Poem Should Be Free Like Man Inside The Cage

I didn’t get much sleep
I was thinking of a poem
Lost inside my head
How it fade fast
Undrafted
In battered scratch paper
A poem is a fossil
Unearthed deep inside
However we chiseled them
Like art
Sculpted
For eternity
Some poem we read
As ordinary
It look like a stranger in the roadside
Leaving his wife
His home
His kid
And the image lingered on our head
For quite some time
A poem should be written down the way
Uttered from the lips
Of common people
People who woke up everyday not on his own room
And found lights that came in from the window
They smile
A poem often haunt us
That you had to sit and write
No matter what
Sometimes poem written
Like people
You could see them walked around
Holding some cheap booze
And drunk like there’s no tomorrow
We wonder what’s going on
We started to judge them
Annoyed
We criticized then we were sorry
As we watched them at the corner
Sat there for
Such a long long time
Like waiting their lovers to come over
While seasons gyrated a slow
Circular movement for immortality
Winter
Spring
Summer
Fall
And when all of these done
They still on
That chair
Even everything had change
For them
It doesn’t matter
Poem should
Be uncage
It should
And it does
Forget the laws of the world
Don’t let yourself sound like someone
You as a poet
Don’t just sat there
Capturing the lines on a piece of paper
Rhyming like the rest of everybody else
Staring a good meter for hours
For days
For weeks, months, even years
That we own it
And say, I’m good
You should be
A free thinker
A free man
Poem are free
They been born at the back of our head
Let them walk
You can let them hover for a while
Then tell
Off you go lad
Off you go
Even it doesn’t come back
Soon
Even how we love them
Let them be alive
Don’t yah worry
Coz
He knows who you are
He speak about you all the time
Like a bird
It will flew into the world
Someday
And
Somehow
He will return
And you still on that chair
With a pen and paper
Tell a story between each line
Don’t get tired
All poem were written unfinished
Poem are just like a mountain
Covered by thick mist
A sand castle
You destroyed and rebuild back next summer
Nib your pen if you had a chance
Then let it go again
Away from you
Just make a wave
But not to say goodbye.

Spoliarium

Long gone hear the
Cries of
Oppressed
Unwashed bloodstained remain
Defaced

Hardened arm
Shackled
Unease

Agonized
Dungeon
Awaits
Fate

As if they
Dances among
The
Dead

An old man holding
A torch
Tiptoeing at the shocked carcass
In the dark
Tried to seek
His fallen son
An important moment
Of his dearly most

Wife sat at the side
She suffers
As he laid on the dirt
More than the wound
That bleed to death
Wail
Like a banshee
No one seem
To hear

He did paid the price
The crime
He did not commit

Uproar crowd
Faces of euphoric hysteria
Vicious eyes of rage
Maniacal cruelty
Rolled at the floor
Reverberated in frenzied lust
As the Roman soldier
Dragged the dead
Down the dark spoliarium
Piled like haystack in the field.

The Butcher

He asked –
Why he was here –
On a crowded place –
Walked dileberately at the side –
Took a cigarette on his pocket –
Stuck between his lip –
How often men would look –
Closely to strangers –
And wondered –
What the heck! –
Or –
Wtf –
And tried to dissect what if –
Only those had hid genius –
One in a million –
Mostly none –
A lost traveler –
Sketched an impression –
Leave a trace –
Build his craft –
Of butchery –
An artist –
A ghost –
A wolf –
A spy –
That after the incident –
Somebody would say –
I think –
I saw someone –
And I don’t like him –
He was more spy to me –
Than a gun man –
That’s what he wanted –
That people –
Would dwell in a web of deciet –
To unknown –
Who he really was –
If he was amongst –
Those creepy middle age man –
Who collect things –
Things like dead butterfly –
Sealed on an empty bottle –
Rum or Budweiser –
Read Ulysses –
Uttered Macbeth –
On his fish at the fish tank –
Waits the telephone chime –
At the middle of the night –
The mark walked –
Turn to him –
Asked for a light –
He just quit –
A cig on his mouth –
Was what he wanted to portrait –
Wait –
A 9 mm bullet –
Land on the back head –
Sputtered the grey matter –
On a hot red brick –
The sun blotched from the hazy sky –
Look like its going to rain –
People panic –
Women scream –
Men like him who wore dark glass –
Dark tie –
Drink bourbon –
Ate raw steak –
Just walked simply –
Drifting with the crowd –
Knew how to –
Vanish into oblivion –

The Man Who Had Laughed Even A Storm Almost Came Often Every After

The day was particularly dim
Sunlit breeze might thought that it was
Another cold front
But it wasn’t
Only a gale wind had blown
Not quitely slow
Knocking down the cold cup
That stood near beside the window
Almost spilled at the curve arm that rest sullen
In a colorless writing desk
Touching the cheek
The thrown coffee almost
bathe his ring
His hand
Even his blue polo he pulled
Up on his wrist
Eyes were looking outside
Mountains were green
Trees were green
And even the sea were green
Hair sway
Waltz unrest

Last week it rain
Till the other day
Yesterday he thought it would be over
The big loud rain
Woke him up at dawn this early
The wind kept bantering the unlocked window
He just stood and walked toward the chair
The rain fell sideway
Trying to break-in
Thunder shook the whole place
Lightning flash
Revealing the owner
Of the crisp laugh that rose the entire house
Laugh with the monsoon
And with the rain
Even after
Had gone
Thunder already cease
Only the dim world had accompany
The tender rain that stay
And still it never went
He softly said
It’s okay it’s okay.

What A Shame

I do not write for this generation. I am writing for other ages. If this could read me, they would burn my books, the work of my whole life. On the other hand, the generation which interprets these writings will be an educated generation; they will understand me and say: ‘Not all were asleep in the nighttime of our grandparents.’

Jose Rizal

i sat at the corner
i didn’t care
the whole class were thrilled
the professor or rather a doctor
stood in front holding her lousy book
with her lousy clothes
with her lousy hair
lousy smile and of course a
lousy make up
i remembered a middle age
woman
hosted a Tupperware party
in my aunt’s house

BLAH BLAH BLAH
AND
BLAH BLAH
AND
BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH
BLAH

“what are you doing?” she said.
i was surprised. She used to have a lousy shrill
too. ” Mr Herbert, may I have your attention for one
hour or else you will be standing here in front for the whole semester.”
I sat straight and looked at her. She already grinning.  “Where is your module?”
she got me there. I thought. Why would I bring that lousy module she authored. It look like she teach a grade schooler with the yellow cover book for kids.
“I forgot Ms L.”, of course her name doesn’t start for L and of course I wouldn’t tell her it stand for a million lousy of her.
“you had half a dozen of books on your desk and you  hadn’t take mine with you.”
Keats
Dickinson
Crane
Twain
chrichton
Ludlum
” Foundation of Education. How much?” I said
and look already sideway toward the window.
” What did you say?”. She walked toward me.
Her cheek were red along with her eyes.
“How much?”
her face changed quickly to a friendly manner

” lets talk business after class.”

The whole class attention drift sleepily as she talked for another 45 minutes. My mind was outside
somewhere at the
woodland
ocean
river
somewhere far
and the foundation of education module
I know she copy-paste at uncle google
and put her name BIG at it and bragged, “i authored
lots of school book on this campus. And I’m a doctor.”
my fellow classmates i know and
classmates i only know with their faces
with their mannerisms
with their yawn
and grunts
whom i walked alongside in the corridor
sat in the cafeteria
and did not bothering to say hi
hardly held the book at their hand
to avoid a crease
that’s the last time i seen the lousy professor
dropped my subject under her
soon she said dismiss.
i walked out without looking at her face
what a shame
i wont forget those lousy day
a
freshman in college
an aspiring deanslist for the next semester
got a fail grade from a lousy mentor
she passed a failing grade at the registrar big time
intent and in broadway
a stain on my curriculum vitae
okay
i decided to decorate it with lots of fail grades
drops
incomplete
etceteras
&
etceteras
college is much better
but i had to deal lots of people like her
people talk like her
people walk like her
people you taught
i think
i’ve seen Hitler
a Hitler
who took everything
anything
even a penny on your trouser
even a candy bar on your shirt pocket
even your passion and even your dream
people who butcher
people who can kill in an instant
not physical but in one way or another
it took me ten years to finish college
it took me ten lonely years
but had no regret
read the book than listen to lies
one step at a time
you see
how strong you face the monster
the world had created
perhaps
right at this moment
right at the chair
where i sat not long ago
perhaps
another skeptics,
like me would say
“what the craft…. Is this
an insurance policy seminar?”

~ There are lots of good professor that I adored in my college.Those are my mentor who taught us unconditionally without asking in return.
Some are eaten by the cancerous system
maybe because of the great necessity in life or hardship they facing but its unfair to force everybody. it’s a free democratic country

Rebel Soldier Going To Their Post Of Nowhere

Rebel Soldier Going To Their Post Of Nowhere

The sling gun,
On the shoulder,
So thin, So frail,
Green tee shirt,
Hug the lean body,
Under the bushes,
They walked,
Ignoring the mud river,
The orange ball,
Seem to fade with the darken sky,
Beam mutely,
On the poor brown soil,
Gray grass,
Above the knee,
Tickled the sole,
Of the frighten rebels,
That they smile,
Wind so strong,
Pungent,
Dead cancer of corrupt republic,
A b-plane,
Just passed,
That boy,
Made an act of shooting,
The bird in the sky,
They laughed,
It banked,
Already on the foggy,
Blue mountain.

Blood Moon

**blood moon** 

Waiting for night fall 
The moment of love is made 
The moon is bruised 

~a poet destroyer collaboration~ 

Haiku # 2

An Elegy To A Prose

Glimpse

It was like a whisper –
My wife delivered the sad news –
“Your grandfather was dead.”-
And so he was –
Her eyes were awfully sad –
Touched me gently –
She knew how hard this for me –
He was old –
I thought he never would –
The time I started to noticed him –
He was like a relic –
He talked about the war –
How the Japs chased them at the
River and hid on water lilies
All night long –
How they lucky to be alive –
How he befriended the
American soldiers –
How the world war started –
How it end –
The indifference over religion –
The Muslim and the Christians
Killing each other –
The greatness of the past President –
How Marcos summary
Killed hundred young
idealist, painter, journalist, artist, and even common people
During his Martial Law regime
They called this event as :
” Dekada 70″
The darkest epoch on us a nation –
How they gunned down Ninoy
Who said, “Filipinos are worth dying for.”

How my uncle had survived
A gunshot wound on his leg –
From an ambushed –
Had joined the New Peoples Army
Taking up law at Siliman University –
There they indoctrinated him –
“Our army are not human
They were dogs” –
He said to my grandma and
they discussed –
Walked limped –
For the rest of his life –
“He wrote a long letter to
Imelda.” , he narrated over and over –
” A LOooonngggg one. ” ,
Grandpa said exaggerating –
Then we giggled.
The first lady
Help him pay the hospital bill
Exchange of his ideology –
Grandpa supported him –
The brainy in the family
Decayed with the system –
Sometimes he told us,
How he
Comes on this land –
How he
Answered the migration call –
In the Southern Philippine –
My Grandma and him
Still in honeymoon when —
They walked away from their home
At Aklan and settled here –
To a land unknown to him –
He loves democracy-
He went to street and joined the protesters –
To end up injustices –
I always saw him went to where
Was the picket assembly –
Even he had lots of grey hair
On his head and wore a
wrinkled face –
He went to street
To overthrew Marcos –
To impeach Macapagal –
And even Estrada Administration –
He tilted the land –
Grow coffee beans and Avocado –
Ate and drunk the wealth of his toil –
He sniffed the salted air of the Celebes

As he stood at the
Cliff of Matutum –
Sometimes they sold fruits
In the
Public market –
Those days of the early 60’s –
While my mother was still young –
Then we came –
My cousins and us –
We sat at the table –
Trembling at dawn –
During summer vacation –
Grandma prepared hot milk –
Then he walked near beside –
Stared on us –
Preached the narrative of his life –
He was proud, and strong –
He loves us even he doesn’t say –
I could felt it beneath his snobby eyes –
As I perceived –
He was a learned man –
Even he didn’t go to school –
Our pillar collapsed –
My knees gave up –
I sat on a bench –
My body drenched by cold sweat –
My eyes drawn beyond the wall –
Like I search things on the mirror –
Tears starting to lined on my eye –
I could still
Glimpse
Those time when I was a kid –
An innocent face –
Stared back from the reflection of the clear pond

“Eat it..eat it..eat it..”, my older cousin whimpered –
Holding his fish line with a dying
Red worm,
Wriggling beneath the cold fresh water –
Salmons circling at it like a shark –
We wore straw hat –
And a checkered polo –
And the place were awfully cold –
It’s the saddest place in the world –
For me,
I knew the feeling,
I am used of it –
There’s nothing there
Only those big wide trees,
Farms,
Cattle ranch,
Thousand acres of  Dole pineapple
Plantation owned by American Co. –

How it change its color to a
Fiery field of red blades during harvest –

And the rain
And the cold
If my parents allowed us to curse,
Maybe I would love to mutter ;
” DAMN! This place and DAMN! this cold! ” –
We forgot time went by –
It was already 2 in the afternoon –
“Let’s go home!”, I don’t recall who said it –
We walked briskly –
Hold big salmon on our hand –
We were afraid –
The sky already given up from the dark –
The rain started to pour –
Then we saw him –
He was there
Signaled us to halt –
Tending his carabao
At the mud pool –
At six in the evening –
We gathered on the sofa –
Only the flickers of light emitted
Down the city of General Santos –

He sat on the dark corner –
Listened the radio transistor –
And the song started to sung
Brother
Louie Louie
I cried silently at the dark,
I don’t know why –
What was that on that song –
That made me depressed –
I was 6 or 7 years of age that moment –

After then –
The radio announcer talked about the cold front,
The storm build up over the Pacific –
Rain came
And the storm
And we startled at the loud roar
Of thunder
Inside the room
We laid there side by side
No electricity
No candle light in the dark
Then
There’s this song –
Played again in the air
Brother
Louie Louie
Damn the world was torn apart
During school days
He went to city
At school
He asked us sometimes –
How things going on –
He bragged about it –
To his neighbors –
At Tieza about us –
We went there occasionally –
There was this shelves with 30
Or more books –
I sat there often –
On my primary years at Public North
Elementary School –
Read carefully –
Those stories about the Greeks –
The Trojan War –
The Arabian Nights –
The Filipino contemporaries –
That’s the reason
I love to stay in the library –
Wherever city I went –
Hand gripped a yellow
Mongol pencil –
Scribbling some words on crumpled papers –
And hid it somewhere –
At college he went to our house at Silway –
He is very ill –
My mom and us cared him –
He watched the world news,
Trying to know –
What was happening around
The whole world –
I read silently Doveglion

Near beside him –
I already had a family –
He was weak –
I knew his end was coming –
I touched his head often –
Kissed him on the cheek –
Looked at him on his fading eyes –
He breath weakly and coughed –
How I love my old man –
My son likes to play beside him –
He was on his death bed –
Then my wife –
Was standing right in front on the workplace –
She looked at me in the eye –
I knew a painful smile –
Of people who tried to say
That… It’s okay…
Life should be that way…
No one lives forever…
She whispered softly on my ear –
” Grandpa is gone…”
Even she started to hugged me –
Even if she didn’t say a word –
I knew it would come.
And I wasn’t there beside him.
I wish…
I be at his side…
And say…
How much we love him…
How much I thank him…
How he taught us to be brave…
I wish I was there so…
I could whisper… It’s OK Grandpa..
And…
And…
And hold him firm…
And feel how he still hold us back…
Even he already gone.

One Moonless Night At The Sea And It Rain All Through It

we were young
we canoed silently the brown little boat
of our Grandpa
of course, we stole it
we had to go fishing under the blue sky
at 4 in the afternoon
– the sun move down
– witnessed how beauty it retract
on my eye
at the middle of
tropical sea
the birthrights of the Pacific
like two world converge to each other
light and
darkness
hug to each other
as the sun
and stars and moon
and the hovering birds
the blue deep green murky waves
the smell of the burnt ocean

I wish I wanted to be a painter –
I said
what –
bummer asked
I throwed my fishing line
thinking of what I said
the beauty of what I’ve seen
and the feeling of regret
I ain’t got talent of brush and tassle

when time had passed
and I grew older
not a kid anymore
the dream died on my very eye
but not inside my heart
the fire
almost ebb
with a small spark
started to lit
a candle tongue

One moonless night at the sea and it rain all through it

we embarked
the way the big guys do for a living
fishing to the open sea
the current was strong
it drifted us far
we ain’t afraid
we just tired of harrowing our fish hook at the sea line
we just tired of the noise of the waves that kiss the sand
and our grandma called us to go home because its time

when the night already deep
dark and sad
the wind moan loud like mockery
rain poured in
from the sky
roar of thunder
blinding lights
the sleeping sea woke up
with ungentle snarl of waves

our boats
seem crying
for us
it’s body
groan
like paper toss
on the waves

bummer hold the ore on his hand
me and another boy sat at the corner
it’s already midnight when we started to see
candle tongue that glowering against the mist
the houses were silent
in the rain
they saw us
mooring on the distant
as the sea spit us from its jowl

we carried the brown little boat of Grandpa
offshore
then we ran into the bushes
with fish on our hand.

Sea Gypsy

my
skin were
like a morning

rays,
that rose
in the sky,

almond
shape eye,
dark with the dusk,

round ,
shape face
got a timid lips,

grandma talked often
best she could –

don’t forget the
past, where
we –

sailed across the
orient sea –
waves

and the seagulls,
the boat
and

our fading heritage,
make it
alive –

where we came,
where we gone.