Ghost Whisperer

Let the slant of light

create the faded shadows

on a misty afternoon

such as this. The cold air

encroaching by my bed,

please sit beside me.

 

Your embrace I dream

feeling your warmth.

See, I am not crying.

I am not afraid anymore

of the dark sky. For I see,

shining in the distance,

a bridge spanning a chasm

between us. Wait no longer.

 

Will you hold my hand

as I kiss death? Will you

listen to the faint beating

of this heart, whispering

it will be soon to join you.

In peace.  Calm now,

please enter by my window.  

 

Soft breeze ruffling

among the curtains,

white noise sweeping

across this dim-lit room.

Your spirit melted into

some silhouetted wafts

from the candle as I

remember you in silence.

Like you never left

a long, long time ago.

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Bye Bye, Yellow Butterfly

Came down the confetti

among the concrete gardens

of skyscrapers in the city

we embrace-

the promise of freedom

remembering the days

when you conquer

the hearts of men.

Frail and afraid

among the chains,

blind slaves to tyranny.

 

Bye, bye

yellow butterfly.

 

Flutter your wings

amidst the tempest

set free, unafraid

of your glory-defining

turbulent life.

 

Like the many yellow

ribbons tossed in the wind,

a salutation to dawn.

An ode to the beauty

of your kindred spirit.

 

Bye, bye

yellow butterfly.

T’was a long,

long way journey home.

Fly away graciously

among the angels

heaven bound.

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Pasig River And The Warrior Child

I once had the chance to swim the Pasig River when I was just about five or six, I guess.  An uncle, who was a robust teenager that time, invited by his friends, tagged me along with him one afternoon.  We walked across J.P Rizal street and descended some flight of steps going to the not-so-murky water.

Uncle led my hand and told me not to be afraid. And when we dipped ourselves into the water, I felt the river current slowly pushing its force against my fragile frame. Suddenly uncle let go of his hand, and I was left wading by myself. He just laughed and laughed, along with his friends to see me panicking and gasping for breath. When I was just about to submerge into the water, he just snatched my hand in time and landed me safely back to the steps.

I was panting heavily as I watched amazingly to uncle and his friends vigorously swimming against the river current. Hoping that I could grow instantly  and have the strength to swim as long as I wish. 

But when aunt, uncle’s big sister, learned of our little river escapade, she scolded uncle for taking me down to the river, saying that the polluted water could make me more sick.  And aunt blares her disappointment at the two of us and told  me that it is too dangerous to swim in Pasig River, and I could get myself drowned.  My mother has allowed me to stay at aunt’s home for the summer to have my routinary medical EENT checkups. 

I just kept on listening to my aunt’s endless rant to uncle and heard her say that she was really disappointed with me and could send me right away back home. But I just  smiled  and throw a toothy grin to uncle, silently thanking him for taking me down the river.

I am thanking him for expanding the fragiled radius of my being. A new-found freedom, to allay fear of not sizing up to what other boys of my age can do. I don’t want my being sickly hamper the extent of what I can do. To belong and be accepted to a fraternal brotherhood like uncle’s.  And it is a feat that begins my tearing down of the walls of my sheltered existence.  A youthful independence. 

I am thanking him, because that’s when I have learned to stand up and defend myself when I am being wronged. To keep up heading on even when the circumstances are getting against me like a fierce river current drowning all the strength I could muster.  To exceed the limitations of what my mind tells me that I can only achieve that much.

As a child then, I believe, most of us, have become warriors against our own. When we have learned how to be brave even when we were afraid and often get discouraged.  When we  are walking out there in the world,  somewhere, winning our inner battles and living uncertainly day by day, and never giving up. 

Pasig River is my Rubicon,  where a warrior child in me has been borne out of the mighty rush of the river current while bailing myself out for survival. An invisible force pushing me to edge out and discover frontiers I have never been to before, now possible and within reach.    

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Afraid of the Future

This is honest.  I am afraid of the future.  I didn’t have a clue where will I be five years from now. Or in ten years, what would I have become? In twenty  years what will I be made of? Oh, it is easy for us to say that come what may, you will be what you have to be.  It is as short as saying that tomorrow will take care of itself.

But hoping and dreaming is what we can do for the moment.  And taking brave little steps along the way is a great way of inching closer towards realizing part of it all.  Before, I am always having this reverie that somewhere, somehow, my life’s situtation will even get better as time goes by.  Now, I noticed that I am beginning to have bigger responsibilities and bigger problems to look at.  It has never been simpler a life nowadays.

Up to now, I have a habit of sticking to the plans I made up so many years back and checking on it once in a while if I have been anchored to follow it by heart. But the disadvantages of having this one track-mind setup is bondage.  Bondage to believe that I need to religiously follow the routine that goes with it.  I am being constrained to keep my life in that direction and miss some very good opportunities to maneuver to another direction.

I need to cope and be more flexible to the changing times.  I must accept that it is seldom for people to hit the bull’s eye and the jackpot.  And I must develop an atittude of keeping the faith even if the odds are against me.

Talk about aspirations.  I must tell you that what matters to me now is that I can fulfill what my role in life is.  I could never be somebody else.  I am me. I am what I need to be.  And I will be happy by choice.  I cannot explain any further why am I opting to do it and how will I going to make it. The choice is mine to make.  I may be a pauper or less, forever a dreamer engulfed in my own misery. 

But I need to be reminded, that in this case, other people’s opinion doesn’t matter anymore. Whether I am afraid if I will live another day or am I counting only minutes closer to this life’s end.  I don’t care anymore if I lose my job knowing that I can be able to do things other than my job.  I don’t care anymore if I will live out this life alone and penniless since I have existed in this world without anything to boast of.

I don’t care anymore about people who can come in and out of my life. If I have been used up and made to believe that it’s worth to be around them.  I don’t care anymore if people tell me I am weak since I can say that it is not my intention to be perfectly programmed to follow obsolete instructions all my life.  Without emotions.  Without compassion.  The future may be bleaker much more than I thought it could be, but life must go on.  Still living it out and make the best that I can be.

Perhaps I could just be another life form destined to just exist.  Where I cannot make a niche or a legacy that people crave to be immortalized in tableaus and engraved in cheap metals.  All is vanity. An exhaustion. And a senseless struggle for social power and definition by numbers.

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