Epal the Sonnet

 

You already are here and somewhere else,

At someone’s wake hearing wedding bells.

Your name’s on the sash of a beauty queen

While your epal face on a tarpaulin.

You float with the rest of the overflowed sewer

While people around are making you mura.

Pump up your smartphone’s volume and smile,

Nod like you mean it and say “for a while.”

Head in the clouds but with feet in a banca,

Head on the shoulders of Paul Anka.

The water’s kadiri and kakainis:

Your Metro Manila’s now Metro Venice.

You have one motto: Time is gold.

You have one joke that’s very old.

 

Teleserye the Sonnet

 

When last we saw her she was alone

With no reception on her mobile phone

While he kept calling from their usual place

And checked each passing stranger for her face.

Then from the shadows crept her long lost twin

Whose strange discoloration of the skin

Was the only way to tell them apart.

He had bad eyes but something in his heart

Could see that she was his but someone else

Until she spoke. Then all that he sensed was false

Now passed for truth. Something in her words

Pierced doubt the way he wielded gun and sword:

“I have something here that breaks men’s backs.

In bondage I will teach you to relax.”

 

For Grabs

 

Under the hanging lattice of goodies

Where toys and candy swing loosely from strings,

The children test the limits of their reach

With outstretched arms and practiced running jumps.

 

Each wants what only the tallest can seize

But the tallest, does he know what he wants?

The little boy he’s outgrown and the little man

He’s becoming, sometimes they’ll agree

 

To climb a long spiral staircase and jump

The absent center when they get to the top

If only to see who falls first, who survives.

 

The little man, he wants to slide down

A woman’s cleavage to see what waits below.

And the little boy? He’ll settle for all the candy he can grab.