Wherever it is that life may take me,
in places near or far out a foreign land,
I know it is but my feet wandering solely,
my faithful heart will never be a vagabond.
However it is that these roads will wind
and twist and turn as I go about my errands,
from distant avenues I know I’ll come to find,
in the night my heart is reaching for your hands.
I
My bones have eroded,
my tendons are worn,
and from the constant whips
of time, my flesh is cut-open and torn.
Dear me, do save me from a doom
from which my mortal limbs
have become preyed.
I am weak and dying,
do let me bury myself now
between the furrows of
your shoulder blade.
II
Suffocate me love
and crush my bones,
as you would between
pages have a scarlet rose pressed.
Preserve me, let me lay at rest
within your embrace
to steal kisses and pluck my
next breath from your chest.
You will know her like you’ve known the night
that she comes in passing with swift, quiet strides
that she masquerades with many faces in the skies
that her secrets lay in the black pools of her eyes.
You will know her, but no more than you know the night,
her beauty and demons lurking in the absence of light.
You will know her but to know her will not suffice
‘til you see your reflection on the black pools of her eyes.
I saw you against a backdrop
that was a cloudless sky
and boldly I said to the moon
that man is mine and mine alone-
I declared it to the stars, the sleeping plain,
to everything around me
that could not refute my claim.
I said he is mine, I yelled to the passing wind,
he is mine and mine alone,
not the vale could defy me,
neither the listless rose nor the
torpid stone.
Insidious love of mine, I have strayed as far
as my calloused soles would take me
and into an open abattoir.
I asked the man with the glistening knife, at his post
if he would strike and butcher my heart for a cost
I was willing to pay, for as long
as I have not a heart that aches for another day.
But you my love has become a cancer cell
that a sharpened blade could neither dispel nor quell,
embedded in my bones and sewn across the course
of my blood, my mind, my tongue
calls out a name that is yours.
And one day I shall measure
how high his chest heaves
and upon expulsion of carbon
dioxide, how low falls his ribs.
One day I shall gauge too
while he sleep how rapid
are the movements behind
each his shut, heavy eyelid.
One day moon, I swear I will
lay my head on a pillow, next to his,
close enough to memorize and not to miss
every breathing he takes while he lay
with dreams and absolute bliss.
Perhaps it is best,
my heart cannot speak,
that it has neither a mouth
nor a nibbling beak.
Perhaps it is best
only I can hear
the thuds it make
akin to hooves striding near.
For what infamy
it would bring me, oh what ill fame
should my obnoxious heart
desires in the night to chant your name
and have far and wide my
neighbors awaken
at its call, loud as the shrillest siren.
Oh love was it
that trod in the night,
with its quiet, tip-toeing feet,
that roused me from my sleep
late in the eve,
with the warmth of a fire
rekindled inside my bony rib?
And love was it, do tell
that by day built in me a belfry
and chimed its bell-
and lent me a dream of
a blithesome dusk in June,
with our lips pressed
beneath the honey colored moon?
Oh is this love and nothing less,
a love as great as Shakespeare’s
sonnet did possess-
love that would rival
that of Romeo’s for his Juliet,
or a petty obsession, that gilds my heart
and brings forth an upset?
And here I place a pause into my day,
I have worn the seconds that came to play
and those I have left are languid on the fringes,
too listless now, upon my eyes’ lashes.
I have no more use of the time left tonight,
other than to seek for sleep and nighttime delight-
some pleasant dream that’ll provide transient ease
while the skies above are black-plum, as açaí berries.
There is much to be desired
from love, for the joy it brings,
when Cupid descends and
shoots his arrow,
piercing the hearts of queens
and kings.
But wars had been fought
for the sake of love and desire
among nations, brothers,
and self,
oh love too, can bring down
an empire.
And as the last smoke from Troy
billows to the skies,
all because of the lips that were Helen’s,
love may have scarred you, but remember
the thousands that perished among foes and allies
and the city that love left in ashes and ruins.
And when last night, came passing the breeze,
it knelt down and left me a warm, gentle kiss-
a kiss on my cheek I did not ask and left me surprise,
and chasing after him til the wee hours, til sunrise.
And I caught his tail at morning’s end,
just before they day turns and make its daily bend-
I cry to him, “Oh how could you kiss and leave
as you please,
oh must you be cruel to have me chase you,
must you be a tease?!”
I hurled myself off a rocky cliff,
a nose dive, into the sea blue and deep,
my arms were spread, and stretched out wide
like an albatross over the rising tide.
And I plunged into the water, warm and salty,
piercing against the ebb, rolling back to sea,
only when my head bobbed above the water, foamy,
did I realize, love indeed can mark you brave, crazy.
Only for you and with you.
Crystal marbles fell from the sky
and landed on my outstretched hand,
but my warmth melted the glassy globe,
all things eventually die, all things erode.
And when you came, you were precious
as the liquid drops are at the height of a drought,
you were salvation and I said I’d love you forever,
but forever drowned at a season’s change
of clime and weather.
Eerie sound the wind makes at night
bashing a branch against my window.
I wonder if its nightly wails and ululation
are to the moon, heedless of its affection.
For late at night, I cry too my pain and woe
but in stifled, hushed tone so none will know-
only the pillow tucked in my arms and chest
would hear the cries, I have repressed.
One day in mid-spring, a bird
perched upon a bough of a tree,
taught my tone-deaf heart to croon
the melody of a love-sweetened rune.
But winter came after autumn’s end
I could hear no more my feathered friend,
and though there were many songs I had
sang with him, all I can sing now
is the chorus of a tearful ballad.
