The terror called Love

Love is a terrifying Thing.
When its splendor whispers the chill of its warmth
we dissolve into strands of light.
And we understand that the nights of our lives
are just moments of a more intimate sunrise.

If what we are is but a dream,
love is our dreamer.
When it awakes,
we are its reality.
It fetches to our hourglasses
the grains of bliss;
It fills our emptiness
the flow of totality.

And we realize a Thing frightening
to our numb existence:
Our hearts never break
but open up
whenever there's goodbye.

Blow

a certain moaning
luminates your spine
with a glow
of a red
cloud at sundown
rising like steam
your body lifts
to the crest
of a mountain
in deep trance
from your toes
a cantering spiral
tickles your neck
your jaw trembles
your cheeks ripe
warmth conquered you
your eyes shut
to everything but
to your ecstasy
my tongue strokes
your volcanic reveries
then you erupt
those undulating rhymes
your navel articulates
your every ahs
into spastic verses
and i swallow
everything that flows

[c]sass

dear O

Even if the wall of goodbye is now in place
When memory starts to play the laughter we once shared
A rain stick still shuffles in my chest

still life

i will paint my heart in a beating canvas
it will be plain and simple, as if painted by a child
but will be life-size, just right for your wall

Eve

Adam,
I'm not offering you any fruit
just my hand.
I want to dance with you
for I have seen:
The way back to your heart
is the way back to my heart.

Into the Infinite Gape

LOVE, spark of wakefulness,
stretch every beat of my being
into a white surrender to the Infinite Gape

stir my conditionless Yes
to the downpour
of creative currents
to the touch
of the unknown call
to the fleeting shapes
of the clouds of time
to the dusk
of nameless nights
where stars rise
pulsating a pure sparkle
wildly as a rebel's roar
yet tenderly as a morning mist

the clouds
let me weep them all
and lay them flowing
on the shore of the inner gaze
they dry into grains of grit
grain by grain courage takes them
into the deep of bliss
where the nacre of acceptance
turns them into pearls

then dive my soul harvest those pearls
they are the wings of this voyage
out of the cage to the Infinite Gape

The Gathering

We are palms of hands meeting in prayer
Thumbs aligning as bodies turn to lotuses
Lips lost in each other's gaze
We are what napes set free in every bow
Between us is a solemn togetherness
The blindness of love: A sense more profound than sight
For love is the gathering of the senses
Love feels, tastes, scents, sees,
Love listens, luminously

Horizon

A warm nest where tears can finally hatch
a horizon, please
I'm quite dizzy right now to walk
What's beneath my feet
crashes

I am falling in a haystack of
masks, as if I'm peeling
an onion -- afterwards:
swollen eyes, a sodden smile,
and just another story.

A warm nest where tears can finally hatch
a horizon, please
a horizon,
please…

These shoes are made for walking...and that's what they'll do

...one of these days these shoes are gonna be thrown all over you!

And one of these days, stilettos will be the new Molotov cocktail. And one of these days, invitations to political functions and events will read: COME BAREFOOTED.

First: "This is a farewell kiss, dog"
Shoed George W. Bush
in Baghdad




Then, It was Wen Jiabao
"How can the university prostitute itself with this dictator?"
Shoed Wen Jiabao
in Cambridge University



The latest: "Murderers! Intifada!"
Shoed - and booked - Ambassador Benny Dagan, Israel's ambassador to Sweden
in Stockholm University




Who's going to be shoed next?

For the moment, Nancy Sinatra sings the soundtrack of the above events

I resign

“This paper is a crane
when its wings unfold
it will be pure and empty”
- Marjorie Evasco, Origami


Whenever I look at you I do not see you. I see an origami of your age, your job,
your class, your gender, your sexual orientation, your race, your nationality, your religion, your beliefs, your thoughts, your past, your future; labels upon labels, conditionings upon conditionings, time upon time.

To look at you is not to be with you but to relate with the images, ideals, and impressions I have made of you.

To look at you is not to interact with you but to interpret you, sizing you up, fitting you in a category, molding you after my thoughts, turning you into an object of my interest, comparing you to my standards, breaking you into analyzable parts, transforming you into something compatible with my beliefs.

To look at you is to get trapped in the skein of our mental projections about each other: we read the script of the conventions and traditions of society, performing an addictive and convenient drama, a persistent pattern of relating indelibly imprinted in the deep recesses of our minds.

To look at you is to separate myself from you: I am your other and you are mine, mine for you have become something I can own, and therefore I can control; as my other, you are a prisoner of my expectations and demands.

To look at you is as addictive, persistent, deceptive, and subtle as its identical twin: Look At Me.

To look at you is to kill you. I'm tired of being your murderer. I resign.

Now, I am just here, with totally naked eyes, looking beyond you, connecting with you not with words, thoughts, nor beliefs, but with the brilliance of the burning silence of our unmediated presence. And in this space, I listen to the melody, smell the fragrance, relish the rapture, and feel the warmth of what you are as you unfold and not as how you are folded by your conditionings, by my thoughts, by my desires, by my interpretations.

The Silence of the Mirror

I.

the silence of the mirror
reflects what's beyond this flesh:
an empty shore where thoughts cannot walk.

what i am is just a mere wave,
flirting with the winds of consequence and chance,
dissolving as it reunites
with the emptiness of this shore.

II.

the silence of the mirror
reveals a secret devastating to desire:
between you and me is not separation but distance.

whenever we let each other's solitude be,
we meet beyond our desires;
we embroider space the braille of poetry
blind inspiration reads to our hearts.

III.

the silence of the mirror
whispers to me the vesper of illumination,
melting me into liquid chants.

i evaporate to form the musical clouds
streaming across the boundless sky.
into the ears of the earth i shall pour
as the humming radiance of the stars.

IV.

the silence of the mirror
ignites me to burn merrily inside.
my heart beats its final beat.

now it bursts into a bonfire of laughter.
ecstatic warmth runs through my veins.
my eyes gleam at the sight
of my cheeks blushing enchantment.

V.

the silence of the mirror
unties the ribbon of pain tied by the past.
the box imprisoning my being unwraps.

out of the box a blaze of fireflies flashes.
the dance of the northern lights springs out.
after the flood of light recedes,
the mystery of my being ascends
naked, awakened, untouched
by the remembrance of time.

Stealing Reykjavik!

Click picture to enter gallery!

IVN

doubt, where were you
to stop a violent dream
from stealing his smile

uncertainty, what made you
skip this instance
and let certainty rule
this game of chance

forgive me, my tears
refused to flow outwards
for this is not the death
my mortal tears can recognize,
can appease, can heal
for this is not the death,
not the death
anybody deserves to die

...and the flowers sighed
where was compassion
when it was needed most?
asleep in the darkness
of someone's heartless night?

yet we know, there you are
and will be, our dear friend,
living eternally afloat, awakened
as a star throbbing
in the pure emptiness of light

(Manila | 3 Dec 2008)

Reykjavik

in your streets,
in those coy smiles,
as your tranquil skies
embraced my eyes,
i heard Steinarr whisper
that in the melting of the snow
"Það er sólskin og hiti (there's sunshine and warmth)"

no matter how you're bruised
your fresh breath
shall awaken once again
as the tower of light
extending from your land
undressing the wilderness
of the night

you burnt my heart
and there's nothing i can do
but beat the flame, o dear,
you are so beautiful
i had to weep my goodbye -
bless for the moment

(Reykjavik, 23 November 2008)

VD

i shall remember you
just how the trees remember Spring
as they sleep in Winter:
gently, silently, patiently,

awaiting to blossom
as the lush that never fails
to inspire our sleeping hearts
to awaken and burn

ardent as the Summer's day
our hands held
Autumn painted our eyes
the golden dream
our lips caught together

(stockholm, 10 nov 2008)

The biography of autumn

Part 1 : The Astronomer

lost among
impersonal city lights,
neon lights blinding life

the gaze of the astronomer within
drowns
for what else remains in the sky
but hearts clenched
by a laminating glance

hands are raised as fists
and not as salutation
to the sun

Part 2: Autumn

i have never seen Autumn
but chances are
she'll be as golden as she falls
in my imagination

even without my eyes
leaves will still slip
from strength to fragility
as trees sing the lullaby
of Autumn's vulnerability

the drummer within
listens
to the lullaby of the trees:

with madness as wings
and love for your wind
my dear leaves, Fly!
fly like the last wisp of smoke
leaving a candle's twig
quenched by Autumn's tears
into The Void
arise and perish
like thoughts falling
to return to The Ground

i have never seen Autumn
but chances are
she'll be as golden as she falls
in my imagination

Part 3: Dear Darkness, Dear Pain

dear darkness
i know how much you long
to stand triumphant
as this body breathes its last

dear pain
all these years you were holding
my hand, inviting them to clench
a fistful of anger to scare
the joy running through my veins

forgive me, for all those times,
i had only the eyes to judge you
but not the inner gaze
to have compassion for you

O dear darkness, O dear pain
thank you, i now understand
that loneliness is just the denial
that love is always there

O dear darkness, O dear pain
let us be free, now
and here, i'll watch over you
as you return to The Ground
my goodbye is your peace
and your peace is this smile

Part 4: From darkness and pain

let us go
as an eloquent laughter fading
with a lilting grace

we'll bring with us
your sadness, loneliness, and fear
but not your happiness

as we go
just sit with naked eyes
and just wear that smile you had
when you felt us for the first time
with the hands of your heart
as tears of compassion
gushed from your inner sight

and with love for our wind
we'll sail back to The Ground

Part 5: I woke up

I woke up
with the astronomer within
caressing a star
breathing so tenderly
with a passionate light

the drummer within
with her untamable beat
marches

(photo from stock.xchng)

These times when outside runs

These times when
outside runs, raging
like flapping tongues of flame, darting
as strands of penetrating chill, rising
as waves of despair, anger, and fear,


vulnerable forms tremble like falling leaves
sickled from their twigs by a swift autumn's whisper.
Yet this turmoil, this crunch, and this collapse
can be angels in wolves' clothing,
messengers of the sharp, bright light, shining


in the darkest hour of our sleep, awakening
our courage to accept that sorrow and joy,
victory and defeat, are but a foam, frothing
on the surface of existence, forming
as impermanence shakes the circumstances
of appearance.


O fellow creatures of the bang,
what's beneath and beyond you and i never forgets,
eternity understands: For the moment, we are sounds
chaotically adrift; but in the Great Nothingness,
we are formation flight of words, flying
as beautiful verses the universe sings.

Dysphoria & Euphoria

i woke up to a chill
intimately intertwined with my bones
the walls of my room were shaking
i laid as a stain of pain, blemishing
the bedsheets with my damp eyes
i felt tired but
enthusiastic to inhale burning charcoal until
nights ascend from it
as fragile wisps of dread

i no longer can't deny:
the clock's face has no smile, just hands
juggling dysphoria and euphoria -
the fraternal twins pushing and pulling
the swing hanging stationary
in this lucid interval

how i long to laugh
laughter that is well

In love

Someone asked me:
Is it possible for "me" to love anyone?
Can I "give" love?
Is it possible for "someone"
to love you at all?

Using this dear little self as the laboratory,
here I share my reflections as I look into this, deeply
and with a courageous sense of intense inquiry:

I see that in “giving or receiving” love
there is a separation among the giver,
what’s being given, and the receiver.
But this separation is the very negation
of love.

Love is this unity. I cannot give nor receive this unity.
For me to say that I can give or receive
this unity of which I’m but a part is nothing
but the romantic arrogance of the mouth
which only speaks about love
but can never speak the language
of love.

There is love between us which comes and extends
from within you and i. Perhaps when one is “in love”
one is “in the realization”, and not "in the conceptualization",
that there is no separation, no “other”,
just love.

Yet one understands that there is
distance but not separation
in love.

I can fall in love with someone, something,
whatever form. But “falling in love with” is not akin to
“giving love to or receiving love from”. As I fall in love
the walls of separation collapse - even for just a moment.
But as these walls collapse, I can see something in “me” resists;
in this resistance, jealousy, possessiveness, and all smokes
associated with the flame of love waft and resurrect
the walls of separation, chanting "Love Me, Love Me".

yet i understand: what is this one that falls in love?
can the “i” and the "you" in the “I love you” still survive
in love?

The annihilation of an "i" and a "you"
makes love very dangerous, very dangerous
to someone who would rather give and receive love
than be in love.

(photo from stock.xchng)

Coincidence? love? or a coincidence of love?

In a span of almost a year, I saw two humongous perfect rainbows in exactly the same location. Coincidence? love? or a coincidence of love?



Rainbow Sighting 1:
Date: 20 November 2007
Time: 4.59 PM
Location: right across my building (Boni, EDSA)




Rainbow Sighting 2:

Date: 06 October 2008
Time: 5.40 PM
Location: right across my building (Boni, EDSA)


*My camera isn't capable of capturing the entire stretch of these rainbows.