Crucified

To whom shall I turn to
To whose ears shall I cry it out
This dirge of pained heart,
Bewitched and led on
By an elfin lady so fair and enigmatic
Whose laughter of dawn
Has awakened my weary mind
And whose eyes of star
Has mirrored my wounded soul,
I shall wail out at Jenly’s Store
And sob shall I
In a quiet Marble Hall
On the resting hill of the fallen and the forgotten
But will the Jae-o remember its sad rhymes
Will the Balete tree understand its haunting sighs
Shall I then have my vindication
Once I uttered the Seven Last Words atop the hill of Agtawagon?

Desperado

I’m a withered leaf
Fallen early from a sturdy Balete tree;
I’m a juvenile caterpillar
Yet tired with this business of eating
And crawling and struggling for the top;
I’m an insignificant dirt
Trampled upon by busy feet
Along Ayala Avenue
Solitary and hopeless
Doubtful even of the dawn of another day.

Your Grief

Your bulging eyelids
Tell me that your pillow was again atop
your face last night
providing a perfect cover
suppressing the sobs
absorbing the tears
concealing the pains of life
lest your sister-roommate suspects

As you went about
the business of the day
you face the world with a Mona Lisa smile
more than a perfect cover
an enigmatic façade
of a young beauteous professional
concealing the scarred and confused heart
lest those green-eyed officemates find out.

But your grief is a story
an attentive ear can hear.
It is a song a loving heart can echo
or a picture a caring hand can paint.
Your sad eyes
Tell me that it is indeed darkness
But isn’t it that in darkest night
where stars shine most brightly?

Longings

In a secret place,
where a solitary Ilang-ilang
stands watching in silence
the dying sun as it kisses
the fleshly horizon,

where a lonely kingfisher
dives for its supposed dinner
as the dusk envelops the point,

there I reach out to you
though you’re in Venus.
I feel you though you’re far away.
I touch you though you’re
in the shadow of my dreams.

In my secret place,
our rendezvous,
we share our joys and pains,
we hold and let go of ourselves,
we make love and caress each other.
We celebrate our lives together
in my dreams.