They say birthdays are a time for introspection. Well, I found my old college notebook from one of my poetry classes early this morning, and it did make me think about some of my favorite poems.


One
From "You Are Jeff" by Richard Siken

You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won't tell you that he loves
you, but he loves you. And you feel like you've done something terr-
ible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself
a grave in the dirt, and you're tired. You're in a car with a beautiful boy,
and you're trying not to tell him that you love him, and you're trying to
choke down the feeling, and you're trembling, but he reaches over and
he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your
heart taking root in your body, like you've discovered something you
don't even have a name for.

Two
From "Small Wire" by Anne Sexton

As it has been said:
Love and a cough
cannot be concealed.
Even a small cough.
Even a small love.

Three
From "Rain" by Danton Remoto

But you are here,
in the country of my mind,
wiping away the maps
of mist
on the window pane,
lying beside me,
as the pulse of the pillows and sheets—
even the very throb of rain—
begins to quicken.

Four
From "Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Five
From "Before Bed" by Zora Howard

I is a still wet concrete
and here comes you,
a brazen unkempt boy,
carving your gang signs all up alongside me with an unassuming stick.
Where is your home training?
Why do you make the city of me so unbecoming?
Your language is hardening in this landscape of mine.
Everyone will pass here
and what will they find?
That I am your block,
I am your boulevard,
your bayou,
And baby,
I don’t mind,
I don’t mind,
I don’t mind.

Six
From "Send Me To The Moon" by Conchitina Cruz

Lay down your arms where I can
                stay in them and send me to the moon, forget the freaks
we ran away from one afternoon by the library, the guard whistling in the hall,
                                       the howl and swagger and the fall—
               Haven’t we all made that jump? Haven’t we all heard
the plunk, the mere grunt of you,
                        the mere spunk of you, reeking of musk
        while teaching me physics, crawling down the road piss drunk
                                                   at 3 am, plastered and master
         to none, pushing my head down in cars all over town—
                                             Don’t we all stoop and deliver?
And so, what now, hopping from bed to bed, all red with rage,
                         the age of the wine on the label tossed
                                                  in the wastebasket, the taste
         of it all, the last of it all, the pale madness of this song,
my thong tugged at again
               by your wandering fingers, still smelling of
                                 another sweet wonder—Don’t we all
have another? Where are my fangs?
        Where are my pangs of guilt for my sins, where the wince
                          in the eternal threat of end, how mend the night’s
            idiosyncrasy, the spittoon in the fantasy
                                         of ordinary life, your wife,
                             my darling nonbeliever, my unwarranted claim.

Seven
"It is not impossible to survive—" by Lauryn K. Alleyne

You have mastered solitude, struggled to unpack
the thick realities of time and matter. Love has flattened
you. Measured, you have faced your least loveliness.

How fragile God’s graffiti, the text of us scrawled
wild, twisted into this renegade, complex sentence
of living! How the making betrays and becomes us!

Look at the tree revise its body daily, spectacularly
rendered through the small violence of loss. If nothing
else, learn this: You are not broken, but rearranged.

__

Labels: poetry

by Al Young


She talks too loud, her face
a blur of wrinkles & sunshine
where her hard hair shivers
from laughter like a pine tree
stiff with oil & hotcombing

O & her anger realer than gasoline
slung into fire or lighted mohair
She’s a clothes lover from way back
but her body’s too big to be chic
or on cue so she wear what she want
People just gotta stand back &
take it like they do Easter Sunday when
the rainbow she travels is dry-cleaned

She laughs more than ever in spring
stomping the downtowns, Saturday past
work, looking into JC Penney’s checking
out Sears & bragging about how when she
feel like it she gon lose weight &
give up smoking one of these sorry days

Her eyes are diamonds of pure dark space
& the air flying out of them as you look
close is only the essence of living
to tell, a full-length woman, an aunt
brown & red with stalking the years



— from The Blues Don’t Change.

__

[EDIT: April 23, 2015]

This morning I lost my aunt, my mom's sister, Gina Vistan - Naniong to cancer. She was diagnosed with advanced cancer in the bile-duct/pancreas area, after a tumor was found just about a month ago. She was not just my tita, but in many ways, my older sister, and my best friend. While for a fraction of my life, she had been based in Singapore, she still played the role of second-mother and partner-in-crime to me (along with my mom's other sister, Tita Karen).

I spent my Holy Week in Batangas where she was confined in a cancer institute there, and everyday since then I've offered my prayers for her. Everything happened so quickly and quite frankly, I'm still wrapping my head around it. I couldn't even write about her being diagnosed without tears welling up - more so this. It's surreal. I'm sad, perplexed, angry, frustrated - I'm all over the place. But I comfort myself right now at the thought that she is finally free from all pain. Please offer a prayer for her soul if you can. She was a great person and a truly amazing human being. I can't imagine where to go from here.

I'll miss you everyday, Tita Gina.

Labels: poetry

by Rudy Francisco

I want you to bite my lip until I can no longer speak
And then suck my ex-girlfriend’s name out of my mouth just to make sure she never comes up in our conversations
I’m going to be honest, I’m not really a love poet
In fact, every time I try to write about love my hands cramp
Just to show me how painful love can be
And sometimes my pencils break, just to prove to me that every now and then love takes a little more work than you planned
See I heard that love is blind so, I write all my poems in Braille
And my poems are never actually finished because true love is endless
I always believed that real love is kind of like a super model before she’s air brushed;
It’s pure and imperfect, just the way that God intended
See I’m going to be honest, I’m not a love poet
But if I was to wake up tomorrow morning and decide that I really wanted to write about love I swear that my first poem…
It would be about you

About how I loved you the same way that I learned how to ride a bike: Scared
But reckless with no training wheels or elbow pads so my scars can tell the story of how I fell for you
You see, I’m not really a love poet
But if I was I’d write about how I see your face in every cloud and your reflection in every window
You see I’ve written like a million poems hoping that somehow maybe someway you’ll jump out of the page and be closer to me
Because if you were here, right now
I would massage your back until your skin sings songs that your lips don’t even know the words to

Until your heartbeat sounds like my last name and you smile like the Pacific Ocean
I want to drink the sunlight in your skin
If I was a love poet
I’d write about how you have the audacity to be beautiful
Even on days when everything around you is ugly
You see I’d write about your eyelashes and how they are like violin strings that play symphonies every time you blink

If I was a love poet
I’d write about how I melt in front of you like an ice sculpture
Every time I hear the vibration in your voice so whenever I see your name on the caller ID my heart
It plays hopscotch inside of my chest
Yo it climbs onto my ribs like monkey bars and I feel like a child all over again
I know this sounds strange but every now and then I pray that God somehow turns you back in to one of my ribs
Just so that I would never have to spend an entire day without you

I swear, I’m not a love poet
But if I was to wake up tomorrow morning and decide that I really wanted to write about love
My first poem it would be about you
And after all of that she was like, so how do you feel about me?
And I said, put it like this:
I want to be your ex boyfriend’s stunt man.
I want to do everything that he never had the courage to do, like trust you

I swear that when our lips touch I can taste the next sixty years of my life
And some days I want to swallow stacks of your pictures just so you can be a part of me for a little bit longer
If I could I would sample your smile and then I would let my heart beat
Do the bass line, we would create the greatest love song of all time
Whenever, we stand next to each other, love I was the only one made for you and you can be at last my Etta James
I’ll be oh child when you’re in pain or you could be candy coated drops of rain
Even though it never rains in Southern California
And together, we could be music

And when my friends ask if you’re my girlfriend
I’ll say no
She is my musician
And me...
I’m her favorite song


__

Labels: poetry

by Clementine Von Radics


I am not the first person you loved.
You are not the first person I looked at
with a mouthful of forevers. We
have both known loss like the sharp edges
of a knife. We have both lived with lips
more scar tissue than skin. Our love came
unannounced in the middle of the night.
Our love came when we’d given up
on asking love to come. I think
that has to be part
of its miracle.
This is how we heal.
I will kiss you like forgiveness. You
will hold me like I’m hope. Our arms
will bandage and we will press promises
between us like flowers in a book.
I will write sonnets to the salt of sweat
on your skin. I will write novels to the scar
of your nose. I will write a dictionary
of all the words I have used trying
to describe the way it feels to have finally,
finally found you.

And I will not be afraid
of your scars.

I know sometimes
it’s still hard to let me see you
in all your cracked perfection,
but please know:
whether it’s the days you burn
more brilliant than the sun
or the nights you collapse into my lap
your body broken into a thousand questions,
you are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
I will love you when you are a still day.
I will love you when you are a hurricane.


__

Labels: poetry

by Nizar Kabbani


When you find a man
Who transforms
Every part of you
Into poetry,
Who makes each one of your hairs
Into a poem,
When you find a man,
Capable,
As I am
Of bathing and adorning you
With poetry,
I will beg you
To follow him without hesitation,
It is not important
That you belong to me or him
But that you belong to poetry.



__

Just an excuse to post lovely poetry on my blog, because it's the week of Valentine's, and because our block is going to be spending that weekend studying for our Civ Pro midterms on Sunday evening instead.

Here's to love, literature, and everything else in between.

Labels: poetry

"Before Bed" by Zora Howard

Bobby Pin crown,
You, my throne,
We make like an empire
before this closet mirror door
a village in your eyes,
my eyes reflecting back
upon this sanctified seat
and oh,
what they will bear witness to this eve.
When wrapping my hair,
you watch me,
press your chest right up on my back
hold my hips as if they were the only mast offering balance
to this wayward sea captain
as if it were my hands sea
my hands sorcery
my hands witchcraft or
wire-weaver who spins gold
threading a nest of precious stone
but my fingers are rather betting fiddling,
finding things to fix on your face,
throw to find there isn’t much a scab to pick,
a zit to pop,
fussing with your stubborn fuzz
which you like so much to bury in the north west axis of my neck.
You’re distracting.
I got a mouthful of pins and a bedtime to respect.
Though your core is gorged with God,
your hands are full of sin,
young man.
My waist does not a meadow make for you to serpent your way in,
young man.
We’ve got to go to bed.
I is a still wet concrete
and here comes you,
a brazen unkempt boy,
carving your gang signs all up alongside me with an unassuming stick.
Where is your home training?
Why do you make the city of me so unbecoming?
Your language is hardening in this landscape of mine.
Everyone will pass here
and what will they find?
That I am your block,
I am your boulevard,
your bayou,
And baby,
I don’t mind,
I don’t mind,
I don’t mind.

When wrapping my hair,
you stare and dare not touch.
Instead, our brown goes for one long line around.
We cannot tell where you begin my end.
I start to blush.
You make to play connect my dots,
my blemishes, and beauty marks
and with your lips
inaugurate my monuments like they’ve just begun this night
last night
and this love is so fresh it squeaks and shines
and lies a little bit,
has secrets and shit to hide a little bit,
small unpoetic things like
like, Baby, you don’t know how to eat chicken
and sometimes it bothers me
like, you leave so much meat on the bone,
your leftovers could feed a small child with a big appetite
or make a nice snack for me now or later with some potato bread or butter.
And it takes everything in my power
not to clean your plate for you but, goodness,
that would be ghastly.
And also,
I pass gas.
I talk with my neck and my hands,
not only when I’m fed up
but sometimes,
when I’m trying to say a point like
It just helps me express it better.
And I got a little street in me.
Sometimes, I lose my cool and get hood.
And I never lose in Taboo but I’m so competitive
I’d make you cry and I’m mean.
Your feet make me uncomfortable.
You never have a clue but it’s more than a hint
when I suggest you and I should go get pedicures together soon.
I have 13 piercings
and two tattoos and
you still look at my body like it’s brand spanking new.
It’s not.

I’m afraid you’ll find my tarnished parts.
If you keep snooping around the way you do,
I’m afraid you’ll see there is no land left here unchartered or uncharred.
This was an empire
before they burned their fires,
stuck their flags deep in this soil.
And when the ear was barren dry,
they gave it back,
unholy act.
See, I’m no piece girl,
when I love I give the whole of me.
So when they left the lease in pieces,
they also left these holes in me.
my monuments have seen some things, baby,
civil wars, famine, and crusades, baby,
the conquer and raids of holy places.
So before we go any farther, baby,
will you listen to the kind of mess my heart’s been in?
touch the grit that’s sitting tranquil
between each whittled rib?
after all the best has been torn away,
will you want the rest of me,
the parts that poets find grotesque and plain,
the bits that boil and bubble over,
crack and callous,
break down and dust to dust;

My crown is fluff.
Bobby pinned bee hive hair,
but, when wrapping my hair just before bed, you stay.
my shoulder be your port,
your eyes revere my isle,
your hands hold my sea.
Let’s make camp here for a while
and oh,
what they will bear witness to this eve.


__

Labels: poetry

 


For Women Who Are Difficult to Love by Warsan Shire

You are a horse running alone
and he tries to tame you
compares you to an impossible highway
to a burning house
says you are blinding him
that he could never leave you
forget you
want anything but you
you dizzy him, you are unbearable
every woman before or after you
is doused in your name
you fill his mouth
his teeth ache with memory of taste
his body just a long shadow seeking yours
but you are always too intense
frightening in the way you want him
unashamed and sacrificial
he tells you that no man can live up to the one who
lives in your head
and you tried to change didn’t you?


closed your mouth more
tried to be softer
prettier
less volatile, less awake
but even when sleeping you could feel
him travelling away from you in his dreams
so what did you want to do love
split his head open?
you can’t make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that
and if he wants to leave
then let him leave
you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love.


--

Labels: poetry

They say birthdays are a time for introspection. Well, I found my old college notebook from one of my poetry classes early this morning, and it did make me think about some of my favorite poems.


One
From "You Are Jeff" by Richard Siken

You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won't tell you that he loves
you, but he loves you. And you feel like you've done something terr-
ible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself
a grave in the dirt, and you're tired. You're in a car with a beautiful boy,
and you're trying not to tell him that you love him, and you're trying to
choke down the feeling, and you're trembling, but he reaches over and
he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your
heart taking root in your body, like you've discovered something you
don't even have a name for.

Two
From "Small Wire" by Anne Sexton

As it has been said:
Love and a cough
cannot be concealed.
Even a small cough.
Even a small love.

Three
From "Rain" by Danton Remoto

But you are here,
in the country of my mind,
wiping away the maps
of mist
on the window pane,
lying beside me,
as the pulse of the pillows and sheets—
even the very throb of rain—
begins to quicken.

Four
From "Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Five
From "Before Bed" by Zora Howard

I is a still wet concrete
and here comes you,
a brazen unkempt boy,
carving your gang signs all up alongside me with an unassuming stick.
Where is your home training?
Why do you make the city of me so unbecoming?
Your language is hardening in this landscape of mine.
Everyone will pass here
and what will they find?
That I am your block,
I am your boulevard,
your bayou,
And baby,
I don’t mind,
I don’t mind,
I don’t mind.

Six
From "Send Me To The Moon" by Conchitina Cruz

Lay down your arms where I can
                stay in them and send me to the moon, forget the freaks
we ran away from one afternoon by the library, the guard whistling in the hall,
                                       the howl and swagger and the fall—
               Haven’t we all made that jump? Haven’t we all heard
the plunk, the mere grunt of you,
                        the mere spunk of you, reeking of musk
        while teaching me physics, crawling down the road piss drunk
                                                   at 3 am, plastered and master
         to none, pushing my head down in cars all over town—
                                             Don’t we all stoop and deliver?
And so, what now, hopping from bed to bed, all red with rage,
                         the age of the wine on the label tossed
                                                  in the wastebasket, the taste
         of it all, the last of it all, the pale madness of this song,
my thong tugged at again
               by your wandering fingers, still smelling of
                                 another sweet wonder—Don’t we all
have another? Where are my fangs?
        Where are my pangs of guilt for my sins, where the wince
                          in the eternal threat of end, how mend the night’s
            idiosyncrasy, the spittoon in the fantasy
                                         of ordinary life, your wife,
                             my darling nonbeliever, my unwarranted claim.

Seven
"It is not impossible to survive—" by Lauryn K. Alleyne

You have mastered solitude, struggled to unpack
the thick realities of time and matter. Love has flattened
you. Measured, you have faced your least loveliness.

How fragile God’s graffiti, the text of us scrawled
wild, twisted into this renegade, complex sentence
of living! How the making betrays and becomes us!

Look at the tree revise its body daily, spectacularly
rendered through the small violence of loss. If nothing
else, learn this: You are not broken, but rearranged.

__

Labels: poetry

by Al Young


She talks too loud, her face
a blur of wrinkles & sunshine
where her hard hair shivers
from laughter like a pine tree
stiff with oil & hotcombing

O & her anger realer than gasoline
slung into fire or lighted mohair
She’s a clothes lover from way back
but her body’s too big to be chic
or on cue so she wear what she want
People just gotta stand back &
take it like they do Easter Sunday when
the rainbow she travels is dry-cleaned

She laughs more than ever in spring
stomping the downtowns, Saturday past
work, looking into JC Penney’s checking
out Sears & bragging about how when she
feel like it she gon lose weight &
give up smoking one of these sorry days

Her eyes are diamonds of pure dark space
& the air flying out of them as you look
close is only the essence of living
to tell, a full-length woman, an aunt
brown & red with stalking the years



— from The Blues Don’t Change.

__

[EDIT: April 23, 2015]

This morning I lost my aunt, my mom's sister, Gina Vistan - Naniong to cancer. She was diagnosed with advanced cancer in the bile-duct/pancreas area, after a tumor was found just about a month ago. She was not just my tita, but in many ways, my older sister, and my best friend. While for a fraction of my life, she had been based in Singapore, she still played the role of second-mother and partner-in-crime to me (along with my mom's other sister, Tita Karen).

I spent my Holy Week in Batangas where she was confined in a cancer institute there, and everyday since then I've offered my prayers for her. Everything happened so quickly and quite frankly, I'm still wrapping my head around it. I couldn't even write about her being diagnosed without tears welling up - more so this. It's surreal. I'm sad, perplexed, angry, frustrated - I'm all over the place. But I comfort myself right now at the thought that she is finally free from all pain. Please offer a prayer for her soul if you can. She was a great person and a truly amazing human being. I can't imagine where to go from here.

I'll miss you everyday, Tita Gina.

Labels: poetry

by Rudy Francisco

I want you to bite my lip until I can no longer speak
And then suck my ex-girlfriend’s name out of my mouth just to make sure she never comes up in our conversations
I’m going to be honest, I’m not really a love poet
In fact, every time I try to write about love my hands cramp
Just to show me how painful love can be
And sometimes my pencils break, just to prove to me that every now and then love takes a little more work than you planned
See I heard that love is blind so, I write all my poems in Braille
And my poems are never actually finished because true love is endless
I always believed that real love is kind of like a super model before she’s air brushed;
It’s pure and imperfect, just the way that God intended
See I’m going to be honest, I’m not a love poet
But if I was to wake up tomorrow morning and decide that I really wanted to write about love I swear that my first poem…
It would be about you

About how I loved you the same way that I learned how to ride a bike: Scared
But reckless with no training wheels or elbow pads so my scars can tell the story of how I fell for you
You see, I’m not really a love poet
But if I was I’d write about how I see your face in every cloud and your reflection in every window
You see I’ve written like a million poems hoping that somehow maybe someway you’ll jump out of the page and be closer to me
Because if you were here, right now
I would massage your back until your skin sings songs that your lips don’t even know the words to

Until your heartbeat sounds like my last name and you smile like the Pacific Ocean
I want to drink the sunlight in your skin
If I was a love poet
I’d write about how you have the audacity to be beautiful
Even on days when everything around you is ugly
You see I’d write about your eyelashes and how they are like violin strings that play symphonies every time you blink

If I was a love poet
I’d write about how I melt in front of you like an ice sculpture
Every time I hear the vibration in your voice so whenever I see your name on the caller ID my heart
It plays hopscotch inside of my chest
Yo it climbs onto my ribs like monkey bars and I feel like a child all over again
I know this sounds strange but every now and then I pray that God somehow turns you back in to one of my ribs
Just so that I would never have to spend an entire day without you

I swear, I’m not a love poet
But if I was to wake up tomorrow morning and decide that I really wanted to write about love
My first poem it would be about you
And after all of that she was like, so how do you feel about me?
And I said, put it like this:
I want to be your ex boyfriend’s stunt man.
I want to do everything that he never had the courage to do, like trust you

I swear that when our lips touch I can taste the next sixty years of my life
And some days I want to swallow stacks of your pictures just so you can be a part of me for a little bit longer
If I could I would sample your smile and then I would let my heart beat
Do the bass line, we would create the greatest love song of all time
Whenever, we stand next to each other, love I was the only one made for you and you can be at last my Etta James
I’ll be oh child when you’re in pain or you could be candy coated drops of rain
Even though it never rains in Southern California
And together, we could be music

And when my friends ask if you’re my girlfriend
I’ll say no
She is my musician
And me...
I’m her favorite song


__

Labels: poetry

by Clementine Von Radics


I am not the first person you loved.
You are not the first person I looked at
with a mouthful of forevers. We
have both known loss like the sharp edges
of a knife. We have both lived with lips
more scar tissue than skin. Our love came
unannounced in the middle of the night.
Our love came when we’d given up
on asking love to come. I think
that has to be part
of its miracle.
This is how we heal.
I will kiss you like forgiveness. You
will hold me like I’m hope. Our arms
will bandage and we will press promises
between us like flowers in a book.
I will write sonnets to the salt of sweat
on your skin. I will write novels to the scar
of your nose. I will write a dictionary
of all the words I have used trying
to describe the way it feels to have finally,
finally found you.

And I will not be afraid
of your scars.

I know sometimes
it’s still hard to let me see you
in all your cracked perfection,
but please know:
whether it’s the days you burn
more brilliant than the sun
or the nights you collapse into my lap
your body broken into a thousand questions,
you are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
I will love you when you are a still day.
I will love you when you are a hurricane.


__

Labels: poetry

by Nizar Kabbani


When you find a man
Who transforms
Every part of you
Into poetry,
Who makes each one of your hairs
Into a poem,
When you find a man,
Capable,
As I am
Of bathing and adorning you
With poetry,
I will beg you
To follow him without hesitation,
It is not important
That you belong to me or him
But that you belong to poetry.



__

Just an excuse to post lovely poetry on my blog, because it's the week of Valentine's, and because our block is going to be spending that weekend studying for our Civ Pro midterms on Sunday evening instead.

Here's to love, literature, and everything else in between.

Labels: poetry

"Before Bed" by Zora Howard

Bobby Pin crown,
You, my throne,
We make like an empire
before this closet mirror door
a village in your eyes,
my eyes reflecting back
upon this sanctified seat
and oh,
what they will bear witness to this eve.
When wrapping my hair,
you watch me,
press your chest right up on my back
hold my hips as if they were the only mast offering balance
to this wayward sea captain
as if it were my hands sea
my hands sorcery
my hands witchcraft or
wire-weaver who spins gold
threading a nest of precious stone
but my fingers are rather betting fiddling,
finding things to fix on your face,
throw to find there isn’t much a scab to pick,
a zit to pop,
fussing with your stubborn fuzz
which you like so much to bury in the north west axis of my neck.
You’re distracting.
I got a mouthful of pins and a bedtime to respect.
Though your core is gorged with God,
your hands are full of sin,
young man.
My waist does not a meadow make for you to serpent your way in,
young man.
We’ve got to go to bed.
I is a still wet concrete
and here comes you,
a brazen unkempt boy,
carving your gang signs all up alongside me with an unassuming stick.
Where is your home training?
Why do you make the city of me so unbecoming?
Your language is hardening in this landscape of mine.
Everyone will pass here
and what will they find?
That I am your block,
I am your boulevard,
your bayou,
And baby,
I don’t mind,
I don’t mind,
I don’t mind.

When wrapping my hair,
you stare and dare not touch.
Instead, our brown goes for one long line around.
We cannot tell where you begin my end.
I start to blush.
You make to play connect my dots,
my blemishes, and beauty marks
and with your lips
inaugurate my monuments like they’ve just begun this night
last night
and this love is so fresh it squeaks and shines
and lies a little bit,
has secrets and shit to hide a little bit,
small unpoetic things like
like, Baby, you don’t know how to eat chicken
and sometimes it bothers me
like, you leave so much meat on the bone,
your leftovers could feed a small child with a big appetite
or make a nice snack for me now or later with some potato bread or butter.
And it takes everything in my power
not to clean your plate for you but, goodness,
that would be ghastly.
And also,
I pass gas.
I talk with my neck and my hands,
not only when I’m fed up
but sometimes,
when I’m trying to say a point like
It just helps me express it better.
And I got a little street in me.
Sometimes, I lose my cool and get hood.
And I never lose in Taboo but I’m so competitive
I’d make you cry and I’m mean.
Your feet make me uncomfortable.
You never have a clue but it’s more than a hint
when I suggest you and I should go get pedicures together soon.
I have 13 piercings
and two tattoos and
you still look at my body like it’s brand spanking new.
It’s not.

I’m afraid you’ll find my tarnished parts.
If you keep snooping around the way you do,
I’m afraid you’ll see there is no land left here unchartered or uncharred.
This was an empire
before they burned their fires,
stuck their flags deep in this soil.
And when the ear was barren dry,
they gave it back,
unholy act.
See, I’m no piece girl,
when I love I give the whole of me.
So when they left the lease in pieces,
they also left these holes in me.
my monuments have seen some things, baby,
civil wars, famine, and crusades, baby,
the conquer and raids of holy places.
So before we go any farther, baby,
will you listen to the kind of mess my heart’s been in?
touch the grit that’s sitting tranquil
between each whittled rib?
after all the best has been torn away,
will you want the rest of me,
the parts that poets find grotesque and plain,
the bits that boil and bubble over,
crack and callous,
break down and dust to dust;

My crown is fluff.
Bobby pinned bee hive hair,
but, when wrapping my hair just before bed, you stay.
my shoulder be your port,
your eyes revere my isle,
your hands hold my sea.
Let’s make camp here for a while
and oh,
what they will bear witness to this eve.


__

Labels: poetry

 


For Women Who Are Difficult to Love by Warsan Shire

You are a horse running alone
and he tries to tame you
compares you to an impossible highway
to a burning house
says you are blinding him
that he could never leave you
forget you
want anything but you
you dizzy him, you are unbearable
every woman before or after you
is doused in your name
you fill his mouth
his teeth ache with memory of taste
his body just a long shadow seeking yours
but you are always too intense
frightening in the way you want him
unashamed and sacrificial
he tells you that no man can live up to the one who
lives in your head
and you tried to change didn’t you?


closed your mouth more
tried to be softer
prettier
less volatile, less awake
but even when sleeping you could feel
him travelling away from you in his dreams
so what did you want to do love
split his head open?
you can’t make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that
and if he wants to leave
then let him leave
you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love.


--

Labels: poetry

Hello, I'm Karla Bernardo. If you Google my name, you will find the Wikipedia entry of a Canadian serial-killer (and trust me, you do not want to read about that - but I'm sure you will because now you're curious), which is why I suggest you type Bombastarr instead so you can stalk me better.

I spent eight-and-a-half years of my life in the University of the Philippines, where I graduated with degrees in Creative Writing and Juris Doctor. It is also where I learned how to speak a bit of Italian, got a taste of the best tapsilog, and took striptease for PE.

I love telling stories, as much as I enjoy finding them.

<center><font style="color: #ffffff;">____</font>Want <a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/09096636074047764491">more</a>?</center><br>

Featured Works

Stargirl (Cover story for Nadine Lustre, Scout, January-February 2017)
Surreal / So Real (at Scout)
Ode to a Great Love's 17-year-old Self (Love.Life, Philippine Daily Inquirer)
Postcard from Diliman (Youngblood, Philippine Daily Inquirer)

Writer for Philippine Law Register
A Call to Arms (January 2017)
Expecting the Expected (March 2016)

Former Writer for Stache Magazine
The Hero's Journey (June 2013)
The 8 People You Become In Your Youth (June 2013)
The Best Bad Idea That Is Argo (April 2013)
Mike Ross Remembers Everything You Don't (August 2012)
Style Between the Riffs (August 2012)
Book Lovers Never Sleep Alone (June 2012)
A Spectrum of Change (December 2011)
Digital Art (October 2011)
Elements of Style (June 2011)
In Her White Dress (All-Art April 2011 issue)

Morning After Pill (Fervore: Literary Folio 2013, UP Portia Sorority)
How To Make a Blueberry Cheesecake (Kalas: Kalasag Literary Folio 2011, UP College of Arts and Letters)
January 14th (100: The Hundreds Project, UP Writer's Club)

An Ode to The Pillow Book (at New-Slang)
Introductions (at TeenInk)
One by One (at TeenInk)

   

Recently

27(.5)
Endgame
Standout Songs: "Overkill" on Scrubs
You'll be out of the dark, yeah you'll get your shot
Music of the Night
Marrakesh Treaty: More access to books for the vis...
How we weep and laugh at the same thing
Something
Conflict resolution
Book frustrations

This Is How It Doesn't Start

this is how it doesn't start, in eleven parts

Labels

An attempt at poetry; Books; Bullets; Creative nonfiction; CW; Featured; Feeble attempts at poetry; Fiction; Finger exercises; Law school; Mixtape; Playwriting; Poetry; Senioritis; Shuffle Wednesdays; Summer; The Pillow Book; Thesis; UP

Archives

February 2005; March 2005; April 2005; May 2005; June 2005; July 2005; August 2005; September 2005; October 2005; November 2005; December 2005; January 2006; February 2006; March 2006; April 2006; May 2006; June 2006; July 2006; August 2006; September 2006; October 2006; November 2006; December 2006; January 2007; March 2007; April 2007; May 2007; June 2007; July 2007; August 2007; October 2007; November 2007; December 2007; January 2008; February 2008; March 2008; April 2008; May 2008; June 2008; July 2008; August 2008; September 2008; October 2008; November 2008; December 2008; January 2009; February 2009; March 2009; April 2009; May 2009; June 2009; July 2009; August 2009; September 2009; October 2009; November 2009; December 2009; January 2010; February 2010; March 2010; April 2010; May 2010; June 2010; July 2010; August 2010; September 2010; October 2010; November 2010; December 2010; January 2011; February 2011; March 2011; April 2011; May 2011; June 2011; July 2011; August 2011; September 2011; October 2011; November 2011; December 2011; January 2012; February 2012; March 2012; April 2012; May 2012; June 2012; July 2012; August 2012; September 2012; October 2012; November 2012; December 2012; January 2013; February 2013; March 2013; April 2013; May 2013; June 2013; July 2013; August 2013; September 2013; October 2013; November 2013; December 2013; January 2014; February 2014; March 2014; April 2014; May 2014; June 2014; July 2014; August 2014; September 2014; October 2014; November 2014; December 2014; January 2015; February 2015; March 2015; April 2015; May 2015; June 2015; July 2015; August 2015; September 2015; October 2015; November 2015; December 2015; January 2016; February 2016; March 2016; April 2016; May 2016; June 2016; July 2016; August 2016; September 2016; October 2016; November 2016; December 2016; January 2017; March 2017; April 2017; May 2017; June 2017; July 2017; August 2017; September 2017; November 2017; December 2017; March 2018; April 2018; May 2018; June 2018; September 2018; October 2018; November 2018; December 2018; January 2019; February 2019; March 2019; April 2019;

Got a comment, question, violent reaction, love letter, or random piece of information you want to share with me? Just fire away. I don't bite.

(I changed my form and went back to Freedback because Ask.fm's being a bitch, requiring people to sign up for accounts before asking questions. Because I love you guys, I tweaked my ask box a bit, so that the questions will now go directly to my e-mail, but I'll be posting the answers still on my Ask.fm for convenience. TL;DR - I'll still be getting your questions so no worries. You're still free to harass me / send me your love.)

Answers

Most Frequently Asked Question

Are you a pornstar?
No, I am not a pornstar, stripper, or your friendly neighborhood call girl. It's just a fancy pseudonym with a long history, and two R's. Rawr.

Bombastarr is my personal blog and my little corner in the Internet since 2005. Yes, I started writing here when I was 13 years old (aka when I was very angsty, hormonal, and always gushing at the littlest things) -- ergo, you'd have to forgive me if you come across an old post that reeks of immaturity and slightly unpolished grammar. I did a lot of growing up here, and from the looks of it, there's still a lot of growing up to do, so I don't think I'll be leaving this place any time soon.

The domain, Bombastarr.com, was purchased on June 2014 and launched on July 2014, on the blog's ninth year (and fifth month, to be exact).

It's crazy to think that this blog is now thirteen years old, because (1) that seems like an eternity in internet years, and (2) that means if my blog were a kid, it's a teenager! That's insane.

Here's to more tales, explosive and otherwise.

If you've been living under a rock and think I'm a threat to world peace or an object of covetousness, sorry to disappoint you, folks: it's just a fancy pseudonym.

As in most things, it started in high school. It began as a joke between me and a couple of friends during our freshman year. We were practicing for a field demonstration dance which involved the use of shawls, and being the crazy-always-trying-to-be-funny person that I was (or I always attempted to be) I started doing poses with the garment. Someone started taking my picture using my phone, and one shot looked like I was posing for those B-list movies (or should it be R-list, as in R-rated?) of the vegetable-nomenclature variety. #IKYWIM. Hence, the word, "Bombastarr." Yes, very cheeky, I know, but for a 13-year-old, it was quirky enough to figure as a username. That was 2005, right around the time I trying to decide on a URL for a new blog. It's been a lot of years since, and what started as a joke became something I've eventually embraced as an identity.

Despite the many other chances I've gotten to permanently move (to Multiply, Livejournal, Tumblr, Wordpress; to a bigger platform where I can earn or use the blog as a venue for commerce), I've come to realize that Bombastarr is something I can never truly leave behind. It is a place I've grown to appreciate and love because it is a place I can call my own. It's a venue for my rants, my views, my writing. It is home, and it is who I am.

Bombastarr is a glimpse of my life: the thoughts, ideas, and stories that shape it into what it is, and what it will still become. This journal has been with me for all my crazy, often embarrassing adventures, but I'm sure there will be more anecdotes and feelings and people to write about. Which is something I'm really looking forward to. After all, you know what they say about the greatest stories - sometimes, there's still a lot that's left unwritten.

This blog is hosted by PhilHosting.net, and powered by Blogger. The layout is coded entirely by me.

Photo hosting: TinyPic, Photobucket
Question box: EmailMeForm, Ask.fm

Copyright © BOMBASTARR