A Compilation of Lost Verses

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 Introduction

Think of this

as a song that breaks off

from your thoughts like needle

from a thread after the

last stitch.

It unfolds from the edge

of a loom, and winds through

each delicate stretch of cloth:

in-out, up-down, around and

around, until it reaches the

edge of its flat universe,

and then it crumples into a

tight knot.

Think of this long line as the trail of sound that picks up from the echoes of a voice that

expands itself to each lonesome corner in the world, where these echoes collide with

cold, gray walls, and bounce back into space, and no one knows how

they disappear.

Breathe,

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 and as

you do,

feel the volume

of the air as it fills your lungs, eats up the space

inside your stomach, and when it is about to

burst,

let go.

Slowly,

like a boxer’s paw

inching away daintily

after the knockout.

This is a song.

You are singing it,

and your voice hangs

in the air like the soft scent

of incense

in a Cathedral altar.

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The Land before Time

“The Great Valley is filled with green food like this. More than you can ever eat, and more
freshwater than you can ever drink. It is a wonderful beautiful place where you and I can live
happily with many more of our kind.”
- Littlefoot’s mother

1.

Before it became a puzzle, it was whole:

a thick slab of soil weighing down the surface of the sea.

Before it acquired names, dates, and cities;

before Babylon fragmented into individual tongues

that created their own objectsounds:

it was terra nullius.

There was only the wilderness that harbored

a serpent.

2.

But before that, let me tell you a secret:

There is meaning

from the fixtures and foils

of each plot of soil you step on.

Each grain harbors a different story.

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Inside my fist, would you believe,

are plants, dead animals, and who knows,

bodies of dead people.

Inside my fist, there are stories.

3.

It was a city built on sand,

the oasis of every lonesome traveler

wrapped in vast layers of cloth,

thirsty and languid, hanging loose

on the hump of his camel’s back.

It was the Land of Milk and Honey,

promised by an exiled

Egyptian prince who wrote letters

to God using the dusty tip of his

wooden staff.

It was Utopia, long before “Utopia”

was conceived by a learned Englishman

held prisoner under the iron fist

of a good friend.

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It was Anatevka before the diaspora

that scattered lives across ocean boundaries.

It was Anatevka before Man discovered sound

from bronze strings plucked gently

by a long wooden stem.

It was Anatevka

before Anatevka ever was.

4.

But first, another secret:

Ours is a universe that thrives on longing.

The beauty of stories is the hope of continuity.

In hearts, there is no room for endings.

The ground beneath my feet

harbors stories constantly being trampled on

by heels that have forgotten what it was like

when the ground shook beneath them.

Someday, these stories

will be pounded to dust, and they will be

blown away by some breeze or another,

into the seabed, where perhaps they will rest

until the end of time.

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 Earth

1.

As a child, I dreamt of autumn. Someday, I said, I would name my daughter Autumn. And

she would have long, golden hair, and eyes that blaze like the afternoon sunset. With

bare feet, she will tread the brown earth, and leave a trail of dried oak leaves.

Autumn. Say it with me: Ohhh---tuhmmm.

Like the passing of a cloud, uttered with a subtle voice, tongue barely touching the edge

of your front teeth, lips softly pressing together.

2.

Do you remember? Persephone was her name.

In autumn, she prepared to leave.

When the time came, earth swallowed her back.

And when it did, she left behind her:

a trail of snow.

Daughter of a god. In that picture, her eyes were gray. And so she saw in him the fire

that once shattered Olympus; the wrath that consumed the soil, when picking flowers

one fine day, she found herself lost.

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 3.

I remember vividly that summer when we were children. We searched the backyard for

the earth that swallowed her. Packed inside large paper bags were things for the

journey: her faded picture, and some biscuits.

We walked carefully, so that the green grass would not make noise beneath our feet.

Hiding behind the fat branches of trees, we would watch carefully for

any movement on the coarse surface of the earth.

When night came, we were out of biscuits but we waited. Our lips, they chanted her

name slowly, Autumn, Autumn.

Autumn, Autumn, where are you?

We waited, but the earth was still. There was no autumn, nor was there snow.

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 Achilles

There is perhaps nothing more agonized than man of all that breathe and crawl across the earth.
- Homer, Iliad

This is the part where I become human,

where each callous memory forms itself

into thorns that cling like unforgiving chains

to the flesh of a slave—do I still sound

Greek to you—well, this is the part where I cease

to be Greek; where I cease to be

all that is known, and named, and fought for, and

fought with. This is the part where I become myself,

where I let the hoplon slide off my fist, let the

cold winds of Troy embrace me, as once I was

embraced by the famished waters of Styx, where

perhaps never again would anyone dare embrace me.

This is the part where I show my face: I am no Eros,

and my cheeks have touched things more painful than

candle wax.

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 Anticipation

. . . it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are—until the poem—nameless
and formless, about to be birthed, but already felt.
Audre Lorde

Tomorrow, perhaps, it will come to me.

Waking up from a restless sleep,

I would rush to my desk and put words

to a phrase that has floated unevenly

in an uncertain corner

of my tongue.

Perhaps when I begin calling things

by their names—

It will come to me on a Sunday,

while I am sitting idly by the garden,

peering over a hedge and wondering

how much of the world

I am losing, or: how much of myself

I will leave behind when

I stand up from my chair and return,

like a prodigal child, into

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 the noise of streetcars and structures—

I am completing a phrase in my mind.

Or the next day.

When I have abandoned

my search for words; when I think

dust has resettled in the shelves

of my imagination.

It will trickle into a page I am typing,

like the inevitable birth of life.

I am pregnant with words,

and when they burst forth from my fingers

in some 9th month or another,

I will name them Poetry,

and they will be baptized

with the tears of joy

of an unexpectant mother.

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 The peculiar thing about sadness

is its familiarity.

It lingers behind every smile,

every witty turn of phrase,

like a Degas ballerina walking on tiptoes

behind the shadows.

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 Notes on Writer’s Block

It has been over a year, and my fingers itch for poetry,

and the rattle of keyboards deep into the night.

I have forgotten how silence sounds,

how it smells, how it feels and tastes.

I have forgotten how the sea forms waves

that foam at the tip of your toes

in the seashore.

I wanted to write about something

universal: sunsets and fallen leaves,

the inevitable raindrops of June,

the dusty, birdless sky overhead.

Words, or the absence of them.

They come whenever I don’t have a pen:

in the crowded jeepney going to school,

when pressed between a fake Gucci handbag

and someone’s wet raincoat,

I form a verse on spaces—

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 and what lies underneath them,

like crude lines from an inkless pen,

scribbling a sheet into shreds.

I wanted to write about something profound:

the white mark of a ring around a woman’s finger,

the ticking of a clock in an abandoned room;

dark bullet-holes on a massive block

where once,

people laughed.

In the classroom, the stench of heat,

the rustle of feet,

a monotonous voice speaking of

paradigm shifts. If Kuhn were alive,

he’d be bored to death.

Bell rings.

I trail after the echo of swift steps on the hallway,

the restless whirr of electric fans,

empty desks.

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I pick up a crumpled sheet of poetry

from the floor, and ponder

why they waste so much paper:

on this,

a lifetime’s worth of ranting.

Yet held tightly to a pen,

my hand dreams of silence,

and the gentle laughter of crickets.

Thus far, I am unscattered.

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 The Weight of Air

1.

I have lost the appetite for study. At daytime,

I wander lost in a passage of a book. Locked in a page,

I search its meaning through the crude lines of the text;

letters are like the scattered remains of Asian hair.

I am brought, not to any Eden,

but nearer: in the kitchen, where my wife

is cooking breakfast. A fine strand of hair hangs

limply on her face. She does not know

that I see her. She does not know

that I can draw her heart

on the palm of my hand,

eyes closed.

At night I try to live a normal life.

Dinner with my wife. A conversation of sorts.

Those scattered remains of

Asian hair beckon at me from the edge

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of my plate. My wife’s voice is drowned by

“the weary ticking of the clock”—

I have run out of creative phrases.

My newest poem? I sip my drink.

It is about silence.

But what is new about silence?

She nods her head.

She knows there is nothing.

I have lost the patience for writing.

At midnight, I pick up my pen

and write a few lines.

The sound of her breathing

distracts me; makes me tear a page.

And another. I try again,

and I know: there is nothing.

From the window comes a crack of light.

It is a beautiful morning,

yet again.

I have lost the appetite

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 for Asian hair.

In a few hours,

my wife will cook breakfast.

2.

He has run out of things to tell me.

Last night, I woke up to

the screeching sound of pages torn.

I pretended not to hear.

I pretend not to notice when

he stares at his plate during dinner,

and then he looks at me with tired eyes.

My newest poem, he announces,

even though I did not ask.

It is about silence.

I nod my head.

I pretend to understand.

On mornings he reads a book

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 while I cook breakfast.

From the corner of my eye, I see

him peering at me from the page.

We look away, and pretend

not to see each other.

At noon, his eyes pore over

the same page. He has stopped

eating lunch altogether.

From a corner of the room, I

munch noisily on a biscuit.

It fascinates me to see his ears

stiffen in surprise, while the rest of him

is completely still.

Once, I rummaged through his desk

and read his newest poem.

In large, looming letters, is a line:

I have lost the appetite for Asian hair.

I crumpled the page

and fought back tears.

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 Leaving

There are echoes that disappear in an instant:

footsteps in an empty hallway,

the careful click of a door being shut.

There are echoes that stay for a few seconds,

a faceless sound parroting, with a smirk,

the sound of your voice,

until it becomes a stranger to you;

a cold resonance forcing itself

out of the stiffness of your jaws

But then there are echoes that fade in perpetuity,

an endless trail of thought moving farther

and farther from it subject;

a voice in the mountains

springing forth from someone’s frantic throat

eating up space in the vast wilderness,

becoming softer, more silent, but staying,

and you wonder at the infinity of silence.

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 Forgiveness

She will return to him with the calm assurance

of rainbows, and he will not loathe the metaphor.

It will be in an ordinary day.

He will be at his desk writing a poem about forgetting.

There will be a knock;

two swift, deliberate thuds on hard wood.

Instinctively,

(out of some lost habit that has found itself home again)

he will drop his pen,

rise from his seat,

and turn the knob.

She will be standing at his doorstep,

hands folded neatly in front, a small suitcase

beside one foot. Her hair will be a

cropped wisp of black covering

her eyes. The only thing he will recognize

is the smile; the thin lower lip stretched flat,

one brave corner twitching upwards.

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He will step aside, and she will come in

and sink into her favorite couch.

She will tell him stories

of places she had left a part of herself in.

He will listen with silent eyes.

She will finish her story, and he will say

nothing.

They will be drawn to tears.

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 On Silence

I am listening to crickets.

They remind me of the inevitability

of sound. In the morning,

without the crickets, there is the

soft creaking of wood from my chair,

the rustle of grass as they glide

across each other in the breeze.

In the absence of breeze,

there is the soft, hissing noise

of air as it enters my nostrils,

and as it escapes in haste.

Always, there is something.

Sometimes, I open a page in the Bible

hoping to find an explanation

for the fly that died in mid-air

and pummeled deep into my coffee.

On Sundays, I go to my room

and look at pictures. These pictures;

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 they occupy a drawer in my cabinet.

Someone’s laughter echoes

out of the yellowing paper.

In the stillness, I see a hand in mid-air.

Someone is holding

a glass of champagne, and I can almost relish

all those toasts we made to long life.

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