abo sa dila

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Kilala kita. Oo, ikaw 'yun: Nagkasalubong na tayo minsan, sa LRT, sa Gotohan, sa kanto ng Aurora at Katipunan. Nagkatinginan tayo. Hindi mo ako kinausap, pero alam ko, nakilala mo rin ako. Kaya ka narito, di ba? Para sabihing, Oo, oo, ikaw nga 'yun. Naaalala kita.
O, ha, Plurk, o, ha!
Radyo? Radyo?
Libreng humirit

Mag-exercise tayo tuwing umaga
Tambay ka muna
Lokal Kolor
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Basa lang nang basa
Tropa ko

    na, mula noong 24 Enero, 2006, ang nakitambay dito

two poems
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Lotus Petal

There, the old man says. A stone.
And because he looks as if his hands
know the difference between war
and a comb, I nod and let the stone
speak for me. Or a leaf. This leaf. I was
blinded by mountaintops and rice fields
and cannabis. I knew a wallet when empty
is still a wallet, only it’s defined by space,
or the folds in space. I was a boy in need
of particulars. I have seen the earth
heave many times, the old man says.
I say I have seen stones float on water.
Skip on water. The difference fits in my pocket
like a switchblade and its selfish edge
saying one two three and then you sink,
saying you have got to be a stone
to truly know water. This stone
with its infinity of pockmarks,
this stone shaped like a headless gull,
that stone under the tree, this
under my tongue. Under a mound in Palawan
archeologists found jewels in tombs.
Shards of celadon. Many-titted statues.
I think in the end the old man
pointed to the horizon and said here we go
although he might have said indigo
or some other color the wind
splashed twilight with. Sometimes the wind
likes to play and a leaf in Sagada
lands on a sap-drenched twig and is frozen
in amber. And the archeologist
with asthma and on her left ankle
a tattoo which might mean lotus petal
or window with young girl peering
at pre-dawn fog or the distance
between Rorshach and calligraphy,
she’s leaning over her apartment sink
in Shanghai, washing her hands,
washing a single blue-white shard,
thinking airports and museums,
thinking careful, saved, mine.

.

.

.


Phainomenon

There are bodies: arms flailing and forgetting
shoulders, backs collapsing from the weight
of hidden shadows, hearts clenching, filling
with water. Eyes on the moon pulling on the sea,
the affection of tides propelling the wind towards
the end of sight. Carcass of a whale. Coins
and crushed coral. Wet maps: I am lost,
you are lost. Everything, sometime or another,
is lost. But the bodies, disfigured like slabs
of candlewax in a dark, barren night,
are restless. They find their ways through mazes
of fog and trees standing wild like shadows
at dawn. Or twilight. The difference
is in movement. Or stasis, the way an eye
clings to space. Rosaries hanging from the necks
of statues, rings belonging to a fist.
The fist does not see. The eye does not see.
The body speaks to your eye and your eye
weaves the moon, the tides, the body
into a blanket luminous as a coin
from a stranger’s hand. Look, by the door,
a figure is standing still, holding out its hand,
mouthing words. Pursing its lips, moving. Gaps
between curtains. Gaps between fingers.
A match is struck in dead air.
Something perches on your ear.
posted by mdlc @ 4:02 AM  
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