BUT WHERE TO?

I need to escape 
From this country of chaos 
Escape the mind games 
The hate and its sowers
The rumors and the mongerers 
The haze of the false and the fake
The hubris and humiliation
All the death and destruction
Escape the change that came
Escape the mad maddening crowd
I need to escape in my mind
Or from my own mind
Escape my own worries
My own thoughts
And hide in a rainbow world of unicorns and giant cupcakes
Where I don't sweat, where I don't fret
Where people are crazy in the way I like
Where evil creatures are a figment of the imagination
Where safety is not even a word
Because the opposite is not even a concept
Where there are no dreams of escape
I need
I want
I have
To escape
And it hurts that I long
To escape This haven where my heart is
The home of my history
The land I love
But for sanity and security
I must
Escape
Inward
Backward
Forward
To a different dimension
Anywhere but here
Any time but now

Never Ever

And when all is done

And my life is on a countdown of days

When my lungs heave their last few rounds of inhalation and exhalation

And I look back at a life just about finished

Will my breath be laced with regrets

Will I sigh about the book i never wrote

The song I never sang out loud

The city I've been meaning to visit but never did 

The poetry forgotten

The world I never changed 

The talent I buried 

The gifts I never gave

The apology I withheld 

The hug I was too shy to give

The compliment I hesitated to utter

The gospel I was too afraid to preach

The goodness I held back

The speech I forgot to deliver 

The film I never saw 

The literature I was too lazy or overwhelmed to read

The moment i did not seize

The bucket list I didn't even bother with 

The instructions I never gave

The craft I never mastered 

The bungee jump I never took 

The ocean depth I did not plumb

The leap I did not take
The love I limited

The me I did not discover

The inertia I did not overcome

The fear that kept me from trying

The brakes I stepped on to keep me from soaring

Will the unfinished business I never even started

Drag my spirit down 

As my body gives in 

And all the dreams I gave up on

Die with me? 

Dr. Kwak Kwak, Tulungan Mo Kami!

(My first Tagalog poem. If I don't count that one I submitted for Filipino 12)

Nakapulupot ang buhay ko sa buhay mo.

Kamay, braso, hita ko’y nakadikit

Sa kamay, braso’t hita mo.

Ang puso ko ay nakaepoxy sa iyong puso

Sa ayaw natin o sa gusto

Ang mga araw at taong pinagdaanan ko’y

Hindi mapipilas sa kwento ng iyong nakaraan

Ang kasalukuyan ko, ang gagawin ko ngayong araw na ‘to

Ay ano pa, e di nakatahi sa araw mo

At bukas, ikaw pa rin ang aking kambal tuko

Kahit subukan kong pumiglas

Kahit minsan sa iyong mukha ako’y nababanas

Kahit parang masmadaling dumiskarte ang mag-isa

Kahit minsan ayoko na talaga

Bakit parang hindi kaya pag ika’y wala?

Nakapulupot ang buhay ko sa buhay mo

Sa gabi pag natutulog, ang higpit ng yakap mo

Sa araw kahit wala ka ay parang nandyan ka pa rin

Nagkabuhol buhol na ang mga parte ng katawan natin

Kahit si Dr. Kwak Kwak ay hindi tayo kayang paghiwalayin.

Para tayong preso ng isa’t isa

Magparole man, hindi pa rin tatakas

Nakapako tayo sa package deal na pangako

Nagsumpaang walang iwanan

Life sentence na nga ba ‘to?

Nakatali,

Nakaganchilyo,

Pinagdikit ng rugby,

Nakakandado at tinapon ang susi,

Nakapulupot ako sa’yo.

Nakapulupot ang ating mga ugat

Mga bituka nati’y naka-superglue

Nakapalupot ang buhay ko sa buhay mo

Dinikit ng kola ng panahon,  ng karanasan, ng kasal na legal,

Ng pangagailan, at higit sa lahat, ng malagkit na pagmamahal

Nil

And when the spell is gone,
When the magic of the moment vanishes,
And the heat, the ardor of going through the fire
Leaves nothing but the memory of embers,
When the river of tears dries up,
Leaving a bed cracked and arid,
When the season of the storm
Has turned into the parch of summer,
When the quake leaves no more tremors,
And the sea has calmed down
Except for the currents down in the deep,
When the piercing pain
Has become a numb ache,
When the anger and the hurt
Have been wiped out from a calloused heart,
By the need to heal and move on,
When the scab has disappeared
Leaving a hint of a scar,
Barely visible, except to the eyes of those who know.
When the desperation of threatened love
Turns back into the complacency of security,
When the chase is over,
And the battle ends with the compromise of a ceasefire,
When the fight fades into a sigh,
When the mundane sets in
And we once more become fixtures
Nailed, hitched, anchored,
Easy, willing, accessible property,
Clad in a house dress,
Wrapped in layers of everyday dust,
Invisible,
Prosaic,
A nagging presence,
Been there, done that,
And ennui becomes a comfort,
And comfort becomes a curse,
What then?
What next?
Just waiting for the next upheaval,
Bracing for a storm
That we miss
But we wish would never come.

Tints and Shades

Don't we all

Forgive our lovers
Soon to be lovers
Imagined lovers
Their foibles
We turn a blind eye
To their flaws

See halos where others don't
And allow the haze to hide the horns
Blemishes apparent to them
Invisible to our clouded vision
There's comfort in our prejudices
Solace in our imagination

We don our tinted glasses
To blur the blotches of a frail character
We camouflage crimes
Obfuscate offenses
We squint, we blink, we look away
We deny, we justify, we glossify

Because to burst the bubble of belief
Would be too hard to bear
Uncoupling too far from comfort
To be lonely is to be lost
Because identity is never isolated
And to belong is worth the price of oblivion

Better to stay imprisoned in our illusions
Better to remain ensconced
In our cocoon of conveniences
Our sentinel of sentimental attachments
This fortress of fog is our haven
To be cushioned in clouds is bliss

Because superheroes are dead
And what use are our armors
If they're far and not entwined around us
To protect our tender hearts and egos
Because saints are up in heaven
So we kiss the feet of the ones beside us

We put our blinders on
For the eternal ecstasy of
Evening embraces
For the luxury of lust
The privilege of pairing
For a lifetime supply of kisses and caresses

After all, who else could endure
Who else could dismiss the lapses
But the one who loves the most
The one who knows the deepest reasons
The one who sees the hidden motives
The one who's already given to the point of bleeding

Because maybe it's all damn worth it
Maybe the end will justify the pains
And in the meantime we hide our minds in shadows
And drench our hearts in numbing potions
And fog up our goggles and reinforce our helmets
And we stay and we love to the point of blindness and amnesia

And in return
We become heroes too
Objects of adoration
Beloved beneficiaries of gratitude
Saints saving sinners with imagined halos
Loved with and without conditions

And we too are forgiven
Our sins concealed under comforters
Our faults forgotten too
Our freckled pockmarked faces filtered
By eyes beholden, tinted, shaded, blinded
By hearts held captive by time, tide, and the turbulence of togetherness

Don't we all?

Status

Restless, listless, like ants are crawling under my skin
Anxious, aching; feelings simmering into a boil
Disconcerted, agitated; the pea under my bed is growing
Seething, bleeding; finding words to paint the color of my angst
And failing

Ripples and Reactions

When you shatter the peace of my worlds, 

Do not expect me to be still.

Do not expect me to pretend that I'm fine.

Do not expect me to shut down my own hurts.

Do not expect me to be dense,

To shut up, to act unaffected.

When a butterfly flaps its wings

In a land distant from mine,

It sends a signal to my bubble of space,

Heats up the skies above my head,

Stirs the air around me,

Agitates, stirs, moves the clouds to cry,

To form oceans and whirlpools

That cover the walking surfaces of my world.

When you breathe, the energy you expel,

Disturbs the molecules around me.

The germs of your heart seep into mine.

The virus of your thoughts

Do not stay quarantined in your head.

It finds its way out,

Spreading, invading, infecting,

Whether we like it or not,

Whether you planned it or not,

No matter how we protest that it shouldn't be.

Because no one lives in a vacuum.

No one exists in isolation.

There's an ecological balance to relationships.

There's an interconnection, a fine thread that runs,

Snaking its way through minds, hearts, hands, spirit
In parties, conversations, coffee dates, meetings,
In heavy musings, rabid messaging, and silent sighs,
In the wee hours of mornings, the bright glare of days,
At night when the loneliness weighs down,
Or that last wishful prayer before the dreams set in, 

Poking, binding, blinding,
Strangling, chafing, knotting, weaving,

Killing, stifling, sticking,
Holding, healing, breathing life.

I am not blind.

I am not callous.

I am not impervious.

I feel.

I see.

I think.
I reason.

I love.

I seethe.

I rebel.

I hurt when someone hurts.

I flinch when someone pinches someone else.

Just like you do.

If you can't control your passions,

Then don't try to control mine.

If you can't fix your emotions,

Then do not manipulate my own.

I cannot sit in a little peg

In a world you have designed

To be quaint and quiet,

Where only you can feel.

You cannot will me to be still.

I cannot gag my ideas to suit yours.

When you exercise your right to emote.

Know that that privilege causes you to provoke.

To goad, to peeve, to alter the emotional landscape.

For you do not hold the franchise to feelings.

Newton said it--Any action

Is met by an equal and opposite reaction,

You offend; I defend.

You launch; I punch.

You push, I shove.

You hate, I protect whom I love.

Maybe I can respect your decisions.

Maybe I can see your point of view.

But would you respect my right

To react, to feel, to speak up in anger?

Ripples in nature,

Waves in the sea,

Fissures on the earth,

Geological shakeups of the past.

This leads to this, and that causes that.

The whispered ire, the secret roars

Escape their dark places,

To gather momentum,

And explode.

And hit everything on the path.

What's shattered is shattered.

The shards of what you've broken

Have turned to dust,

Blown away by the wind,

Then a speck lodges in my eye.

Though I've tried to remain stoic,

And tried to keep my peace,

Holding on to the pieces salvaged,

In a world that’s been ravaged,

My hand has  to let go,

To wipe away the sting.

And yet the memory of that speck

Lingers, still hurting my eye.

And I cry

For a world forever changed

For a time now long gone.