A Day in the Life...

We are like the sea that stood against time, In order to bear the wailing sirens of those marching storms Bending and moving forward, Backward and forward again. Into the depth of midnight, The cries we cradle with a crackling lullaby Steadfastly in silence, in fear, To harbor the promise of a glorious dawn, A glorious morning. We are like the sea that carries the remains of a thousand rivers, Orphaned and without direction as they surged upon the boulders And navigating the tumultuous pathways That leads towards salvation. We succumb at times to the flames Like spirits rising towards the mighty heavens To overwhelm the skies into a gentle dimness That will give birth to a surging rainstorm That fills the hunger of the earth below. We are like the sea that lies unbending, Unmoved and unchanged, A hundred rains after and A hundred storms past. A poem from year 1999. From my collection of poems " The Wandering Soul ".

In the scorched ground of the desert, one must walk not only having in mind the harshness of the blistering sun or the ever threatening sand storms that always brings havoc in the cold night. To journey upon the desert, one needs an extraordinary care for something that is often unseen yet the most fatal. It is not the danger of the scorpions or the treacherous snakes that I am speaking of but the lethal trap of a quicksand. The man walking through the desert must watch out carefully for any hint of soft sand along the way. There is just no other way to foresee danger brought about by the quicksand except by the keenest of foresight. When one is caught in it, the fastest to any hard ground must be sought otherwise the sand would soon eat up towards the level of the knees. When the sand goes up to the length of the knees, others must throw a sturdy rope to the sinking man so that the sand may not reach the level of the waistline. If the waistline is already sunk into the perilous sa...

“The angel pointed to his arms (brothers in arms) and then signaled another message by carrying a load on its back (to carry our brothers and sisters).” There is the man who trekked the hinterlands, through the empty desserts and barren hills, to sought a high rocky mountain of gold. Day and night he labored like a mule until one day he had mined enough gold, more than the weight he could carry. He was blissful of the promise of things that he was laughing inside as he walked down from the high rocky mountain. And yet he had to pass the empty dessert and the barren hills when his parcel of food and water was starting to run out of him. As he walked the miles, he became weary and exhausted and his bag of water finally became empty. He died before he reached any water well. And then there was the man who had nothing and yet he had found a water-well. He put up a tent nearby and guarded the place with his own life. Long after, he made use of the well in many ways and cultivated pl...

* (A repost from 2005) What do you know; I’ve got another vivid dream last night*. No angels though yet I feel it’s worth elucidating if only for reason that it is such a lucid chunk of visions in my head while I slept so deeply and it may evoke some meanings for me or for the lives we all live. The dream started on a steep hill; in a place that I have never been before in my entire life—but it felt like it was in Antipolo, as the rolling hills reminded me of the place called Cherry Hill, the site of a famous landslide disaster some years back and which I was able to have a glimpse of on television and newspapers. I asked in my mind what was going on since there were a lot of people outdoors watching some neighborhood event, out in the open field while the sun was shining so brightly and the wind was warm, such as the summer breeze. Some bystanders answered my query: “A boy from Japan was showing some flying ship.” I stretched my neck out and see for myself what the whol...

( A re-post from 2004 ) I was walking the downtown streets some days ago, feeling a little bit restless for reasons unknown to me specifically, at least to the one or those that I could not pinpoint to with reasonable certainty. Perhaps this is one sort of a malady that I have read about once before in some old decrepit medical book stacked in my mother-in-laws deteriorating wooden cabinets, those that were partly eaten by termites, looking so fragile that a simple disturbance on it would let spew a handful of mashed-up and grounded wooden particles—which I find to be so repulsive knowing that they were the end results of some crawlers’ eating frenzy. This malady is sometimes called depression or anxiety problems (they go by many names depending on the author of the medical book I read) and once in a while I retreat into this state and like water, I just have to let  go of it for I could not rein it in my hands—no matter what. I passed by the new barbershop just in fron...

Last Saturday, I had found myself wondering  why I feel a little strange, becoming aware so suddenly of the virtual isolation I have these days. It dawned upon me that I was really living a kind of a hermitic life, although not any of my intention to be so. I was not always like this. As recent as two years ago, I was always out that I felt then that I had no time at home even when I was already married and having kids toddling around. I was always with my fraternity brods for some meetings on weekends or if not, I was out practicing with my band, then called  “The Dirty Sox” . Yeah, I had a band then with my friend  Aziz , who have passed away already due to a highly debilitating sickness. This story may need elaboration in future entries and Aziz is an old friend that needs an elegy. Now I felt like I have not seen the sun for the longest time. Not really though, since I have to fetch the kids every day from school. I just felt like I haven’t had time for myself l...

The Accidental Tourist What do we mean by producing fruits from our repentance? To produce fruits from our repentance is the condition attached to the rewards of forgiveness that the angels have brought with them and this condition must be fulfilled. To produce fruits from our repentance is an edict of replacing what we had taken, of returning what we had borrowed, and putting back into the condition in the past of a thing or persons ruined and defiled by us to the extent of the condition taking place before our particular misdeeds had caused such ruin and injury. What is broken should be unbroken. A thief should give back the money he stole, and the fornicator should live a life of total devotion to the edicts of God, evading fully even the mere thought of lust and temptation. It is also to ensure our soul by giving back more than we had taken that for instance, if you stole a car, you must give back the amount of the car you stole and more in addition. That is to ensure the ac...