Shapes of Darkness This is where we settle our dominion

(Tita Lacambra Ayala)

the colors of our properties
all that is blue is mine and all
The other side of
that is white
sunset is the dark ocean
you claim the reds and all others
bringer of dreams bitter
but in the end
with blood
nothing belongs to us not this land
its rainfall and trees only the
nightmares borrowed from war films
memory of these
sputtering of guns in the neighborhood
not the sea and its depths only its
Father agonizing on his gout and heart
symbols and excesses
Mother trembling in the pleats of drapes hiding
Precariously we fill the vacancies
from thieves
with goods,
her hands cupped around her golden earrings.
with sounds billowing the sails
of our makeshift curtains
A child in fever
we sail around the world amidst its dangers
at 42 degrees burning like bruised
and permutations
marshmallows fruit dripping
holding on to each other - all that
syrup on the coals its eyes red with fire
we can ever own.
of faulty wirings, unknown origins
I crush the ice into pebbles
and crust the head the face the fevered limbs
with diamonds like rivulets
in some far burning desert.

Midnight's are rough for travel

alone on the highway trees are ghosts
a house burning and the tribal owner
will burn in it
smoke to the sky telling the gods how he ruled
as a noble datu leading his people away from
pirtalls set by government, the temptations
of civilization schools that teach how to count
beyond tribal memory only the number of fallen
trees can match it
And we are lost from our ancestors in speed
they can no longer keep up with us
we carve the earth with our travels so soon
their memory is nothing but a scar on
the skin of our dreams.