is path warm

(I) write my sadness ad infinitum. but
i encrypt it with images and tones:
in poetry, ambiguity’s a virtue.

(S)o many of these pieces are loosed
like arrows: pills, drink, and fatty
foods are my fletches.

(P)eril and pain: not every creature
runs from such things: some
seek and live for them.

(A)lmighty dreams, almighty loves:
they pierce me with ups and
downs by the kiloton.

(T)here’s many ways out; i know them all.
but this one, see, is the most brutal,
indelible, and glorious.

(H)ot and cold converge: the lukewarm
path my heart had blazed is a cavity
that creaks and reeks.

(W)hat good is society when my
feelings for it sink away so
quickly?

(A) man, neither enemy nor friend,
hurt himself first: i feel nothing
and, thus, victorious over him.

(R)oaming, i find a moment anywhere there’s
a rush, a shock, a death wish titillating me
like silhouettes in a red mist.

(M)ay love promise that my highest highs are your
lowest lows. with that in mind: i have mastered
this game. the pleasure is all yours.

(giving away prized possessions) take with you
everything i’ve seen. let me burn to prove that
darkness is a temporary absence of light.

:
:

~A.

śūnyatā (reminders in sonnet form)

(see how you’re an irrelevant sociocultural
experiment, a litany of hopes and failures.
see how your
romances [even the sexless
few] are frightening and
radioactive.

you are a system of desires interlinked
within yearnings, interlinked
within mourning,
a slow drift of feelings and memories,
a decay of memories to memories
of feelings…)

remind yourself: this is all another dream (a
reminder you’re never doomed or sad as you think).

:
:

~A.

sonnet by a poor tiger’s kid (draft 1)

my mom’s greatest gift was her constant fury.
kind and sweet-voiced as she could be, i
hear her when i yell, curse, threaten: i
hit as if her ghost drives my arms.

her sheer strength of will killed her: a nurse, a
shift boss who learned english after tagalog
and kapampangan, who, despite her first-
honors mind, had a post-war lexicon.

she was the object of patriarchy, racism, a
bad american diet; and so cancer claimed
her, and the last words she heard in this
world were mine, as i whispered in her

ear, “i’ll be okay” – i feel that all i do now
is her revenge against her tormentors.

:
:

~A.

in A minor

(there’s no line between my fantasies and
delusions – only a fine mist.)

in my mind, i am peter shaffer’s mozart.
my eyes, commanding downbeats and
astonatos: irreverent, childish, and
unpredictable.
***
my poems are
emotional sheet music. i sit here,
writing & writing as if taking dictation
from a dream: a music that only i can hear.

(i fear my purpose is to be a
bad mystery: a daydream of a bored angel.)

:
:

~A.

swarm of one

i am a bee, culling pollen from many flowers of
many colors, fragrances, forms. my limbs are
dusted like jackson pollock rainbows. and
i do all this to make my own honey: a
flavor you’ll never know, because
it’s not for sale, not for human
consumption.

(go ahead, give it
a taste…)

:
:

~A.

julita of tarlak

on her way to barrio viktoria, manang julita,
a revered babaylan, met a band of townsfolk

armed with canes and bolos. ‘where do
you go with your weapons?’, she asked.

‘a foreign tiger prowls about tarlak’, they said. ‘it’s
threatened our animals and children. we’re hunting it.’

julita went with the people. when they spotted the
tiger, she said: ‘let me talk to him.’ approaching the

tiger, she extended her hand. the others drew back,
certain julita would be mauled. but the tiger sat,

lowering its head. julita patted him softly and said:
“peace, brother tiger. the barrio folk have told me

about you. you probably know they detest you. but i
know you’re hungry and alone: that compels you to do

terrible things. if you agree to harmony, i swear you’ll
be fed for the rest of your days. will you promise not to

attack anyone anymore?’ to give consent, the tiger
lightly placed its paw in julita’s hand. she took

the tiger to the barrio square and told everyone:
‘our brother promises never to harm anyone again,

if you agree to feed him.’ the people of viktoria, awed
by what they’d seen, promised to do their part.

from then on, the tiger behaved
sweetly, like a loyal companion.

:
:

after a tale of st. francis of assisi,
grafted onto a philippine rhizome

~A.

edward theodore gein

he inspired franchises (psycho, chainsaw, hannibal),
and god knows how much else. but ed, doomed at
birth, only killed two people, officially. strange,
how he wasn’t much of a killer. (born in 1906,

he was a plainly lonely kid.
his mother and only company
was a lumbering, cruel heart who
warned him against sex while encouraging

him to masturbate. and after
she died,
he lost
it all.)

ed, growing up to be an skilled taxidermist,
didn’t stuff her and leave her in his cellar,
à la norman bates: he locked her room
and left gifts at her door. and

ed sickened in his growing solitude.
he failed gender reassignment,
à la buffalo bill. broke, save
a hundred acres and

a toolshed, he put his shovels to use
from ’47 to ’54, robbing forty-plus
graves, using every corpse
totally:

skulls would become bedposts, skins,
upholstery for tables and seats.
he made many masks, à la
leatherface. (what

ed planned to do with a bucket of pickled vulvas
isn’t known – perhaps it was related to a jar of
noses he kept beside it.)
his last known victim

was found in his shed, flayed like a deer.
anyway, ed died in prison in 1984,
alone. ed and his victims, today,
remain equals.

~A.