the ghost of you

07.29.09
i saw an apparition of you today...
my heart skipped a beat, but kept close.
remember the promise i gave you?
that the spaces between your fingers
are my fingers
when all the world has fallen down...

well, my world has fallen down,
and your fingers are nowhere near mine...

home

07.28.09
it is my heart,
not the stars,
that will guide you tonight...

the face of hope

07.27.09
*entry from the exhibit on lrt*

this should have been the winner...
a painting that talks of hope...

free will

07.24.09
"the whole purpose of places like starbucks is for people with no decision making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. short, tall, dark, caf, decaf, low fat, non fat, etcetera. so people who don't know what they're doing or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95 get not only a cup of coffee, but an absolutely defining sense of self. tall... decaf... cappuccino!"
~joe fox, "you've got mail"

hollow

07.23.09
i am keeping myself empty
so that you can fill me
when we finally drown
inside a papercup...

if you can read my mind

07.22.09
i bury boredom under sheets of paper,
tuck it with the stack of folders,
mix it with paperclips and pushpins,
hide it under the desk
together with
papers for shredding...
...hoping boredom gets shredded too.

of birthdays and growing old

07.21.09
if i can hold the years
and keep them in my pocket...
i will never reach in for change.
but growing old happens
and the once innocent
is battered by time,
broken by failed promises,
bruised by the cynics
and made stronger by faith.
i am
full of faith.


happy birthday kuya luden!

one picture, one poem a day

so this is my new challenge... to take one picture a day, and somehow write something poetic about it. i seriously swear i'm getting dumber by the minute. i can't let my neurons die! i'm not certain as to how long i'll keep doing this but it's a good practice for me and my so-called writing... that and till i get a new inspiration...



07.20.09
i am trading empty bottles for a full heart,
the one that can make me overflow.

tucked in mid-air

how do they come to the
come to the
come to the God
come to the still waters,
and not love the one who came there with them...
~sharon olds, "sex without love"

our eyes moved in hunger, and it was not to fill the emptiness that sat in our guts. you were spontaneity and you attracted me completely.

so that was how it felt like to surrender to fate, letting myself get lulled by beer and your voice talking of your escape from home. you see, i am the world's sadness collector and nobody is there to collect my stories when its time for me to share. this is the comfort i found in strangers. i can let myself overflow.

...and so we shared the nights flying like airplanes, floating in smoke then plummeting to the ground, faster and faster, till we reached the center of the universe. the mornings were lazy as you whispered your silent wishes to god in my ear, your lips tenderly brushing my skin. i've never wanted to stay in bed so badly. afternoons were just as slow as we made something else other than love. how is it that you were able to stop time?

even when we moved out of the mountains and found rest in the heart of manila, you found a way to drown street sounds with the sound of your heaving breath.

i've never seen unrest conquered so easily by sleep and silence.
you suspend me in mid-air...

i just realized...

i finally completed the 30-day project. i even went over 30 and posted an extra...
(wink wink, nudge nudge luanne!)

...so what am i to do next?

***long retarded sounds plus drooling***

07.09.09 (the road to el hemp-o part 3)

***last installment... hehe!***

woke up early to go to church because it's my lola's birthday. then vitaly and i had breakfast at bana's cafe and met with our guide robert and headed out to sumaging caves. it's also known as the big cave and one of the main tourist attractions in sagada.


the descent wasn't as scary as what other say, although i was told that i'd be reeking of bat piss and shit. but then again, what do we expect of caves right? as we went farther and deeper into the cave, we saw the magnificent display of stalactites and stalagmites.


getting out was harder. again, my choice of footwear was not good and i kept on slipping on the sides of everything i step on to. i enjoyed the short ride halfway back to the town. i rode on top of the jeep, which was pretty daredevilish of me...


next, we headed out to bokong falls. it was a 30-minute trek across rice fields. i wasn't supposed to take a dip but i'm such a gullible person and was talked into it after 2 minutes of convincing.


i thought i tire easily of things but i found out that buttered chicken is good the 4th... er, 5th time around. we had a late lunch at bana's and had lemon pie i bought from the lemon pie house. it was pretty good (memo to self: must take picture of everything to be an effective blogger or something). the rest of the afternoon was practically for slacking off and the night for beers.

the next day was spent in transit. the bus was fine although it was a bit cramped up for vitaly. it took 6 hours for us to get to baguio and the road wasn't as good.

now if there's a place i'd relocate, it's going to be in baguio... i always had a thing for it. i hate cold places but somehow, i enjoy it a lot. so anyway, the reason why i had to stop over baguio was to get milkshakes at 50's diner... so before going our separate ways, vitaly and i had late lunch and to cap my seriously kick ass vacation, i had two orders of chocolate milk shakes!

07.08.09 (the road to el hemp-o part 2)

***finally, after eons of slacking off...***

i woke up with a bad hangover... so i went to sleep again. then i woke up after a couple of hours and realized i was hungry. and so like what my schedule said, i had breakfast at the yogurt house. next stop was to make a reservation for the buffet dinner at the log cabin. vitaly said they serve mean dinners for the price of 350php. i went there to find out that he already made reservations. nice... but i paid...

after breakfast, i decided to go back to the church. unfortunately, it was closed. so i went to the market to look for the bookstore indicated on my map... i wasn't able to find it. but then again, i found shamrock cafe, the restaurant i was looking for the other night which was reportedly closed already. i had coffee and met vitaly to go to echo valley.


this time, i knew where to turn. after 15 minutes of hiking, we got to the view point. took pictures and spied on the hanging coffins.


it is said by our tour guide that they have been doing this tradition for more than 2,000 years. they arrange the bodies in fetal position to fit the small coffin so that they are brought back to mother earth the way they came here. the cave is the earth's womb and should should face east where the sun rises.


after echo valley, we headed out to bokong falls. unfortunately, it rained and we figured it's kind of retarded to go swimming when it's raining so we decided to head back and stay inside and read our respective books.

by nighttime, we were ready for the buffet. we purposefully did not eat anything after sharing one order of buttered chicken for lunch. the french chef who owns log cabin totally reinvented filipino food... the meal was very gooood! every peso was worth it.


the rest of the night was practically spent getting drunk and watching terminator. i would tell more about the movie but somewhere along the way, i got really really sleepy. so i slept...

***yeah yeah yeah... tomorrow... i promise...***