They Are Silent

They are silent, yes, they are silent.

I imagine them talking on corners

sounding like the bees ready to sting.

And the beehive is ripe and heavy

with gossip running over like honey.

 

The audience, they lined up like stones-

incensed hot coals ready to be casted

and thrown at statues and pillars

breaking under the weight of judgment.

 

They are silent, yes, they are silent.

A mockery of sorts, they like the show.

Shadow puppets will scream and whistle.

They are victims to a phantom in a circus

and worship the magician with words.

 

I wish the sword will tangle with tongues,

lacerate the innards and spill the beans.

I wish the fish will bite the bait

and see the hook clasp hard the mouth

to stop fishy things from overflowing.

 

They are silent, yes, they are silent.

The blind is not actually blind

but open eyes would like to see illusions.

They have ears but do not want to hear

truth as sharp at its double edges.

 

Applause will fly like white doves

for the trick and the disguise deceives

the gullible and naivete. Silent ones

whose ignorance excuses no one.

They are silent, yes, they are silent.

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Strange Foreign Beauty

Silence is a little thread that binds the pages to a life-

closed book of chapters, passages, remembrances,

acquaintances, wanderlust, transience, oblivion. No one

speaks about the truth anymore. About

 

long hours. Segments, anecdotes, soliloquies,

echoes, nuances, ennui, memoirs, silhouettes

of things and places. Sights and sounds.

The mind and senses in harmony. Strange

 

foreign. Beauty hidden in a labyrinth frozen

in time. Never to be opened for a reading

and not for sale. Summer, winter, spring.

Fall.

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The Conversation

I read what you have written.

I watch how you exist everyday.

I listen to what you have to say.

In silence I understand and

in the way of silence will I respond.

I may disagree with you

but I thank you for what you are,

in respect to the way you live

your truth. I may have biases

and pre-conditioned opinion

of how it was with my side of story.

But I do not beg you to listen,

nor to watch and read these lines.

For I know you will afford to respect

the unwritten code of tolerance.

Measure for measure. We swap

vantages and viewfinders.

We have a choice whether to see

things clearly in detail

or  the bigger picture.

We do not need to hide

the arguments on intellectual

acrobatics nor choose to mislead

honesty in fallacy. It is not

in the amount of words nor

the eloquence of the language,

but in this fraternal bond

that even in disagreement

we thrive in peace.

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Come

You see, light can be a scary thing.

 

It reveals something you won’t confront

by the mirror. You won’t by your shadows.

This ceiling, will you know how far

I have travelled without moving?

Beyond which my eyes can see.

The mind wanders alone. Come

closer by my bedside.

I’ll whisper something, a story.

Like a baby crying at mother’s

giving birth. Hear the sound

of the first rain after a drought

and how it falls on the parched

earth. A seed hibernates too long

through the darkness, alive.

Set free with its fragile arms

embracing the sky.

 

Will you tell me the truth?

Have you seen the surging ocean

drowning you out of the blue.

Have you felt something taking

root beneath you, peace.

Lullabye of the mermaid

lulling you to sleep

and believe in love

like the shooting stars.

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I Am Writing My Pain Away

She told me that my father was another man,

well I shrugged my shoulder and say “it’s okay”.

But she didn’t know that I am writing my pain away.

I came to a point of thinking about those fatherless

children who lost theirs in wars, in car crashes…

 

I am still lucky, and better-off, I got one

whom I can call Dad, but he would rather not.

He told me I am not his son, and he would not talk

nor teach me how to drive cars. I sat down on a corner

and started scribbling my pain away. Maybe I can draw…

 

And draw myself a car, a house, a tree, the blue sky,

and people smiling under the sun. Until I came to a point

of thinking that I could imagine a world, my happy world.

I could draw as many cars as I would like, and as many fathers

who could teach me how to drive and see how proud I am.

 

But playmates taunted me it is not all true. They laugh.

They scorn. They tell me how crazy I am to believe.

I just left, not minding, distant and alone. “It’s okay”.

I will just write my pain away.  I write good stories

about friends who sit beside you and listen to you.

 

They, who will never doubt how good the story was.

But some books I read say otherwise. There were lessons

which say do this and do that. I believed it was. That

I should never be a pauper begging for affection.

That I should be headstrong.  That I should  be honest.

 

And genuine. That good people will go to heaven. I did

believe in truth and desperately seeking it all my life.

But I was mocked and I stand bruised and wounded.

They say I am too much. They say I am brash.

They say I am too frank. They say I intrude.

 

They call me names. It’s  like big boys and big girls

saying that I should go away. They don’t need me.

And then again, I isolate and pick a pen, scribbling…

And I am writing my pain away. And this blank space

is sure and will not reject me like most people did.

 

No matter how fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters,

friends and even if the world will turn against me

and continue to restrain their hand in extending love.

I would teach myself loving without taking, understanding

that my heart is rich and I have much more to give.

 

I could belong like my ink being absorbed by the paper,

without condition. Just pure distill of my thoughts.

I could somehow say that I found a home to myself

after all.  With the pain I’ve been through,  I am

still here writing my pain away.  I am not alone.

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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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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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