His Past Smells

His past smells of a ditch

drying up its putrid stink

as stale as the street air.

It belongs to a smoggy neighborhood.

In the memory of tattered rags

flapping like flags on the clothesline.

As if dreams can be scavenged

out of the hilly mounds

of garbage, dumping its gifts

of someone else’s trash turning

into someone else’s fortune.

 

No one cared about armpits

getting wet and sour for hours,

as long as the bad odors

can promise him little money

to buy fish sauce for rice.

Sniffing heaven on earth-

little angel never complaining

about life, about the linger-

of those occasional whiffs

from the broken sewer.

Nor the rising sting of steam

emanating from his broken skin

pierced by the cruel sun.

 

Nor inhaling the dry cough of cars

and buses farted poison.

The way he exhaled yesterday

walking on a pavement slow,

feeling the throbbing locomotion

churn on his empty stomach.

A street urchin squeezing the crowd

like a fly hopping on a hope

above the grease and grime

that smeared a childhood.

 

He won’t cover the past

with today’s perfume

nor sanitize its images

in suds of detergent.

He’s not ashamed

of the scent of his past-

the smell of poverty

that swarmed his innocence

and have walked

the muddy line across

the nook and cranny

of his every bones.

He survived them all.

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The Story

Don’t upset the mainstream, he’d say.

Art for art’s sake, I think out loud.

 

Unless I end up whoring

at the art house

with rusted springs

at cushioned seat poking

scooped up gossips.

Eavesdropping 

some private lives.

 

I let his copulation of idea

with tried and tested formula

stink like the stench of urine

of those who had chewed

and vomited yesterday’s

mulch of cinematic nostalgia.

 

And feces too. And fetuses

aborted prematurely

at the conference table.

That goddamn scriptwriter!

 

He wants a Truman show

for peeping Toms’ and Marilyns’

who think life can fit in a box. Squared

wrapped in a gift, 24/7 in public

with the world half sleeping

and half awake. Eyes wide shut.

 

Well, everybody wants to be

porn stars. And millionaires too.

Sixty seconds to fame. Or shame.

 

I twist fate and turn some coincidence.

Making them laugh. Making them cry.

People love some happy ending

but of course, I knew the bitter score.

I’ll reveal on a one-on-one interview.

 

Facts gyrate around a pole dance.

Truth hides in darkness, so dim the lights.

 

I clip a scene here and there,

sanitized some bits

like clean sequences of plot

I trim into fairytales-

reality cloaked in dreams.

 

Then, there’s the director’s cut.

I have hidden something

here in a draft, unpublished.

I create an imaginary character

of the self I would never be.

I plagiarize someone else’s life.

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Man On The Wheel

My hands perspire from the grip

I need to loosen up.  Bringing in the air

to these burning palms laid down from commanding-

life directions in the intersection of good and bad.

The right from wrong.  I twist and turn in indecision.

Bending  and yielding.  Speeding up and slowing down.

I try to break down the clods of earth

from forming  into mounds of rock.

I try to make a path through the grass

and keep the weeds from growing.

 

I try to calm down my reflexes and think

that the tyres won’t leave the road

and it’ll continue chasing the horizon

until that cul-de-sac to begin again

turning in circles. I gave up the throne,

to allow the changing of hands

of the driver seat into that passenger,

I surrender for the first time. Watching

someone else’s lording over the brakes 

and keep moving the distances away.

Away from  myself.  Trusting.

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Paper Cuts

He stares at the frosted window,

dreaming of pigeons in flight.

Probing shadows in his oblivion

while the neighborhood is asleep

on this night bathed in blue light.

 

His heart refuses to surrender

to someone else’s handwriting.

 

He’s an outsider, perhaps a victim.

No one knows how he spent hours

imagining a beautiful world.

Unable to express, struggling

for a line to be understood.

 

An empty love bleeding sentences

that can never be written.

 

Such beauty, a flower in the field

belonging to some lucky bee.

Jealousy hits his innocence

like a knife to a man’s desiring,

leaving his wounds unhealed.

 

For the lady who reads letters

from some scented envelopes.

 

There is blood in the trash bin

and it does belong to him.

Among the crumpled sheets,

the fingerprints and drops of ink-

a memory of his scarred sanity.

 

How he endured the paper cuts;

this man’s life in blank pages.

 

The postman didn’t come today

and the letters were undelivered.

No one has foreseen death’s coming-

such as his knocking on doors

and opening of mailboxes, each morning.

 

They found a fountain pen in his hand,

motionless and still- in cold blood.

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She Sings

This pilgrim slowly falls

into longing.  Loneliness

hums along a prelude

to twilight.  The olden days

forgotten. Of distant past

revealed and was found-

in the lines of her song.

 

She sings of a sad refrain.

 

As if she knew the way,

retracing tracks to wounds

of a love lost.  A trip,

down the memory lane.

 

She sings

 

as if she knew this pilgrim.

Whose heart is keeping

a sad, hidden melody

left here at the station.

Unsung of someone else’s

 

story.  She sings

 

about broken promises.

About dreams fading

into the horizon.  About

memories slipping away.

Like trains not returning

 

this song’s sad ending.

 

Loneliness runs along

here at the station.

Tomorrow is another day-

down the memory lane.

 

And this pilgrim chose

to stay awhile, alone

past midnight.  Waiting,

as she begins  to sing

another sad song.

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