ORATION

Ladies and gentlemen! Children of this earth
Listen carefully to the utterances that I will make
That you may hear the inevitable truth,
Today, I, a member of this miserable and piteous society
Announces my denunciation! My isolation! My contempt!
To this evil society that money has put together.
To this evil society who has exploited its own home.
To this evil society who became dead.

Consider me an alien from now on, an outcast!
I will leave my things, I will leave my work, and I will leave isolate myself.
I will bathe under the light of Henry David Thoreau, whom you, children of this earth, have stoned to death long ago.

Like him ladies and gentlemen, I mourn.
Not because of forests slowly flattened, not because of rivers blackened, not because of the thousand crying souls suffering from exploitations of the powerful men in suits.
I mourn to the simple statement “we’re not being human anymore”
“Not being human anymore”
“Not human anymore”
Money causes us to decay, our decrepitude made its way to our pastures. Our own hands block her breathing, GAIA, our mother.

You cannot blame me for this decision ladies and gentlemen, children of this earth; I’m trying to be fundamental, while you, you, you Indulge yourselves with material things that make you dull, make you obese, make you in the trend. Corruption slowly drills into your head like a highly alcoholic drink you spend too much on cosmetics and senseless cell phone load. Money has corrupted us like how the snake corrupted Eve in garden paradise. The reason of poor and reckless mental capabilities of our youth who doesn’t know that burgers they buy on fast-food chains burn down forests to their roots. Massive rain forests for cattle graze land and soybean production for alternative fuels are just one of the main moves of profit-oriented corporations. There is no win-win solution in here ladies and gentlemen only death and murder.

The greedy corporate capitalists not just smile; they rejoice at our discontentment, they rejoice out of our innate discontentment! We buy, then we buy and we buy some more! We upgrade our lives! The latest cell phones, the fastest computers, the hippest bikes, the biggest refrigerator, the most effective slimming tablet, the most potent love inducing drug, the most, the latest, the best, the hippest. What more can you ask more freak!!!
Hear their thundering jubilation from your mindless consumption.

Profit orientation has an incestuous relationship with exploitation.
Someone buys premium consumer items in SM mall, packaged in fancy plastic design with tiny Winnie flower promos in It. then later hurl it into an innocent river!
Someone buys a new cell phone battery from china, disposes the old one, and burns it and poof! Toxic smoke!

This disgrace has been passed on to the youth and their fertile minds, we live not to be humans, we live like machines dictated by a program behind the computer monitor. Like big brother in PBB. The desire for good living is just a mere fantasy for now, in this generation. The culture of death is upon us. It is like a jolt of dominoes crashing together forever. Nature! Natural! Our home! Our habitat is in garbage. We have nothing, no one to blame in this misery, except our insolent selves, unless we become humans again.

Ulalume

The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crisped and sere -
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year:
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of Weir -
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

Here once, through and alley Titanic,
Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul -
Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.
These were days when my heart was volcanic
As the scoriac rivers that roll -
As the lavas that restlessly roll
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek
In the ultimate climes of the pole -
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek
In the realms of the boreal pole.

Our talk had been serious and sober,
But our thoughts they were palsied and sere -
Our memories were treacherous and sere, -
For we knew not the month was October,
And we marked not the night of the year
(Ah, night of all nights in the year!) -
We noted not the dim lake of Auber
(Though once we had journeyed down here) -
Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,
Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

And now, as the night was senescent
And star-dials pointed to morn -
As the star-dials hinted of morn -
At the end of our path a liquescent
And nebulous lustre was born,
Out of which a miraculous crescent
Arose with a duplicate horn -
Astarte's bediamonded crescent
Distinct with its duplicate horn.

And I said: "She is warmer than Dian;
She rolls through an ether of sighs -
She revels in a region of sighs:
She has seen that the tears are not dry on
These cheeks, where the worm never dies,
And has come past the stars of the Lion
To point us the path to the skies -
To the Lethean peace of the skies -
Come up, in despite of the Lion,
To shine on us with her bright eyes -
Come up through the lair of the Lion,
With love in her luminous eyes."

But Psyche, uplifting her finger,
Said: "Sadly this star I mistrust -
Her pallor I strangely mistrust:
Ah, hasten! -ah, let us not linger!
Ah, fly! -let us fly! -for we must."
In terror she spoke, letting sink her
Wings until they trailed in the dust -
In agony sobbed, letting sink her
Plumes till they trailed in the dust -
Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.

I replied: "This is nothing but dreaming:
Let us on by this tremulous light!
Let us bathe in this crystalline light!
Its Sybilic splendour is beaming
With Hope and in Beauty tonight! -
See! -it flickers up the sky through the night!
Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming,
And be sure it will lead us aright -
We safely may trust to a gleaming,
That cannot but guide us aright,
Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night."

Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,
And tempted her out of her gloom -
And conquered her scruples and gloom;
And we passed to the end of the vista,
But were stopped by the door of a tomb -
By the door of a legended tomb;
And I said: "What is written, sweet sister,
On the door of this legended tomb?"
She replied: "Ulalume -Ulalume -
'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!"

Then my heart it grew ashen and sober
As the leaves that were crisped and sere -
As the leaves that were withering and sere;
And I cried: "It was surely October
On this very night of last year
That I journeyed -I journeyed down here! -
That I brought a dread burden down here -
On this night of all nights in the year,
Ah, what demon hath tempted me here?
Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber -
This misty mid region of Weir -
Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber,
This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

The Road To Florence

Worry not lost wanderer
Keep your pace on the dark road
It strayed many travelers
Long ago before you showed

Long ago through tongue twas passed
By folks, who now rest below
Now its realized at last
Your entering soul don't know

Muddy rivers comes to trail
The residents of the woods
Slugs and caterpillars hail
Through the fog you sounding boots

Light rarely reaches the floor
Deprived Venus flytrap cries
For sunlight for food and more
The edible mushroom dies

The damp mosses welcome him
A carpet of evergreen
The fog of dusk and the dim
Invoke creatures who are mean

His jacket made of weak hide
Shields him from the biting cold
As forked trails before divide
Deep within the forest old

River ran beside the trail
As he ventured deeper in
The groves echoed by nymphs wail
Enticing the strayed within

River undisturbed cascade
Cloudless waters that carry
A lone, sleeping, drifting maid
Whose pale hands held a daisy

In the fainting shafts of light
Frailty defined the astray
The trail, his blurring sight
And the maiden sailed away

Sailed away in the shadows
Of an unending river
While the trail slowly narrows
Hopes for the lost traveler

In his mud-smeared pantaloons
Striving, limping on his weight
The prelude of nightfall tunes
Reminds the last time he ate

He felt his weight heavier
Than he is a while ago
There's something in the river
That's forbidding him to go

Then came across his vision
Though it's blurry he defined
Majestic apparitions
Aged trees whose thickly vined

This forest has conceived them
To save its virginity
And with them are the children
On their hollows security

Twinkling lights before him now
Enchant him as they flutter
Playing on those misty boughs
His consciousness they shatter

All those lights lured him within
And he tread them trail no more
Quest for home is growing thin
Venturing the unknown lore

Carrying his unsound mind
Through the barbed vines on the ground
It savored his flesh behind
Though he's coiled and nearly bound

In the clearing all was torn
It was his numb skin that cried
For warmth of light like in morn
That the hidden sun denied

His piteous blood the earth gain
On his worn out knees he fell
Now that he is lesser sane
Resign to unconscious spell

On his own puddle of blood
He faded and strive to crawl
With each slip, he kissed the mud
When he falls he tasted all

An endless torment tonight
His soul and insanity
Enticed him into the lights
A hovering fantasy

Spectators are in the boughs
Following his bloody trace
Smell of predators arouse
As he reached a hollowed base

A hollow on the grand roots
Cavern of intertwining
Ancient wood that bore the fruits
And now a stranger dying

On the warmth of its bosom
Summoning his breath
Unaided in the dark some
Attended by lurking death

His flowing blood has gone cold
Cold until it flowed no more
His eyes lost its gleam and told
Death to take him to that door

As soon as darkness consume
The lair that became a tomb
It celebrated with gloom
The forests' possessive womb

Minsan Sa Silid Aklatan

Sa aking pag-iisa
Kasama ang mga aklat
Nakatiwang-wang sa lamesa't
Inaamag ang pabalat

Ang pahinang maalikabok
Na naninilaw sa kalumaan
Dinidinig nito ang tibok
Ng puso ko'ng may kahinaan

Sa bintana ko'y tanaw
Ang kaway ng mga dahon
Na sa puno'y ginagalaw
Ng mga engkanto sa hapon

Lagi sa dakong tahimik
Sa mata ko'y nagpatalim
Tumakbo man ang mga titik
At magtago sa dilim

Ngayon sa paglamong marahan
Ng gabi at pagtahan ng ihip
Sa hapong may kapighatian
Ang mundo ko'y sinisilip

Damdami'y walang lungkot
Sa pag-iisang sinadya
Maging hangin may sangkot
Sa pagbuo ng tula

[English]

Once In The Library

In my loneliness
Accompanied by books
Laid on the table
Molds on its cover

The dusty page
Yellowing of age
Hears the heartbeat
of my weak heart

Behind the windows, i see
The waving of the leaves
Of the trees being moved
By Elves of the afternoon

Always on a silent nook
My eyes are sharpened
If the letters should run
And hide in the shadows

Now, the slow swallowing
Of night and the breezes pause
On a lonely afternoon
The world i peak

My gloom less mood
A deliberate loneliness
Even the winds have part
On wielding poem

The Dethronement

Tell me mother, what's the taste?
Tender chunks of shattered waists
Carnage swimming on your mouth
Macabres concluding route

Mother tell me? what's their fault?
that you've drown them in your salt
With their blood and fluids fuse
Dead ones, never did you choose

Is it like a candy drawn?
When you chew them and their gone
By your tempestuous tongues
Fishes found a home on lungs

You pity not the drowning
And savor all the dying
Those pale faces whom you've bound
On heels, so they can't be found

Mother did you treat her well?
On your limbs, a swelling hell
The princess poor has lost her crown
For you hanged her upside down

Mother, mother may i ask?
Is it just to make them cask?
Made of metal, twisted cry
Your dominion they defy

Its a lesson you inflict
Those who mock and maledict
Your cordial sublimity
They keep breaking your decree

Mother, still they do not hear
All their faults, your children dear
How much will they have to pay?
Murders of so grim a day

The Death of a Well

There was once an aged well
Whose depth mocks the fiery hell
Frigid waters rests inside
Mortals with their needs supplied

Once provide their sustenance
The great well, but that was once
Thirsty brought their jars to fill
With waters untainted still

Origin still is unknown
Said that it was no ones own
Witnessed life cause like the mounts
Lasting yore is so profound

Stationed on a misty realm
Withered trees are overwhelmed
Red bricks fade, mosaic broke
Like the woods that peckers poke

Wrinkled ground of which she stood
Pity her for she was good
The deep void that light cant reach
Her womb home of mud and Leech

Time has closed her living pores
And has barred her breathing doors
Rendezvous of water rain
Sucked up dry and gone for vain

So the late was claimed by vines
With the mosses, and the spines
Comes the homage of the fur
Now the sons remember her

Footprints on fertile mud

It is Avian choir
Accompanied with crickets
That ring and sing the loudness
Of farmers morning
The nothingness of fog
Brought uncertain squelch
On heel-deep mud to my boots
Careful not to disturb
Sleeping puddles of leeches
In my walk, time passed

The earth mud odors rise
Herons started days work
Fishing on Carabao backs
Ticks bloat of Carabao blood
Like pale berries succulent
Advent of another day
By the ray of golden sun
Glistening of golden seeds
Slowly is the fog undone
Busy farmers before me

The last dance of Terpsichore

Quick palpitations of lightnings veins
acknowledged the Nimbus' silhouette
a backdrop of grandeur reigns
made of Luna's' hidden coronet

The clouds roll, still is the flashing
a canvas great of black and Grey
as one may see, are the gods warring?
a timid thunder silenced away

From every flash a pendulum stops
witness to the swirling of hues
of dark origins for heavens' drop
simultaneous, magnanimous

A feat of marvel to appraise
at night when the snoring died
on this roof, a raindrop felt my face
Its time for me to get inside