Flood

The hours tick like sound of punch cards

in this corporate machine treating

people like ants filed into ranks.

Mountain of paperwork  piled up

into sandbags. Bring it on, breach

my levee and let me drown forgetting.

 

Labor becomes a habit. Of numbness

and enjoying the suffering.

 

Like the sound of water from the tap

during a morning ritual in oblivion-

silence resonates like a hidden bell.

I wait until it fills the tub overflowing

down the rim and the clock raced

to the minutes rushing for the train.

 

Like the way the thinning soap glides

my body and the necessity to wash

away yesterday’s worry-rat smell-

that doomsday spell. A thank you note

and the termination letter. The downsizing

and the news keep rolling off the press.

People pick up some gossips to chew

and I am excited to blab my hunger.

 

Like the constant whining of the weekend

laundry, hoping detergents rinse the stains

and filth of missed deadlines. And overtime.

And I got the time to soak away thinking

about the next line to a poem, capturing it

before it goes down the drain. In limbo.

 

And I hope to keep afloat above it 

like a flotsam of dreams in a stream

carried away in the fading of days.

Figuring it out how to bailout myself 

like a straw in deep water.

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Zoo Logic

Freedom is an open door to a cage.

Yet another cage must be opened

like animals, we are hesitant to move.

For the years we lived in it, self-made.

A niche. A home. A nest. A dungeon.

The city streets became a zoo

and life has turned us into one.

We migrate and roam like animals do.

Constantly in fear that patterns change.

Season after season. Year after year.

Territories we keep from somebody’s

breaching our personal space.

We accept no disturbance to our boundaries.

Yet we think we are free? Alone.

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Sinking Deeper

I sense a dark storm is looming over.

Someone told me that I should not be afraid

of all the tragedy impending.  Even if the winds

blow me empty at will, I should not cower.

There are intruders- those unwelcomed visitors

breaking and entering the skin I lived in.

 

I forgot the keys, my memory slips

down in the labyrinth of forgetting.

I search for clues, deciphering a code

among the pages in the book of days.

 

I misplaced the sign- “don’t disturb”

among the shards of broken plates,

of broken glasses in the kitchen.

Where did I put our picture frame?

 

I can only hear whispers from strangers

whose faces I have seen for the first time.

Ruling my house as if they’re kings and queens

breaching  a territory, our serfdom of privacy.

 

I blame these disrespectful marauders

for letting me swim deeper into the pool.

I got tangled in the maze,  finding myself.

Don’t they know it’s an abyss down here?

 

Don’t they know how it feels to get lost

sinking deeper among piles and boxes

of photographs, of letters, searching-

a faint remembrance of the two of us.

 

They keep on robbing me of something.

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Earth Sounds

Someone had it written clear-

that one should not just keep pacing

on this earth, like a  somnambulist do.

Instead, he should lay beside the grass.

Ears close to the ground hearing

faint sounds and whispers coming

from the earth’s bosom.

 

Hearing how the rhythmic breath

of stillborn seeds of coniferous trees

waiting to break out of its shell,

awakening to the hymn of the spring.

 

Hearing how aquifers running deep

into crevices, into rivers, carving

canyons, gorges, fjords to the open seas.

Sailing away, riding with the wind.

 

Hearing the tides keep pushing,

and pulling in. Or the breaking waves

into the cliffs. Scouring the shoreline

of an island down to the ocean floor.

 

Hearing how the mountains gliding

its terrestrial skin past each other.

Like a potter reshaping and remolding

the land into a new continent.

 

Hearing how it grumbles beneath,

venting out ash plumes and lava streams.

A force roused from deep slumber

churning mood swings in its womb.

 

Someone had it written clear-

that one should not just keep pacing

on this earth, like a  somnambulist do.

 

We should hear the gathering storms

of the impending avalanche. Iceberg splitting.

The glacier receding.  Oil gushes, spilling

over the gulf. Helpless cacophony of wildlife

endangered. Landslides and the levees

breached by hurricane. Rainforest on fire.

Desert sands advancing. Clods of soil

drying up. Locusts swarming over fields.

Ground crumbling into sinkholes.

 

We should hear how restless it gets

day after day, when  the clock is ticking out.

Faint sounds becoming loud voices

sending distress call to reckon with,

summoning mankind to listen. The earth

finally eclipsing to its perilous journey.

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Immersion

You lied to me about baptism. The intoxication

and its sinful concoction sweating from some bottles

whose name sounds like a saint I worshipped

night after night. 

 

I gulped down gallons like the torrential rains outside.

Submerged in the bubble of nameless strangers

in the watering hole. Kindred souls searching

for some kind of salvation.

 

The cloud of smoke, its humid and hazy steam blurred

my visions into hallucinations. Of angels and demons

dancing in revelry. The dirt and grime camouflaging

the filth of the mundane.

 

The surging numbness of a hundred knives dripping down

my throat. Felt like hell on earth, whose flame creeping

a river of fire. Dissecting, invading, lacerating my innards

into a violent storm.

 

A deluge I have cried and my salty tears breaching

these floodgates of the dam. I swam away from this murky tide,

its rampaging waters, swelling a flood into my bloodstream.

Drowned in a landslide.

 

This is not the heaven you promised. You lied.

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