Poems by J. Lorenz Poquiz

Saturday, October 15, 2011

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.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

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.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

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.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

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)

Saturday, January 29, 2011

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.

Friday, January 28, 2011

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.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

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.

The Lucky Man

God must be playing with dice,
who gets more, who gets to go hungry
today? Who gets to leave?
If He is anything like us,
then He is a gambler. The dice
is the most fair among things
of the earth: everyone has a shot
at the grand price. One man scores
big, but who's to say that the wind
didn't just blow in his favor?
If God was anything like us,
he loses every time we do.

Thoughts on the Edsa Bombing

It could have been me, a man said.
Why me? a passenger asked.
I hope none of my friends were there, a worried
woman said. Maybe I should live my life
differently, said the enlightened one.
Anytime, the bus I am sitting on could
explode, he continues, but I am still alive
now. What coud they have been fighting for
that is worth the lives of other people?
a pacifist went out to streets asking.
The lucky man said, thank God I wasn't there.

Friday, January 21, 2011

Rage

It's mostly because think we know
better. At one moment, we see
how things should have been done
and we feel compelled to shape things
into its rightfulness. But we are faced
with this wall, which, like time,
we would want to hammer down.
Our eyes find no way around and over,
so we give it our best shot with our fists,
and always, we end up hating the fact
that we are powerless against it.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Like Flies

Like flies, we our drawn towards our own demise
by bright lights. When I left the city,
for a vacation in the mountains
I came to miss these images of death: the neon signs,
telling me how to live my life; traffic lights,
keeping things in order; and the street
lamps to reveal the secrets of the night,
I knew I was being called, and realized
that there is no escape. I now know
why they suite people up before burying them.

Tunnel

I would want to know where we are
heading. Those who came back from the other
side always talks about light at the end.

I look at the sun and wonder if the exit
could be as bright as the source of everything
earthly. Will it also burn?

Two Men Digging

"I hope we get there soon, " one said.

"Where are we going?" replied the other.

"Somewhere rich. Somewhere where
there is light. Where we can put down
our shovels, and lay our heads on the grass."

"Who told you that?"

"No one."

"Why are we going there?"

"I don't know."

Monday, January 17, 2011

Why it's cold in January

You think that the wind wants you
to be lonely. With yourself, you are
with bad company, you hear it
whisper. And you start to think

about all that have been touched by it.
On the table, a piece of bread mourns
from molds. Inside a wall, a mouse
curls itself up to form the shape

of a fiery fist. We learn from Science
that as islands of ice melt to become part
of the sea, they leave behind their cold
shadows for the wind to spread around.

The same is true for those who seek
warmth from what is left of their past
selves, the wind says. And you imagine
a block of ice melting as though it was crying.

Friday, January 14, 2011

Anonymity

My mother called her Jamie
But that wasn't her name.

My mother never liked Jamie.
She likes this girl, but didn't
see the difference.
A girl I bring home is a girl

I bring home, she thinks.
Label her once.
My mother tends to do that:

Forgetting people's names
but in mind she knows who

they are. My old lover should be
happy to know
that another girl had saved her
name.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Strech Out

Tell me things I don't know.
Say that when you are drinking
coffee, you are not drinking
you are lying.

Say that there is no tonight
because darkness died in a fire.

Or say that a flood engulfs
your city
every time you finish a book.

That when a girl leaves
the small town she grew up in,
she will find what she is
looking for, only
when she stops to take a rest.

Say that when you are writing
you are making love with dreams.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

At First

You want to believe that tomorrow would be
different. That after merging with another, the body
will no longer be the same. Still, you take off
your clothes with the fear of putting it on
again as the same person.


Sunday, January 9, 2011

To be Forgiven

You would have to imagine the Nazarene on fire
and choose to take on tomorrow's labor
knowing that you can no longer clean
your hands with a piece of cloth

Ignorance is Blind

The most hurtful things
are always felt by the eyes
first. The blind man with the guitar
knows hunger, not pain.
He had no chance to see
the towering buildings
and their far-sighted windows.

Monday, January 3, 2011

The Marble

I came outside to see the moon blue.
It was like looking at the earth
from the ground. A reflection
of ourselves. A marble of water
suspended in a canopy of blackness.

"Nothing to be ashamed of but sins,"
a preacher said.

Everybody went out of their houses
to brush off their disbelief
and gave the moon a humble gaze.

It was like the stare of a beautiful woman
from a foreign land.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

A Book, A Bed, A Glass of Wine

She spends the last few minutes
of every year boxed
in the silence of uncertainty.
Windows blind. Nothing
coming through.

Message from the Future

We celebrate the new year
where we grew up. I can't think
of a better way to move forward
with life than to look back
and see how much things have changed.

The cats grandmother used to own
are dead. Trees have been cut down
to make way for the towering of houses.

The old man who lives across
street still says to kids
that if they stay up after midnight
they will never grow big.
That they will be stuck at their age
unable to move forward
with time.

I never believed the old man
but I guess nobody did.
The whole neighborhood is always
awake to welcome coming year.

In a foreign country, my uncle
receives a message from us
saying that we share his wish
of celebrating the arrival
of tomorrow
at the same time.