Sunday, January 31, 2010

How do I dare me? Let me count the days




(This is not poetry)
but a declaration of

No smoking, no
alcohol, and no
sex for the next
eighty nine days.
And I'm up
for the challenge!

I wish i could say
this sacrifice
is for some great unrequited
love (that'd be too late now)
or the sort; but no, it's not.
It's for something much
more profound.
(But not impossible.)

Just little sacrifices, really
for some little favors. Oh God,
hear me out.

And so,
for the next three
months, chocolates
are not the only

temptation.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Trading Yesterday's "The Beauty and the Tragedy"



Another day, another sunrise
Washing over everything
In its time, love will be mine
The beauty and the tragedy

Friday, January 22, 2010

The Masseuse

by Ewong Martines

each night she yearns for someone
to end the coldness and tremble
of her hands, yet she would never
lament; the words no, not,
and don't have long died

in her throat. in the seedy room
she kisses the frozen breeze,
her tongue licking the dust
and salt of the passing minutes.
her slender nose can only smell

the surrounding darkness: the shy
flood of amber light washing over
this nest and all others occupied
by nocturnal strangers. her feet
barely move, but it is her mind

which wanders in the grocery halls;
there she happily fills her cart
with the most basic goods and
a pack of choco-peanut bars for
her little brother. her lean muscles

are tired, but the half-hour passed
strikes to declare that the man
with cigarette breath and musky
sweat needs more than her hands.
the drone of jeepneys from

what seems worlds away tells
it is time to make love again
without love. the flesh aching,
the spirit strained, and with that
lovely mouth of hers she longs

to cry, if only she could,
that even she needs a hand.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Joshua Radin's "The One You Knew"



The one you knew from your love
I grew into complete and whole
and the way I justify,
it's my way to control love everlasting

Sunday, January 3, 2010

i fell in love with a whore on new year's eve,

by Ewong Martines

for she told me more lies than truth—
exactly what my heart wanted a week
after all greeted me on Christmas day
but the one whose voice could cure
my sleeplessness, whose hands pacify

my shivers. in the damp light
of orange and gray she blanketed
my lips with her calculated warmth
then mapped my neck and chest and navel
with urban traffic that respects no holidays.

with nimble fingers i brushed her hair,
pulled hard in moments of beastly longing
for the shelter of my beloved’s breasts
whose milk could feed a thousand babies
in need of affection. i remember her

like i remember the sun, and in this paid
twilight of joy i remembered her still,
as mouths raided across napes and thighs,
tongues lost and found at every orb and slit.

the musk in the air had mixed with this
woman's cheap perfume when my thrusts,
mourning yet impassioned, hit harder
like ocean waves slapping nonchalant rocks.

her crimson nails clawed my back; she
squealed a pitch-perfect note of pleasure,
sang to a photograph of an erupting volcano
born again after centuries of being futile

and mysterious. it was barely dawn when i awoke,
the january fog blurring the mirror at the ceiling,
and there i was still haunted by the stench
of loneliness and misery of firecrackers.

the night felt too long like a whole old year.