midtones

The Cure

2010-10-13T18:31:00.006+08:00

Love, like gravity, is a disease.

You catch it from everything around you. Everything is grabbing at everything. Grabbing.. pulling.. weighing everything down.

Like measles, love is something that you have to catch in youth.. dispel.. so that it doesn't leap upon you in old age and kill you.

So that you won't lie in bed staring at the ceiling on your off-night, thinking you should've just gone to the production floor.. if not for the break that you badly need from the radiation-smacking PCs and the shrill cry of Avayas begging for attention.. a gentle touch on an aching button.. but are instead shushed with a clap.. CLAP, CLAP.

So that you don't bludgeon a stranger with your mad emo-texting as you strain to weave lyrics for an unfinished ballad once shared with a lover.

So that you will not molest a virginal melody with words to indulge your hopes -- that the music will ever continue with his return, to remediate the chance you botched -- as you lie spewing sentiments, delirious with a fever that can leave you scarred for life.

But gravity, however, has a cure.

There are two moments when the universe is free of it; when it matters so little that it is barely worth the calculation.

The first is at the beginning.. say, in the first hundred-millionth of a second, when all matter is jammed together in a speck.. and, next to the other great forces at work, gravity is insignificant.

And then also at the end (if there is), when matter will converge into that single point again.. and gravity will, again, not matter.

The cure rests at the beginning and the end. And in the end, a vacuum.

The cure for gravity is time.

Dead Air

2009-03-22T00:25:00.009+08:00

You call,
I answer.
But a deafening silence
fills the air
between us.

I wonder if you can hear me;
wonder if it's a deafness on my end,
or a muteness on yours..
And I wonder if you're wondrin' back
if I can hear you too.

I dunno if it's a failed connection
or if you'd simply given up
hangin' on the line
waitin' for an eternity
before I could even say "Hello".

The Song Of The Rose

2007-08-20T00:40:00.014+08:00

Sing me a song, I once asked my Little Prince.

He was sitting on his chair, the only one on his planet, counting sunsets. It was the day of the 44 sunsets.

He turned to look at me as if to check if some weed had grown within the few minutes that passed as he was staring at his sunsets. Then, as if by some absent-minded compulsion, he lifted the sprinkling can and showered my roots. For the 42nd time.

I admire his royal sense of duty, but I am already bloated from all the sprinkling. One more and I'll be sneezing off my petals. But of course, I didn't tell him that. I am, after all, a flower. I am supposed to make people feel good, not hurt their feelings.

I tried to catch his gaze but was met by an ocean in his eyes.

Sing me a song, I asked again. I miss hearing your voice. But he had already turned to watching his sunsets. Again.

I wanted to hug him, make him feel that he was not alone. That he was loved. But he had already moved to where my roots couldn't follow.

How I wish I could wrap him under my leaves. Frail as I am, I want to shelter him from the cold. But then, my thorns. Dare I make the slightest touch and he will bleed.

I can't walk to him, nor can I touch him. But I can sing, and maybe he will hear me. I closed my eyes, trying to still myself (it was cold), trying to remember the song...

"Some say love, it is a river
that drowns the tender reed...
Some say love, it is a razor
that leaves your soul to bleed...
Some say love, it is a hunger --
an endless aching need..."

It had gotten warm before I could finish the song. I opened my eyes and saw my reflection where the ocean had been. Was he feeling it in my voice?

"It's the heart afraid of breaking
that never learns to dance
It's the dream afraid of waking
that never takes the chance..."

He turned away to catch the 44th sunset.

I was wrong. The ocean was still there, and I wasn't in its reflection.

He had enclosed me in a glass globe to keep me warm through the night.

Friends

2007-08-11T20:31:00.000+08:00

Be it for a reason or a season, many friends strum in and out of my life, blending with my soul rhythm as they pass.

But only true friends leave lingering harmonics. And at times, when my memory fails me, or I get lost in the major keys, they strum it back to me...

I remember who I am, and my dreams come alive for me again.

Dreaming of the River Piedra

2007-07-21T21:18:00.002+08:00

[with apologies to Paulo]

I read in one of Coelho's that everything that falls into the coldness of the River Piedra: bugs, leaves, unsent loveletters -- easily sink and are turned into stones that make up the riverbed.

How I wish this waterfall were like the River Piedra. That I could throw my heart in the rapids so it would stop beating. Stop wondering.

Stop hurting.

I'd plunge straight towards the basin and lie in the calm beneath the torrents. Let the world forget that I ever existed.

That I loved, and ached. Pathetically.

But this is not the River Piedra. And I can only but wish.

That somewhere...between the tiptoeing consciousness of hearts in slumber and the waking of the soul, I'd like to believe there is a graveyard of dreams where dead, lost, and broken loves rest in peace.

Give Them This Day Their ABCs

2007-06-08T02:36:00.003+08:00

God have mercy on the penniless ignorant whose emptiness builds the greedy liars’ altars.

It’s a not-so-unsolved mystery. How the goat, their Ticket To Salvation, ended up like that. A story that anyone could piece together, but no one can tell.

These are Nena’s thoughts as she ponders on her Lola Marcelina’s blood-stained blusa. The stains were no mystery. It was the goat’s blood. But how it ended up like that in a place like Lonoy, where every one knew each one and kept to each other’s own business or property, what happened is A Not-So-Unsolved Mystery.

October in Lonoy is poised and balmy. The days are spelled with monsoons and a forgivingly warm sun. The afternoons are dreamy. Not cold. Not hot. But the air these days is filled with Something Serious.

In this dreamy afternoon in a day like any day, Marcelina, the hilot, looks for her missing goat throughout the barrio. Nena, her granddaughter, is at home, weaving the seventh of the fifty banig which are to be picked up by the contratista the following week. Nena is a seventeen year-old whose dreams of getting a degree in Literature has to wait until when Kuya can afford it.

Kuya is Ondoy, a nineteen year-old Maritime student, who the family expects to graduate this year. The family is Nena, Ondoy, and Lola Marcelina. The main characters in almost all of the stories and poems her eternity at home weaving banig had afforded her to weave in her head. Her manuscripts are the mental notes of the everyday any day events, the very significance of which lay in its being mundane, the titles Capitalized, as the English adviser once marked on the first draft she submitted for their highschool paper. Etched in some corner of her circuitous memory, waiting to be written with the words and styles she is yet to learn in college.

When Kuya Can Afford It.

Mother and father are the strangers whose pictures hanging on the wall are their Lone Remembrance. The solitary evidence that Lola Marcelina was really their grandmother, and that they weren’t just adopted from one of the disgrasyadas the hilot had once helped. The disgrasyadas were the unwilling bunkwarmers of the uniformed gentlemen who had been encamped in the hacienda since God-knows-when, her Lola once told her, who could not bear to kill but could neither love the uniformed bastards’ spawns.

She is immersed in these thoughts when she hears a commotion coming from the neighbors.

Nong Sito, in his panic, has stumbled and stamped on her Lola’s santan. He rushes to his wife, Nang Turning, pale and gasping for breath. Three armed men in fatigue, smelling heavily of alcohol, had accused him of spying on them while he was tending to his carabao. Aiming their rifles at the poor old man, these so-called gentlemen shouted ‘Run!’, and so he ran, as fast as he could, leaving his carabao behind.

Meanwhile, Something Serious brews in the town hall. The ranchero’s contratista, standing on a platform up front, has declared that a new corporation now owned the entire 816 hectares of pandan land spanning the three adjoining barrios. In his hand are crisp white documents supposedly proving the new corporation’s ownership. Mumbles of disagreement drones throughout the town hall, but is immediately hushed as a troop of gentlemen in fatigue swarm all over.

These men have been off-and-on stationed in the hacienda for close to two decades now, supposedly to get rid of the barrio's uplands of insurgents. And with them in that assembly, it was stupid to argue with the contratista, as anyone smart and feisty enough to talk about the land reform law was dubbed as an insurgent.

With heavy grunts, the farmers walked out of the town hall, mumbling Something Serious among themselves. This grunting and mumbling procession of irate land-tillers is what greets Marcelina as she walks towards the new munisipyo.

Perhaps the stubborn goat went grazing by the grounds of the adjacent old churchyard again.

The goat isn’t lost. It can’t be lost. Not now, when Ondoy is only one semester shy from getting his diploma. Not now, when the contratista has finally agreed to take it for P700 – enough to pay for Ondoy’s misalenyos, the entrans pi to his school, which was due in two days.

The old woman makes a turn for the churchyard. But instead of the goat, she finds a troop of dark men in fatigue, their rifles slanted against the moss-covered old church wall, drinking Vino Viagro and munching on, judging from the meaty aroma, some kind of Grilled Whatever. She drew back, not wanting to catch attention to her self, lest she be branded a spy for disrupting their good time.

She spots Turning by the market across. Her neighbor was also on a hunt for their carabao.

Tired of the fruitless search, the two women decide to call it a day. They take a shortcut through the old munisipyo across the old churchyard, where Marcelina’s hunt ends with a sorry reunion.

Lodged atop the rusty gate’s tines, resembling a cannibal’s trophy, was her stubborn goat’s head.

The stubborn goat was their Ticket to Salvation. The living sacrifice they had to offer in the contratista’s altar in exchange for his benevolent offer of P700, for Ondoy’s education. But now, it was gone.

Now, salvation will just have to be postponed until God knows when, where, and how they can afford it. And Nena’s stories and poems will just have to wait.

Until God Knows When.

creep

2007-03-15T23:55:00.000+08:00

you no longer slither
through my rabid,
raunchy dreams.

my clever worm...

i no longer tingle
at the slimy moves
you fashion on my skin.

stop.

you've nibbled at me long enough,
feasted off me long enough
on this dank and mucky bed

inside my head.
#

Passion Chronicles: Interlude 2

The Fisherman's Wife

2007-02-14T19:41:00.002+08:00

The clock read 4AM.

The darkest hour, when those flickering, fickle stars finally leave the moon alone to its musings. A melancholic spotlight lighting up the dark horizon that envelops the sea.

Corazon is already up and about, hustling in her kitchen. The rich, bittersweet aroma of sikwate warming on top of the glowing embers on the dapog slices through the cold November air.

It’s time, she mumbles to herself.

Scurrying, she takes her knitted shawl from the makeshift coat rack. Two rusty nails behind their bedroom door. Tarnished old nails, where Rustico hangs his patched-up jacket beside her shawl.

In a minute, she was already at the pantalan. Just as she had been before dawn yesterday, and the days before. To meet him with her worn-out icebox and pail, it’s once green plastic make now blackened on the sides.

Time is slow when one is waiting. But at least, she was not alone. Flanked on both sides by the other wives, mothers, and sisters waiting for the men, the wait became less worrisome.

She knew the sea like a sister. And sometimes, like her self. She had learned and grown familiar with its movement. Revered its calm demeanor and the bounties it gave freely. Feared its furious billows that could swallow up Rustico and take him to its bottom, where its deepest secrets lay, and keep him there forever.

She knew its sorrows. She had heard and understood the sad tune it sang for its lover, Habagat. How it felt when it was kissed by the wind. Warm when it was cold. Cool when it was warm. How those kisses made it throb and roll over, flowing and ebbing with every touch.

She felt its pain each time it parted with its love, for Habagat had other things to do, places to visit, businesses to take care of. And the rapture it felt with each reunion.

Sea and Habagat were like Corazon and Rustico.

In the distance, kerosene lamps flickered like tiny yellow stars floating on the pitch-black water. Like candles in a procession, shining midway through the darkness, growing bigger and bigger, drawing closer and closer to each other as the boats approached the pantalan.

Just then, a strong wind blew from the west, breaking the line of yellow lights as the boats rocked with the tides formed by its tail. An instant chill ran through her spine, but warm blood soon rushed over her veins as she caught sight of an orange baroto riding calmly through the clutter of lights, jutting up and down the crests and falls as though its lord had mastered the wind and the waves’ erratic periods.

It was him. Rustico, with his steady hands and keen senses.

He had come through, expecting to meet her by the jetty, to receive the bounties the sea had allowed him to take and give to his lover. And she was there, just as she had been before dawn yesterday, and the days before.

Waiting.

Heat

2006-12-31T23:53:00.000+08:00

A quiet pyre of infernal longing
burned at the core of our emptiness.
Fire caught fire as your amorous musings
grazed my sacrilegious passions.
Torched, we were consumed by the flames
ignited by our fateful crossing.
#

Passion Chronicles: Episode 2.3

Elemental

2006-12-28T23:49:00.000+08:00

You are earth, I am water.
I come, pouring through your membrane--
you arrest and contain me in
the delicate stillness
of your warm embrace.
#

Passion Chronicles: Episode 2.2

Eros & Psyche

2006-12-19T23:06:00.005+08:00

As bright as the moon on a starless night
glowing gently over an enchanted valley
of nymphs dancing under its soft radiance...
shining, he lights up the dark recesses
defiling the blossoming patches
of ardent insights in her secret garden.
Sacred union of love and the soul--
a divine rendezvous of hearts
crossing limits set by mortal impressions.
#

Passion Chronicles: Episode 2.1

thunder

2006-12-18T22:44:00.000+08:00

a blast
running tremors through my spine

echo of a thousand drumbeats
roaring all at once

harbinger of a stark and purging
deluge

ending at the time of beginning,
returning with mighty rumbles, you strike

and leave
with all your love.
#

Passion Chronicles: Interlude 1

Obscure

2006-12-16T02:32:00.008+08:00

Specks of stardust fading to oblivion
loom across her tentative horizon.
Quiet cloaks her soul in twilight --
alone, reminded of a distant summer night.

Grief is sweet when tasted from his poisoned lips.

A tongue-tied poet
baffles over fragmented couplets..
A gentle memory
paints an abstract of dreams that will never be..
A mourning shadow
watches dead stars shine in phantom glow.
#

Passion Chronicles: Episode 1
[for him who was almost my love story. almost.]

Regina

2006-12-08T03:24:00.000+08:00

She hears the heavens
in all its majesty
but she does not see God.
She cannot.

She, as the holy men say
cannot receive the graces
intended
for God's beloved children.

Her cherubim-eyes
will never shed tears.
Her angelic giggles
will never be heard

for God's errant,
but beloved children
have denied her
her flesh

and the righteous
can do no more
than name her a stone
on sanctified grounds

where her memory sits
guarded by sad marble cherubs.
Forlorn
but not forgotten.
#

[regina /RE-ji-na/ a. a girl's name; b. an altar devoted to the memory of the unborn located on the perimeter wall within the premises of the St. Joseph's Cathedral in Tagbilaran City, Bohol.]

Anonymous

2006-11-30T19:21:00.008+08:00

Her hunger extends
beyond the corporal relief
afforded by the scraps
she holds in her hands.

Despair
defines her strength.

She comes from the South
displaced by the horrors
of a legacy of aggression --
of peace pursued by bloodshed.

Vestige
of a ravaged culture.

She sits by the portals
of God's merciful kingdom
waiting for the blessings
that shun her still.

Her sacramental
devotion.

Alms: the oil that fires the lamp
that lights her starless nights
revealing stories hunger has written
on her crestfallen eyes.

Tales she could tell
if she only remembers her name.

chrysalis

2006-11-07T19:35:00.003+08:00

She only has
to close her eyes
to feel it all
again…

Dank.
Stifling.
Cramped.
Heavy.
Yesterday.

She only has
to close her eyes
to feel it all
again…

The last piercing
ray of light
as she shied away
and shut it out completely
for the moment.

She only has
to close her eyes
to feel it all
again…

Wound up in the golden crust
of her private sticky mess,
shrinking back,
drinking the sap
of her own mushy core.

She only has
to close her eyes
to feel it all
again…

To marvel in flight
at another golden crust
hanging
by a single thread
of faith...

where another one
begins to shed
her once hairy legs
and grow her own
resplendent gossamer wings.
#

[chrysalis /KRISS-ah-liss/ a. the casing, or pupa, of an undeveloped butterfly, shaped like an upside-down teardrop; b. a poem i wrote for my mother, grandmother, and aunt in summer of 2003.]

Spaghettini di Bruto

2006-03-15T00:14:00.002+08:00

Al dente:
Smooth.
Taut.
Supple nakedness
bathed
in scarlet mush.

Warm…
You leave a lingering hotness
as you delicately dangle
on excited lips
indulgently savoring
your piquant litheness.

Cold…
You leave a rancid aftertaste,
a greasy tang
on crass tongues
savagely gorging
on your chilled zest.

Luscious.
you lure little boys
to that searing aroma
of your scrumptious
sweet-sour-saltiness...
Your brazen spice.

You torture the palate
with the pleasure of such tender,
fleshy succulence
melting in the mouth
of your craving,
raving punters...

And you fill their scantiness
with your delectable tartness
after a paltry haggle
with the shoddy peddler
vending you
for loose change.
#

Tantra la la [episode 5]

2005-10-30T18:46:00.001+08:00

FRANTICALLY [more of pathetically], my fingers type some good-vibe jargon on the radiation-smacking PC. I shouldn’t mention anyone or anything that sucks. It should be something divine that we both love doing together. Something sacred to both of us. Something like love, romance?

Visualize…[that’s how he always starts]…it’s all in the mind…hmm…

Dim. Scented candles. Smooth wine. Soft pillows. Satin sheets. Mick Jagger’s ex singing Night and Day. On original CD, of course. Neat sound system. Wish I could afford one. Nice flat. Wish I were really this rich. Rich can buy good music. Rich can buy soft. Rich can buy fragrant. Rich can buy what I can’t buy.

All I can afford is to rent this bug-infested, termite-ridden bedroom. Euwh!

So much for Visualize Program #1.

Again…

Wet and wild in the tropics. Fun in the sun. Skinny-dipping in some immaculate coast down South. Waaay down South…far from urban smut. No noise. No intrigues. No watchful eyes. Except maybe those hiding behind that bush. And that one, on the left. Yes, that too, on the right. What are those? What the…who? GMA’s minions tracking down the MIs? Aiieeee…

Visual malfunction…shutting down…

It’s hopeless. Even romance is damned by inequality, injustice, and war. Osho will never come to life for me again. To me, he will be Khajuraho for all eternity.

And I am doomed to sit a thousand years in silence just to meditate on his face.

Tantra la la [episode 4]

2005-10-12T17:55:00.000+08:00

IT’S BEEN WEEKS since the moratorium and I still can’t think of what that something different should be. I am awed at how Osho seems to have mastered self-restraint, but I know he can’t be Khajuraho for all eternity. I doubt he can even get past forty days without giving in to what’s-her-face’s wiles, scheming to role play Siddhartha and Kamala with him.

Now that worries me.

Tantra la la [episode 3]

2005-09-23T01:55:00.001+08:00

TO MAKE HIM HAPPY AGAIN, Osho tells me to write something different. One that will generate good vibes. Something about setting the spirit free... from all the sham and drudgery and what-not. And until I am able to present him with one, his depression will fill him and he will be as distant and stiff as the cold stone figures of the Khajuraho Temple. Endearments are canceled until further notice. A moratorium on any contact – worldly or other.

So for him, I’m writing something different. I’m too much of a sucker for my Osho that I’d write anything, do anything, even sit anything for him.

I would sit and scribble mental notes in silence as he reads while we’re feeding pigeons in the park. Sit and prune my wits in silence as he reads while we’re on a trip to God-knows-where. Sit and will my flatulence to silence as he reads while in the john. Come to think of it, now that I’ve mentioned sitting any effing thing for him, sitting is how we like doing it best.

Reading, of course.

Tantra la la [episode 2]

2005-09-22T02:46:00.001+08:00

NOW HE’S READING MY MANUSCRIPTS. He says it’s as depressing as the stuff he reads in the dailies. Asset inequality sucks. Social injustice sucks. War sucks. GMA sucks.

He remarks that I’ve been writing too much about people and things that suck. He says its depressing and it makes him a not-so-happy citizen. I make him a not-so-happy citizen. I suck.

I am crushed at how he doesn't seem to like my sucking.

Tantra la la [episode 1]

2005-09-13T17:31:00.000+08:00

OSHO LOVES TO READ. He prefers it to watching movies or drinking with the boys. He reads away his coffee breaks. He reads while we’re feeding pigeons in the park. He reads while we’re on a trip to God-knows-where. He reads while in the john.

He reads alternative healing practices, hermetic studies and the Kabbala, and regularly visits Steiner in esoteric cyberspace.

His name isn’t really Osho but that’s how I like to call him. I used to call him Red for Redfield as his presence sometimes makes me feel like Marj of the Celestine Prophecy, but it didn’t stick. He says he’s done with being Red. Goethe would have been okay, if not for our perpetual debates on how to mouth the German name without practically going for each other’s throat (gerthi, or geuwthi?). So I called him Osho. My Osho. He will enlighten me through the most misunderstood, but powerful route to divine consciousness. We will study Tantra Yoga.

We declared a truce.