el niño
somewhere in the midst of
these hundred summers stitched together,
a memory of rain long forgotten
but now remembered
because of profuse tears
refusing dehydration.
somewhere in the midst of
these hundred summers stitched together,
a memory of rain long forgotten
but now remembered
because of profuse tears
refusing dehydration.
my flag is smeared with blood,
the blood of the blue-blooded
and the blood of the dead.
people watch it fly
through a blue-sky breeze,
above the city, high
and happy like the prince.
but the passing swallows
and the ragged sparrows
know it sighs and cries
in grief kept clandestine
from the well-fed
and the complacent.
alive we are all blue-blooded,
for red harbingers death.
my flag is smeared with the blood
of the living and the honorable dead.
in retrospect i am grateful
for the blue and crimson stains.
i wouldn't want it all yellow,
its courage never waned.
and an immaculate white would mean
all the bleeding happened in vain.
(actually, i was supposed to write an essay about the two logos above that i made for the "proudly pinoy" logo design contest, but hey, this is my poetry page, it's sacrilegious. i still have to come up with another blog site for my essays. so i wrote this bloody poem. if you like those two logos, please feel free to email your positive comments to proudlypinoy@yahoo.com.ph. just state my contest nickname: ivan roarke. you can also vote for the other entries. there are a lot of really good ones at the contest website: http://www.proudlypinoy.org/. there are judges for this contest, but they also rely on public opinion. we would appreciate it if you exercise your right to vote. thanks everyone.)
behind
these bars of white
billowing
curtains of now
I sit in
rapt attention gazing
at the
ghosts who left this
room to roam
the summer outside.
listen! a
sharp cry from the boy
who fell
from the young
branches of
that mango tree.
in the
stillmess of the night,
in his
sweltering bedroom
he shall
nurse his broken arm
with the
stoical passion
of
adventurous youth
and the
lingering freshness
of a girl’s
laughter wafting
over the
shimmering rusty
rooftops as
he sat in the
green-dappled
shadows
of the
mango leaves while
straining
his ears to
separate
the joyful sound
from the
tinkle of the
ice cream
cart’s bell
and the
whistling of
the summer
kites and
the singing
of the flowers
in the
butterfly fields.
after the
fall, he will lie
there in
the grass thinking
with amused
wonder whether
there shall
ever be need
for all the
king’s horses
and all the
king’s men,
for pain is
as sweet
as a hot
summer’s love.
the ghosts
will play
outside
until the shadows
throw their
dark limbs
on the
billowing bars,
and then they
will enter
this house
to retire.
who would
have thought
these
tongues of flame
would erupt
into glorious
unintelligible
noises
only our
maker
can
understand?
if you grew
up in the seventies
you would
know
that uncle
chris didn't die
in an
accident.
he jumped off a jeepney
on its way
to life.
the grass
was brown then
and tall
due to endless days
of sun and
silence.
and there
were only four streets
and four
corners in this town.
the firemen
didn’t have
only a
hose
when the
only cinema
burned
down.
we used to
catch dragonflies,
uncle chris
and I,
in the
ponds at the back
of the
warehouse
where they
stacked bottles
of
coca-cola when
it used to
be coke.
you had to
chew a lot of gum
to catch
dragonflies.
you put the
gum on the tips
of stiff
brown grass.
like those cattails with the pussywillow
of the song
the radio would play
under the
sun and the silence.
and if
uncle chris and i
would just
keep still,
the dragonflies
would come
to listen
to the song
and hover
over the pond
and land on
the gum.
uncle chris
and i
would watch
them die
in the jar
on the porch
under the
moon and the silence
until mom
and dad
would come
to fetch me.
after the
jeepney dropped my uncle,
it resumed
its trip to life.
the rains
chased the sun and silence away,
and the
grass turned green.
the streets
became numerous
and the
firetruck would be lost
if not for
the smoke and the noise.
they tore
the warehouse down,
and the
ponds were dried up
for a cinema that could never be set on fire.
and in the
night when nightmares would tire of me
I would dream
of uncle chris with dragonfly wings,
with silent eyes imploring me:
"open the
jar, set me free."
I have a
window
where the
branches sing
in the
evenings when
the wind
tumbles down
in slow
motion
from a
nearby hill.
I have a
gate,
and its
hinges scream
in the
evenings when
the mind
crumbles down
in emotion
while
everything is still.
because
sleep stands
out of
reach
in the
meadow
outside the
window,
I stare at
it
through the
singing branches
until dawn.
because the
gate would wail
in the
night
if I open
it,
I stare at
the street
and the
still
but singing
branches
until dawn.
anne frank was right.
in spite of everything, she still believed
that people are good at heart.
they're always willing to help
end the misery of
so many godforsaken lives.
a single bullet here,
a knife plunging in there,
a few blows with a rusty pipe.
sometimes that's all it takes,
effortless, powerful nonetheless.
ah, these simple acts of goodness.
at times they can be ingenious too,
for goodness knows no bounds:
rooms and rooms of liberating gas;
warm, cavernous furnaces;
gigantic, photogenic, luminous clouds;
two babels of singing fire.
but nothing can beat
the bashing in of a skull,
for who knows what evil lurks inside.
it might spring out
and crawl on the ground
and multiply
to put an end
to all this goodness of the heart.
in the
morning
joseph
returned
from the
market
with a
basket
laden with
loaves
and fishes
for
breakfast
to find to
his
utter
devastation
that mary
was
in a state
of shock
and instead
of Jesus
a dog lay
in the manger.
last night I
was waylaid
by the
scent of your hair.
tangled in
tendrils of thoughts of you,
it shot to
the surface
like a
diver gasping for air.
and for a
second or two or three,
you crossed
the raging sea
and stood
here beside me
at the top
of the stairs,
watching
the dining table
surrounded
by solemn chairs.
I could
hear silence breathing
and the
memory receding
as my legs
heeded the call
to resume
the nightly journey
from the
dead tv
to the
empty bedroom.