I've always felt awkward about explaining poems. It's not so much a hesitation on how to start the critique, if ever it be called such, but a reticience in dissecting it and finding empty skins, discarded pistachio halves.

We can never really get at the heart of things; once a doctor slices a man up, all he finds are more surfaces. His incisions, deeper and deeper, never tear at the curtain. To him said: I'm sorry, Sir, please go back to your seat; the backstage is off-limits to viewers. But when the opera does show, and when the man's eyes do speak, there will be nothing on his operating desk, and nothing to show for. The inexperienced surgeon's fears can never be allayed.

The diver enters the water. And the sea heals itself faster than any broken heart could. Its hands clasp in joyous leaps and forgets that any breach had been made. Within water, the diver makes masterful strokes that meet persuasive currents: he learns a secret or two. Within him, his blood converses like old friends with the water beyond. The diver lifts himself from generous water, walking away with nothing but the droplets in his skin.

The dam of cadence breaks
from pitters of the heart
to skipping, soaring thumps.
And the patter of your feet
hurls from bacchanal beats
into the rhythmless dissolution
of stillness.


Because my head was abuzz with caffeine and would not let me sleep. :)
I like how this turned out. I might or I might not continue it. This seems like the final stanza of a longer poem.

A character sketch


Mr David preferred the company of boys.

Pushing thirty-five, Mr David, along with his wife, lived without children. A high-school history teacher, he walks to an all-boys school a few blocks away from his home. His wife, Estelle, could not be bothered anytime except during the morning when she performed the only spousely duty he liked: spreading peanut butter on his toast and pouring him his glass of pulpy orange juice (the only kind he liked) or chocolate milk, which he preferred when he wakes up grouchy. He would have no coffee even if he nods his way through the morning paper's comics. Mr. David is a man of strange tastes.

After the customary silent breakfast, Estelle would drive to her work and he would see none of her until he gets home late and sleeps beside her curled figure in the bed. In recent years, she had been going home later than usual and her forced smiles began to stiffen and stiffen painfully until she eventually gave up all attempts at smiling.

In all honesty, Mr David didn't care and his wife knew as much that she only allowed herself one admittedly futile attempt at an argument. One night, she didn't go home and appeared only in time for breakfast. She shouted that she's having an affair with her boss, that she shouldn't have given in to her fear of becoming an old maid, and that she would rather be that than be married to an immature, selfish bastard who cared nothing for her.

Mr David didn't say a word but walked to school without breakfast. Taming a grumbling stomach, he treated himself to a hotdog sandwich in the canteen. The following day, his wife was on her usual seat by the dining table and on his plate was a toast with peanut butter spread and on his glass was pulpy orange juice. Without word, they continued as they had for years.

Mr. David comes to life when he walks into the all-boys school where he worked. He was not a particularly good teacher, and most certainly not an inspiring one. Students graduated from his class with a mediocre knowledge of Asian history and with mixed impressions of him. He was the sort of teacher students figured to be lazy because he would rather have the students report about the lesson than him lecturing up front. And while a few students reported in front of class, he would often sit at the back of the classroom and not pay attention. Sometimes, he would laugh loudly at the antics of a few mischievous boys who were likewise oblivious to the influence of the Chinese dynasties to the silk trade which the reporter, feeling painfully ignored, tried to elaborate.

But when he would lecture in class, Mr David is a complete charmer. He was the sort of man who draws your eye and commands it to follow him and his engaging hand movements. Jokes, often green, were cracked as often as possible. And the class, goody-goody or no, would howl with laughter so loud that it often disrupted the neighboring class. Bitch, asshole, fuck, faggot were normal vocabulary for his class and they were often met by approving guffaws on the part of the students. The sixteen-year old boys believed Mr David was one of them, and for all his faults he was forgiven. It's impossible to fail the class if you were game.

Mr. David believed that his life starts every four in the afternoon when the dismissal bell had rung and released the jittering, restless teenagers to movement. Dismissal is the time of reckoning. What a boy does after dismissal defines a boy. Mama's boys would have their drivers pick them up from school, jocks would head to the gym or the field where they'd promptly begin training and no one bothers to find where losers hang out.

There's no regularity in the activities of the cool boys. Sometimes, they'd swagger to a store next to an all-girls school. The baddest boy is always the one who could get the girl off her skirt the fastest. Often, they'd play some computer game until dinner and from then onwards they'd smoke and drink until someone's irate mother would call him to please go the fuck home.

Mr David is one of the cool boys.

The unwritten rule that all cool boys follow: all of them sit at the back of the class. Since they hardly listen to any lectures, they cannot but form friendships over their shared disdain for school. As was mentioned earlier, Mr David likes to sit at the back of class whenever he
chooses to ignore group reportings. As such, he'd become some sort of patron faculty for delinquent boys.

After dismissal, he saunters to the school gate where all the cool boys are having a smoke. Another shitty day deserves a stick or two. He'd light a stick, mutter some derogatory remark about some asshole in the faculty lounge. Boys would guffaw in their newly deepened voices. Someone would say, "Tara, pare, dun tayo sa tindahan," when he really meant was that he wanted to pick some girls up and that he's horny.

Mr David didn't really have interest in girls as much as he feigned. It was cool to have a smoke in one hand, and an arm wrapped around a girl. On the part of the girls, Mr David didn't look too old or too bad. It was a matter of reputation that they were dating an older man. It was a mutually symbiotic relationship that Mr David drops as soon as the boys wants to go out drinking and the girl starts to whine that she needs attention.

The boys felt they were cooler now that a teacher was hanging out with them. And whenever they call him by his first name, or when they swear at him jokingly, they feel a rush of excitement and indolence. They were saying "Fuck you," to a teacher.
Outside the classroom, Mr David likes to say, that they're the same and be believes it with all his heart. They even call him by his first name, he thinks with a smile.

(Tis a draft. :) )

Breathless, she ran through the forest. The agile body of a seventeen year old girl darted between the trees, and in between bushes. But, still, the smell pursued her.

She running from the smell, the smell. She thought. If she ran fast enough and far enough the smell will vanish. If she could outrun the smell, she could think clearly. It would no longer filter in her nose, and cloud her eyeballs. It wouldn't seep through her scalp, mingling with her long, dark hair and her head wouldn't maddeningly stink the same.

And when her mind is clear, she would retrace her steps back to the village. The sun would've sanked behind the trees and dragged the day sky down with it. The mayas would chatter noisily in their nests in preparation for night. And instead of this stink, she would not smell anything. The scent of the familiar skips past usual inhabitants. She would walk past and overlook the scents: vegetable stew, roasting hunt, freshy chopped wood. She was running for these scents not to become memories. She will not have any recollection of stink.

But scents never leave. In the years to come, the smell of burning will rouse her from dreams of twilight, and vegetable stew, sibilings, friends. In her last breath, she'd smell the same.

The forest was a blur as she ran the familiar routes. Her legs bled from the cuts from the thorny bushes right outside the village. The seeds of weeds caught her clothes and pricked her through the fabric. And in her mouth mingled the metallic taste of blood and soil. Despite the sharp pain coursing through her body, she dared not stop, she dared not look back.

In between the trees, to the direction of her village, she could imagine bright red spires slowly eating away her life as she knew it. But if she never saw it, she told herself, then she could always tell herself it was a dream. The dark bulbuous smoke from the burning houses rose up and covered the sky; a premature night loomed behind her.

In a moment of delirium, she thought the shadow of smoke was the shadow of a giant demon god chasing her. Any moment now, his hands would wrap around her body and his talons will dig deep through her. She cried out loud and wrapped her arms around her body as she ran ever more desperately.

A branch beneath her feet cracked and she cried as her her knees crashed to the ground. She looked up; the giant demon god seemed to disappear when she realized she had come upon a clearing.

The raspy voice of an old woman was the last thing she heard before the forest wavered before her eyes and her head fell to the ground,

"Like what I told them, you alone will survive."

Explosions happen.

The gun points too high.

Your bit of metal will

Need to dig through thick cranium

And in sponge of my brain

I can imagine it away.

Not to the heart!

The mindless pump

will drip cliches.

Put your foot down

Aim a foot lower.

Shoot through the stomach,

Where it parts the softest flesh.

And through the singed passage of your bullet,

You let loose inside

The parts of me that always wanted to eat.

A fat drop falls.

I looked at my watch and it spelled-out, in bright neon, that I should have been home by then. Instead, I was stuck in a street corner in busy Makati. Cars spilled out onto the streets—their bright yellow lights glared at me as they slowly inched forward, and behind me were their red lights flashing in equal frustration. There were no taxis.

I looked up. By this time the sky should’ve shown dusk with a bit of orange light peeking at the end of the horizon.

The sun swallowed by the horizon of Manila waters: it's a sight I'm only too famliar with. It's the same picture that greets me as I looked out the FX everyday for three years as the shuttle crawled through Coastal Road.

Monday to Friday, I would sit at the back of the van. I never wanted to look at the sleepy faces of the passengers, their bodies slackened by fatigue. A few of them text—their faces brightened blue by cell phone screens. And every once in a while their sleeping neighbor wakes with a start. Ringtones were always a decibel too loud for those quiet van rides as they weaved in and out, avoiding reckless bus and jeepney drivers.

I didn’t want to think of my face having the same look as theirs or that it was illuminated by same kind of blue. So I always looked out, through the tinted glass of the van, and to the sun descending on dirty sea.

Monday to Friday, when I arrive home, Tito Larry would be feeding the flowerhorns. With his brown, lined face next to the glass, he would tap the aquarium twice (“Para alam nila nandito ako,”), and feed his hungry children three measured dashes of fish pellet (“Tamang-tama lang”). Their fins and tails were long and translucent, their scales were flawless and dappled with bright colors. They were fat and had as much personality as their tiny brains could ever muster-- meaning, none. But Tito Larry knows fish. He would observe them for a good few minutes while telling me there’s food in the refrigerator I can heat.

Tito Larry is my father, but I never call him that. He left when my mother was pregnant and came back only when I was five. They told me he was named Tito Larry, and when the grand revelation of my paternity came when I was twelve, the name stuck. My mother said she was afraid I’d get attached and that he’d leave again. Looking at his back bent over as he lovingly traced his beloved fish, I would eat my cold tortang talong, porkchop, or adobo—and wonder at how absurd my mother’s fears were.

But that night wasn't the usual Wednesday night. The clouds have taken over the sky and cast a gray spell on everything. Instead of me staring at the setting sun, I was standing in a crowded curb in Makati. The sky is turning an angry, dark color on me.

I sighed. By now, I should have been eating my cold dinner but Christopher just had to give us a pep talk. He round us up in one of the conference rooms and rambled on about the latest of his glorious accomplishments—never mind that our parents, unlike his, don’t have drivers to pick us up from work. Some of our parents have flowerhorns to attend to.

Smiling brightly and with an overrated curl of hair on his forehead, he told us how he just landed a deal with a difficult client—an old spinster who’s notorious for pestering agents by inquiring endlessly on how the real estate system works and the value and details of this and that property, and then balking at the last minute. Her knickers must have fallen off at the spark of his toothy smile. Twenty-four years old, rich, handsome, and with the world rolling red carpets before him—all the secretaries in the floor would’ve gladly thrown away their knickers for him too.

Forty-seven minutes after we were supposed to get out of work, I interrupted his speech:

“Landing a deal with—who? Oh my, Christopher, you deserve to be promoted as God! Henceforth, I shall replace all my expletives with Oh my Christopher!”

Well, that was what I thought of saying instead:

“That’s great, Sir Dulao. We’re proud of you. You inspire us.”

Sir Dulao stopped and grinned, the woman next to me sighed smilingly. He sauntered to me and ruffled my hair, “Andy, you should take some tips from me next time you meet up with a client!” I smiled sweetly after him as he swaggered out of the conference room door.

I smiled sweetly after him. Next time he touches me I’ll have the condescending bastard arrested for sexual harassment and finally end his streak of good luck. His fan club at the office will probably maul me before I could even say Oh my Christopher!

A fat drop gathers dirt and dust.

The crowd in the corner steadily grew; no taxi came to thin the crowd. One vacant cab turned up around the corner but a snarling twenty-something woman elbowed me out of her way. Looking at her sitting smugly inside the taxi, I itched to test the pepper spray inside my purse.

Instead, I returned to my hopeless spot. I stood there, inhaling the fumes of the city; the dirt and grime making their home in my lungs and my system until the city and I are indistinguishable.You know what they say, though anorexics would beg the case to be otherwise, that you are what you eat? That I, a twenty-two year old Sales Executive, am formed through the molecules that formerly belonged to cheap cafeteria food, mostly Baked Macaroni and diet Coke?

That isn’t always the case; for instance, the city swallows me and Manila doesn’t become Miranda. Miranda becomes a depraved little blood cell lining up to be loaded with the dirty carbon monoxide in this toxic body. I looked at the throng-- fellow bloodcells lining up to receive their pollution cocktail.

Beside me was a girl with short hair and glasses who waved frantically for a taxi that wasn’t there. She was wearing a modest office skirt and a white top. There are three thousand women in Makati wearing the same species of clothes, including me.

In the middle and muddle of the congestion, someone decided to annoy everyone by honking nonstop.

“That’s not going to make you fly, moron.” I said irritably. Of course the driver couldn’t hear me but it felt relieving to tell the universe a piece of my mind.

Suddenly, the black, shiny, honking sedan looked too familiar. It was Christopher’s car and I just blasphemed against God’s driver. I knew that if he had spotted me, he would offer me his patronizing benevolence and that sparkling smile, Andy, Would you like a ride? I sunk to the middle of the crowd.

A fat drop fell—squarely on top of my head.

I looked up and a drop splattered on my glasses. Another drop fell. And another. It began to pour, as did my breathless expletives.

I nearly collided against a man in a blue shirt while I was running to the small waiting shed where a crowd compressed itself.

“Reliable weather prediction, PAG-ASA!” I grumbled to myself.

People flicked off drops of water on their shirts and skits, their briefcases, and purses while muttering indistinctly about the hassle of rain. My hair was dripping wet. I squeezed myself at the edge of the shed and looked out as the rain roared and blotted out Makati. All I could see was the bright red lights of nearby cars in the white haze made by rain.

I took a huge breath and closed my eyes.

“God, thanks for stopping the rain,” I breathed.

I’m not sarcastic. I read in some New Age book that the way to get God to listen to your prayers is to be a polite brat and expect it, thank Him for isn’t what’s there yet. God is a smoker who follows “Thank you for not smoking” signs. The minimum requirement for His cooperation is politeness.

It poured even harder.

“Thank you for cooperating. I feel loved.” This time I’m sarcastic.

Somewhere in the city, someone is sighing and saying the heavens are weeping—that the heavens are with them in weeping, for a dead flowerhorn, missing children, betrayal, Manny Pacquiao losing a match, Kimchu and Gerard break-up. Romantic bull.

The consequences of divine pity are puddles that lure street children to the bacterial stew of Manila streets; and then later, deluges that sweep them away and under until all that remains of them are their little wet brown puppy bodies lying lifeless amid city trash. What are tears for? The consequences of His pity is me getting stuck in a waiting shed with a host of strangers who look exactly like me—drenched, tired, struggling, and ordinary.

Each drop of water is indistinguishable from the rest. And their brief lives as teardrops didn’t matter— they were all too soon puddles, and then floods riding through the city with the grime of the streets and the sweat of the workers whose bodies they wiped as they went down. We are like rain, each one of us in the shed. Suddenly, I felt tired of keeping whole.

I stepped out of the waiting shed and, suddenly, the world was too big.

Rain was forceful little pellets that soaked my hair and ran down it's short length. The man in a blue shirt, who stood next to me, stared. He didn’t say or do anything.I started walking away. My short black hair dripped and clung to my face, to my neck. The rain dotted my skirt until it was black and dripping. My blouse clung to my bra, my torso. I could feel tiny rivers of water in and through my clothes.

The trees swayed to the tempestuous rhythm, violently shaking their manes. The dark gray clouds loomed ahead, casting a dim look on the streets. Lightning flashed: a moment of brightness that momentarily relieved the panorama of it's colors. Though the streets were alight with car lights and though the rain, the thunder, the cars roared it felt deserted, and I was alone in the world.

And I didn’t feel afraid.

I turned to face the crowd left huddling in the waiting shed. They looked at me silently, oddly. I searched each of the faces I could make out throught the thick rain's haze. They didn't understand there was no glass between us and the world. What I learned just then, you don't fall off the edge of the Earth when you step out.

I ran hard and furiously. My feet dunked and splashed at the dirty puddles as I ran through them. I felt a new world. I ran my hands through the hard pavement, through the wet bark of trees that periodically dotted the streets. I smelled what I thought was long buried underneath concrete- the smell of wet earth.

The tiny pellets made gullies in my face, my arms, my legs, my body. The water seeped in, and it seeped out with failures, loneliness, disappointments, denial of Mom's death, Christopher's wrong kisses, jealousy for fucking flowerhorns, hatred for myself, for the world, for God. Rain drenched me through and through, until I was dripping, until I was no more, until I was filled with water, until I was new.

“Bakit ka basa?” Tito Larry asked, looking up from the aquarium. I was no longer dripping but my clothes were wet, and I shivered. Outside, the roaring of the rain was reduced to pitter-patters.

“Umulan,” I replied.

I smiled at his flowerhorns, and thought of the dirty sea they would never know, of the divine pity that knocked at their glass but they would never understand.

And the solution is: rain.
She runs in rain.

I was in the middle of a symbolic purging until I realized I was in one.

Christian sacraments are essentially symbols that are so ordinary to human life- washing, eating, marriage, death. The divine latches on to the simple act of washing, and gives the act a deeper meaning. Christians believe that the simple act of eating the Eucharist symbolize something of a regular acceptance of Christ into our lives.

The commonplace symbol of today, which is not so commonplace in my life, is cleaning the bathroom.
My mother's bathroom.

I was angry, at so many things, and not just the empty bottles of shampoo which I threw out with a vengeance. There were no divine infusings; my point is this: that it was a symbol. The act came to mean a scrubbing away of this family's scum, this resignation to brokeness.

Elbow deep in soapsuds, the answer came to me when it was farthest from my mind.

The solution is: rain.
She runs in rain.


If I had plurk or twitter, I'd say this: When dirt sticks too long, it stains.