In transit

How many times have we found ourselves like this?
Seated shoulder to shoulder
waiting
for trains to arrive
for ferries to sail
for planes to fly
and take us away.
Inches separating us
that our voices go down
to whispers.
How I wish we didn’t have
to wait like this.
Trying to get away
from where we are: beside each other.

which for me is enough.

NAIA, May 2012

falling asleep

I slept on your shoulder on the way there.
A good 40 minutes brought about by alcohol and the fact that
it was already 2am.
You told me that you were waking me up for 10 full minutes,
“It’s time,” you said.
I only responded with more sleep.

You being in love (E.E. Cummings)

you being in love
will tell who softly asks in love,

am i separated from your body smile brain hands merely
to become the jumping puppets of a dream? oh i mean:

A Japanese Love Poem

I should not have waited.
It would have been better
to have slept and dreamed,
than to have watched night pass,
and this slow moon sink.

After (Niña Ann G. Suba)

Read this,
if you must know
how things have been
since he left.For six weeks,
I did not make my bed.
Then, the sheets
began to smell.

Ang Maisisilid sa Bulsa (Eugene Evasco)

Naninilaw nating larawan;
Talutot ng ilang-ilang;
Mga dahon ng santan;
Tatlong malagkit na tansan;
At turnilyong kinakalawang.

To someone who has never been caught (Edgar Calabia Samar)

This is my memory of shadows:
like some forgotten regions
of our souls, they ran after us
or left us behind
in our childhood games
of hide-and-seek
where you always disappeared
behind the same non-flowering bushes
that will remain nameless for us.

The Coin

It was a joke.
We were out that evening,
as we always were then.
You were speaking to me from the ground
where you decided to make yourself comfortable.
We were freezing, famished,
figuring how the night will turn out.

Love At First Sight (Wisława Szymborska)

Both are convinced
that a sudden surge of emotion bound them together.
Beautiful is such a certainty,
but uncertainty is more beautiful.

Because they didn’t know each other earlier, they suppose that
nothing was happening between them.
What of the streets, stairways and corridors
where they could have passed each other long ago?

Central Park (Ramon de Veyra)

I hate every couple
I see, obviously.
You’re not here.
On the other side
of the world, you’re as far
away from me as you
can get. So do we live
our lives in direct
opposition: you still asleep,
or perhaps already greeting
the sun, just as I am
saying goodbye to her,
surrounded by misery
in these strangers
enjoying themselves, playing
baseball and throwing frisbees.
I wish I had a frisbee.

But mostly you, here,
to catch it.

 

6.2.00