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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Steel Bars

I am perched here inside with distances to roam

only my eyes can see. You are out of reach.

The wind blows from distances afar

bringing me in yesterday’s news. It’s cold.

And the noise reverberates like a broken record.

 

Tell me about freedom. Day in, day out.

Of walking in circles, and the light travels into the night.

Tell me about resilience. No matter how it looks-

a hard shell but brittle and fragile within my mind

where it builds edifices of dreams. Towering

 

over my need  to run away and get lost

untangled into distances unhindered.

Restrain my hand from gripping the bars

of steel I layed propping up my self-esteem.

I will run untamed like a wild horse.

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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 Waitress

She took out a folded piece of paper

from her pocket. A handwritten note

she would read again. Then say,

“He loved me and I still believe”.

“He is from Oregon, an American”.

 

She hid this keepsake along with

a photograph.  Of a white man smiling,

in uniform, besides a military truck.

Her fingers would trace the line

of the man’s face, remembering.

 

When she first served him a drink,

seeing him there ever since. Then,

to her the bar transforms to a place

where promises of crossing oceans

were not so distant like a dream.

 

But they left. Leaving behind sadness

that will fill her days as she waited-

for her man to return and take her away.

To a place where the color of her skin

will not matter but a heart that she fully gave.

 

Year after year, she stayed while clearing tables

and washing dishes. Cleaning them spotless

and white again, counting them like days

she will have to wait. Leaving this place

crossing oceans to dream with her man.

 

Still, no news of him. Maybe, tomorrow.

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Nil

Flipping through a newspaper  is like a world

in a still shot of words. A night sky of falling stars

against the backdrop of inkblots and faded graphite.

Filling out the whiteness of pages parched with yesterday

scenes captured and distilled in silence.  Here, where

its blackness became a cure to this ennui.  A distraction.

A flotsam of unhappy events, of somebody’s tale.

The never-ending saga of tragedies and its epic struggle

to survive. Looking for signs, of parallelisms

which might ephemerally keep that connection.

While tomorrow is another news rolling off the press

harping that life will still stay relevant. Each day.

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