veins in the scrotum draining the testicles

ANTHURIUM GIRL

You never knew why your mother loved them so;
having grown up in a house that always had them,
you never figured out what it was she saw
in these strange flowers, hiding in the precious shade.

If you had asked her, perhaps she would have spoken
in the way the two of you talk, of this flower’s resilience,
how you take it for granted because it lasts longer
than any auxiliary anxiety or inborn immolation.

Perhaps she would tell you about how she fancies
its shape, how its flower is a heart impaled,
how the hurt you fear most comes from exactly
where, when, and from whom you least expect it.

Perhaps, just maybe, you would then take
the opportunity to tell her about that someone
you could not have, whose shape and syntax
continues to elude you even now.

Perhaps you will tell her about truths too sharp
to hold or release, breaths too heavy to reclaim,
poetry books grown too heavy with dust to open
or move, lost last chances at little redemptions.

Perhaps there are no answers for all your questions,
and perhaps she knows it. Sometimes not even
the most sacred of words can save you.
Not even your own.

Perhaps the answers lie in the same secret
places you like to frequent, that unseen
space between books on a shelf, or in
the pauses between a friend’s invisible sighs.

They lie in the cool, dark corners you grow in,
the places which only you really know.

—Ruel S. De Vera

GOD

That night, he was a beer bottle
wrapped in cold sweat,
radiating amber light.

The Greeks believed he was a circle.
Nietzsche said he was dead.

But the conclusion of the tale told by fifteen bottles:
God is a bed.

—Lourd Ernest H. de Veyra

ANG SABI KO SA IYO

Bumalong ang dagta
sa hiniwang kaymito
namuo sa talim
ng kutsilyo ang ilang patak.
Diyan ako naiwan, mahal,
at hindi sa laman.

—Benilda S. Santos

"Sana holdaper ka na lang. Para ibibigay ko sayo lahat, wag mo lang akong sasaktan."

Mula sa isang text message! May kurot talaga sa puso, e.