Las Cumbres and Armita

Shoulders hunched forward, stomach in your chest,
another day on the road.
Counting minutes, counting kilometers,
and counting on backseat laughter
to raise your drooping eyelids.
When their eyes succumb behind you
yours follow the curves of the road
the skyline, drifting from rectangular patches
of green slanted cabbages to bright blue expanses,
and precarious gray fences that tease you about the vales below.

The sun sets and you count once again:
cars lined up like ants, buses spewing black fumes,
the low-droning hum of traffic the bass
to the backseat's revived running commentary.

You come home to his face:
lips curl downwards from rustic pleasure to an anonymous frown
(you don't always say the right thing),
his eyes change from country to city.

Habiliments of the grave

Hollow hollow hollow heart,
Years ago I dared to read the cards.
They prophesied your hermitage,
the shining light on the dark path,
beams illuminating the crevices and places unseen
where humans step and stumble.

Hermit hermit hermit heart,
Know that they will never heed your words.
They wish to fall for themselves,
they cry to you as they slip and tumble,
and your predictions incite their anger
when they inevitably come true.

Hollow hermit, your lips are sealed.
Your first breath gave way to a strangled sob of solitude,
and the illusion that stays alive for most
died as your childhood faded into premature senility.

Hold the lantern, hold it high,
you are merely a lamppost to passersby.
And those days that you see their smiles,
their jolly cheeks and pink abandon,
the fire you thought long gone glows,
those embers of doubt
how they haunt your hollow heart
until all the footprints are covered in snow.
Not a voice, not a breath.
Alone with the ice and cold,
Your hearth back to its status quo.

Hollow hollow hermit,
How long will your heart beat?

Silent scream for a dollar

Sometimes you contain it
it reverberates through your bones and blood
blood brewing, boiling, bubbling,
bubbling over into conscious asphyxiation and a gasp--

gasp for air

air enters your lungs but the breath is shallow
(shallow drowning is the worst kind)

kind enough to smile at the crack of dawn
dawn on you yet that at dusk, you can't hide the fury in your face,
face the inane conversation at the dinner table,
table the issue of what's cracking you?

You sometimes can't contain it
it reverberates through your teeth
teeth grinding at the letters scrawled on the check
check your math but not your temper
temper your voice about a billing mistake
mistake the waitress's ambivalence for malice

malice escapes as the tone of your voice
voice your complaint bitterly and the battle is lost

lost twenty pesos for no fault of your own
own your frustration and let it spread,
spread through your blood and your bones.

Metamorphosis

Once she dreamed of Baucis and Philemon:
the intertwined branches of two lovers immortalized as
the oak and the linden, in vibrant embrace
shimmering golden leaves brimming with life in the wake of an angry destruction.

Time ticked and tocked its way through xylem and phloem
and her own roots grew deeper into the earth.
The hope turned to sadness to anger
and back to hope again
and then all emotions oozed out as sap.

Wind will rip her leaves away,
locusts will descend upon her trunk,
their dead shells will stain her bark,
even if she gives the gods the wine and the goose.

It's still possible to stand tall and weathered
with a heart that pumps from empty veins.

Kokyu Ho

The believer and the skeptic said
they preferred not to hold hands in battle.

They once picked wildflowers together,
forded rivers,
climbed trees.
As they grew older,
arthritic kneed,
they separated.

The believer says they bickered;
the skeptic insists they fought.
Too proud to admit these untruths,
they grew apart.
"I keep you alive," smirked the brain.
"Isn't it the other way around?" inquired the heart.

The moment for reconciliation arrived suddenly:
the tingling hands of the one who drove them apart,
harnessing heat,
hovered.

The believer raced
The skeptic panicked
and finding themselves unexpectedly in the tight embrace
of fear,
they clutched each other's sweaty palms
and renewed their vows.

what they never told you

When every word matters, when there is a word limit,
they never told you how swiftly writer's block would strike.
Your typing fingers are constipated,
your mind clutches for words desperately as you sleep,
your legs thrash off the covers and you wake up in a cold sweat
blinking away the after-image of a computer screen.

You no longer remember the pleasures of paper and pen
those days of carefree spiral notebooks, privacy and poetry
replaced by deadlines and judgment
(these have slowly etched themselves into your forehead
horizontally
you never knew your reflection
would turn to hand over eyes, thumb and index rubbing temples
staving off the ache of words locked in)

A progressive death

There is no adverb
for living in a deathly way.

"She woke up dyingly.
She got ready dyingly.
She lived her day dyingly."

And then she went to sleep
--not the ultimate sleep--
but well aware that with every ticking second,
with every jerking second hand,
that there she was headed.