'was browsing through my email of pinoypoets, and found this one from de Ungria, among others. interesting how he plays with words, but actually means my favorite pastime (or at least that's how i interpret it. baka manyak lang talaga ako).

Spirits of Their Glass
Ricardo M. de Ungria

1.
Into the fork
Of her emotions

he thrust
His starmost song—

that in the milk
of her silences

his piercings
may lose their whiteness

and her pores lap
his nameless soul

and ease him down
her aeries wakefully.


2.
Spirit of light
in the aeries

of her east
his starmost song.

The kissed heart
lifts, exposed.

And into his breath
she sinks her wideness

until
to his tongue

she comes—
the word waited for.

luring all
he could not understand


After EDSA 3
Gemino Abad

And we are nowhere still, hostile to process
And living mostly on the surface of things,
Captive to our Imp’s “metaphysics” of happiness—
A spate of all the world’s amber mornings.

For we blink the sad, dark faces of things,
The razz and dazzle of our Imp’s humor—
Flux of all the world’s electric mornings—
Blank time’s malice to rouse our spirit’s ichor.

O razz and sparkle of our Imp’s humor,
Such gristle as shatters the tyrant’s laws,
Voids history’s ills, and fires our spirit’s liquor
Where coups vaporize in politics without clews!

What Imp’s grit to scatter the despot’s laws!
And because our fathers loved us, their sins fade
Where ventures choke in scams without clews.
Brief triumph! hubbub and rabble of barricade.

And because our kin are loved, their follies fade
Where shanties barnacle our suffocated creeks.
Fleet glory! and baffle and babble retrograde,
Our Imp still rules, and our laughter leaks.

Where our shacks totter over poisoned creeks,
The thief’s our saint who had faith and was saved.
The Imp enthralls yet where our carnival leaks;
But here is no country still, our honchos depraved.

The thief goes scot-free, by a helicopter saved,
The Imp outwits our writ of habeas loot.
No logic avails, no country where lawyers rave,
Everything is soon forgot, all heroics for naught.

Yet our wit is wound with wounds that wail,
Captive to our Imp’s “metaphysics” of happiness.
We bear our father’s sins ever without bail,
And we are nowhere still, hostile to process.


A Kind of Burning
Ophelia Dimalanta

it is perhaps because
one way or the other
we keep this distance
closeness will tug as apart
in many directions
in absolute din
how we love the same
trivial pursuits and
insignificant gewgaws
spoken or inert
claw at the same straws
pore over the same jigsaws
trying to make heads or tails
you take the edges
i take the center
keeping fancy guard
loving beyond what is there
you sling at the stars
i bedeck the weeds
straining in song or
profanities towards some
fabled meeting apart
from what dreams read
and suns dismantle
we have been all the hapless
lovers in this wayward world
in almost all kinds of ways
except we never really meet
but for this kind of burning.

***
have no fear of the unknonwn;
step out, fearless, into the open.
- the late Pope John Paul II

funny. for the last few days since the death of the pope, i could not stop crying everytime a special about him flashed on TV. it's like i have this connection with the pope that i don't even know we had, but do.
seedy and surreal as it may sound, i feel really bad that this pope died in my time. and why shouldn't i be. he's the only pope i've ever known.

***
1995. i was in my senior year in high school when the pope visited the philippines. i was chosen to be part of the celebration of the 1995 world youth day celebrations here in lipa. i was third youth city councilor.
i've never seen the pope upclose. but everytime i see his pictures on the tube now, i cry. it's like i've always believed he'd still be alive until i die. he was my patriarch - a father i never saw in mine, since mine was too stupid to act as one.

he was my replacement father.

have no fear of the unknown;
step out into the open,
fearless of the perils ahead.
look forward to the impending silence
that haunts ev'ry evening
ev'ry dawn; accept fear as
it accepts you. make it
your own, as it owns you;
own your fears.


Of all the things I believe in
I just want to get it over with
tears from behind my eyes
but I do not cry
Counting the days that past me by

I've been searching deep down in my soul
Words that I'm hearing are starting to get old
Looks like I'm starting all over again
The last three years were just pretend and I say

Goodbye to you
Goodbye to everything I thought I knew
You were the one I love
The one thing that I tried to hold on to

I still get lost in your eyes
And it seems like I can't live a day without you
Closing my eyes till you chase my thoughts away
To a place where I am blinded by the light but it's not right

Goodbye to you
Goodbye to everything I thought I knew
You were the one I loved
The one thing that I tried to hold on to

Ohhh yeah
It hurts to want everything & nothing at the same time
I want whats yours and I want whats mine
I want you but I'm not giving in this time

Goodbye to you
Goodbye to everything I thought I knew
You were the one I loved
The one thing that I tried to hold on to
The one thing that I tried to hold on to

Goodbye to you
Goodbye to everything I thought I knew
You were the one I loved
The one thing that I tried to hold on to

We the stars fall and I lie awake
Your my shooting star

GOODBYE TO YOU
michelle branch


goodbye my pope. goodbye pops.
hey.