Dark Matter

A nobel price winner said

that there is more

to the universe

than what we know

about.

Stars pull

away from each other for reasons

even the laws

of physics fail

to explain. There is no

easy way

to deal it:

that things drift away

for no reason.

Nilaga

Friendship taste nothing like it. The beer
that night, like her eyes,
was cold. I told her
I want nilaga

because that is what you
get after labor:
the grief of listening to grief.
He left her
even after her labor.
She told me
there is no nilaga.
only cold beer.

Old Habits

I prefer my room door closed,

even when I'm alone in the house. A habit

I picked up as a masturbating teen.

Here, I know what I have. There are no skies

nor horizons to doubt.

Once, I wished for a bigger room,

not for the space, but for the larger scope

of certainty. Perhaps, this is the same

reason why the people prefer to live

in houses: there is so much to fear

in the endlessness of the outside. Given a wish

now, it would be to reduce the world

into the limitation of a closed room.

A fish may want to walk on land

but it doesn't mean it's going to happen.
There is something in the way.
A general, who was told he had no reputation

to protect, attempted to clear his name
by taking his own life. Futile,
the fish said. He thinks he has better
chances winning a marathon. But whatever
works. Winners try, not cry. The general
thinks that life is in the way.
People judge the fish for wanting
to walk, and so the fish judge
the general with a death penalty. The fish
began dreaming when he saw a puddle
and people started walking on it.

(An Elegy for the Angelo T. Reyes)

The Man in Black

One day a man would arrive at your doorstep

to tell you that nothing you know

is true. That there is nothing divine.

We never die, because we were never alive.

The man, you'd say, would be wearing black,

the color of ambiguity and secrecy.

But he but he wouldn't be.

Color is a creation of the mind, he'd tell you.

The man will say that the blind has been deprived

of nothing important.

That they are fortunate. They would never

say that he is wearing black.

When that moment arrives,

you would want the man crucified.

L(if)e

There would always come a time
when one would demand for all
the answers,

the way cracked soil demands
for rain in times drought.

You look at the sky and see life,

a grey cloud, and wonder
how heavy it is.

What separates a philosopher
from an ordinary man who thinks
too much is the act of preaching.

And so, you tell people about all
that you've learned about it: its origin
its promise, its name.

Then a little boy tells you
that the cloud is shaped

like a mouse with a cowboy hat.

When the World has Lost its Meaning

Suppose that the moon ceased to be sad.

And you see it looking at you, extending
comfort, but it's not.

The lake you've been staring at doesn't resemble
the eye of a crying girl.

Tonight, the wind is mute

and when you hear it whisper,
you are making things up.

You see fireworks from far away
and you pretend that the sky is in pain,

that things make sense.

Like All

There is a point.

There is a point in time.

There are points in time.

Time is full of points.

When you look at the night sky you see them.

When you open a book, poetry or prose, you read them.

They say that the line series of points.

And so must be everything else.

There are points in time.

Those are what we are

from above.