as time passes

i am tired of being

hungry all the time.

i am tired of my body

aching for sleep and

growing larger and

weaker as time passes.

i am tired of music and

mirrors and all they invoke.

i no longer wish to laugh

for laughter banishes

what good there is left

in these simple rules of being:

we grow old and die; we

grow up and live. we do

what we need to prolong

our selves. we race our own

hearts to peaks of mountains

and cover our sadnesses

with drugs. we fall in love,

and damn it if that can stop

me from falling asleep every

night, when there is so much

left to do. i want children.

i want to leave them

with their own children. i want

to take away all those years

wasted on smoking and drinking.

i could have been asleep or keeping

my teeth clean. i want to un-eat

all that ice cream. someone

once told me, to hold bone

is to touch the very soul.

i am very fat. and it is

a terrible thing when

the body insists on covering

all its wounds. today i make

a promise. i will run again.

i will take all my pain

and smash them against

the asphalt. i will stop eating

so much food. as my body falls

away, my bones will glow.

for Mia

"If there is anything after this existence,
I say no to the politics of heaven or hell.
I hope it would just mean rest."
-Corin Arenas

the good will always know what the color black is.

objects are god's way of getting in the way of heaven.

we follow the unseen and listen to the unheard of

that belief become real. for the mind is better than

the heart when it levitates. i am on the ground thinning

that space between spark and unholiness. so that

when they marry, i can come between them and

lose all my suffering to that tight squeeze of loving.

my dog knows how to love. he is filthy and innocent.

there is nothing more to it. so many words have been

cast beyond what is necessary. two days ago i was

buying an engine for our rice thresher in the heart

of Nueva Ecija. when the night came i couldn't sleep

because the wind would not allow my trees to just be.

and that is where i shifted into the night to hunt for

snakes, only to find fireflies. to smell mangoes and

eucalyptus. the moon dies out of boredom. it is

never as beautiful anywhere else when the plains are

silver and god is bellowing from the darkness to come

play in his fields. it is like a dream you find yourself in

where there are no machines. the field is whipping

itself. i watch the world go by for once without hesitation

or regret. my dog howls and i know why. there is nothing

morning about the weather. crickets slash through

the silence. frogs doom themselves by chanting in chorus.

i am sitting by a rock smoking a cigarette. my skin is silver.

So is my dog. bats take their place among the stars.

For Joel

It is the end of the year now,

here in the middle of June,

on Fathers' Day. Here I am

with Old Joel, a man who's

faced the sun in the backseat

of a cab and lived since then

with his shadow to his back.

We toast to renewal, and to old

friends. It's been just a week

into law school for me, reading

and dreaming of crimes and

politics; the world is no longer

full of stories. Just the facts.

This is how the sky looks to one

who sees black and white all day:

solemn as the blue in a single flame,

and vast as the definition of home.

The bar music plays like a song from his face.

You will know in time

what all young men come to know when

you survive the world.

It is calling you, boy, he laughs. The rich

spoils of responsibility

for the lives you will hold, for the time you will

surely waste.

Pardon me for my sentimentality. Pardon me

for seeing this man now as a man my father

never will be. I will part at the end of this night

armed with what I carry: there is no name for it.

So tonight, I will listen to old Joel the way

I look at the sky after a hard day in school.

Tonight we will brim with things men own

that are far more ancient than language.

Tonight I will love the world like I love

this bottle of beer.

one bright day, when the sands sift into place
i will not know how my heart bends but i will
hear it in the waves, calling out through the girth
of this world. you, now far away, wanting, always
wanting for that glorious voice to rise out of your
lungs and just dissipate into golden nothingness.
you want and you want, and somebody will arrive
to lift you, if you can but lilt a little and go over
the many little hills that a human life is made of.
what I wish is the same. a memory to carry me on
to better days. the brightest smiles others can give.
and a word of courage from nobody i know. someone
who passes me by, looks me in the eye, and wonders
if some lightness has formed in me the way it has in him
every single day.

1.

you know, i just watched Funny People and it made me think, i gotta be more honest while i'm up here. when i'm up here, i mean i'm alive. call me a sucker for unconventional friendship movies, but i don't want to lie anymore. this world is great.

2.

i think i don't have it in me anymore to be poetic. so i'll just play with form instead. and leave the text as unpoetic and as plain as possible. i don't think i'm trying too hard. i think i'm making sort of like an abstract painting. but for writing. and in reverse.

3.

so let me get back to the point. this world is great. i woke up this morning and saw my friends. and in the evening i ate quite a good meal. i played music. i watched a good movie. then it struck me to just write shit down. so i'm writing this shit down.

4.

i don't want to be fat anymore.

5.

god, i'm sleepy.

My Name in Reverse

I.

Nothing ceases to disappear. From the beginning where the child and the star

stain the void with brightness, to the language my teachers passed on to me

to understand these things. I dwell in what I do not fathom. Twin things:

the egg and the whole jungle I call life. Do not try to understand. The poem

is the poem, and this does not create between us a relationship. I speak

about rupture. The mouth opens. Just one. And many things speak. Don't be

like Adam who named every single thing. Be like the thousands of unforgiving

beasts that came after creation, dwelling in the absences where they prefer to dissent.

I prefer to relent.

II.

I am justified in killing my faith. I commanded it. I, who swore never again

to trust in Americans or Jews. I, who drew my own bastard Spanish blood,

who wrote beautiful verse by the sea until the insight was struck out of me.

I stayed in my room all day until possessed by a tongue so foreign

it could only be mine. And no human prayer would lift the curse from my being.

No benediction from my bodiless problem: I have no name, you see.

In my tongue, there is no need for a name.

III.

Take away madness from joy and all you're left with is useless laughter.

Remove struggle and you will not find anything. This is known as peace from where

I come from. That singular incident where you and I are lifted from our countries

and buried in the negative equivalent of a million tons of space. The heart

is the heart. Nothing more. Because it is more important to float away than

to remain inconsolable; the whole body should shudder out of love.

IV.

I propose that every cat must die. This way, there will be no cats. It is much better

than destroying a race of humans. This is the simplicity of math. Take a variable,

and destroy it.

V.

My forefathers insisted that they came from inside a man and a woman who came

from inside a giant cosmic bamboo tree. This tree was split by cosmic lightning.

This lighting was split from a single source of light. If you divide and divide these

mythical things, you will come to realize as much as I have that it is a terrible

waste of time to make up stories. I prefer to speculate on the terrible horrors

which will inadvertently destroy us. My favorite form of extinction is poetry.

VI.

A good preparation for death: one bright morning, when you wake up and see

that your consciousness still hanging from your bones, command yourself

not to rise. And by the time you lose track of yourself, it will feel like you are

slowly disappearing.

VII.

I once picked a fight with the universe, and it won. It was the only victory I have ever had.