Those Sisters’ Men

When my sisters began to marry their men,

I just stop talking to them. Eagerness

suddenly plummet into nil and I began seeing

an imaginary wall that divides me to them.

Those strangers’ hand snatching spaces,

of familiarity, never uttered a word about apologies.

Plundering the blood bond, the images of innocence

running away to far places where I cannot go… I hate them.

 

Suddenly somewhere appears picket fences,

territories, boundaries and cages

which were meant as a warning

not to encroach their line, their property.

And how then, for a split-second

they ruin the emotional investment

my sisters and I build relationships.

 

Ah, they would never understand

the weightier aspects more than

the union of two bodies to breed.

They would never understand how

my sisters and I share a lifetime-

that intimate part we found eversince

we are born, out of our mother’s womb.

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Renegade Days

We were among those hundred innocent feet

wheeling through the clouds of dusts.  So close

that someone shouted to stop the angry phalanx

from advancing the gates. We were young bloods then.

Brave as a collective force ululating vignettes

about homeless families, starving peasants,

weak indigents, landless tribes,

friends of disappeared and the exiled.

 

We stand like a hundred innocent moths

circling fearlessly around the flame. Ready

to extinguish our fates  for one day of glory.

The cups ready to be filled with the bitter

after-taste of seeking the truth on the matter

of state.  Of politics. Of international affairs.

We stomp them shamelessly beneath our sandals.

We ripped them off from our tattered jeans.

We print them on the plainness of black shirts.

That justice of the land is not blind and should prevail.

 

We debated doctrines. We fight about logic.

We push our pens. We clasp our fists.

We join the caravan. We live our days

marching  vigorous  in the streets chanting

the aged texts  on mass struggles by the red book.

Burning  effigies.  Donning the placards.

We abhor dictatorship. We hated imperialism.

Like waterbombs spouting heavily against our faces.

Like the many teargases  hurled against our defences.

 

We bled when the police beat us out of the line.

Isolated  when we are thrown into prison cells.

Humiliated when subjected into torture chambers.

Discriminated when hunted down in the mountains.

We rise and made each part of our bodies as weapons.

Our  mouths  without strained voices.

Our  eyes  without biases.

Our  ears without prejudice.

Our fists without cowardice.

Our hearts without fear.

 

This is our revolution against the world order.

And the phoenix will rise again and again

among the many moths that have died.

Resurrected and will never be silenced.

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Counterpoints and Movements

Imagine yourself playing the part.

The melody in a slow tempo

touching the white bones in mine.

The blank spaces glide

filling the staves into octaves

where rhythms of silence

are aching to be heard.

 

The approaching train

in locomotion slowly halting

to a rest and the muse

steps out in a sudden hush.

Whose inspiration reminds me

of the autumn breeze

that shifts its weight

among the rustling of leaves.

 

The sounds in the pavement,

and the trickling of the rain

drops of minims, crochets,

semibreves and quavers

into unfamiliar serenade

awakening the restless

in the night’s peaceful embers.

 

I remember the beating pulse,

the sharp pause counterpointing

the pace and the careful movement

of that forgotten harmony

smoothly entering my soul.

 

When all love was just a dream

and tonight I hear applause

thundering under my own skin.

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Moonquake

Your alabaster beauty

fills these empty halls.

I am watching you.

As my hand memorizes

each curves and contours

of your sculptured life.

I chiseled. I breathed

a ghost of someone

who will never  be able-

to reciprocate nor return

the passion unfolding

in cold stone, white-

washed in lunar glory.

 

Hush now, Venus, hush

in your half-baked shell.

Please  lay by the fire light.

Under the moon’s silhouette

and the night full of stars,

feel my night’s embrace.

Letting your nakedness

guiding the master’s touch.

The ocean tides mounting

under my skin, surging.

Setting ablaze a part

of me. Hidden, unrequited-

this undying desire.

Rise now, Venus, rise.

I want you.

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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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Rhapsody In Blue

No string quartet.

No conductor to signal the baton.

No orchestra to anticipate my usual swoon

of randomly plucked staccato

alternating octaves

like a mad man in Vienna.

 

Alone in the stage,

I would linger

unvigorous in vibrato,

punctuating this sadness

in glissando. A solo part- how I wish

to serenade the muse. Longing

to tell her story in music-

under the sweet  delicate pitch

sorrow of Cremona.

 

The episodes, I have written on

mellow notes, resonant harmony-

bowing cello. Passionately

romancing my fingers to the smoothness

of her nape, the ebony board. While

sitting on a chair, I am a young lover

in blue, embracing memories.

 

My gentle touch travels

her body,  her maple waist

to her bridge, her sensual curves.

Choreographed my movements

spiked to her gravity. My slow breath

became whispers reverberating,

counter-pointing her lucid melody.          

 

I chose to be soft rather than loud,

my cello swooning treble of a tenor-

overwhelmed by a mezzo-soprano.

Quenching beneath this segmented,

disjointed and abruptly shifted

monotony of a lifetime

asking for her forgiveness. 

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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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