You’re looking at me
the same way I to you
Yet no one notices (not even you?)
How I like you glimpsing
here; now
sometimes leaning or touching
glancing; your eyes are dancing–
I catch them all welling.
I wish more than anything
when we are like this flirting,
you are braver for my
feelings unspoken.
Eyes that gape at you
In silence
Basking in every t-shirt you always
Wear.
Your hairy chest I’d like to hide
Not minding the time.
You smell awful that’s what they say
That I never once believed.
Wednesdays and Sundays are but a favourite
For your hair gets thrice as blacker after it’s ran by water.
Who’d think I’m crazy for you
I never met your daring eyes, never bump nose to nose, or stand on two feet inside yours
Guess there are reasons why
Everytime I ignore you
Your hard stare and dark brows
Complain
Silently with half a smile.
Was it yesterday when you wore those
Pair of faded blue jeans?
Melting my knees with your incomparable looks.
This one-sided affection and presumptive heart don’t
Want any more ploy and toy
That smile that voice that brain and air cool are
Too much for an encouragement.
Being around you is a lost love I’d like to keep
Bizarre, surreal no further than
This reality.
I mourn the days that turn green leaves to brown.
Changing one after one
Bares the heart-piercing
Hypothesis for
My mistaken identity.
So where do I stand in all this?
Truly I don’t want to answer..
As long as I have you
Near and far
In this demanding cell
I’ll not fail in this tremendous tale.
Like the nightingale so
Perpetual; it’s my sworn duty.
This silly mind wishes you’d blackmail me,
Push me to a dead-end to make me confess
How this heart never wants
Another man other than you.
But until then
It’s my secret, Darling.
Imagine.
If my lovers were food,
Hung fully on a ratan basket
I’d take no preservatives.
Whether they were imported from China, America, Japan, UK, Spain, Latin or locally made
I’d gladly take them in and make no mistake
Call his nourishment a charm
Beneath my skin and intestines
I’d call it nothing else but
Home.
Before I was satisfied with the prestige brought by writing a couplet then I learned about haiku and loving its 5-7-5 lines as much as the first.
But
When I met you, various collections of Russian novels and southern poems I wanted to touch and read. Whether they’d be in prose, in episodes or in a grand narrative. Words to adorn you while you sleep. For how many versions, sure. I’d love to. When you looked at that spot near your city forming a triangle as you spent a good 10 minute stare at it from your Godparents’ condo, I didn’t know how engrossing that moment could be. Or when you walked out on the quite sidewalks and started reminiscing precious times around town, I’d trade any of my possession to write about that. How you opened a beer in my honor after we shared petty stories. And while you drove your Dad interestingly, I thought about more words to put that scene in a clear-cut poem.
Suddenly
I see you every time and it’s rare how consuming to find you in every word. Of course, there has to be some plots. Perhaps, plots could run like the Caucasian lad inheriting a necklace then, the necklace made him a merman. Or a series of detective plots written vividly only to find you the hero at the end part. Then, finding gold in the house of the peasants where you lived on your vacation but thought money could be destructive so you built them a school and the money for their books and their first teacher was you. Or maybe a collaborative work with different types of people doing humanitarian work in Nicaragua and in Tanzania.
Anything as in any thing.
Words just love you
Now
as I do.
The mountains look up to the clouds waiting for a kiss on a foggy afternoon
The soil kisses the foot of the hill for a beautiful worth
Then the soil kisses everything around her the greens, yellows and reds all contain in one big halo
The bird sings to the heavens and thanks the Father for when he’s home to his nest the she-bird awaits and smacks him a kiss
The fountain overflows with water to all strangers so when they’re thirsty before they gulp first, they kiss the water for their desire to be quenched
Even the sea nourishes whoever dives in its waters for a bountiful scenery when you give your body as its own fill and be kissed
The moon and the night sky both have something so reassuring in their cosmic set up cos together they vow before the sea to be one and kiss before they light up the world at night
Your hands they clasp with another hand for a dainty lil kiss on a tiresome day
And your brain thinks about a kiss on two sweet lips before you go to bed
Then it might be wonderful to believe
” What are all these kissings if you and I won’t kiss and be bitter? “
Oh but Darling, the world never fails to teach us.
Look and let’s believe our desires to be kissed..
And let’s just kiss.
It’s four o’ clock in the morning. The earth prepares for twilight. As the clouds regurgitate its splendid moment of nudity, your breathing descends immensely. I whisper to you, Remember the day you asked me about my age? You said, “how old are you?” You laughed so hard when you saw my mercurial reaction. So hard your dimples shaped the flesh in your cheeks at 20. And I felt I was at my 29th year again.
Dearest,
This respirator might defeat your frail body but never will it succumb the high-spirit in you. Throw wide the memories we had like quicksilver for they were fated to be watched like little slates of flashback episodes of our love. Sleep soundly and contain only me in your anxious child’s heart. Let me wan all acts of self-betrayal done by your restless fear of leaving the fruits of our honest labor in this world stained by piqued hardships and disgust.
Dearest love,
I’ll hold the same palms on our wedding day,
I’ll thresh the same finger tips now calloused and overdosed by your encroaching empathy and trust.
…On our death bed will sleep together like we knew this bed is ours and ours to keep.
—–
On our death bed at 25, 34, 52, 68, 79 years we’ll live our lives twice.
W: (chuckles over beer in his flat) so when was the last time you had sex?
M: I can’t remember it quite well. But it could be over six months… (touching his brows as he grins)
W: seriously? That was like six years ago! (chuckling and teasing him with utter seduction)
M: oh yeah so you’re laughing at me huh? (talking with a similar seduction and showing his eyes filled with mischief )
W: uh..no. No. No. I’m not. In fact, I like it. (she smiles softly and sweetly because she’s guilty and wants to make it up with him)
M: (moving closely toward her with a biting air of desire wanting to beat her out of confession) hmm..no? Really sweetheart? You like it?…
W: (pumping blood and pounding heart) yes. I miss it. I like knowing that you haven’t had sex that long.. (as she responds meekly)
M: (flushing neck and cheeks in the dark) why?..only inches away from her praying lips.
W: (gasping for air with an open mouth) she is melting like a pool of ice-cream enclosed in a sauna… He’s very irresistible so she kisses him first.
Oh, this is going to be a fight under the moonlight.. Tipsy but sober…he wouldn’t want to miss this one either..
W: Are you surprised that I kissed you?
M: nope. Not at all. Damn it. I miss it too!
-Poem-
You and me.
We’ve just met and now
I’m in your place.
Talking this sweet nonsense.
Wondering how it’s like to be wild sometimes.
Like a bitch like a hooker
Who leads you to a slutty conversation
Here at night..with the moon kissing the darkness first…
And the stars singing the hymns and lighting the sheets of clouds as their mattress ..
This beer,
the setting,
the daring lines,
the inviting touches and
the moment..
To get real and
Be real..
We’ve been waiting for this.
But tomorrow,
Let’s just say..
We don’t remember this.
Together.
Today I’ll hold the reigns. You won’t say a word. This petty flush of bedside rumble will be published an hour after. Don’t think I’ll let you. I’ll rouse your horses; ready for the all time marathon in the jungle. But you’ll not cum unless I say so. Don’t touch yourself. Just don’t touch yourself. Hold it close. I’ll mount you but don’t crack the jar yet. Remember I’m holding the reigns. Trust me for the delay. The chicken skin, pelvic reverberating, shaft explosion; I know. The aisle won’t suffice. Your office will be on fire. Better yet, own us a room in a cheap motel.
Grip me. Pull me back on the bed. Insert your hand in my sweatpants. Heat presses under the vertebrae of my skin; hitting all the capillary veins. Throw in the white sheets. Lay me down. Write me a poem down under. Tonight, make me surrender thrice. Or you’ll get laid ‘sex’ times.
He never knew I was a writer. Or that at least I write. He knew I studied Literature but he never asked what it was. He didn’t know I loved books but he knew I read. He never knew anything until I told him so. Still he never knew anything because he dared not to know.
Stir fry my body like that of pork fresh from a newly slaughtered pig. Include my fingers and toes to add you the blazing chills. So that when you eat it for breakfast, lunch or dinner your mouth will remember the infinitesimally rotten taste of the body you emptied thrice when you closed the door and left without a thinning word. Cut my limbs and put them onto a barbecue skewer then steam them til they wrinkle and complain. When you’re done, peel off my skin. Turn them into an armor and wear them like it’s popular; en vogue. So that the next time I throw back the hatred you gave me, you’ll not perish but you’ll reek with the irreparable blemish.
He never knew I was a writer. Or that I still am. He never knew how he came to be the words in my poems, the voice in my poetry I relentlessly listen to and sing at noon when it was the hottest and at midnight when it was the coldest. He never knew I wrote about him; us. Still he never knew why I couldn’t do that anymore. For what these pens and journals were for? When they were persecuted by their own coordinates and momentum?
Even after our marriage, he never was open and willing to know all about me. But I knew all too well about him because all those times we were together I tried learning and knowing all about him. Rubbing the rough edges of his skin, strumming the holes in his heart and blowing his inborn tattoo of hatred and insecurity off his body.
I knew I was a writer. I still am. But my hands, the pages in my notebook and the ink of my pen no longer recognized him. They could no longer be moved by his slightest thrill.
Many times I became exactly that weeping writer his heart forbade to view.
A composite of me and the universe 