Rise and Fall

It has begun: that which you fear. The end is never

Abrupt. Like a story, it begins, progresses

in the middle, peaks into climax,

And then slowly

Ends.

I. Beginning

Waiting amongst nervous pacers, and those whose knees

Are too weak for standing. Newspapers provide no comfort

Like the embrace of cold white walls. The TV is out of place,

Provides only noise to break the silence, entertaining only

The unaffected nurses in passing. Coffee turns

Cold, between trembling hands.

Furrowed eyebrows, eyes on the ground. The faces

Of early lament and waiting. Light, careful footsteps

treading back and forth,

Then back again.

II. Middle

You once confessed fear, of age and all

That comes with it. To witness none of the bellows of your youngest’

First born. To be forgotten like the image of a portrait

That fades away through time.

Sadness hangs beneath tired eyes, and a set of luggage

From sleepless nights. End breeds new beginnings.

But they are endings nonetheless.

III. Climax

No one is groomed for terrible news.

But there is no good one here. One by one,

Heads lift to receive it, word per word, when there is no need.

Except to signal tears. Except to confirm what the cold white walls

Already knew. Except to send the minute fires of blind hopes to ashes.

IV. End

Nothing but silence and sounds of heavy breathing. The faces of grief:

calm and subdued. The grave says Daughter, mother

and lelang. Will always be remembered. Like the image in a portrait,

That hangs on a museum. Beguiling and venerated.

But when night time comes, the spectators walk

One by one.

To leave the dead alone.

In my head –

You are reaching out to me with arms

The wingspan of an albatross. And under the sheets

Of my womb, I wrap you in a bundle with the length

Of my legs. We roll into a globe,

Creating a world within the tear cast off

For our looming separation. It was gallant –

Our embrace as they write prosaic in red

Across our foreheads (wide as an airstrip). We are

A poem, deemed contemptible

Of a prize. And under the eyes of the sentinel,

I swore I would never let go

Of the you I had conceived
In the womb of my head.

not a prose poem, sorry

Found an old folder filled to the brim with poems done when I was much younger; back when I rhymed. Debating with myself on whether I have enough guts to post them here. Can't help but laugh at how some of them are so innocent, and so unbelievably honest. Nostalgia is kicking in and I feel like I'll spend tonight wondering how far true I was to myself when I was younger, feeling bad about how much I've changed.

Untitled #3

I looked up to him in my seat – a monoblock

As he relates my transformation, in a tone almost stone

In stoicism, from submission to a possession of voice

Of authority; wherein a voice could’ve sufficed

I had leapt over a border and left myself beyond

When in a form of a prose, I wrote

A set of instructions to forgetting

Akin to commands of boxing memories

And wrapping them with packaging tape

In countless rounds

I have written that remark in cursive

Tattooed in a box labeled nostalgia

A compliment - granted by a man

I looked up to like a god

But in the view of twilight, I am masked

With shame

For I have lost that voice at the touch

Of a diploma on my hand, replaced

By a docile “yes sir, yes ma’am”

On a usual office set up

How the real halts the dreams of innocence

Not by the looming rejections or failures

Or by the gift of disillusionment

But by the natural instinct to survive

Before to live

I am now writing a set of instructions

To the generations yet to come

On how to live by emptying out the box

Wrapped with packaging tape

In countless rounds

But between paper works and paying

Bills I couldn’t find the time

Nor the voice that in my sleep has once

Possessed me alive

As I Watch You Bury Yourself Alive

Allow me

to stalk the penitence of your wayward

soul gyrating on a bed of blood and petals

leading you to the death of all your sins

and to the beginning of new ones

Allow me

as you fumble through your vows

the delight of mockery at the tear that dives

flat faced on the soil that bore you

incapable of weeping

Allow me

to untangle the stalks of santan that wraps itself

austerely ‘round your finger, so I can raise

my middle finger on you in a form

of a champagne glass for a toast

Allow me

the burning of my feverish bitterness

as I sat in the back pew, uninvited

to this eager celebration of deceit

beginning at full tilt with “I do”

Untitled #2

I search for you in the hollow echoes

Of whispers fleeing;

Of moans from souls wandering aimlessly

Across me in the stillness of the hour

Every hour til I search for you

And find you in the damp and chill

Of winter’s bone, alive

But not quite

Breathing as fiercely

As to fight off muerte for vida;

Almost as if in great surrender

You yield in

To the lack of warmth

In empty spaces of vacancy

Where in the stillness of the hour

I had once watch you dreamt

untitled #1

you tear the skin of her phalanges, if only to feel

the cold tip of the bones of her long,

winding, fingers. you trace the cold,

if only to arrive at the warmth of her palm: a cushion

of red and wine. and you lie there;

a fetus bound by the cord to her placenta. a lover

bound by the heart to her hands.

She cradles you, and you learn to feign slumber

halfway through her lullaby. eyes close, mouth open.

gaping to suck on a thumb or a nipple; hard

Llke the rubber end of a mongol. the color of carnation

and rust. slowly, you drift farther

and farther away. smaller and smaller like a dot

of dust ‘derneath her nails.

when the warmth chills you,

you pull up her skin like a blanket. skin to skin

like steamy nights in Santa Fe, when all you had

was her skin to warm your cold, cold heart. and you dream,

you dream of tearing her skin so you can keep it

tied around your wrist like a slash; like a badge

to parade around town.

when you awake, she is gone. and you tread

the length of her arms to find her again. only to get lost

in her veins; to get drowned in the flow

of her streaming, angry, streaming blood. she is lost,

and you close your eyes to recall the image

of undressing her off of her white skin.