Synecdoche

I.
One stroke of pastel
Numbing heartbeats
The bees came in great numbers
Bearing pastels in their stings.
The numbness overwhelms...
The bees don’t judge, only sting.
Probably they too love me.
I could discern in their drones
The sound of breaking glass.


II.
The hubbub spoke of sirens
And of Althusserian strangers
One danced the hula
Another stood on tiptoe on the ledge
And a third flew away with the bees.

Naked swords
Alice’s quest for her lost dream......
The soldiers knew the familiar stories
They had once crawled through rabbit holes.

On what basis should you lay down your naked swords?
Or put your vagina on display?
Poor Alice has only been raped thrice—
Her wonderland isn’t far away.

Pic: Courtesy of Insiya

Cardboard Boxes,
Stories trapped within,
I beat carpets clean.
Dust from the boxes
Residues of rides flown,
Each a ghost.

Lost— ancient tribes
Made of stone.
The sea’s ripped heart
The sargasso’s groans
The tribes chant within the boxes.

Should I, Could I let them out?
Drown the box in the sea’s blood?

The stories have no end
The dust settles right back
My hands are tired
The groans are louder.
I know— I must have let them out
Long, long ago.

For Maximo

And it goes on...
The axis tilted to the right—
Muscles sagging
The blind cop trying to see,
The scars on his face
Hushed like lenses.

The urine never smelled so strong before
Now it bloats the drainpipes of the mind,
As arteries desiccate with each heartbeat.

Gone are words,
Only bones remain
And skin that barely contains them.

It goes on...
The dance of the vagabond adolescent
His name was pity.

(this was inspired by Auraeus Solito's film The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros)
Pic: Nathan Lopez as Maximo

Inertia

It’s a performance. And we perform— love, lust, hate— the repetitive, recurring cycle of it all. The first time one is never so conscious. Somehow things feel natural. And a part of the mind successfully manages to convince itself the ‘genuine’ness of the performance. Yes, maybe one does feel ‘genuine’. When one kisses for the first time, one does manage to think that somewhere ‘emotion’ was involved.

But things change— one learns, or rather, unlearns. And suddenly, one even knows. One has been performing all along. Denying it any longer is hypocrisy with the self. So, one accepts it and things fall into place once more. One can perform each emotion with ruthless precision— so precise that it threatens, only briefly, by seeming ‘almost’ real..... The ‘almost’ remains. Yes, one learns...