Mangyari Lamang

This is my token Valentine’s day post days early and without so much the bitterness and angst. As inept as I am in talking, writing, reading my own language, nothing moves me more than reading a piece of fine, fine writing. And I am sharing this with all of you because no other reading has made me cry as hard as this one did.

<3

Mangyari Lamang
by Rico Abelardo

Mangyari lamang ay tumayo
ang mga nagmahal
nang makita ng lahat
ang mukha ng pag- ibig
ipamalas ang tamis
ng malalim na pagkakaunawaan
sa mga malabo ang paningin

mangyari lamang ay tumayo rin
ang mga nagmahal at nasawi
nang makita ng lahat
ang mga sugat ng isang bayani
ipadama ang pait ng kabiguan
habang ipinagbubunyi
ang walang katulad na kagitingan
ng isang nagtaya

mangyari lamang ay tumayo
ang mga nangangambang magmahal
nang makita ng lahat
ang kilos ng isang bata
ipamalas ang katapatan ng damdamin
na pilit ikinukubli
ng pusong lumaki sa mga engkanto at diwata

mangyari lamang ay tumayo
ang mga nagmahal, minahal at iniwan
ngunit handa pa ring magmahal
nang makita ng lahat ang yaman ng karanasan
ipamalas ang katotohanang nasaksihan
nang maging makahulugan
ang mga paghagulgol sa dilm

at sa mga nananatiling nakaupo
mangyari lamang ay dahan- dahang tumalilis
papalabas sa nakangangang pinto
umuwi na kayo
at sumbatan ang mga magulang
na nagpalaki ng isang halimaw

at sa lahat ng naiwang nakatayo
mangyari lamang ay hagkan ang isa’t isa
at yakapin ang mga sugatan
mabuhay tayong lahat na nagsisikap na makabalik
sa ating pinagmulan
manatiling masaya
at higit sa lahat magpatuloy
sa pagmamahal

Usapang pag-ibig

Nang mawala ka sa akin, ikaw at ako’y nawalan.

Ako dahil ikaw ang minahal ko nang lubusan,

at ikaw dahil ako ang sa iyo’y lubusang nagmahal.

Nguni’t sa dalawa ay ikaw ang higit na nawalan.

Kaya kong mahalin ang iba tulad ng pagmamahal ko sa iyo,

ika’y ‘di mamahalin tulad nang kung paano kita minahal.

– Ernesto Cardinal

[Source: Going Against The Current]

If You Wish To Be Removed From This List

by Jeanne Marie Beaumont

You must be more careful. You must wash your hands up to your elbows and dry them with a linen towel. You must say please. You must swallow your lumpy medicine. You must draw a card and return it to the deck. You must deny deny deny. You must put it in writing. You must write your name on a cup and pee in it. You must read Moby Dick. You must read Moby Dick again. You must perform forty hours of public penance. You must eat your spinach and finish your milk. You must shave. You must do windows. You must name names. You must demonstrate your ability to parallel park. You must share. You must lock the door and leave the key under the mat. You must change diapers. You must sift the dry ingredients and fold them into the wet ingredients. You must learn to work around the pain. You must drop a sack of unmarked bills in the trash bin by the sweetgum tree. You must forget what you just saw. You must produce your passport when asked: now. You must slip into something more uncomfortable. You must revise. You must, for your own protection, put on the blindfold. You must reset your clock. You must let the dog lie at the foot of the bed. You must pay the piper and leave a generous tip; use exact change. You must burn the dark letters. You must bail some water. You must forgive your mother. You must march to the river’s edge. You must stop crying. You must give away your possessions to the poor. You must soak in bleach. You must pledge allegiance. You must summon the energy to clear the last hurdle. You must be very very brave. You must click your heels three times. Wish to be removed from this list, moved from this list, emptied of all words.

♥

Lovely, isn’t it?

Stop All The Clocks
WH Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

A Kind of Burning
Ophelia Dimalanta

it is perhaps because
one way or the other
we keep this distance
closeness will tug as apart
in many directions
in absolute din
how we love the same
tirvial pursuits and
insignificant gewgaws
spoken or inert
claw at the same straws
pore over the same jigsaws
trying to make heads or tails
you take the edges
i take the center
keeping fancy guard
loving beyond what is there
you sling at the stars
i bedeck the weeds
straining in song or
profanities towards some
fabled meeting apart
from what dreams read
and suns dismantle
we have been all the hapless
lovers in this wayward world
in almost all kinds of ways
except we never really meet
but for this kind of burning.

Read Me
Ophelia Dimalanta

whenever my voice flings arrows
your way at a fiery pace,
read, discover there is that
something in me that dies to go gentle.
for when i viciously tangle
with you trying to throw
you off course, inside, i am raring
to cover you, take you, become
all of me fire and fluid.
when i try to lord it over, empowered,
it is because inside i am already
slave groveling ready to heed your bidding,
crawling waves lapping you up
sea shore hillocks sky
all the way up, all drool and drivel.
and when i insolently seek out
pulpits to mount my gospel truths,
i am really one humped question mark
thrashing about for your steadying light.
and when i try to light you up whole,
there is really a part of your flame
i would want extinguished
to die rekindled in me alone,
and when i am wind taking roots
in your solid ground, i am roots as well
ready to take flight upon your wings.
when i prance around proud in times square.
i am child carousing in the greener
fringes of the heart’s final roosting.

read this idiolect,
read well, decode, detect,
and love me when i seem to hate.

Let’s go visit Pablo

I posted this before, in my old blog. But this seemed appropriate for the occasion. I know, I know what you’re thinking, Emo much? This .. thing .. feeling .. has to be purged. It has to be beaten TO DEATH so that I can go on living .. try living a normal life. A life apart from the one that I’ve known. So if you can’t take anymore emo shite, please pardon me and meander somewhere else. Look away. This won’t be a pretty picture.

If You Forget Me
Pablo Neruda
Read by Madonna

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists:
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.