current music: it's silent, but my head is playing Ne-Yo

Because You Forgot

all the words that I've said,
written, read, every line you needed
in your heart and head, all the letters
dropping from me like crumbs of bread
trailing to safety through a valley of the dead

I write you tonight. Because all these words could do,
every vowel and syllable and silent letter U
is curl the hours back, bridging the gap
of the miles of salt and tears.

If you are cold, haunted by the weightless phantoms
of bodies that have passed over
and pressed against both our bodies, I
will whisper your name,
lighting fires from feet to cheek, till nothing
is left of us but ash. If my hands

cannot be the ones that stroke yours
during those secret seconds of warmth,
I will write you the story
of how your fingers found my shoulders,
molded the stone in my back
into wings. If my lips cannot find yours,

or they are replaced by another's,
I will make poem for your feet
that have flown you away,
and in there, I will kiss them,
turn them to fins, so that you may seek me
beneath the seas that I will have thrown my soul to.
If you cannot find me in your thoughts,

I will will you, Dear, a song, such that the sails
of your mind find me through the muddled
mists of memory covering the sea of our lives.
For if I can remind you of this,

this promise that holds the hands of the sun,
the truth that my tongue
finds itself prying from my teeth, what keeps
the follicles of hair on my forearms
standing, the little secret the silent abyss has always known:
that someway, in some light,

every night I breathe, I will write,
and every night I write you will never be alone.

When I was in college, my Philosophy professor, Dr. Leo Garcia, liked to say this version of Sir Francis Drake's prayer to start our day. It didn't leave that much of an impression at first, but after several sessions, it grew on me.

Last night, a friend of mine got drunk and had a lot to say about me. About how I've lived, and how I've still not fully realized who I could truly be, even if I profess living a life where I truly am happy. That I can still go so much further, be it in my career, in my health, in my relationship with God and even in my relationships with people I love dearly.

Here I was, saying I was really happy with how things are going. Like I just finished a tall house of cards, or a castle of sand, and somebody came by and kicked it all into air.

And then tells me to build my house with bricks, and blocks, my castles on rock and stone.

I post this prayer, as a sort of way of saying "Thanks" to God, for this not-so-pleasant reminder that my life's work remains undone. I still find the task of rebuilding Raph quite daunting. Still, I should do it.


Disturb us, O Lord

when we are too well-pleased with ourselves
when our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little, because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, O Lord

when with the abundance of things we possess,
we have lost our thirst for the water of life
when, having fallen in love with time,
we have ceased to dream of eternity
and in our efforts to build a new earth,
we have allowed our vision of Heaven to grow dim.

Stir us, O Lord

to dare more boldly, to venture into wider seas
where storms show Thy mastery,
where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars.

In the name of Him who pushed back the horizons of our hopes
and invited the brave to follow.
Amen.

I remember watching it on YouTube. It was September 18, 2008. Dr. Maya Angelou, one of my favorite poets. She was giving a short warm-up-the-crowd type intro talk for Michelle Obama. Dr. Angelou said that while much is said about her husband Barack, Michelle was also quite amazing herself, as the best person to speak of how a great man he is. Who better that to say this than his wife?

"I believe that only equals fall in love."

She said that and the crowd applauded. Of course, in the context of her talk, she made mention of how somebody like Michelle was more than a match to her man.

But at the same time (and I find this with Maya Angelou poetry) there's a lot more to it.

See, apply it to the people you've loved, or more specifically, fallen in love with. Now, be honest. Not many of them worked out. And that makes sense. But the ones that do, and stick?

I'll use for an example a relationship that did stick. Growing up, I used to wonder why my Mom and Dad got together. Dad was class valedictorian in UP Los Banos, editor of the school paper, and was accelerated and graduated early. But he didn't have much by means of a social life; my sister used to joke "Dad was a loser dork back then" when we talk about it.

Mom? She was Homecoming Queen. Not stellar academically (she didn't pass med school), but popular, with orgs and sorority activities 24/7. Tita Mandy (Mom's dorm roommate then) used to tell stories of the dozens of suitors after Mom, at the flowers they left at the dorm, and how these boys would keep asking her after Mom. Mom shrugged them off the way you try to hide the story about the time an elephant pooped in your backyard while your next-door neighbor told friends about the smell.

So when they told me that the way the "dork" won over the "crush ng bayan" was because of a stray day when Dad sat besie Mom in Cell Biology class, I had to admit being perplexed. "That's it?" I'd think to myself. No sweet talk? No flirting? No GAME? The only major "move" Dad did, apparently, was when he saw Mom depressed at one point, and he spent time with her "being a friend".

Mom's story corroborated it. "He was just so nice to me. I felt he liked me but never said anything, then when I confronted him about it, he told me he liked me. And I liked him na rin, because I got to know what kind of person he was."

NGEK! And to think I wanted a story of riveting passion and romance and a fairy-tale happy ending.

But life isn't like that. And no, Mom and Dad aren't 'equals' in certain ways, it sort of evens out. Mom is the type who lives to experience the world and has helped open up my Dad to new and exciting experiences - new food to taste, new places to visit, new friends to make. Dad, being the stable, predictable rock he has been all his life, has been able to build the strong foundation that my family has grown on. Dad used to say how it was weird, him being "thrifty" and Mom being the spendthrift she was, but now he sees how his wife has become something of the budgeting maven, working the family account like clockwork, like how Dad pulled those 1.0's for his GWA, both in UPLB and in Med school.

Theirs is a love that has endured claims of infidelity, bouts of tempers firing, around a quarter of a century of married life, health crises on both ends, and yes, even children acting a damn fool. It's still stands.

And yeah. Dr. Angelou must've been onto something, saying how people, no matter how different, belong to one another when they know that in their love, they meet their equal.

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

I tell you this, for my life is interesting lately, particularly when it came to the women I've met, cared for, and even loved. I am blessed, I guess, that years ago I had found people I knew I could spend my life forever with. And also doubly blessed that my friends are true friends - true friends must be always there, even when you don't realize you need it - their loyalty has come to bat everytime a girl catches my fancy, or when it's me who finds admirers.

My peers have split one another to two sides. On one hand are some of my longest-loving confidantes, adoptive sisters and brothers, some of the wisest and noblest people I've met. Theirs is the belief that love is love is love, that if Raph so chooses to love somebody, then she must be one of the luckiest women around! That if there was anybody who could care and love and nurture a relationship, you'd do a lot worse than Raph (never mind that he's not the physically sexiest man).

Others are different. I nicknamed them "moveonraph.org". They too, number in my deepest, most valuable friends, the kinds I spent hours awake on the phone on, or who have come to my rescue countless times. They still continue to throw my life preserver hoops, albiet a different way - they believe that if somebody was to be loved by Raph, she must deserve it. She must love me in the same endless, no holding back kind of potential that they've seen me in with some girls from way back.

How do you know, who deserves it? How do we tell that somebody deserves another?

And the most important part, I guess is...

...who are they to say whom I should love? :)

current music: Arsenal @ Sunderland on ESPN (2nd half started, score still 0-0)


I was writing you a poem but apparently somebody already wrote it, and did it better than I could ever dream. Tsk!

Still. For you, who I am dying to disappear from the world with. Let's go away from it all together. :)


You are tired
E. E. Cummings

You are tired,
(I think)
Of the always puzzle of living and doing;
And so am I.

Come with me, then,
And we'll leave it far and far away—
(Only you and I, understand!)

You have played,
(I think)
And broke the toys you were fondest of,
And are a little tired now;
Tired of things that break, and—
Just tired.
So am I.

But I come with a dream in my eyes tonight,
And knock with a rose at the hopeless gate of your heart—
Open to me!
For I will show you the places Nobody knows,
And, if you like,
The perfect places of Sleep.

Ah, come with me!
I'll blow you that wonderful bubble, the moon,
That floats forever and a day;
I'll sing you the jacinth song
Of the probable stars;
I will attempt the unstartled steppes of dream,
Until I find the Only Flower,
Which shall keep (I think) your little heart
While the moon comes out of the sea.