Skip to main content

Joelyn Moreno Gemao

Joelyn, my Surigaonon princess,

Over the rainbows, you live with feathers of my joy.

Eternity is their temporary I shall wait. Twenty years ago, we were

Lying on our wooden bed, as you told me about the beach you love to wander.

Yesterday are your arms I held, from your skin I clasped with my little hands,

Now to the burnt memory of its gentleness.


My Lianga, suppress my fire with your heaven-sent water;

Our land, can I still be touched by your ground?

Reeling with the leaves, I am still being caressed by its wind as it

Envelops my cream skin. There were the

Nipa huts and coconut trees, old CDs and comics

Of our grandparents’ springtime and romance. 


Give me as I ask for you; ask me as I give everything—

Everything that has brought by how I burn every midnight oil.

My blood sharer, how my blood shed, kiss it with the lips akin to mine.

And for every year I wait for our bridge to come close, I emerge

Only to find myself drowning with burden, seeking your redeeming lullabies. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

IHY

 The hatred is piled up, enough to orchestrate a crime  and to hide it in nightmarish metaphors. I have imagined you getting piercing through the fragility of the roof of your mouth, until you beg for forgiveness with your really untamed spirit. Perhaps, flaying would be much better, but crying will be reverberated through every corner of your long shattered room, as your annoyingly pleading voice will still be heard. An unforgivable, hell-bent serpentine, you always are, caressing the man’s ego extracting his exhaustion, and me against a fiend in your presence. Such a soft way to demonstrate hell to you— as it was not even a flinch, or a poke. You deserve heaven appearing reverse, so the gods you have known will forbid your salvation.

Emancipaternal

If I were to talk about a father the arcs of his ears are enough, yet, he would not talk, just like the heavens when you plead, as he is better now: he does not hide in his paternal loop, nor would he ridicule my son I have been hiding. He once knew that what was not written was unprincipled; now, I talk and he pertinaciously listens, unbothered by my pretentious tone. He speaks, but only at night— with his melted heart. I taught him to be more man: now, he would cling to me as if I were  a wife who cooks for her. I used to watch him with Mom's self-made perspective;  however, sometimes, you really have to switch taste—I still love horror,  but not anymore from my father's. After all, he still sees the child in me and the afraid. A father should be called pink and he shall not flinch. Freed from guns and loads, and he shall not be defeated; for he is still, and abandon is not his last name, as I still reweave his first name in my poems. He has been with me:  inherited every fib

Grief (ii)

" Death and life are a friend ,"  the old lesson keeps bludgeoning me. Death ripples through the streams and creeks that flow near the homes that depend on recollections.  Each of these bricks used to be housed by fine architectures,  now bound by white bands and prayers. On the front porch, the most-welcoming wreath of carnations,  which are enveloped by symmetrical stanchions,  greets every person that comes through it.  And I thought: if death comes near,  then life is nothing but sprout of vine reaching its arms to a far cry,  and never will it give you time to read every sentence death foretells. In this house, it now gives homage to the days I could remember but never hold. Here, I witness: Candles are as still as my stiff existence,  while the quietness of each life in the room screams. The sympathies dress black and how regrets strip my skin. But how could a friend hurt you when they only visit you once? That every gaze to the rectangular—which holds my dear roots—las