Tulips

I offer you my love in the form of a flowering plant in a pot. Roses, dandelions, or tulips perhaps - the plant is healthy, vivid and beautiful, in full bloom. You enjoy looking at it, the utter joy that its colours and fragrance bring! But you can't just simply stare at it. You must tend to it, water it everyday, put it out in the sun, remove the weeds that might grow in the soil. In short, you must take care of it. Otherwise, its leaves will wilt, the flowers will dry out, the whole plant will wither and eventually die.

My love is like that, it needs to be nurtured and nourished. Or else, my heart will just stop beating for you. I would never ever want that to happen, but we both know that it could. My love for you, on its own - and despite how poignant and powerful it is now - is not enough. A heart still needs another one to survive.

Sol y Luna

From E to P

You are the sun, 
ever so bright and beautiful. 
And I am the moon, 
silent in the starry sky,
reflecting your brightness. 
We may be in different milieus, 
in different hours, 
but we share the same light 
in the same universe.

Someday soon, 
we'll share the same love. 

University Drive

From E to P

From McKinley to QC

From E to P

Uncertainty

For Pau

There's a certain someone

whom I certainly miss

There's a certain mouth

that I'd love to kiss

There's a certain hand

that I want to hold

There's a certain embrace

that defeats the cold

But you're not here

You're no longer here

There's a certain time

I didn't want to end

There's a certain message

of love I couldn't send

There's a certain void

no one else could fill

But you just disappeared

And you're not here still

There's a certain longing

a certain pain

a melancholy

And there's a certain silence 

this heart hears

ever so loudly.

Some Nights

"Well, some nights I wish that this all would end
'Cause I could use some friends for a change.
And some nights I'm scared you'll forget me again
Some nights I always win, I always win..."







_____________________________________________
'Some Nights' is the second single from the album with the same title of American indie rock band Fun.     The song was written by Jeff Bhasker, Nate Ruess, Andrew Dost, and Jack Antonoff. 

Staccato

by Ewong
for the Sharp Islander

You sang in such a soft tone | Can’t look at the stars now

a line from an unknown song | that I couldn’t learn anymore

now that there is | no more reason | to sing since you left

I still don’t know what it was | that captured me | was it your

sweet, unassuming voice | your camellian eyes, your gift

for music | or was it the warmth | of your bosom against mine?

The night was passing | like a tourist in a strange land

and all I could do was count | the seconds | the minutes

the hours | and pray to them nameless gods | well,

including  Albert Einstein | that may this episode | this chance

encounter with you | never end | These days I look at lyric

sheets | and I hate myself | for singing those songs back then

when I first met you | For now they are all meaningless

without your strumming | without red wine or beer | or deathly

porcine cholesterol | without you | Now all I could do is sleep

all day, sleep all day | over and over | and over and over again

There’s a certain sadness in the endless pleasure a single night

brings  to us lonely people | Maybe the problem is | one of us

is more lonely | or the other is much less alone | Or is it

because both of us | can’t look at the stars now? | I know I sin  

And I know you sin  | But what I really want to do is sing  

all day, sing all day | over and over | and over and over again

But I had lost my tongue | will someone else please find my song?

____________________________________________________________________
Poem has reference to these songs:
Stars (Grace Potter and the Nocturnals) and Sleep All Day (Jason Mraz)

The Dandruff Monologue

by Ewong
for the Starbucks Smacker

I cling to you like the embrace of a woman

yet I annoy you like an unwanted suitor

Sometimes I interpret your frequent

caresses as a sign of your affection

but now I know that they are only

meaningless affectations like things

or food or people that grow on you,

or perhaps like the hair on your head

which grows long like a lazy Sunday

morning song. Yes, on top of you,

there’s my home sweet home. Yet you

despise me so much, despite knowing,

deep in your bone, that scratching

me off gives an inexplicable sensation

like being kissed on the lips by the man

of your dreams, under poetic moonlight

and dancing fireflies in a princess’s garden,

or perhaps like that infinite moment a boy

is no more a boy when he’s discovered

at last the wonders of a woman’s nipples

You hate me now and feel so much

shame for having me, but you can’t,

and won’t, let go of me so easily. You

go ahead and try whatever chemical

but I tell you, I’m as strong and natural

as the sight of wind-blown cherry

blossoms, painted by the gods perfectly

for the purposes of our romance

You’ll see, my dear friend, you

will not be well rid of me, because

for me to leave you completely,

your hair, your whole hair, has to go

as well into oblivion. But perhaps there,

in that desolate realm of the abandoned,

your hair and I, just the two of us,

can be friends, then make love, and have

lots of baby hairs and little more of my kind.

Perhaps your hair and I can be truly happy,

without your scalp, without your head.

Without you. Maybe it’s better that way.

When I’m far gone, when you’re old

and wrinkled, with no hair, not even gray

or white, perhaps then you’d finally realise

that I was more than the miserable scum

you shook off with inconsolable fury,

that I was, in fact, those little snowflakes

ever so slowly, enchantingly

falling from your sweet head.


______________________________________

Joshua Radin's "Today"

No other day matters as much.



Shoelaces untied
You can dry your eyes
Perfect shadows align
behind us
This is the day I make you mine

The Callous (I)

by Ewong
for the callous one

And thus begins another
of my drunken imaginings:
a glass of merlot in one hand,
a menthol cigarette in the other,
and in between is my mouth full
of French curses, and if only I
could kiss you tonight--following
those Parisian guidelines--then I
would know why they invented

wine--yes, to act crazed, be stupid,
to say the wrong things, and harass
someone, to sing and poke, to scream
and puke, then succumb to slumber
whilst muttering gibberish of somber
tales, yet still with the finest grace, for
we can claim that this divine inebriety
is simply the climax of an epic story

that started in a scenic vineyard.
But it is not wine glass that we hold
but a homey coffee mug, and you know
better to quickly end this bourgeois
pretension: so you bring out them
Brobdingnagian bottles of ice-cold
beer--our dependable, great old
red equine friend from paradise
lost and paradise found, yes, yes, I

have been so lost, and it's you I
have found, and I must be tipsy now,
o dear stranger, where 'you been all
my life, hurray, let's drink to uncanny
coincidences, o darling you could be
my wife, so what are we waiting for,
let's come, come, come together, come
away with me, and tomorrow is another

day, tomorrow I may not remember
your name, but now is what matters,
the guitar's strings are long, but our lives'
short, yet the night is young, and so are we,
yes, we are here, and here is what matters,
yes, even for just this one drunken night:
have I told you lately that you're beautiful--
(you, you, so beautiful under this faint light)--
that you are all mine, and I am all yours tonight,

though just here, in another of my wild imaginings.

_________________________________________
Art credit: "Vineyard Way" by Roberto Lombardi

This is the first poem I've written in two freaking long years!
So that only means I've been drinking frequently again lately. ;-)

A Dog Has Died

by Pablo Neruda


My dog has died.
I buried him in the garden
next to a rusted old machine.

Some day I'll join him right there,
but now he's gone with his shaggy coat,
his bad manners and his cold nose,
and I, the materialist, who never believed
in any promised heaven in the sky
for any human being,
I believe in a heaven I'll never enter.
Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom
where my dog waits for my arrival
waving his fan-like tail in friendship.

Ai, I'll not speak of sadness here on earth,
of having lost a companion
who was never servile.
His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine
withholding its authority,
was the friendship of a star, aloof,
with no more intimacy than was called for,
with no exaggerations:
he never climbed all over my clothes
filling me full of his hair or his mange,
he never rubbed up against my knee
like other dogs obsessed with sex.

No, my dog used to gaze at me,
paying me the attention I need,
the attention required
to make a vain person like me understand
that, being a dog, he was wasting time,
but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,
he'd keep on gazing at me
with a look that reserved for me alone
all his sweet and shaggy life,
always near me, never troubling me,
and asking nothing.

Ai, how many times have I envied his tail
as we walked together on the shores of the sea
in the lonely winter of Isla Negra
where the wintering birds filled the sky
and my hairy dog was jumping about
full of the voltage of the sea's movement:
my wandering dog, sniffing away
with his golden tail held high,
face to face with the ocean's spray.

Joyful, joyful, joyful,
as only dogs know how to be happy
with only the autonomy
of their shameless spirit.

There are no good-byes for my dog who has died,
and we don't now and never did lie to each other.

So now he's gone and I buried him,
and that's all there is to it.
________________________________

For Zagu, my "Dog No.5" whom I rescued from the streets in January last year. He died 03 January 2012; birth date unknown.


Someday I'm gonna have another Basset hound. :-)

Anatomy of a story, or: The Little I Know About Women

by Ewong.
for the girl across the big room.



Strangeness springs from hospital hours, among first-time residents gone mad from illness, of affairs both of the heart and gut. It was the final week of summer.

Now rains have come, and rains have gone, and summer seems to have claimed upon the earth and its drenched-souled men again. A certain change has filled up the uncertain emptiness, or returned to the old feelings apparently long gone: a change for the better, the elders would say -- but who really knows what's even good?

Someone looks up the book of words and discovers this relationship disparity between a pair -- a lover can be a friend, but the latter can't necessarily stand for the former. Some book, indeed. It is definitely not the dick-tionary. Let me read (it/you) further.

Cut to:

Her sister a few weeks ago she tutored about the reproductive system -- apparently the first topic in grade 5 science class. In her best attempt at sounding clinical, and quelling all malice and awkwardness pressed by such unnerving anatomical concepts, and with the textbook and internet both open, she taught her the mechanisms behind human organs called penis, vagina, scrotum, testes, and fallopian tubes. It was torture, for both of them. There were daunting terms like 'fertilization' and 'menarche.' At the end of her teaching, the fifth-grader was still confused as to who possesses the 'vas deferens,' man or woman? There is a vast difference. But she, the younger one, doesn't need to understand it all now.

Even the older one has not fathom much of it yet.

Fact: The human circulatory system is a better subject. And much more romantic.

Dissolve to:

Something Theatre proudly presents "The Indefinite Pronouns"

Someone wrote somebody a poem. Or poems. Someone likes somebody. Someone, perhaps, is already in love with somebody. Someone fears. Somebody feels. Someone feels something else, though -- like that of being stalked. Somebody hopes for something else. She says, or does. He says, or does:

a) Too much?
b) Too little?
c) Too soon?
d) Too late?

Sometimes someone thinks that somebody is onto something.

Music: Summertime, and the livin' is easy.*

Summer, it feels like summer all over again. Summer, o how it rhymes with forever, but these are words not fit for a beautiful poem, in a beautiful book of beautiful poems that is published in some other beautiful world.

One of these days, someone is going to have his or her heart broken. Or more likely, both of them, only over some other someones. Characters from different books, they are. Or different volumes of the same set of books. Like encyclopedia, a kind of literature which sounds like a dream from the ancient times. But now, encyclopedia that comes back to life -- but in digital format.

Cut back to:

Hospital hours. She will never forget how her own heart beat ever so slowly in her last days in the room. She feared. She felt. As if for the first time. She did not die, of course, but something else died, and something else was reborn. And he, the object of her subtle affection, was somewhere else. In another hospital. In another sense of words, in the vocabulary of the cyclically ill and broken.

There are three characters in this story set in summer that's not really summer. Or shall we better call it the rainy season without the rains?

Metaphor by morphology: Rains are like tears. I hope no one of these characters has cried, or is crying, over the other yet. That would be (too much/too early) a drama.

I would write them in the same book. One that does not have entries (yet) for fallopians or androgens. If I scanned the pages, I would chance upon this word: kiss. But this is like a drunken part of speech. As a back-story, I would write that it was a very short instant, void of any romance or anything like that, certainly one that doesn't count as a 'kiss.' Simply a casual touch between a man and a woman. And this is neither a good time to mention the word 'lust.' Let me annotate on this for revision:

"a very brief, prurient encounter."

She feels that they are on the same page. It's been awhile since she felt like this. She raises her hands up against the bright, blinding incandescent light to count her fingers. She reckons one hand is enough for her counting. Nevertheless, she thinks that he, the present object of her subtle affection, was, or would be, in a significant non-physics-sort of movement:

a) moving closer?
b) feeling weightless?
c) orbiting toward a center?
d) falling a freefall?

Music: We could have been so good together, we could have lived this dance forever.*

There are also some minor characters that, if I may bravely claim so, could be reminiscent of Francois Ozon's brilliant film 8 Femmes, adapted from a play. All the women there loved the man, but who "killed" him?

I have not written a poem for a long time now. (This statement could serve as a clue.) Is it time for me to learn the play? (This statement is not pun-ny at all.)

I haven't read a book lately either. I haven't read much at all. I fear that I can no longer read well. I've been misreading words lately. I've been misreading people too. I could be misreading myself. I need to bring out the dictionary and chew the pages off, from A to Z.

Montage during the internal monologue (voice-over) of a deaf-mute:

Fiction: He would have killed the 8 women, if he had the chance. But that wouldn't be a musical comedy-slash-mystery-thriller anymore. That would be a massacre of hearts.

Art: And then the image of hands. Hands.

Music: My hands are [not] small, I know, but they're not yours, they are my own.*

Melodrama: But you can hold one of mine now.

(...for the other is doing the writing.)

He is on his way to the bookstore to look for this best-selling title published in some other world: Complete Idiot's Guide to End Quickly the Falling Slowly.

He would read it, and then hand it to her as a gift to commemorate their end of friendship.

Excerpt from the preface of a book that must have been either poetry or biology: "It's amazing how testicles and fallopian tubes are so alike and different at the same time. Both are in pairs. Both secrete the gametes. Both have reference to what are called 'eggs.' But the former is outside, exposed to the harsh world, while the latter is sheltered deep inside, lonely and longing. And that is why nature compels them to always meet halfway."

She (from outside, looking in) cannot remember if there was any other male character in Ozon's film. But in this other story, she (from inside, looking out) realizes that there is another man.

Caption of a photo from a book from another world: If (you/he) were an egg, I would break (you/him) into a bowl of hot Soup no. 5.**

And the plot suddenly becomes culinary.

There is no end to this story.

____________________________________________
*Lyrics quoted are from the songs "Summertime," "Careless Whisper," and "Hands."
**For the non-Filipino readers, Soup no. 5 is a special dish with cow testicles, sometimes penis, too.

Food for the taught

by Ewong

What I've been cookin' up and fillin' my tummy with lately:


Saucy spaghetti, meatless but with lots of parmesan


Payless Pancit Shanghai Oriental flavor with chili added


Canned-Laing Sandwich


Saucy spaghetti with diced tomatoes and dila-sausage


Lucky Me Pancit Canton chili-mansi with more chili

You see, no rice for me during weekdays. And I usually eat just sandwiches at work. So my dear friends, stop worrying that I'm sick or that I'm in dire poverty, haha.

Thanks to my housemates for the amazing, un-sung ingredients and left-overs in the kitchen (and the sleeping booze in the fridge, too).

Which reminds me, I need to buy basil soon.

Quatre Saisons

by Ewong

There's the drink:



There's the music:




And another music:




And there's those crazy artful stuff I was making then:


Created April 2


March 19


March 5



March 12It's time to finally post them.

For a new season has begun.______________________________________________

Love/Lust

by Ewong



*like most unpublished poems i've been posting lately, this one was written in the summer of 2010, when love was high and lust was long... and love was right and lust was wrong...

"Piso-piso"

by Ewong



I take back what I said in my last blog post. Or rather, I am keeping what I said before: summer had been cruel to me. I got hospitalised early this month (for the first time ever), puked my guts out and subsisted on dextrose for four days. A week later, my very sick cousin died. She'd been sick a very long time: complications from the thyroid storm which killed her unborn baby months before, and then malnutrition. A few days before she passed, she told my mum, pointing to somewhere in her hospital room, that she was seeing Jesus in bright light... Jesus, she was certain, and someone she called "S." Of course, my mum told my cousin to stay with the light, go with Jesus. And she did eventually.

And no one must go with "S." Whoever he or she was.

For the next few days, relatives arrived for her wake. Relatives who don't live in the same town (she and her daughter, my aunt, uncle, and my other cousins just lived in a house a few blocks--a tricycle ride--away from ours). Yes, those whom we only see when a kin has died. I'm not close to most of my relatives, so I wasn't really excited to see them. Sometimes I think, and funny it is, really, that the families of my clan are in some sort of a contest of who gets to have the saddest, most MMK-worthy story. This cousin of mine tried to hide her pregnancy from her strict father for the longest time, and they lived under just one roof. She had goiter, hence her pregnancy was downright delicate, but she never went to see an endocrinologist or an ob/gyn. Before this baby, she already had a teenage daughter, with a man who just disappeared before the girl was born. Her new husband, the father of her dead baby, abandoned her after giving birth--

or is it "giving death"?

My own family was in strong competition a few years back. When my dad died tragically, treated like an animal, while my mum couldn't even go to her own husband's funeral, and we, their kids, had to fend for ourselves...

So you could say I planned my visit well to the funeral home: it was during noontime, and like I predicted, my relatives were still out, soundly sleeping in my uncle's house, and I only had to meet my cousin's (now totally orphaned) daughter. Still, I hated scenes like this. Not that I do not care for my cousin, or that I do not mourn her, but it's just that I hate the sight of death, this very solid scene designed with a white coffin, wreaths, monoblock chairs, a guest book, candles lit and blinding bulbs burning all day and all night long. And seeing my cousin like she was already a skeleton, I could see her wrinkled skin sagging from the bone of her arm. She was just about my age. One could not recognise that she was the same fine, pretty lady in the framed portrait on top of the coffin glass. She was my most beautiful cousin. And perhaps that's why I never visited her in the hospital, never in the four months that she was sick, dying ever so slowly. Because I wanted to only remember the beautiful flower that she was when we were younger.

Her name was Hyacinth.

And so, you could further say that I hate being confronted by death. I'd rather all my siblings and cousins have unplanned pregnancies, and then births, every month, every week if they must, but not this call of mourning. I would not want to see my relatives again, if it'd only be on funerals.

But I love the coffee served, and the biscuits from the big tin box. Classic. Later that day, during the wake, another cousin would teach me how to play tong-it, and I'd win three out of the six rounds.

Piso-piso game it was.
.

Bliss of summer

er.
And so my summer wasn't so cruel after all. Well, good things came one after the other: my five day-leave from work got approved, my subtitling gig for a-very-important-Filipino-film-which-should-have-been-in-Cannes paid me extra, my sick cousin in the hospital is hanging on to dear life, and my brother is back at work...

then I had the most awesome summer adventure in Magalawa Island, Palauig, Zambales:



...and while I was busy (lonely-ly) living by the beach, our bitch Tentay gave birth to three uber-healthy pups:



And although I missed another Palanca deadline (because having read the book Six Poetry Formats and the Transforming Image by Edith Tiempo while I was alone by the beach made me realise I hadn't been writing most of my poetry "properly"), and that, practically, I haven't done anything productive and creative in the last couple of weeks, and that now I'm good (or bad?) as broke (after having had to pay for four days in the white-sand-beach far far away)--(and finally, didn't I promise not to talk about heartbreak?)--summer definitely has been so kind to me.

The scorching sunny season is not yet over, and I have high hopes for more good things to come, to me and to everyone. Happy summer, guys!

Regina Spektor's "Laughing With God"

.
Regina Spektor is a music goddess, and I figure that my favorite "non-romantic" song of hers is just so apt for my favorite hol(y)day: this Lenten season. Great vocals, great poetry, great message:



"No one laughs at God
When their airplane starts
to uncontrollably shake
No one’s laughing at God
When they see the one they love,
hand in hand with someone else
And they hope that they’re mistaken..."

Watch the official music video here.
The full lyrics are here.
.

(The beginnings of my) Cruel Summer

by E Wong



And so this doesn’t appear to be the bright sunshiny summer I wished it would be—for me. My brother had just lost his job, hence our expenses at home will definitely be tighter. We had already cut our internet connection months ago; I think we have to give up the cable subscription, too. Our cat had given birth to three kittens, and our dog will be giving birth soon. It'll be so heartbreaking to give up—give away—some of our pets eventually. Then even more ill-timed is the need to transfer to another house in the province next month, just one block away, anyway, but the moving and the costs it will entail is huge headache already.

There’s also some “domestic uncertainty” back here in our apartment in Manila, and I really wish things will turn out fine for my dear housemates. My own “certainty” depends on it. Then, my mother had her recent checkup for diabetes, and she is advised of stricter monitoring, thus there’ll be more medications than what she is already on. Worse news is one I just learned this morning: my cousin, who barely made it after her tragic pregnancy “poisoned” by her severe goiter, is back in the ICU, and now the doctors and the family are on the verge of giving up…

This is how my summer appears to be: gloomy despite all this sun. I am keeping the optimism, of course, but I’m really sad, and scared, about how things will turn out. Well, for one, I’m glad that my personal life—the affairs of the heart—has just wrapped up its last consuming chapter. Yes, I am moving on. It was a great experience, but one which has to conclude now. I'm glad I will not be writing so much about heartbreak and unrequited love soon. And I’m glad I ended it with a creative, thesis-like thing, like a student’s final paper deserving a 1.0. Which brings to mind… oh no, I guess I have to postpone (again) my going back to school, given these predicaments…

And my summer plans most likely will remain plans. The Vigan or Baguio trip, the annual beach getaway, the concert I wanted to attend. And the writing “retreat” I’ve been looking forward to. I guess I’ll be spending the rest of the summer just at home, in the hospital, and in the office. I don’t think I’ll have time left to write poetry, or to do some art, which I just recently got back into. That is really sad. I don’t even have the energy to edit and polish this blog post. Here comes the stream of consciousness… Here comes the inevitable ellipses… and the grunts... hmpf... aargh... and the shouts… aaahhh… aaahhh…

So I guess I may not be blogging as often as I want to, and my Facebook addiction will have to be greatly tempered as well. Because summer seems to be extra tough this time. Because I have just lost my licence for procrastination. Now I have to move, move, move! Because I will have to face life once again… in the face! We’ve been through much more difficult times before, that kind of drama which you’d only see in the movies or in MMK, (God I don’t even want to recall them!), but now, why am I so scared of the days ahead? Because I fear poverty striking us again? Because I don't want any more deaths in my family, amongst my relatives? Anyone dying, for that matter!

But so strange it is that when things go awfully rough, it seems easier to accept tragedy or tribulation in the rainy days. Is it because, as the cliched metaphor goes, the rain washes away our tears? Whilst summer, this time of the year, means being happy and youthful and festive, and we should be singing now, dancing now, and having some summer lovin’? Because in this season of sun, we’re supposed to celebrate the dryness of our eyes, we should bask in the utter brightness of our ephemeral lives?

I wish I knew the answer. I wish life would be easier. I hope things will still be sunshiny for me, for everyone… O summer, please don’t be so cruel to me now. You’re my favorite season, you know that. Shine on me, O sweet sun. Shine on me now—

just don’t get me burnt.

___________________________________

The summer sky of April 11, 2011

by E Wong



the noontime summer sky of April 11 is blue
and pure, it is a holiday for the painter
of nature, though bright as it is

she cannot tell whether it is inviting
her out to play or warning
her against the glare

the noontime summer sky is clear
to her, now, so clear it is blinding,
it compels her to sing, but then—



the late afternoon summer sky of April 11 is bleeding
smoke: it paints the screams of people running
rushing crying for help crying for life

somewhere else someone else needs to be running
rushing crying for help crying for love, but how
can she cry with all this charcoal in the sky?

the painter cannot stand this fullness of colour,
she confesses: smoke is that black of that red
that after too much longing had clotted

the late afternoon summer sky of April 11 is burning
still: the smoke may have been extinguished,
but the fire stays within


________________________________
(Photo: 1 PM sky over Susana Heights exit, SLEX)
(Photo: 5 PM sky over Tandang Sora, Quezon City)