain-drenched

images of chaos and shattered hopes,

on the table a bowl of rice

and a can of sardine. In a color

charcoaled space,  I breath as a man

determined to celebrate my existence

among the ruins with this twist of fate.

I shifted my gaze from the table

to the broken windows and watch

the passing of the storm clouds

in the evening sky. I am happy

but no sound of laughter. Hearing

the incessant drop of water

from a leaking roof.  Contented

among the shadows. Decided

to bury the hatchet of what is past.

Gathering what’s left after the storm.

As I dream of patching the tattered

and pock-marked walls, then hide

the traces of mud  in fresh white paint.

Believing nature has a way to let people

start anew. De-cluttering my life of things

that entangle men of never-ending want.

Until now,  when I had less.

There was a time in our lives

when we thought of the raincloud

as omen, spoiling the day

for us to play in the open.

The rain fills the street canals like rivers.

And if it has stopped, then hurriedly,

we rip pages from our notepads

to make us- paper boats.

We were so young then.

We are fond of races. We will race to see.

Whose boat comes first crossing the finish line?

If our paper boats were like voyages

of our little dreams. Would it be?

I didn’t cross the finish line first.

As mine have wilted wet, moving slow.

I have to be content coming in

as number two, a  second placer.

You always come away as the victor

in almost every races we used to play.

We are not so young anymore.

The tough gets going and it’s me

who have stayed behind, year after year

bobbing at sea. Sailing the ocean because

I didn’t win. Crossing first the finish line.

I have tried everything I was taught

to do. Trying to fit in the world

by becoming someone who,

I am not. An everyman.

What’s going on? How tragic

is this shallow happiness

becoming emptiness, seeking

where is the enlightenment?

Punch me hard to bleed.

Hit me more. Be harsh to me

like a nihilist. Obliterate

my every apprehensions.

Pull me away from this reality,

sheltered in my comfort zone.

Stripped me off with this fear of pain.

I need another revolution.

Break down this prison walls

closing me in. Out of this

sanity’s edge,  I will escape

my disillusions and never return.

Wake me up from my deep slumber.

that I have to die, to gain.  

I will not pursue my defense now.

I will surrender to your every blow.

I will lie here half-dead in bloodbath,

the glory of my sweet liberation.

Beyond the years and graying hairs

I am keeping in a book of dreams.

Like dried leaves and dried petals

flooding my way  to the mailbox,

togetherness is just one simple note

of words handwritten in a page.

And in my dreams I am trading places

of happy photographs and postcards.

Those promises that fill my head

I am dreaming still. Wondering

what’s like to be on the other side

traversing like pigeons. Drifting on

edifices, and parks, and monuments,

wide-eyed in surprise, collecting moments.

This morning, I waited for the postman

dropping another note to my mailbox.

And I’ll begin to step back in time

miles and miles away from yesterday.

Wishing and hoping memories can be

such like these,  just keeping souvenirs.