Hate Me

Lately I have been dreaming of
your singing voice, echoing within my head as
blood in my veins slowly change into tears.
But where can we now stand
in this thin line between love and lust,
love and hatred,
love and unlove?
It’s been so long since I’ve felt
the warmth of your touch upon my skin,
and sometimes I just wish that
I had never let go. I had taken that
leap of faith. The consequences
of pushing away the fear and “living”.
But now I’m aching to hear the sound
of your voice, stumbling upon words
and poetry and lost affection,
now burning within the embers of
hatred. You promised me.

 

But where have I
landed now?

 

“You hate me now, don’t you?”
“No! Why would I hate you? I won’t ever hate you. I swear to God I won’t ever hate you, how could I hate you?”

 Liar.

 

Death is Sweet Pleasure

I am dying.
Slowly, unlike how disease eats
away at my insides. Slowly.
I die everyday, in the mornings
when I wake, alone in my bed.
I die in the afternoons when
sceneries are painted blurs outside
the moving window. In my head
I die in the evenings, when
all is silent until I fall asleep.
I die of loneliness and envy,
of sadness and jealousy,
of loving and unloving,
I die with the thought of you
crossing my mind everytime I
close my eyes.
And I don’t mind it. Dying this way.
I don’t mind it all.

 

I’m Home

You are like cookie crumbs settling unto
the paper of my ink-stained notebook.
The cold November wind dancing
with the leaves on the road.
The sheets, soft and comforting,
as I lay down in bed to rest weary eyes.
The tea stains left on the tablecloth
as I whittle away with the words stuck in my head.
The familiar tune I hear as I walk through
the busy streets of Manila at night.
The scent of baking bread
as I reach and unlock the door.

You are like home.

The End

This is how it ends.
I would let go of you.
Let you drown in the sea of faces
until you disappear completely.
But I can’t let you
wander off by yourself in this world
where you only get hurt.
I’ve been thinking of the ways where
love was the only thing that kept you
from breaking apart. And you’re still crumbling.
I’ve tried to hold you —
tried to stop the monsters from tearing
us apart. But we are only reduced to
dust and vodka left to evaporate.
And for four years your eyes trail
to every shadow thinking it was hers,
even though one of them is mine.

We are spinning in a circus lost within
a broken wheel. Your lips taste like
tea and stale cigarettes and I just
lose myself within the realm of possibilities.
If I could let you go and
you could let me go.
I’ll tear myself away, just for the thought of
your needs. Your wants.
Because there is nothing left to say.
Because this is how it ends.
Reduced to dust and evaporating tears
running down my cheeks.
I know what we were,
what we are now.

We are nothing.
the end.

Through the Ages

“Who do you live for?
Who do you cry for?”
If I look deep inside the shadows of my heart,
all I see is you.

At the start what I have ever been looking for
is your smile. And I want to remember it
until you close your eyes,
and the last moment comes.

But no matter how I try to hold on,
you slip away from my fingers.
Shadows of the past and mere
fragments of the future. We are.

And your heart has wings
so white they wrap around me,
until there are no more shadows
left for me to hide.

Until you close your eyes,
and the last moment comes,
would you still laugh
the way you do now?

At the start what I have been looking for
is the love I found in you.
And I’ve found it.
It will last through the ages.

“Who do you live for?”
“Who do you smile for?”
If I look deep inside the caverns of my heart,
all I see is you.

Defender

And you have been shaken yet again,
from a love you have lost so many years ago.
With broken fingers you write the words forming
within your chest. Scrawled upon skin with
rusty razor blades.
And your sadness is like a burning ember thrust
into the wet hearth where your heart,
the battered, bleeding heart you had clawed
right out of your chest, beats slowly in stopping motion.
Igniting within a split second.
Burning until you have left yourself into the ashes.

And I have been remembering yet again,
the nights when screaming into cotton pillows,
and drinking prescription drugs,
and shattering vases until the floor was carpeted in
glass and dust made me sane.
When the pain made me sane.
And all I could think about is how
sad you are. How sad I am. How sad we are.
How the world has turned you into
a broken man, and I a hypocrite.
I have no truths left to say,

Except these next ten lines:
I want to die.
I want to know if I still have a reason to exist.
I want to stop the sorrow from eating you
from the inside out.
I want to save you from the demons
you can easily outsmart.
I want to lull you to sleep when the nightmares
make you scream in such fear.
I want to show you how much
this small piece of immortality can mean.

Break

Don’t
try to
go closer,
or else you’ll
break apart if I
touch you.

And I don’t want
to see you shatter
like how I have shattered,
So many times
before.
Over and over.

You

You are like shades of blue
and red stuck unto my skin.
From lonely nights where the brush
stained and the paint spilled
unto open canvas.
Like dried ink curling
paper with heavy hands marking
serene empty spaces,
from days when I look out the window
to see birds flying into open space.
Like music from broken stereos
with words drowning out into
undecipherable pops and buzzes,
distorted and unrecognizable.
But beautiful.
But beautiful.

Under

They buried you today.
And I have no words left to say.
You have taken the voice within me
under the ground for no one to see,
all the tears I could give are nowhere,
nowhere to be found, would anyone care?
Oh maybe these tears are trailing with raindrops,
falling from the sky to land on the ground in plips and plops.
Silent like the screams of dying caterpillars and ants,
falling down from the leaves of drowning little plants.
Like the rain we once watched inside the dark
space of dry shelter within the evergreen park.
Or within the mossy earth under our feet,
or within the distance where horizons would never meet,
or absorbed by pale skin and cold hands,
left alone in a place where no one can stand.
Because I’d give up my life for yours,
I’d give up my life for yours.

Shots Drunk

Pain will not hurt

girls who hold in their breaths and

take a swig from the cold bottle and drink

away every little sad thing.

Because sad things get washed away with

the bubbly tide,

cold at the tip of my tongue,

warm as it passes my throat, and like

fire when it reaches towards

the pit of my core.

Like how the way your words tasted and

how I spat them out and pushed you away,

and I forgot the meaning of the sentence

“I’ll always stay.”

I left you to the world and forgot you.

And I did not turn back to remember.

You left.

You turned away and walked through

the exit where you can’t go back in.

You can’t go back in.

So I’m going to drink the night away,

until the glass is salty with tears and

the image of you lying peacefully in sleep,

in sleep where you can’t wake up,

will be erased from my memory.

Because I don’t want to remember,

even if it is only fleeting,

I want to be reckless and forget,

I want to forget

that you died.