Opaque

Here I am, intending to break

your mirror in my disgust.

By letting you understand

my need to understand you.

I  am squeezing and inching

my way closer to your smoky eyes.

As I am trying to pass through

but you won’t absorb. Me.

 

There’s a part of you

I can’t unlock. You won’t

let me fill. I am a stranger.

 

You shield something away

like the night clouds. That even

the slight sincerity of words

were moondust refracted

into the air.  I keep on clearing

the cobwebs of frosted thoughts

and sand-blasted shadows

of doubt between us.

 

Let me stripped you down

stark naked. Fleshing you

out of your reptilian skin.

Your chameleon cloak you keep

on wearing everyday I don’t need.

What needs to be visible- be seen,

transparent and undividing.

I want your honesty.

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Death Of A Little Bird

I was on my way to a restaurant that late afternoon to meet a friend, hurrying and my mind was filled with gloomy thoughts. My mind just wandered aimlessly, battling inner fears. 

Rebel as I was, it seems that I am all wearied and fighting against the world, crushed in the agony of my self-defeat- I succumbed into powerlessness.  I have met a familiar darkness of my soul once again. In such a long time.

I am depressed that day.  Defeated by reason. I am filled with anger emblazoned across my face.  That day- I am not the usual masquerading, self-hiding chameleon in the cloak of coolness and charm.  I am likened to a ticking bomb.

I have questions.  And lots of them.  As endless as the broken road markings. My combatant nature would never accept any kind word- even from the most endearing. That was one time I had feared myself the most- who is capable of hurting myself.  Like a jagged knife ready to cut the ventricles of humanity in me.

Somewhere,  in a sudden mysterious way, I heard a helpless chirp.  I stopped and started searching the source  by my side.   And I have found a little bird, that has fallen from a bird’s nest from the nearby palm tree and landed on the ground.  It is too early for the little bird to take flight.  My hardened composure melts gradually into a compassionate being.  How on earth, this hapless sight would pour a cold, cold ice to my raging soul?

Then suddenly, out of nowhere, a stray cat emerged. Prowling as if it is finding something to devour.  In my quick thinking, I immediately snatched the little bird from the ground, rescuing it from danger. From harm and from the claws of the enemy-  so vicious and lethal.

Just when I thought, that what  I did, is the right one, I felt a sudden pain.  A stinging one.  The little bird had bitten me.  Surprised as I was, I accidentally dropped the bird away farther  into the ground. Then the next thing I heard is a scuffle in the bushes until the hopeless chirping stopped.

I am overwhelmed.  I just stand there and was filled with a sudden grief.  I can’t believe that life has been snatched away from my very hands.  The life of a fragile creature. A tragic lost.  Tears quietly streamed down my face until it became flood as pent-up emotions surged and overpowered my anger like a dam  breached loose.

That moment, I wonder,  how vivid  this circumstance made my soul saved from drowning and wallowing in despair?  My life, I learned, can be like the hopeless little bird, compared to a  child out of God’s hand.  How powerful can God teach me a great lesson, a stiff-necked person as I am, who never learned from His admonishing?   The questions that I have over-analyzed  for years has crumbled under the weight of God’s wisdom which is mightier than what I can comprehend.

Like a prodigal son who came back to his father’s arm, I did the same coming home to what God has purposed me to belong.  With the lesson of that hopeless little bird, I just knew that my life on earth rest only on His hands.  All I needed to do is to have an unwavering faith and complete trust on Him.  And God has impressed to me to stay in His dwelling place as long as I live.

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Elegy to the Departed

Perhaps, Teofi

the promises of your future withers too soon

like the leaf falling early in the summer

where we frolicked in the fountain of our energies;

and bask in the heat of our freedom;

and in the nest of fermenting dreams with another human.

I can tell Teofi, how sad is the early goodbye

where you breathed your last and let go

without questioning  who deserves to live more

and without crying over your half-empty cup.

So long that I suddenly stop, I remember

your acid- washed litanies and the morbidity

of your soul longing to be understood.

I fail to grasp the hidden images of your words

to the point of harboring steely tears

over the innocence of your chameleon smiles.

Perhaps Leden,

I cannot fathom the depths of your pain

as if the morrow of your life leaking silently

until the thousand roses leave those lips.

I may not hear you scream to the bowels of the night

fighting the demons of what cruel love has.

Let me feel, the inability of you pointing fingers

to a person who has destroyed your world as if

I can paint the sky with hatred and revenge.

Let me hear  you sing in the divine discontent

of your heart seeking to embrace

the fullness of the glorious unfolding

beyond the corners of your abode.

Perhaps Grandpa,

I can cry me a river searching for the clown

of my many Christmasses and Easter Sundays.

Of letting the clouds softly traversing

like the music of the yesteryears

you keep playing on the radio.

I can say that you choose to live the most

but you never have told me that I

will be missing so much a part of the child

that was taken from me since you’ve gone.

Perhaps,

I would have not lived at all since then,

of querrying, of imagining how death

must have snatched me from my mother’s hand.

All along,  I might be carrying this imaginary coffin,

grieving among the countless earthworms swarming

and crowding the earth

in the numbness of our existence.

Forgetful and aimless like a dead man walking.

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