Earth

 

your hand falls from the door knob

now locked, now the world is shut

outside this room alone with

only the two of us.

and words fell someplace else in

pit of silence, as they become unnecessary,

as you take a step, another, closer,

the low echo of your footsteps I count in reverse,

ten, nine, eight,

your eyes pierce mine

and knock me into the bed,

into a time when I was naïve and optimistic and

eager to be touched,

seven, six, five,

and your lips, then the whole of your body,

fall into mine. There is something about you

that sadness cannot withstand,

something that makes my body easy and light,

like a leaf falling unto earth.

four, three, two,

You are earth. I fall and you claim,

I crumble and seep through,

to be a part of you,

’till we become

one.

Desert

burrowed and caged by her weakness, she lied covered in dunes of sheets and pillows. her expression drought as a desert, her skin lifeless as the Sahara.

but her bed was an oasis made to support  life.  at her left was the mechanical ventilator supported by an adjacent oxygen tank. at her right, hung the Intravenous fluid on a stand  and  a piped in suction overhead.

it is as if air diffused in a manner not suitable for breathing, despite the endotracheal tube anchored by strips of leukoplast unto the rim of her mouth, inspite of her chest muscles that quivers as she inhales.

her right arm kept on trampling the bed sheets. non-purposefully, an exercise in futility. on the sands a camel cutting loose, waggling, writhing, squirming,  from lost limbs. sands storming the air, the heat dissipating across the horizon.

her back was wet. on her forehead were thorns of sweats. a river of saliva swelled beautifully out the mouth guard. She coughed and the mechanical ventilator alarmed. a rambling sound followed and a firework of  yellow sputum streaked the inside of the endotracheal tube.

her right arm groped for the side rail. anchored well, she tried  to pull herself out of the bed. veins bulged in her arms, neck, forehead and on her eyes. like pulsating vines groping for anchorage. like the blue Nile winding the strength-barren limbs weakened by Myasthenia Gravis. the IV catheter pulled from its place, and blood splattered unto the white sheet.

her husband came, along with her little daughter. she spoke to them on paper and pencil. the pencil is a camel and made vague wandering message on the paper. her husband and daughter waited. the pencil fell off her weak grip. but she held it again and the pencil danced the dance of two left feet. a meaningless scribble, a vague Morse code of sorts.

With her husband and daughter standing by the bedside, she was failing miserably on the pencil. she scratched her head. she got tired. she parted her lips but no sound came from them only the beeping of the cardiac monitor, the incessant whooshing of the ventilator.

With her only able arm, she tried to reach for them as they walked passed the door and left. a muffled voice, a drooped eye, weakened limbs, mask-liked face that hid dampened spirit.

grains of sand got into her eyes and tears drop along with her hope that  is a search of an oasis.

Metaphors

We tricked ourselves every time we define others by the limitations of our senses and the unpredictability notwithstanding the non-absolute reliability of our judgement. I’ve known a few who have fallen into their own trap.

The desire to belong and integrate with the greater whole sometimes comes with the disintegration  of the many parts that make us whole. As we dismiss someone who is different and doesn’t fit into the definition of normal we tend to forget that we too our different. And as we disintegrate we tend to see others in many parts and not as a whole. We start to label people by their extra finger, skin color, language, belief, gender, among others.

We derived meaning of these labels from an individual’s distinct character  that sorts them away from what is ordinary and average. Blacks, Midgets, Gays, Rapist are the many stars that punctuate the dark sky of prejudice and lopsided view of a person’s totality. From there, we ceased to appreciate an individual more than the labels that define them. We generalized as the means most comfortable because our own understanding of the world has become limited that we cannot take in something more than what is pre-determined by our set of beliefs. In turn, we have become intolerant,  self-engrossed as we define others on the same standards we set to  ourselves.

To quote from Dane, when you judge someone else, it doesn’t define who they are, it defines who you are.

An artist who makes nude paintings are definitely not satyric;  in the same way, writers who uses words referring to genitals to create beautiful metaphors, aren’t pornographic artist.

Sculpture

The warm light from the lamp shade basked the innocence of your face, your eyes needing, the tenderness I came to know from your half- opened lips, the soft curves of your hips, the lushness of your hair carefully laden on the kneaded bed sheets. Like a solitary cloud,my fingers tips  skimmed through the landscape of your body,  knowing that  this expanse is mine.

I am an artist and you are my sculpture. My hands big and thick. Rough and tough to your body. you like it hard, you said. you like it brutal. you like it when pleasure is an echo of pain. And I obliged. I hammered the clay without hesitation, without comfort, without patience  until it bled with joy. and everytime, you reach the inevitable  there’s the rush, the gush, the lush explosions, the hushed staccato of a singular vowel—the short a, a, a, a, a, a, a  .

I stabbed the mold with a chisel, without compromise the first lunge severe, deep, devil, wild, underneath within, reaching the inner depths of your being, shattering whatever was inside that ever existed but you know were gone forever after this very night as you grope for them shifting from one surface to another in the metal bars of your closet, in the pillows as you squeezed them , along the lengths of my back as I dig deeper into you as you scream, piercing slicing from below before withdrawing, then suddenly back again, the pain, pleasure never complete and thirsting until the very fragments of them all are gone long with the  many smells of our body sweat, musk, earth, iron, mud clay along with the recurrence  of knots, tangles, moans, aliases, repositions, throbs, shoves, friction, sweat, euphoria, along with my sudden, numbered, small deaths.

I looked up and light exploded. There was heaven.

+++

A shower of sunlight set apart the curtains from the window. It basked the innocence of your face, your eyes asleep, the tenderness I came to know from your half-opened lips, the soft curves of your hips, the lushness of your hair carefully laden on the crumpled bed sheets.

I opened my mouth to say something, instead a big gulp of air came in. I wanted to say thank you but I didn’t know your name.

Form

Amidst the incessant beep of the cardiac monitor, the whooshing of the vacuum from the suction, and the crackling and rambling of  sputum that comes along, I tried perusing my patients life pages in the chart. In nursing parlance we aptly call it chart rounds.

The chart is a record. Chronicling a client’s health’s worth in pages.

Flipping along, I happened to come across this order: OR technique inserted. Signed by the surgeon, counter signed by the nurse.

A beautiful sight of Miriam Santiago comes into the picture, rattling and bashing  this order’s poor use of English. Or Jessica Zafra dishing out her witty banter to the hapless concerned. In the same league, it sparked personal musings again.

Technique is a way of doing things.   A completely abstract concept and cannot be inserted to any hole one finds. Well, love can be inserted,only as a gesture.

Breaking away from the ‘routinous ‘ job of a micu nurse and poking fun at myself, I started rummaging the chart expecting not to find something. At the bottom buried over the heap, there really is an OR technique. An OR technique form.

OR technique form accomplished and inserted is my humblest suggestion.

Smart stupid

There are stupid smart people but there aren’t smart stupid people.

I am safely ligtas

my mga salita na hindi makakasulat ng tula

there are words that can’t pick themselves into poem

parang mga ulap na hindi makakabuo ng ulan

like clouds that can’t gather enough grey to rain

may mga bagyo na ang bagsik ay hindi sapat

upang wasakin ang aking pagkato

there are storms whose effete gust

too lame to crumble my character

may mga musika sa hangin na

hindi nakakaabot sa aking damdamin

there are melodies in the air

that cannot be wafted through my consciousness

Hindi ako ligtas sa iyong kagandahan

Im not safe in your beauty

sa iyong mga mata, sa isip at puso

in your eyes, mind and heart

Hindi ako ligtas

I am not safe

Pero walang akong pag alinlangan

But i have no desire to be

somewhere else

maparoon kung saan man.