5 Love Poems II

for the lovers

1.  PRIMORDIAL

How long
does it take
for my breath
to make the hairs
on your arm / stand / ?

I told you / You are my arm.
You told me / You are my backbone.

I imagine you
without backbone
amoeba flesh
from primordial earth
dreaming of me
before double helixes

were banged together
in God’s cocktail at
Her bar and you
dinosaur beast
on Her stool
wait for my body
to become
your spine.

2. EYELASH KISSES

My mind is pensive
the television off
we sit on the sofa
close – the bright lights on
and I think of war
when you lean over
with eyelash kisses
breaking my thoughts
and I giggle at how
you could break me
so gently

3.  LOVE WAITING FOR APOCALYPSE

A couple of months
have passed and
I wait

bite down desperate
on your lower lip

My mouth suspended
on your mouth
with just a space
of hot air
between us
– you & I
diminished

I stop myself
from inviting you
even as I sit on your lap
with my jean-covered legs
around your waist

You sigh
I sigh
There is nothing
to save here

Fear stops us
from taking
each other

We question an exchange
of souls tonight
as we fear the familiarity
of bodies and nothing else
as Soul and Body
are difficult conjoined twins

My mouth remains
suspended
on your mouth
with justjustjust
space of hot air.

I push your tongue against
mine and bury the sting of
papercuts on your heart

as you subtly wrench
in hesitation
from me.

***

I sit reclined
with your head heavy
on my chest
wondering

Is the end near?

If

our spirits seep
through skin
beyond fingertips
while our palms rest
heavy hot

then

take me

but in the meantime

wait
wait until that happens
wait
wait
wait
wait
wait
wait
wait
wait
and                                    then . . .

4.  A LIFETIME IN MUSES

The need and urgency for the Constant Muse
what I now understand what Frida felt
at the expense of her spouse, to feed
her insatiable appetite where the head
cannot be fed or extricated enough

but

how do you define
with the Modern Woman
who can surpass men
in fame and appetite

and

how do you define
in the age of social media
depersonalizing traces of the soul?

Despite the era, we are all still
deities and doormats.
Nothing changes.
Nothing changes?
In the end, we are
what we fear:
Meaningless sex.
Meaningless.
But even the meaningless is holy.
A lesson, treasured.
A painting, erupted.
A poem, unearthed.
A character, loved.

We retaliate. We hide. We remain
deeply passionate. We want.
We refuse. We get over. We want again.

5.  DRAWING RESTRAINT

If we were living in the time of
Warhol and Giorno
or Frida and Josephine
we would be lovers
but we’re living in a time
where artists struggle
to exhume the art
buried deep
while denying love
and starving for Muses.

Our society calls it progress
while progress seems nothing but
restraining our appetites
that could fill us more than
exclusivity ever could
but in order to preserve reputation
we give up our appetite
that entangles itself with starving
to a point of intellectual incompletion
and not just sexual frustration.

This is what we do
– starve ourselves –
and we somehow call it progress
when progress is not what we feel
not what we believe.

When did we get to this place
to entomb our deepest selves
with morals that don’t match?

I continue to wish
hoping it somehow satisfies
an appetite
in the conventional
lives we lead.

We dare not feed our yearning
as we face shame and ruin
not because we love our publicly-announced-commitments less
but because we feel guilty
for not feeling guilty at all.

We have the cursed ability to love wholly
to mirror parts of ourselves that
are not entirely understood.

I just want to fuck you
spend a long afternoon
without phone calls, texts, and TV.
I want my thoughts to drown
in my moans and your moans
so that nothing but
the thought of you, the touch of you, the taste of you
flood all the spaces
inside my eyes, my ears, my mouth
inside my hands, between my legs
and the base of my spine.

I want to drown.

But you won’t. So I won’t.

parang pinagbiyak na bunga
parang pareho lang age nila dito

In another life, we could’ve sprung
from the same fruit, the same blood
connecting us in a way that lovers
take their whole lives to find
that perfect one to complete
the missing half.

 

* more love poems here