From 15 Poems I

Peep

I see you when you don ‘t see me

breastfull—all skin—in your bath

In your innocence, I keep you in beauty

like the gods, this window is me

becoming the swan.

And beyond your clothes

this is what you are, really—

have I known you better this way,

the Person without the lies

of clothing? God ‘s

art without the censure,

truly in the company of stars!

No

Yes, your no threads thru my within

I have inside me a heart nailed with what I am not

No, I am not what I am you think Yes I am

And suddenly it ‘s Me, suddenly

Because You are where I become with you; because

I with you is Joy to Me.

Yes, you thread thru me, needleless yes,

needless, yet you did, true, my within, thru it

wounding around, wormness.

How so without the prick

of truth, how come you did

swim your spears thru my veins?

No! I am not what I am you think Yes I am. Yet

suddenly, the skin receives its wound, suddenly

the thread without needle thru me,

is true needleness! Happening, now. How dumb?

I am not what I am in your head. Yes. My within is not torn.

My heart is not ugly, Yes my heart is clean. Yes,

your head hurts

Me too much, Now, with, your No:

No, you don ‘t like us as Us, yes ? But Yes, I told you, honest

my within is true; and now, through!

I will always be Me with myself. And I ‘m back

after you made me go

Because you called Me wrong Yes. And the universe is not happy

I am here yet you see me in your head still!

I want you in my within but you can ‘t just tell Me Yes I am!

No, I am not what I am You think I am.

No, you are wrong with your Yes.

Your Yes hurts you

and It is not even me.

Star Poem: How We Wonder What You Are

Forever Stars, how we wonder, yes:

Rockets blasted to the numberless

to catalog the last glittering anxiety

of neighboring, God, to at last

pen the period—silence, to the moaning

manuscripts from Ptolemy to Hawkins…

Point the gray thinkers to their grave

Face the universe eye-naked, wonderless mankind?

Shelf the questions of binoculars, the tears

of observatories—

Ah, Forever Stars! In a way, endless

as all gods are riddles

nourishing our tendency to look up

to something of Height.

As long as wise children sing of your twinkling, remain

yourself beneath the mist, mystify. Leave aging

to mothers now longing for fairy ignorance

as innocence dissolved by the hardening

of the unbroken wishbone.

Children

Isn’ t the greatest life to follow, children’s?

They who fear only what they don’ t see,

and everything, yes, everything is holy.

What is order to them but the unnatural

intention of afternoons to put them to sleep

and divorce them from their play.

They with the courage to fly without proving

the reality of their wings.

And after the rains, how many ships have they sailed

to the infinite, to harvest the grains of time

and stopping it in pickle jars.

Their nations depend on the trees

and on how much shade they can give.

Their wars are deathless

against the Night

and the monsters it breeds beneath the bed

The thunders, that loosen the shadows to the world

against the oppressive bars of rain

against our wills, our reasons, our alien size

They experience their God’s close

intimate as their hands

dipped on the waters of their body

And god themselves

for making the stones

speak, the dark bite

And the stars, how correct they name

the stars! Either the streetlights of heaven

or the footprints of clouds.

As Adam Is Narcissus

In love only on still waters

I turned away from my face:

Round in my eyes is a world.

Without the water, I have reflected myself

into this: You. But wrong!

for Reflection, I have neither your shapes

Nor your control

Inexact Copy, how is this so?

The thunders ripen the rain.

And they are ripe.

Then, You are the falling that rippled my pond

shattering my Other into spheres:

A sudden butterfly shooting from the gray garden

turning my head towards a yellow trail of light

From my vain mirror, away

Had my forgotten face in revenge, turned away in return?

Or resumed loving even in unrequited pain?

Only the frogs knew

Which later, when the Great Voice yawned

all dived to bury their warts into the water.

Waiting For Ronnie At A Canteen By Her BoardingHouse In Legaspi

An unspeakable philosophy of one who is breakable:

A sky is not a sky if it’ s not blue?

No, a sky is not a sky when I’ m not with you.

However, with you I am, there is no sky.

The horizons are bent in horror to another land.

Yes, they shrink until gone, away, no more, but

the air we breathe or the too few earth

beneath your feet; that becomes all.

Anything behind you is muffled,

and everything behind me forgotten,

the breathing between us, and the unhandled gaze

drains the other things.

And what does this made me, but a silver figure

in a looking glass. Testing my independence from your face

defining to defy the secret tendon that muscles our connection.

Returning, we are the original idea of how the sea

and soil crowns every division,

collapses the repel of Un-one-ing.

Like the lock blindly guessing the patterns of grip

to match the teeth of the key, no eyes

have been there, the somewhere bed

where universe and land meets.

Perhaps there is no answer. Perhaps there is no end.

To Jewel Birth-giver to Haraya

Literally a globe in your belly

I ‘ve never seen any woman so full

How many continents swallowed

with your little mouth? How many

people? How much courage to swallow

it all? All the eyes all the arms

all the testicles combined into one

curling.

How could I ever manage not to burst

from the dreadful trees into the wind

with the engine of a stork when the world

crawls out into a child.

Name

I dread to repeat how your hair

hangs before the cliff of your jaws.

As if a pilgrimage of legs

stopping to wonder

at the oceans of your neck

that even the wind has no hands

to push movement on such calm strands

such tiny longings

You deserve the words

sincere enough to echo

even just the surface

of your cheek or an example

of one fluttering moment

of your eyelid

But more offense is given

by not saying

by shutting you the windows

against the breeze that ignites

sudden comets

too sudden as smile is too sudden

or ignorance

by not letting you

know your own hair

I can ‘t call you the way the universe does

I ‘ll name you the name you call yourself

I can ‘t call you the name affection calls you

or the grasses or the streets

or your name in your sleep

or your name

I can’t love you alone

even though love forests

into a patterns of feathers

or a river untamed

I must not feel you

with feeling alone

There can ‘t be a region

in my mind where I fear you

Our distance is simple: it is immense

The number of beds between us everynight

distracts me from your little parts

I must crush you with care

until you crack into a flower

like wind, but not the wind

not its touches never again

the fragrance of its transparence

For I might just liken you again

to the silver stalks in moonlight

aligning the dew into threads

or worse the ropes of rain.

What I Mean

Hi—the rivers are pushing beneath

the crust of my bones

in secret; as tribute to Day, like to God

the untouched hymen, alone, only, always,

the giant Sampaguitas, the Dama de Noches

give off first scents, filling my hollow

eyes, my so called window with laughter

Hello, hello—the heavy feet of boys

walk to their girls, from bedroom to here,

with the moon perfect as tonight

and the walts starts at the floor of my heart

as horses emerge from the nameless forests

trampling upon the still waters without defense

How are you?—with my eyes I tried

to lift the pond from its basin,

to drown the unseen fishes

with air. But the grasses leaned

on my knees and slept, their breathing

so loud it caused my belly to rattle.

Nothing happened but night, and it was

just so silent.

Bye—somewhere embers will someday into fire turn,

and evenings will never need

stars anymore, never.

Paging A Kamia Resident

I always come here to return you

things I took everytime you leave me

by myself. Bored, I took your eyes

like picking shells trapped in the sand.

Fetching it from a distant isle

of Santan, trimmed like a cadet,

lazy to the wind, but deliciously red.

Sometimes your lips fall off like a centerfold.

Besides you do make yourself one stack of magazines

to make waiting easy, I steal it home,

group it with other articles: chapters of your hair

the feature of your forehead and the short

briefs of your nose, all compiled in a portable

memory. Although it costs me a lot of skin

to endure the warmth of your manners,

your politeness, a scalding cup of water,

I still find it very worthwhile to sit with you

as you lie you are still awake

as I pretend you are not asleep.

Full of you already, I have to give up your color

climbing over this Kamia yellow walls.

As usual you act

as if you see the wind. My pygmy Galatea, unguarded

and unawake, I gathered your falling parts

of speech in a yellow notebook, softly.

Softly as it happened yesterday.

Seeing you now, descending

dormitory stairs that shake

like the brown accordion of my knees,

full of asking, and a struggle to remember,

how could you be erased of your patterns

who had exhausted your perfume?

I will have to return

the borrowed mole too

to the white elbows of your jaw.

Ah, and peel your eyes from this morning

sky and stuff it in, back to its darkening burrows!

I Care For You

The same sadness as the armless slime

pulled to the mouth of the drain is saying

I care for you

For I care more than the soap

you rub your face with

and I’ m not your soap

I care for your hand

because it ties your hair

writes me letters. And it ‘s sand

as the fruit falling to the ground

or consumed by weather

without reaching your lips

Because I ‘m stopped to saying

I care for you

for it waves the ocean

just enough to lick

tickles on your toes.

And it seemed an empty cloud

this care, that it fills the heart

with anxiety of rain

It holds you just a little bit

to the point of tenderness

at the same time not holding

because it is a prison with bars of rain

It can ‘t really make you stay

for I know how you love rain

And that ‘s sad as the lake

who can ‘t even ripple

but just there.