Skid Marks

Not a soul passes by but me

cradled on this steel machine

hugging the asphalt hard

chase the broken lines

fading into the infinite sky.

 

I see the tyre burning marks

like tattoos criss-crossing,

shifts of directions of going

and coming into your life.

 

A rugged kind of art

you have mastered

with speed. I surrender

to freedom, leaving

traces indelibly

creating loops-

togetherness

under heat

pressed

suffocated

in our bodies.

 

Raw, savagely

carefree.

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News Of The World

A housewife is busy at this hour.

The knife slices and chops vegetables

in a rhythm that synchronizes the clock.

While a farmer is out on the cornfield

riding a tractor, skimming the clods of soil.

It’s just a regular working day. Simple.

 

I sit here shuffling papers from a tray.

Scribbling and rushing deadlines. Punch,

punch, punch the buttons. Scribble some

more. Telephone rings. One time, then twice.

I picked it up. Yes, uhmmm, yes, I’ll be right there.

 

A child is lost, yes she is. Where will I get her story?

Ah, the empty sauce pan is simmering in the heat.

The table cover in disarray and the knife stops slicing

and chopping but the clock is ticking nervously.

 

The dusts were stirred over like a sandstorm.

Someone is running back home and a name

is being called out. This time it grew longer

and louder and larger as if the window panes

will shatter. This is the beginning of the story.

 

And you will hear the sound of footsteps

becoming heavy. And the noise picks up

like the tractor breaking the clods of soil.

Like the knife speeding the rate of chopping.

But it is not about the tractor. Nor the knife.

 

It is something bigger on the papers tomorrow.

Printed out loud. And my byline is on it.

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The Bibliophile

His muffled voice breaks

the long stretches of silence

while his hand guided

young and untrained hands

practicing calligraphy.

 

Watchful and demanding precision

of copied texts exacting translation.

As he unbuckles the leathery tome

of secrets in a wooden chest.

Tradition, theology and religion.

Diaries, recipes, scientific notations.

 

Inventories, census, receipts.

Readings of narratives and poetry,

astrology, proverbs and magic spells.

The volumes of letters, last wills,

songs and words of blessings.

 

Spending hours and hours sitting

among the piles of pages digging

for clues and answers to mysteries.

The labyrinth of a culture. A treasure.

Each of the fragile pages a wealth

weightier than silver and the gold.

 

Piecing each fragment in a mosaic

mapping an ancient civilization

long forgotten. He believed, it was

here  in his hands lies the fiber, sinew

and muscle of generations of man-

the society is ought to remember.

 

So he became a warrior, obsessed

with the written word wielding

weapons of passion and wisdom.

With his small army of juvenile scholars

continuing an unpopular legacy.

 

Waging the classic battle against time,

earth bugs, heat, rot and decay

slowly finding its way like marauders

pillaging the essence of our humanity

into oblivion and brink of extinction.

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Sugar For Coffee

Love they say,

is an alchemy.

As for sugar is to coffee

of white and black,

sweet or bitter

in the cup of life

intertwined.

 

By the teaspoon,

measuring. Mixing

a palette of taste-

dissolving crystal.

Drowned in a tornado

of its brewing desire.

 

Heat dissipates.

Simmering scent.

Until that golden glint

fades into that

smoldering fog.

And the lip of this cup

met yours.

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The Wake-up Call

I skipped my regular routine attending church services in the morning that Friday.  A week ago, I have already informed our pastor that I plan to attend the Industrial Area church service instead in the evening.  I also missed out our church choir practice that night, which I am so sad about. 

We braved the dusty road leading to Industrial Area. When we have arrived at the place, it was a regular accommodation building intended for company workers.  The road leading to the building is quite notorious with potholes and mountain of construction debris on the side.   We reach the worship place after winding up seven staircases worth of our stamina, of climbing the steps. The place of worship is located in the rooftop.  About 24 sq.m. approximately, capable of seating around 20 people, right there along with the clothesline of wet laundry left out to dry.

The truth is, I am not expecting it.  Of all places, to hold a church service.  A rooftop towering over other rooftops of factory buildings in the midst of desert wind and the usual darkness of the evening.  I am used to attending house of worship with the comfort of sheltering oneself against the external elements, such as rain, heat and dry wind.  That night is a wake up call.  Believers are called upon to honor the Sabbath, wherever, whenever and whatever it takes.  Be it under the shade of the tree, or under the canopy of the bridge, or an open field. 

I am deeply humbled by the fact that here in the wide stretch of the desert, away from the comforts of the homeland, people who are disciplined in faith, are braving the routinary grind of their overseas life, partially isolated to the urban centers.   This is mission’s work,  a life dedicated to the cause of bringing the Gospel to the far reaches of places.  Administering the continuous flow of the message and strengthening people’s faith in God.

I admire my pastor, who is a missionary himself, for the kind of passion he have for the lost  souls and bringing them all to Christian faith.   His silent ways are a steady yet constant reminder that complacency has no place in Christian service.  Believers are ought to steer clear of their comfort zones, sacrificing time and effort for building up Christ’s work and taking upon each the individual God’s calling in putting into action all the Christian training they have learned.

I admire my friend Grace, who chose to become a full-time missionary, while administering translation of the gospel to the native tounges of the tribes among the hinterlands of Mindanao and Luzon back home.  She already had the chance to go to India, for some introductory mission’s work as part of her trainings.

Sometimes, it is a pity, when I hear myself, complaining about being so tired to get up early in the morning to begin my morning prayers.  Sometimes, it is a pity, when I see myself, scrambling over reading best-sellers in the night rather than having a bible reading of a chapter or two. Now it occured to me, that what I am doing for the kingdom is not enough.  Christian life calls for able and willing men of faith to stand up and do the work.  Whatever the circumstances may be or a situation they are in. 

The next time, I will go to the Industrial Area to have my Friday church service there.  I need to listen to what God is saying to me, visually.

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Absent Minded

Crossing  the pedestrian lane

whip lashed  by the  breeze.

He came by- unmindful

of the roaring traffic.

Green light blinked

turning yellow-

still he walks, only inches

away to his own shadows.

 

Merged in the crowd

in the heat of the sun

with eyes transfixed-

one solid direction.

He goes without turning.

He goes without swerving.

He talks without sound.

Keeping distance.

 

He exist but can’t be found

in the sea of strangers-

he lives but don’t belong

waiting buses, waiting lines.

To him, the world’s a square.

A face and a name where-

traffic signs blinking red,

life detours to dead-end.

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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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