It sounded like a thousand yes, yes,
Yes, yes,
Yes,
Not in F,
But a thousand affirmations
Dripping in bucketfuls,
And rivers, and lakes and floods
Of yes, yes,
Yes, yes,
Yes,
Meanwhile,
A thousand questions silently stream
Out of my soaked heart.
Questions not answered
By a Yes.
Or a No.
But the clouds continue its indifference.
Pouring a multitude of
Yes, yes,
Yes, yes,
Yes,
it clings helplessly to the skull
like an overripe fruit
ready to drop on the
forest floor or perhaps a child’s
play-sticker, loosely gripping
blood and what-have-yous.
it never really reveals itself;
it only shows its smoothness
and curves or some
clandestine scars here and there.
it parades its flaws or its infinite
beauties, but never actually revealing
in the sense of some burning, un-burnt bush;
always, always concealed by
tightly shut eyes.
it hangs precariously to the skull,
un-revealed, imperceptibly slipping
and pulled by a certainty
that is gravity
or that more certain something
we humans call age.
the burden you carry on your arms
is a living sigh, an incarnate regret.
with his constant sobbing and bickering ,
dreams and hopes are wisps of smoke.
the pavement is home and prison,
the street is your private world.
and here and then, an eye full of pity;
like god's and the rain's quickening
of your squalid life.
i see you clearly wrapped in a torn muslin, the dead hope
in your arms, the other in a gesture
so universal that i can't help to think, if
the open hand is man's most base language.
i will name you Elena, after Helen of the Cross.
instead of looking for the lost cross of the christ,
you gave birth to it.
he stood like a Swiss guard
ready to take the first man
to his guarded bed.
in him i understood why they say
"history repeats itself," himself a history
full-brimmed with tears and fears.
the body of Samson with Delilah's locks,
the eagle's eyes and the hornet's sting
on his tongue,
an inflamed longing
to spell desire in the threshold of pain.
whatever your name is,
you are Galileo to me. looking up your
darkened ceiling, you see the mountains of Venus.
i am witness to his death.
Priam and the Lady Hecuba
mere shadows on the peripheral vision.
i never knew Fate's blood can be as red
as Christ'.
rose-red and thick as the wall you
conquered with
Hale-Bopp's roaring nereid.
his skull was human after all,
pouring the fluid memories of
a lifetime on the apathetic asphalt.
his last exhalation,
a prayer to the old gods;
i was there -
surrounded by tangerine streetlamps
and a crowd of Friday souls.
i saw how Hector was
dragged by every Achilles' eye
i only i could wail like Andromache,
or if only i could cover his
naked body with the shroud
i wove for Helen.
the moment you opened your mouth and
disclosed how the gods can be killed
by a razor and a room-full of shadows
made me assume you know the way
to atlantis, lemuria
and the stone circles of ynis witrin
in avalon;
you painted your own skin with the map,
like etchings in the cheeks of trois freres caves
in the pyrenees,
and it was a wonder to behold -
like hieroglyphs in anubis' papyrus,
the dance of the sacred whores, devadasi.
no, you are not Pablo the saint, Pablo the gentile.
rather,
you are Pablo the Poet.
You wrote Melancholia's lines and stanzas on your arms
and painted Emptiness with red.
You came from the line of Hippolyta,
Fierce warriors of the Taurus mounts
(or so I thought you are);
You are no one but a mother of three
And wife of Chronos the Titan.
On your back the map to the golden fleece
On you face, the goddess of Helen.
You hung the Cyclops on trees and
Bred Gaia’s son, Typhon, on your palm.
What tragedy, you are my mother.
Instead of air, I have nectar for breath,
Tremendum et fascinans for water.
In your island of sorcery I was reared
And for friends, I have Odysseus’
Companions-turned-pigs. Porcis you once
Was called. The Hag, the swine-killer,
Circe, I call you now in my dreams.
And with strings spun by Medusa,
You manipulate hearts, organs and lives
While sitting on your tripod
Crushing with your heels, the serpent Typhon.
Somewhere in the confusion of mitosis,
When sisters Fate are played by sister chromatids –
I was your son.
Or else,
I was a mystic Siddhi of Mumbai,
Full-bloomed Dendrobium somewhere in the Amazon,
A winged seraph or perhaps a line
In one of Dante’s sexed poems.
Alas! The spinner Fate drank three espressos
That day, and I was your son.
Until
One night, when the breaths of a thousand
Hindi drowned the fields of prophets,
You came with a sword tied to your liver.
And with one swift move, cut mother’s head –
And the picture of stars in your room
Grew dim, like Van Gogh’s sunflowers on endless
Decembers. And I was nothing but a comma
In
Remembering,
I could not resist your memory, even your
Musky scent of the hunt gives me migraines.
Even my name smells of your musk.
Secretly, since the first ash on my forehead,
I have called you
Tomas on my mind;
Because until now, when I have lost my angel
Wings on a bus to Quiapo,
You refuse to believe the process of Mitosis.
And a look in your face
Makes me want to call your
Secret name:
Tomas, Tomas
you were never the one
who lets me see my own
reflection on your eyes,
always, like a thief, I steal those glances;
dark, silent and deep
like the few conversations we had
concerning Egyptian bricks and
art deco on silksreen.
(that, and nothing else)
never mind the conversations our knees
unconsciously do, whenever they touch
and just linger for a brief
moment of immortality;
(let us just talk about the dying stars
above our heads)
let us not mind the many times
i saved your life from speeding cars
that swerved pass us
missing an inch of breath;
(let us talk of chance)
do not regret, love, that instead of
touching your hands and putting
them to my cheeks, I placed them
on my heart, only to find it lifeless,
painted with Duhrer’s melancholic woodblocks;
(regret only that I love your future and
that it is clearer without that heart)
if only I could find your name
in the shadowed moon now –
i pray, the fireflies whisper your secret
name to my ears that I may write
it also in the walls of my heart.
but you are nameless and swift, I know;
a passerby to the alley of my outstretched
palms. The lines crossing once and departing;
(never to meet in another lifetime)
