30 December, 2014

/

Living vicariously and invading privacy / piracy.

10 December, 2014

/


hands that wake the dead, tenderly
grasp for something lost

a boat on a still lake rocks quietly
as the impenetrable night hums

soft in black water, he
grieves with palms pressed

her tongue moving, wet
in the language of fallen gods

a prayer for forgetting, weighing
like wisps from the mouths of ghosts

i am not your animal, honey
dribbling from the hearts of  their bodies

honey: a crater brimming with black feathers
cradling a small wooden tree

and the dying of something unnamed
in the swill of the sway

he begs for return, he opens his hands
the boat is empty, the lake is dry

24 October, 2014

a mess of a post: really old draft i'll eventually work on again

I am always dreaming of waking up; as if resurfacing.

a Saturday morning, dewy skies and September, an arm around my waist, a leg between my legs like papers haphazardly folded together then smoothed, coming off clumsy. My hair a black lake on the pillows and your fingers palm fronds on my hips. Outside there's a city kissing your window as you press your body to mine, still lost in sleep, slowly brushing back branches to wakefulness.


24 September, 2014

xii


of that night
what i remember:

the warmth of your chest
and your heartbeat.
temporal dimensions bent
hanging off the rungs of your rib cage
and the desperation of your hands 


07 September, 2014

the truth is we were made for each other, and i say this only because i'm coming to terms with the fact that i am a monster and am losing my mind in the process. i keep falling in love with people. i keep trying to make people fall in love with me like i'm trying to prove something, tying strings around my fingers, tying strings around their wrists and knitting a web of loves i can hardly keep track of. i am a prison of a human being. i am a spidery prison of a human being. tying strings around their necks, pricking them with promises. stay here, i love you. and then i leave them there, their lives now woven in and tangled with mine, un-unravelable almost. held in place by the hope that someday i will love them more than i am afraid to lose them. someday they will squirm so violently their bonds will asphyxiate them. and so i figure if i should love someone, it might as well be you who cannot look at me with anything but hunger. who cannot give himself, not careless enough to be stolen. i cannot have you which is why we are perfect. are you seeing it? is it making sense to you? i am collecting lovers like flies. a proposition as much as a warning. perhaps an invitation. i bet you couldn't stay even if you wanted to.

28 August, 2014

vii.

He was struck by her softness, scared as if somehow it would subsume him, like if he held her for too long he would begin sinking into her skin. To melt into the pillow of her embrace the way water envelopes everything it touches. He looked at the fullness of her, the happy gentle way the curves on her surface touched his spindle fingers. The sea that drew him out in the twilight hours of day. He would wade in ankle-deep; sometimes feeling brave, he'd let the waves lap at his knees.

misplaced

Desperate Tuesday nights: every revving engine turning into your ride home, every passing car another half hour stranded in the company of someone tapping his foot in anticipation of your departure. It wasn't always like this. 

Strange how much happens in the passenger seats of cars when you're eighteen. That age seems to coincide with internal vehicular tension, I mean heat. I mean drunken somewhat conversations, leaning against each other and eyes barely on the road, speaking in bodies, or something. But not tonight. Tonight, you're sitting at a gas station and he's unbuckling his seat belt and you're doing the same, first to mirror in response but also because you feel a little short of breath. You debate staying versus jumping out and walking to the nearest coffee shop or bar, anywhere well-lit and still populated, really. 

You think about everything that's happened and not happened in the last three months in all of five seconds. You have to sit in this car for another twenty minutes maybe, and for all that time you'll probably be wishing humans could manifest into another substance, something small enough to tuck into the crack on the right side of a glove compartment. At a loss, you try to make yourself as small as possible; you crumple your legs into the seat, fold your arms across your chest or tuck your hands under your thighs, try to rest your head against the window or just look down.  He's paying the gas station attendant. You think about jumping out again.There's still time. 

Sobering anxiety. You're flushed and pale at the same time and aren't quite sure how that is. This boy doesn't want you. He doesn't want you here.You're trying to figure out what to do with yourself, how do you perform an amputation in a car, how do you cut out the rotting ache before it sets. He's starting the engine you're bleeding all over the seat; it's going to take weeks to get out the stains.


You look really sad. 
Mmm.
I mean, you're really quiet. A lot quieter than usual.
Um well... how are you? How's everything?
Really? 
What do you want me to say--

resignation. hopeful for the dissolution of this body. and that i might forget this night ever happened.

~
Are you sad because of--? 
Yeah, a little. 
Do you want me to kill him for you?

i keep thinking it's stupid and that i shouldn't be sad, but i am. and i'm allowed to be sad. i'm allowed to be sad about you even if it makes me hate myself to be so childish. 


25 July, 2014

Ketamine

I cringe when the word comes out of your mouth
                                                                                  -- love;
it clings like taffy and festers like a sore. I think about it 
sitting in your teeth 
                                       waiting to be said, 
ready at the back of your throat           as if a threat, 
crawling out of your lips like poison or suddenly 
                                                                               like a gun shot. 
                                                                                                        And then 
I'm bleeding again -- 
                                 (and it's you and not you at the same time)


09 July, 2014

22 June, 2014

A.

it lives and dies with this


06 June, 2014

insomnia


eyes sunken so deep
they devour oceans
catch the night on their lashes
pull it waking into blindness

04 June, 2014

It's Not Even The Weekend Yet

This is the part of the night when I try to get home without accidentally walking off a bridge or tripping into someone's knife.

The station's nearly closing - it's 10 - and still there's a gathering of people on the platform. Some have damp crescents on the necks of their over-washed white shirts. Some of them proudly sport the scent of women and cigarettes. Some of them have the rolled up sleeves of mediocre desk jobs, the wrinkled dress shirts of a little over minimum wage. Still not enough to buy a car though. A part of me wonders if they'd catch me if my knees buckled and I fell onto the tracks; after all, accidents happen all the time. I wonder if the blood would come right off, if they'd even try to clean it or if they'd just let it stain until time eventually wears it away. How many people kill themselves by jumping in front of trains? Honestly. They probably don't report every incident. This country doesn't concern itself so much with suicides; everything is either an accident or a murder.

Someone smells like alcohol. That's probably me, I don't know. I spill when I've had too much. Tonight was too much. Where is everyone. Where is. Where. I've got a phone in hand. Call someone. Call everyone. "Hi, I'm on my way home." Did they leave me here. Jeez. 

There's a five under the pebbles by the rails. I could reach for it and fall in and no one would know that I wanted to die.  They'll say I was too drunk to notice, that I made bad decisions but that it wasn't my fault. I might get the platform security fired. They might even blame my friends for not keeping an eye on me. "Hey, um. I just wanted to say hi." These people on my phone keep hanging up. "Yeah, I can probably call when I get home instead. I don't know... I might just fall asleep." Would anyone scream if I jumped. The train's pretty close. The station is vibrating a little. "It's okay, I understand. You're busy; I'm sorry."

It's okay. I can't say I expected to be able to hold a proper conversation. No one has the time or the patience to talk to me. They never do. Everyone's either working or playing or sleeping and look, some girls are coming down the steps. They can't be a day over twenty. Their skirts fringed an inch or two below their panties, shirts tight enough to leave very little to the imagination. One of them smiles at me. Almost completely sure it was me. Am I staring? I'm staring. Stop staring. There was this girl at the bar tonight who played beer pong with me. Afterwards, she grabbed me by the wrist and lead me out the door. She tasted like redemption, like eighteen years of recklessness, like long stretches of crowded roads and youthful impatience to find me. But I'm in a train station standing alone and she's probably having sex with her boyfriend in a parked car somewhere without streetlights. Would she mind if I slipped and broke my skull on something steely and rusted. Would she cry for some guy some night, almost too intoxicated to undo buttons. Christ, I smell like gin. 

Loneliness is underrated. I'm soaked through with alcohol. How does a person not self-destruct at twenty-one? I always thought I had options: so many ways to force a shut down. I could hang myself from the curtain rod, choke and break it, have my family walk in with my sister crying. I could run across a highway in busy traffic. They'd like a petty murder. It's someone to blame. I could aggravate a junkie and have him stick a needle in my throat. A better crime. Intent. Or I could jump in the way of an oncoming train drunk on a Thursday night, spent from school and necessary social waltzes, dreading the idea of a repeat performance. Well.

It's almost here.

19 May, 2014

Adolescent; just girls.

She came home today. 

I hadn't seen her in weeks; I don't know what I was expecting- she looked exactly the same. Her hair shorn with house scissors, jeans worn, shirt short. Even her skin was ill-fitting. We moved to Cavite recently, she reminded me, I can't wait til' I turn eighteen so I can get a haircut from someone other than my mom. She spoke in straight english but her words were clumsy, constant yet fumbling. 


We stood outside for the first fifteen minutes of the church service as I listened to her talk about her life, which was leaps and bounds more eventful than mine. She smiled a lot as she confessed her crimes, sins casually thrown into the furnace. I only go to house parties in the day; sometimes she sits on the bed and watches me smoke so when she drinks, I let her. There's nothing I could have said to faze her- already a soldier at seventeen- so I told her about my friends. Satisfaction when the shock registered. I can't believe you guys share things that personal. I told her about the perks of befriending writers. 

As we sat down in church, our conversation continued on touch screens. She handed me her Samsung, read this. Her girlfriend texted her seven times when she said good morning: an homage to the words 'I love you', a redundancy of the promise 'I'll always be there', and a violation of every 'I just need some space' ever said. She'd gone through so much more than me and yet is convinced that my advice is worth something, because for some reason I'm supposed to be good at this. 

Her girlfriend is six years older and is holding down a job, travels approximately two hours to see her in secret, and only on the weekends. Her girlfriend is not nearly as rough, not nearly as repressed as she is. She's convinced she's found herself a saint; that she, violent, lacks the tenderness it means to be good. I just can't control myself. There is an animal in everyone. 

We've known each other since we were in grade school; I remember scaling balconies with her. We'd run from the authorities and rub ourselves gray with dust, running and hiding and snickering about getting away. Now she smokes, we all have our vices - it's no excuse but I didn't say anything. Now she runs from bigger things, from the restrictions of living in her matriarchal household, being unable to rise against. Passive aggressive drinking, smoking, and sex and sex and sex. I didn't choose to be like this, she says about her sexuality. I just am. Usufruct to self-destruction as seen fit, or unconsciously ignored. 

I can come out to the world, everyone except my mom. Caught once and beaten blue. She says I'll go to hell.

In the middle of church, she left to pee for fifteen minutes. My girlfriend called. Just checking up. She is looking for more than a seventeen year old can give of herself, confidante confused for something lasting. She declared love and concern so openly; reading a conversation was walking in on intimacy, as if a dark room at dawn. They were clearly in different places. I don't know if I can, she's not going to want to hear it. It's not the age disparity; they just seemed to want different things. I told her that she should address that, but that it was her decision, not mine. 

We exited after the closing prayer. She said something as we descended the stairwell in cheery disposition. My dad slept at our house last night. He hasn't done that in two years. My brother doesn't talk to me; I try but he just stares or nods or shakes his head. I want to tell her she's brave just for caring enough to try, but I don't. She goes on. 

She's resilient in her domestic confinement, unyielding to her mother's demands. It would be wrong to be condescending; she was capable; she could manage. We stood against the railing overlooking the mall's first floor where a sea of heads had washed in from the outgoing service. With an arm on the rail, she leaned on one leg in her old sneakers, pants that had seen better days, and a shirt that predated our college years. Smile worn graciously. 

I hugged her before I left. 

Next week, okay?


06 May, 2014

Incendiary

"I want us to be compatible."

You're driving up a mountain road. He's at the wheel, a hand on your thigh, a cigarette held between his teeth. You're barefoot, legs propped up on the dashboard, window down to let the wind ravage your hair. He's wearing aviators. You push your glasses into your hair to draw back the bangs. Sunlight washes the windshield in glory; this is where you will always be. These front seats are a throne room, this highway a kingdom; you click your lighter as he shifts gears. 

To your right you see vertical cliffs, the greenery crawling up, roots intrusive. He rubs his cigarette out on an improvised ashtray and asks you to pass something in a bottle. You oblige and mention literature in passing. He responds in according proficiency, quoting someone who was famous twenty years ago. You nod. His music is drowned out by the sound of the wind whirring past. He doesn't turn the volume up.

You can feel the weight of your bags in the backseat -- your mother asking you if you've eaten, if you're happy. You say yes with soft peace; you hold his hand, take a deep breath. I'm happy, you say. She smiles, and this is all you get before she's gone and it's just things rustling in padded canvas. When she gets home she will find the letter and you hope she doesn't cry - it begins and ends with I love you. 

You fidget; you worry but refuse to ask him again. You'd gone over it so many times. You're going up to Baguio for a small retreat. You said it wasn't necessary but he insisted: I want to do this for you, and then he kissed you and kissed you and kissed you and you had sex again for the second time that night. "I don't want to lose you like I have lost those before you." and it sounds almost promisory. He said he wanted to write, to be alone, to be with you. Isn't this what you wanted?

You imagine your life in three years -- a child cradled to your chest, head tucked under your chin, soft as water. You hold her with all tenderness and rock her to sleep. He comes in from the kitchen with your coffee in hand. He tells you he's tired, tells you about work, looks at the miracle you're holding and smiles. You hand him his daughter; her cheek resting on the tattoo on his shoulder. You want to sleep, you want to cry, you want to make them happy. You imagine him coming home late at night when he's half-drunk on something you can smell from the doorway. Is there someone else. Who were you with. What were you doing. We have a child. I left everything behind. He says, "You're too young to understand," and you throw a plate at him. He ducks and shouts profanities. The baby cries. You shout. Soon everyone's in tears. This happens for three months and you're almost sure you're going to lose your mind; but in the morning he makes you breakfast, and feeds your daughter, and says he loves you and it rings like church bells from underground steeples.

You look out the window again and place your glasses on your lap. You run your fingers through your hair with your right hand. You take a swig from a flask in the glove compartment from two nights ago; he laughs. You take another sip for the prosperity of romance, another for the promise of adventure. You put it back and flash a smile, hoping there was a flaw in the design, something you missed, something unaccounted for; and that this man in the driver's seat will spend your youth well; and that in ten years, there will be more to this than ashes. 

01 May, 2014

"college tip #2"

don't be afraid of gaining weight; you're turning into a woman
it really doesn't feel that way

day 6: 'outside the window'

*

26 April, 2014

PSA

To comemorate napowrimo 2014, and to make up for all the days I didn't make poems for, I'm going to attempt to do the challenge in May instead? Expect it to stretch out into June. It's been pretty busy lately. 

23 April, 2014

M.


I slept in your shirt last night, over-sized and forgotten at the bottom of a pile of long-washed clothes haphazardly shoved into a closet with half-broken hinges.

05 April, 2014

day 0 & day 5: the kiss

Poem Used: an excerpt of when men started calling... by Shinji Moon

I’m wearing my skin and it 
clatters when I walk, and

no one prepared me for 
this.

Day 4: If


time is linear,
you will never happen again.
                     --  love me now

Day 1: fragmentary


To just stop will mean no more swish or fizzle or bubbling, no delusion of
an interval.
Then, the music.
In the meantime, don’t ask, he won’t hear you.

from “The Book of the Dead Man (Silence)” by Marvin Bell



14 March, 2014


1. When I first found you, I thought to myself how interesting you must have been to have shown up in the middle of this tumultuous ocean with me, emerging from the underside of a boat near-sinking. I hoped you would teach me how to tie a knot to combat the raging sea or slit a throat without wincing; instead finding out that you had escaped a prisoner and knew nothing of the water.

2. Best viewed under moonlight, under premise, under siege.

3. I will never recover from you.


28 February, 2014

first date idleness


The curve of lips
curving, curling
folded like cloth,
a stack of linens
a swan sitting
on a dinner plate

perhaps pressed
against a mouth
to dab away red,
pressed against
a neck, pushed into
a blouse, lipstick
staining, fresh

the curve of lips

10 February, 2014

burdened

She watches him speak

Twenty is such a hollow number, barren and earthbound
imagine surrender; running in the night from blindness
falling like a tree in an empty room silently sobbing
damp soil beneath worn boots on a manufactured forest floor
the bones in his mouth  grinding profanities when he cannot sleep
in a stranger's house he still hears the fighting, voices raised, fists
where a spine should be; crumbling
the idea of place called home

She watches him speak

The same lips loved by a twelve year old girl
now quiver with the sorrows of a boy who has kept too quiet 
wishing to fasten his buckling knees- biting down
petalled mouth bleeding, skinnied and sun-burnt and cliff-edged; 
spine shot straight, eyes still
wandering like a child who has walked the earth alone
a soldier by the side of a river waiting for the forest to burn

She watches him -
he is a pool of something viscous, crawling from battle
hands over discarded rings; 
imagine surrender. 

18 January, 2014

So.

The little I know about leaving: there is always something that stays. You left long before I could say anything, long before I began to notice.

What used to offer now pulls away; you are three fields ahead of me walking hand-in-hand with what is to you a force of nature. How grateful you are for the presence of a storm, standstill amazement she walks in quiet beauty and does not slip through your fingers, does not run away. Secretly you wonder when the winds will blow her back to a time before you, or hastily push her into a time after.

Are you still afraid that she will leave you the way you leave everyone else. 

08 January, 2014

sext


he says 

let me show you how to speak
tongue lightly against 
the insides of teeth, curling 
pressing, peaking--

let me show you 
how to arch a back like a bow,  
sighing an arrow into night,
a night breathing into forests
forests burning into bones

let me show you how a man 
holds a flower with two fingers, 
takes it between his teeth, lips 
par ted --petals un furle d

he says 

let me show you how to tie an animal down
let me show you how to eat with your hands