TONIC

March 11, 2011

I told you the story about how I stepped

over broken glass. The macabre fascinates

your senses rarely stimulated

by similar spectacles

in your own white-washed world.

To pursue this career

of moderation, you dole out

graces in shot glasses, small doses

since your undivided attention

is a straight-up affair devoid of nuances.

I, the fool, tried to take it

and ended in a conflagration: burn

patches in my throat, a flare in my gut

but careful never to spill

a single drop. I wonder if you always

taste like distilled violence.

Perhaps this longing is why

I see you behind the bar bathed

in--rose quartz. Colored

glass can easily shatter

and you've made it clear that

money and wits and ponderings

of love-lost drunks

cannot draw you away from these

rows of expertly bottled platitudes.

A dash of sympathy,

stir in a solemn smile and

you have a drink for that soul

by the darkest corner

gazing at you--my benediction

slaking this thirst for something pure.


SP 1.15.10


blue rogue

Rueful Response to a Query: What Were You Thinking?

May 06, 2009

It’s not so bad, really. Just another
scrape on the allegorical knees 
stumbling over how perfect 
you could have been. After all, for me, 
there are only sighs, silent  
eruptions of longing 
coalescing into something 
hard: bullet-like and never ever to be 
bitten because of one reason 
or another. Cuts like these 
never matter. I bought one hundred 
band-aids printed with yellow smileys--
in a strange Comedian-esque 
fashion. It helps to grin 
while pieces of you meld against
my soul like candle-tallows on naked
skin--burning a mark that leaves
a space of purity even when it hurts. 
All of these happened 
before, again, tomorrow, 
next time I wrack my head
for reasons why 

you should stay. I never 

come up with anything, except, 
to shove back into my pockets 
fists that clench tightly 
holding the radiance of our hours, 
when my world becomes utterly still, 
wrapped up and alone
within the expanding,
unconscious joy of your laugh.    


blue rogue

PROUD

November 27, 2008




blue rogue

Play It Again, Sam

November 26, 2008

In all the empty places
inside me the words
rang, solid
filling in between
stretches of longing,
of hours
waiting. This time I cannot
mute the tremors
as they shatter
every tenuous chord
linking my self-worth
to the fingers that used to
strum my soul
with the songs of angels.
I close my eyes, tuning out
inner wails long enough
to compose the harmony
that will make the replay
more gut-wrenching
like two hands
on either side of my head
as they slam against my ears:
To
Hell
With
You.

Now, every syllable is seared,
captured perfectly into
notes of violent sadness
I have felt myself become.
So, for the last time:
“Play it again, Sam.
There is no going back
from where you’re headed”.

blue rogue

DIVE

November 16, 2008

Her claws stung from grabbing
shells on the wet sand left behind
by fishers long gone from
the afternoon oyster hunt.
Swooping low and close, still
her eyes catch blurred images
of surfaces. Within her grasp,
the ridges scrape raw
blisters, make her wonder
if oysters are formed
by rotting. Shaking sand
and dreams from feathered limbs,
she ventures out. Strong
beaks sweep past faltering
claws, clutch hard. The small armor
head snaps, the outer shell
bone gutted. She cracks
a smile, a brief cursive
like the upward arc
of a bird on air --
the one who just swallowed
one more hope.
The one shrilling away
the silence.



--------------------

I was kind of wondering what will spur me to write again. I never expected it to be peer pressure. How juvenile is that? Hehe. Heh. And Rax, I owe you one, too. *wink*



Senility, thy name is... what did you say your name was?

blue rogue

CARTOGRAPHY

April 08, 2008

From the tips of his splayed fingers
to the edge of the horizon, his
vision can map the distance between
fallen leaves and the V of geese that fly
home. When his calculation never arrived
at the same point in time and space ,
he concluded: this proximity between
human bodies must not be
a question of fate
but of intent. He will prove that
intimacy exists merely
between the interim of consciousness.
After some time, he would
murmur in frustration as to why
he is off tangent when he tries
to angle his own way within
the radius of another smile,
never factoring how each degree of
affection always comes in pairs.

blue rogue

Inclined To Say No More

March 23, 2008

Inclined to Say No MoreI got here a birds-eye view
of loneliness. A map
of scars that healed
by themselves, snaking
their way between ridges
and slopes that have gone

too jagged.

I want to move the mountains
that wall away the valley
where you keep your sighs
all the things that make you
ache, hidden
in some make-shift grove
only the child in you can ever
see. Way up here,

where I hover
above your lips, the air is
too thick for words to travel.
My senses, in some semblance
of calm, can only roar
while the ground rises up
to swallow fragile constructs
of sound and comfort and worship
until all that is left is a trembling
of plateaus, leveled by the sleets
of your first rain
my vision foraging wetness,
tongue tunneling soul.

blue rogue