In The River My Blood Flowed

Coins  intricately spread
over the foil, sweets
candying silver trays -
kisses of chocolates
and money cats arranged
in a conspicuous lucky array.
A sapphire crystal glistens
at the east corner of the room,
to ward off stubborn illnesses;
a mystic knot made of ochre
gold around my delicate neck
for good fortune and success.
Right now I finish sketching
a white monkey smiling
confidently, wearing a tael,
steering a black stallion
prancing over misfortunes
haunting you like hell.
Tomorrow I will wear red
and eat chinese moon cakes
fried in cerulean blue flame,
and set off little fireworks
and crack every fortune cookies
my fingers can desperately claim.

Light of the morning flowed

Warmly from my window.

Time to move up and out

Of my room’s cramping shadow.

Months did pass, silent

And cunningly. I must yield

To the call of my love’s wind

Blowing over the field.

I don’t want to quickly open

My purse, take out the coins

And pay for the travel.

Someone I rarely knew

Aside from the precious mapping

Of her skin on the bedsheets

Took advantage of what little

Bills I have left in my favorite

Girbaud wallet. 

                        That wallet was lost,

Left somewhere in a rusted and rickety

Jeep that traverses familiar terrain,

Driven by an old man whose cataracts

Won’t help remembering my face.

Time forced me, unwantedly

To replace its memory with something

Smaller, reflecting my current

Personal economy.

So I don’t want to open

Quickly my purse, take out the coins

And pay for the travel:

I may never get a change.

This route has a more expensive fare.

I contemplate
every smudge and shade
of you on the paper
wondering if I got
at least your likeness
if not the exact image:

she would be detached
if she doesn’t see your soul
with my sketch of your eyes,
and tell me the way the wind
tells a browning leaf
trying to cling on the thick,
healthy branch -
"at least you tried."

Nevertheless, you will be
my obvious yet unspoken
emotion - every stroke of you,
the hair strands, the curve
of your face, the neckline -
enveloped in manila,
ready for her scrutiny:

tell her, I’m trying -
I still am.

Round and round, the clock’s hands turn.
The face with no mouth speaks.
A second of sun, a minute of rain,
you disappeared with your noon shadow.
Minutes of cricket songs, hours of stars,
my elbow aches on the windowsill.
Hours of moon rainbows, days of rose clouds,
shadows find themselves behind curtains.
Yesterdays of you, todays of sighs,
tomorrow, a monologue - I am the actor.
The clock is truthful.  The vacuum fills me.
The dense silence leaves me empty.
Then it stops.  The longing goes away
like a visitor, and I’ll forget the name.
Some days of gentler tides flow on.
Some years of orange skies paint God’s big blue back. 
Trees grow.  People go.  Questions disappear.
Lovers say hello, stay awhile, then vanish.
Someone like clouds, someone like storms
can go and disappear without leaving a clue.
Someone resonant and very close, was like a wind
that time and my human heart has failed to keep.

There was a garden, my father’s garden
of orchids and lilies - his delicate burden.
Near it was a bench, my father’s bench -
wet with mornings and mushroom stench.
He sat there like Tantalus guarding his flowers
blossom with colors in the passing hours,
bloom like fireworks in a vast night sky,
open like virgins on their very first try.
He sat there and watched them, one by one,
like red light district girls come undone,
like Moulin Rouge ladies dancing can-can,
like Geishas with parasols look over lotus ponds.
How proud the leprechaun is of his lovely beauties! -
the all-women ensemble, the brides of peace
tendered with rain, dewed with magnificence,
kissed with sunlight, glittering in his presence.
He loved them all! His love - it danced like a bee,
stingy and war-like, armed and ready
to fight those who’d desecrate and taint the pure
rainbows and immaculate stars of his treasure.
Countless times I’ve seen spectrums from my father’s eyes
as he saw their revelations like a natural surprise.
So priceless they are, like a pot of gold
and every imagination that pot can hold.
There was my father’s garden, and such will always be
a proud creation his children can never be.

I found a room, your room -
not by mistake.  You led me there.
In that room I saw a green Mao cap
dangling like a withering leaf
atop a discarded rifle.
It was from someone in your past
when you’d happily exchange blood
for fire and revolution.
Beside it was a cabinet filled
with little icons from old churches,
paint peeling from their chalk skins.
It was from someone in a convent
you’ve never heard from ever since.
Above it, an African mask
hung like a shadow on the wooden beam.
It was from a tourist, a vagabond French who
bragged you’ll never be to places he’s been.
On the walls you had pastel paintings -
a landscape of two mountains
that looked like brown, arguing beasts;
an imitation of Picasso’s "The Crying
Lady", left unfinished; a still-life
of mangoes and papayas in a basket
done in hurried strokes.
It was from your student, wanderlusting
where his dreams will maroon him,
coming back for school very soon.
Then there were the stones: an amber
with a fossilized fly at the center, trapped
forever; moonstones in the shade of summer
skies and dark twilight; unopened
ores of gold; usurped blue stalactites -
it was from someone who shovelled for history
but never got his hands dirty.
There were also the beads in your closet
from a tribal chieftain, a memoir
when you felt tasting the exotic,
and the century old books you stole
with someone articulate and bookish
when you felt settling down with the colleague.
And there were your pictures, alone
and interesting, like a National Geographic nude.
And there were their pictures, I can tell
by the hats they wear, the collars of their shirt
or the landscapes behind them, which is which.
And you wanted to show me more, your colorful past
piled and dusting in the drawers of your closet.
Frankly, I’m now afraid on being added
like a museum artifact cramped along with
the silent cacophonies cluttering your room.

In sleep, I dreamt myself:
I looked upon my reflection
in a clear brook, and saw
myself - emerald-skinned,
with a tongue slithering in
and out consistently, eyes
yellow as pale
sun covered by morning fog,
with black slits at both centers.
Within their darkness hides the secrets
of me, looking upon me.

The sound. It is painful here.

The gray world turns ice to ice.

Rain from the sky fall hard as stones

and cluster over the ocean,

silvering with cold white.

The wind is never light -

its density pounds the land.

It eternally howls

  about the zero

            the negative

                the never was

   
   the naught.

The wind demands a mountain

to stop it from its path.

Not this emptiness

more vast than itself

Endlessly spreading

in the absence of desire.

My eyes are giving up on me.
They were sharp once. They knew
how to distinguish a speck of white
on my black leather shoes.

I remember seeing you clearly before.
Your eyes would glance sideways at the strange
outline you haven’t met: glance
at how his shoulders travel perfectly
down to his bulging arms.

Your mouth would twitch when my voice box quivered
every nervous word.  You’d kidnap the conversation
in between sentences, and begin
a monologue.  I made sure I was listening.

Everything is more blurry now
in your absence. The letters
on the keyboard have more softer edges.
The fonts on-screen have traded places
without my knowing. 

I should have taken my eyes more seriously
then.  I should have understood
what they were trying to show me.