Till There's No Time

For CJ

A second passes
Unnoticed
The eyes blink
A minute of a child in the arms of her Father
Eternity looks on
An hour’s worth of running down the hill
And rolling over the sea of grass
A child’s bliss
A day of turning at the axis of the earth
Somebody’s caught, left behind
Time waits for noone.

As the tide rises
as it falls back
the moon lets go
of all its months
barrels upon barrels
of photographs and artifacts
are rolled over the river until
the years, as tide, rise
to wash them all away.

We couldn’t but watch
For we are caught in the web of time

Shadows lengthen till darkness takes over
However, billions of stars
Are awake tonight
On the road shedding light
‘til we come to the other side
Where the sun shines
And there’s no time.

Fade

Dreams fade...

As the setting sun
They ebb away
Like dawn
Like twilight running
Away

Dreams end.

Like any happy
Or troubled childhood
Like any story told
By poetry or prose
Like the passing away of

A rose.

We who belong
To the dreams—we
Who dream

We perish.

A Woman's Ordeal

for Abet

He came to me
As a black cloud, dry and heavy
Without precipitation
His eyes, an unflowing stream,
Brooding all the hurts and confusions of his life.
His heart, a stagnant lake:
Breeding ground of hate and anger,
And a reprobate mind—
He can’t think straight.

They took his mother
To a mental health clinic in the nearby city
Last week. His mother is in delirium—
She was a bottle of alcohol,
Preserver of hate,
Hers was a face of smiling
Pretense—of placid gentleness, as of the quiet noon
But her heart was boiling like Mayon
a year before a major eruption
Her countenance, her eyes are cold as the torrent
Of rain in June.

When they returned, she speaks not much different
than the way she used to after her husband
beat her. She bled inside…

After the beating, he’d declare his love for her
In the quietness of the evening
So they can go to bed together.
And he held her lovingly with the same
Hands that beat her.

And she would whisper
“Your love is sweet…
Your love is sweet…
(as the brackish sea)”
With her voice, indiscernible
Even by her own heart and her own mind.

She could feel him her between her legs
She could hear him let out a harsh sigh
of relief. She could taste his sweat
mingling with her tears. But she could feel him
nowhere in her heart.

She was a placid lake.
She was a bottle.
She was a dormant volcano
Seething within.

One night in the silence of her child, the bottle was broken
She was shattered. A home has been torn
Apart.
The heavy black clouds gathered
And yet the rain didn’t fall
The rain didn’t fall.

She became a stagnant stream,
Like a boat, her mind floats in the nothingness.
Forever wondering and wandering while
The waters whisper their rippling melody, but
She started living in her distant memory
She lives to blabber and talk albeit unsensibly.

Nobody understood

Her husband never tried
To understand her, to care for her
As he ought to.

Nobody understands

Though she talks and she talks nobody takes her
Seriously, but her son
Who sits here with me, telling her story.

He fixes his shirt hastily, hesitantly
Afraid to let his tears drop.

He simply looks away.

Freedom in a Prison Cell

for Amado

Will the ink run dry?
Will your words be forgotten?

The ink flowed freely
The pen was your gun. So you were
shackled. Inside the prison.
where you cannot see the sun
the fire within burns,
your heart was trained
to master your mind, suffering
confirmed what you wrote—
stinking prison, poison disguised
as food.
You slept and dwelt with the insects
Of the dark.
But you remained alive, alive…

The ink flowed freely
The pen was your gun.

So long as the poor plow and till
the land
So long as the wicked rich burden
the farmer with an iron yoke
So long as the hallowed Congress inscribe
laws in the name of their own interests
So long as the millions remain
Oppressed and ignorant

Your ink shall flow freely
Your pen will echo its shout…

The prison cell vomited you
It cannot contain you…

A heart of light breaks
Through the dark

Your ink shall flow freely
Your pen will shout.

Broken Guitar

for Victoria

Am I of any worth to the hands
Of a maestro?
Scarred, thrown down,
I’m broken
Can I ever utter a beautiful sound?
Will anybody listen to a broken guitar?

Hear me plucked, hear me strummed
Will I be in union with a golden voice?
Or do I offer nothing but noise?
Oh Maestro, will you ever pick me up?

You see through the scars—
the heart of a broken guitar
But you pluck this strings
You strum.
Together, we sing melodies deeper,
Sweeter than angel’s voices.

I am more than
just a broken guitar---
I am the maestro’s
guitar.

Ruins of a Cathedral

On the altar lies the broken cross
Debris scattered everywhere
Dust blown by the wind
Brings the mist to my eyes.

I sit on the porch overlooking
The ruins of a majestic sanctuary
After a thousand years of the sun’s shining
The pillars are broken down, bricks reduced to rubble.

I pick up a stone, and throw it inside
Chants of the ages echo back
Reviving the choir--
the ancient melodies.

Listen closely to the melody
The singing voices and the silence all at once
After a thousand years of the sun’s shining
The ruins of the cathedral still sing.