Ang Makatang Mangingibig by John Iremil Teodoro

Nagiging akin ka
Lamang
Sa mga sandaling
Nagsusulat ako ng tula
Para sa ‘yo.

Nagmumukhang tama
Lamang
Itong paghigugma ko
Sa Teksto
At konteksto
Ng mga talinhaga.

Napapatula sa ritmo
Ng aking mga linya
Ang mga abyan
Kong makata|
Na katulad kong
Mga bigo ring
Mangingibig
Pero patuloy
Na naniniwala
Sa kapangyarihan
Ng mga salita.

Makakapasa kaya
Sa kritika ng buhay
Itong aking
Mga binalaybay?

Ayaw ko sanang
Mamatay
Na yakap-yakap
Ang mga gutay-gutay kong
Pangarap.

Tonight I can Write by Pablo Neruda

Very well said Mr. Neruda. How can you get into my mind and delve into my heart, coming out with just the exact words? How can you do that, huh?

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, ‘The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.’

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another’s. She will be another’s. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

If You Forget Me by Pablo Neruda

...and after reading the I Do Not Love You, it should be followed by this. 

I want you to know

one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

I Like for You to Be Still by Pablo Neruda

I like for you to be still
It is as though you are absent
And you hear me from far away
And my voice does not touch you
It seems as though your eyes had flown away
And it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth
As all things are filled with my soul
You emerge from the things
Filled with my soul
You are like my soul
A butterfly of dream
And you are like the word: Melancholy

I like for you to be still
And you seem far away
It sounds as though you are lamenting
A butterfly cooing like a dove
And you hear me from far away
And my voice does not reach you
Let me come to be still in your silence
And let me talk to you with your silence
That is bright as a lamp
Simple, as a ring
You are like the night
With its stillness and constellations
Your silence is that of a star
As remote and candid

I like for you to be still
It is as though you are absent
Distant and full of sorrow
So you would’ve died
One word then,
One smile is enough
And I’m happy;
Happy that it’s not true.

I Do Not Love You by Pablo Neruda

One day, somebody will read to me this poem, promise. =)

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to you love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without know how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

The Muse This Time by R. Zamora Linmark

What do you take me for? Dial-a-poet? This line sent me smiling. Yes, what do you really take me for? Now, I'm missing my *ex-muse.......=)

I am, at the moment, a patron of the meat market. Profession: a poet on-call because poetry only comes when it wants to; hobbies; listening to Gershwin while looking for Freud in Woody Allen movies; history of the heart: six lovers who wanted to be immortalized.

“Funny,” said my fourth, “you can cook up a poem about bumper-to-bumper traffic, but when it’s time to write about me…” How do you explain to someone who makes you come thrice a week and gives you head and foot massage at bedtime why it is much easier to write about gridlock in the land of diesel than return to that humid night in Makati, where we had met, in a Korean-owned steam room, a misnomer since lust provided the heat.

The fifth and sixth were more demanding. “Screw the acknowledgment page,” said the fifth. “I want a biography that sings,” said the sixth. Completely unaware they were making the same request an hour apart from each other, I told them, “What do you take me for? a mail-order poet? Dial-a-poem?”

“I don’t get it,” said the third. “You can create beauty from a dead fish,” said the second. “Destroy buildings in one line,” said the first, “but you cannot write about the good ole devil?”

Their words are stinging now as I approach twilight. Truth is: love’s hard to live with. I forget to set the alarm clock, I buy everything on credit, I start making up words, I call in sick to the world. “Are you a poet?” asked the second. “A lover?” asked the third. “Just shut up and write,” said the first.

I can’t. Nothing is entering. Except the voice of my first lover, the one who set the picture straight. “The problem with you is you think you’re Woody Allen in Manhattan.”

Gershwin’s blue clarinet, black-and-white Big Apple, an ice cream parlor. At the counter, Woody is buying Hemingway’s daughter, Mariel, a milkshake before he delivers the bad news. Tears coursing down her cheeks, she asks, “Why? Because I’m too young? Because I don’t know Rita Hayworth from Veronica Lake? Because I’m not Diane Keaton running with you in the rain?” They split, then a minute before the credits roll, he changes his mind. “I’ll take you back,” Mariel says, “when I return from London.”

That’s the closest to my idea of love: watching the skyline, making out, making mistakes, making believe desire means it’s with somebody else, then breaking up, and, if we’re lucky, forgiveness that comes right before take-off. There, I’ve said it. What more can one want? A lover who loves me as much as the rain. Rain, and, from the opening credits to the closing heart, Gershwin.

Reclamation by Angelo V. Suarez

I was knocked straight into my guts by this poem. I think I'm in love with him (Angelo) na, swear!!! Ah, such imagery, it's giving me goosebumps!

“What sphinx of cement and aluminum
                 bashed open their skull and ate up
                 their brains and imagination?”
                                                 –Allen Ginsberg, from Howl 

you do not own me
              you do not own me
                            coconut country whose blood is concrete
whose eyes are replete with the sight of cement
              twin eyelids of corrugated roof
                            whose skin is corrugated roof
scalp of corrugated roof whose hairs
              are filaments of cement
                            whose nose sniffs cement
& the scent of we concrete
              whose nape is replete with tenement homes
                            dreaming dollars    disneyland    daisies
dreaming gold mines in america
              dreaming America where our people
                            are cardboard heroes refilling gas tanks
are heroes dying of starvation & shame
              of watching their children become children
                            of domestic helpers    domestic heroes
heroes that dry-clean american coats
              that man limousines    heroes that feed dying americans
                            their last dying meals osterized like gerber
changing their adult diapers
              babies whose tongues
                            are tongues of cement
are tongues of steel
              you do not own me
                            you do not own me
coconut country whose tv’s are owned by america
              whose streets are paved with the golden feathers
                            of america’s favorite primetime bird
(what giant fists for eyes they have
              he & his imaginary elephant friend)
                            coconut country whose semen is cement
you have been robbed of your legends
              what happened to humadapnon    gaki
                            labaw donggon   the pagan warriors
whose coconut fists socked the eyes
              out of demon sockets
                            fists that knocked the living daylights
out of demons   out of natives
              out of the imaginations of natives
                            whose lands were tilled by their own flaming hands
whose lands were walked upon
              by bathala himself
                            you   America   whose hand   whose throat
whose stomach is filled with the sap of my country
              whose eyes are eyes that see
                            the pornography of my country
whose hands are hands are the hands
              that milk my country of its semen & imagination
                            you   America   whose mouth has mesmerized
our men with myths of better lives
              better planes & better tanks
                            you whose tales have replaced our tales
with tales of your own
              you who own our hotdogs   our hamburgers
                            you who own our tv’s & souls
bring us back our bamboo   our children
              bring us back our money   our coconuts
                            bring us back our coconuts
and brown-skinned lumawig
              will spare you your convenient caucasian lives
                            you do not own me
you do not own me
              coconut country whose heart
                            is the size of an American fist
for centuries I had owned you
              and I will get you   get you
                            and I will get you back