Red and Yellow

Now, I feel silly

looking back

how I compared you to navy blue

when you were nothing like it

you must understand

I only knew 3 colors back then

and they were broken, stripped half naked

that I have to lay them down

to color my wrinkled sheets

silly that my blue always

pokes my water clouds, harassed

the black lines break in mud

you are the sky

and your blue is a kind

that cannot be named or contained

but can be imbibed

I have been asked why my mouth was

stained squid blue

I just sheepishly smiled pretending I wasn't

drunk

Silly that I have come face to face to allusions

I have not known the names yet so I can't

bring them back at will

everything was just within a pentameter's reach

Paper Cranes

there are those who choose to remember

the feel of guitar strings on softened nails

numbed by the sweet plucking of both new

and familiar notes, waiting to discover,

perhaps a new song without losing touch

we dig in frantic search of old letters

of lost taste, and adolescent cologne scents

that have once lost in a bus ride

only to have come back after a long trip

notes written on favorite paperbacks

whose spines have arched lovingly

split by page partitions of overly read chapters

an invite to shortened immortality

paper cranes take flight once more

after a long yellowing silence of bookmarking years

the unfolding of feelings passed, the secret smiles

the perpetual conspiracy of innocent love signals

but remembering is such a human thing

a grasp that we fashion to fill in a particular present void

those who knows shapes, know change too well

to realize that not everything fits

and so we, as humans, forget.

for we can only take so much paper cuts

of memories to remember that blood

has a certain metallic taste and is more viscous than tears.

April 12, 2009

2.25 PM

Duel

we held darkness like swords

free from our wounded scabbards

and we wail and tear the air

the ringing vow of cold steel

reverberating over and over like a tuning fork

humming an endless elegy

with blind swishes of lightless force

and eloquent war cries

positioned to strike on heels and unprotected tendons

we hope to hit each other, perhaps

a gash would let April gush out reddish

promises,

and keep salt from filling our veins

we have stabbed eternity and grilled

them to charred perfection of bittersweet

bite-sized brutality

till we no longer feel like gods

but mortals eager to be meddled.

April 12, 2009

4.34 AM

Firefly

we were born this way

fully unaware of the light

so we tangle our intestines

into linking chains in the dark

I didn't know how, it just felt right

to know when you are hungry

and I can tell the slightest

form of tension,

the humid breathing

the spiders of your web-like weeping

the silence of your solemn smiles

or even when in mid-thought

your forehead wrinkles into pensive

horizontal columns

and in that short distance

between our blindness

your stifled yawns sounded like thunder

from a thousand horizons

I have screamed your name in Braille

deep enough to have built trenches

and bore valleys

you cup a firefly selfishly in your hands.

8.13 PM.

Wilt

you hang roses upside down to dry

and they crinkle in delicate lines

aging quickly in petal years,

curling into shrunken lips

side by spooning side

like burnt fabric edges

not falling piece by piece from a wilting flower

posed inside a sneering Italian vase

you asked yourself if leaves feel

cheated after a game of hide and seek

its the needed intimacy that draws them

to flirt with caterpillars and wind

hoping to brush

brutally on other branches, on stems

or other serrated foliage

because hanging separately to die

is irrevocably painful and sad

petals hug each other for immortality.

9.50 PM