The Plan

It was a rainy night. Three homeless men sat huddled closer together, searching comfort from each other’s warmth. Someone started a bonfire using old newspapers in an empty can of powdered milk. Somehow, the fire made the place bearable. By midnight, the rain stopped but the three men kept the fire burning, the alley warm and well-lighted.

“If you win today’s lottery,” asked the oldest in the company. “What would you buy first?”

“I’ll buy hot pan de sal,” replied the younger one. “I’ll buy a dozen. Or three.”

“I’ll buy new clothes,” said the other. “If you haven’t noticed we’re all wet. I’ll buy for us, or we’ll be dead from this cold.”

The men became quiet for a moment. They were thinking of nothing, of just surviving each moment not thinking of anything. One of them stood up, the oldest one, and began looking for dry cartons for shelter. Clouds shifted westward, clearing the nightsky visible with stars.

“I’ll buy a big house,” spoke the old man suddenly. “A mansion with many rooms. And I’ll find me a wife, and fill the rooms with food, children and laughter.”

“Ambisyoso,” blurted the youngest of the three. Both lads laughed mockingly. They were laughing, thought the old man, because they are young.

Finding his own cardboard, his own dry place for the night, the old man rested his head on the cold pavement, staring sullenly at the stars. Yes, he thought mumbling to himself, if ever I become a millionaire, I’ll buy myself a house--- no, a cottage swept by white sands facing the great oceans of the world. I’ll make sand castles all day, and watch the sunsets for the rest of my life. When I grow stronger, more older, I’ll retire and become a fisherman. But I will not eat the fishes, he said smiling at the thought, I will return them to the sea one by one, for they too are my brothers. Then the old man closed his eyes and slept soundly with peace on his lips.

“Grandpa here has money,” whispered the youngest man.

“You want me to check it,” replied the other conspiringly.

“No, we’ll do it before dawn.”

“But he’d seen our faces.”

“Don’t worry I’ll break his head so he won’t remember.”

“Don’t forget to kick his front teeth.”

“Oh yeah, one of them is gold-coated. They could sell for a couple hundreds.”

“We can break his knees too, if you want.”

“So he can’t chase us, good idea.”

Welcome...

... to the Beginning...

... Of things Unfolding.

The Helix

When viewed at an angle,
A milkfish is empirical;
Like Life dripping yellow,
In aquamarine guanine flow.

However, during illumination,
Water is quite pure, absurd.
For dipping ligands creates prisms
In helical, pristine formulations.

A mirror image is but truth
Inside the isometry of equations.
Soon when viewed at an angle,
A milkfish is precisely a Man.

Standing on Rooftops Easy

Standing on Rooftops easy,

Seeing the endless multitudes,

Munching petals of Blackberries

Or bathing in the colors of Tulips,

---I finally understood my Maker.

The way Grandmother understood,

The perfection of her crochet,

Over her gnarled, wrinkled self.

Only the Pure

She would have heaven come down. Beneath a midnoon moon, the colorant fade into several burst of fragrances, pulling her closer to verandas of violets and cherry and the many luminous things that made living beautiful. Marionette, she was called. Marion to her friends. And a name her lover only speaks that fragments her heart, then make it whole again. His voice, everywhere: the garden, the rustling foliage, the dimming streetlamp across; echoing, playing with her sanity--- overflowing of things to be spoken, yet to be uttered between breaths and whispers and God’s silence.
“This is impossible,” she would say.
“What is?” asked the voice in her head.
“The preoccupation with living.”
“Only the pure, Dearest.”

Her soul, softly, nakedly flowed through halls made warm by the dying firelight, unliving the follies that clung to her like thistles. “Oh, the walks. I remember!” Fragrant hillsides during rainy mornings; light rain, filtering the dying sunlight of summer. So pure and clean. Tabula Rasa, she recalled softly. I will be pure.

And she would fall softly, on pillows of white clouds, dreaming of Youth chasing barefooted on the low grass, laughing and smiling at Fate that cares not for the Price of Living. Nestled, protected from the cares of the world, she would allow to make herself escape the unbearable lightness of her whole being, forgetting class, divisions, caste, economy, politics and all that useless trifles which formed the axis of civility. “How idiotic!” she would exclaim like Bertha Young, and laugh like her, recalling emotions she desperately hold on to in that instantaneous slice of what she would call now: absolute rationality.
“How could the world come to this?” she would ask.
“Because you are pure,” replied not the voice, but his.
“I’m naïve,” she would declare.
“So few can see.”

I had a dream, and it was blown to ashes by the searing winds of delusion that ruled most our lives.
But seeing you smiling and contented, I often wonder, often at night when I am alone looking at you, resting peaceful, how mankind lived through their lives without a memory of pure things.

Tomorrow, she woke up. And things were as they were.

In the Language of Atoms

"To man, man is holy." --- Seneca

In the language of Atoms, I am ubiquitous;
Indivisible, minute, unknowing of borders
Of Time and space and man’s abstractions.
I am particulate, the North of Abscissa
Congruent, Cartesian, the x determinate.
(Democritus should have been a poet,
ratherThan a philosopher, or a scientist, or Greek).

In the language of what matters are made,I
am the whispering behind clouds and dust,
The silence beyond sleepy hills, slumbering
Grasslands, green fertile by running streams.
I am the play of lights and colors at Sunsets.
(Aristotle was right: There is a Life
behind Things, and one need not fear).

In the language of Atoms, I am the First Mover.
Nothing is holier or viler than me.
I am Reason. And I celebrate Life.

The Passerby

“Yes, yes I know!”

Freddy stood at the head of the table, a bottle of beer in his hand, poised like a preacher about to say the day’s sermon behind the pulpit. Everything about him was red: his face, his hands, his eyes; certain puffiness was developing on his cheeks.
“But this is precisely the agenda for tonight,” he continued. “Precisely the point of this invitation!”
Jun waited for a moment to pass. The living room trapped in the uncomfortable warmth of a summer night, the dead air still above his head, swirling only like vortices whenever it touches into dews against glasses half-filled with ice and brew. He nodded helplessly and stared beyond Fred.
“Imagine, Brother, these old people. Old people! Squabbling over money, not theirs, but ours! Dammit! What is conscience to them? Where is the honor and dignity in that? They will die in a few years, these damn thieves, and they worry not one bit about where they’re going!”
“Their reasons may not be that simple,” Jun managed to reply.
“Shut up, I’m not finished.”
“You’re drunk. We’re done here.”

Fred looked at his brother. It was a look that registered something neither regarding blood nor reason, but of an emotion that can only be likened, or at least approximate, to pity.
“You are just like the rest!”
“It’s politics. You know I hate that subject.”
“You don’t care!”
“Besides I hate arguments.”
“You are dead inside and I know it!”
Jun dug his nails on his thighs beneath the table just so the pain would keep him from responding against his older brother’s hostility. The moon was obscured briefly by a passing cloud, casting a dim shadow on the front yard, the well kept Bermuda lawn turned to black-green continuous with the deepening night. The clock said 1AM Saturday, April.

“It’s late,” said Jun standing suddenly. “I need to go home.”
“I thought this was a step, no, a leap for you.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, spending the night with me.”
“I still…”
“I thought Melly was good for you, but she had you locked up in that house.”
“Don’t go in there.”
“Jesus Christ wake up!” Fred continued neck veins visible now with the tangent light. “She left you! And when she came back, she dragged with her this …”

Fred saw the remaining image of the nightlight above their table against the closing darkness of his dimming vision. He felt a warm liquid flowing from his nose and tasted something metallic at the back of his mouth. He gave in to the swelling compulsion of laughter rising from his throat.
“You are a passerby just like me!”
“You are pathetic.”
“At least I know what matters, now!”
“I’ll talk to you in the morning.”
“They’re all going to hell; Bastards, thieves, all!”
“Another day then; when you’re sober.”

Jun walked all the way home, a good two-ride distance from his brother’s house, just so he can clear his head. No, he was not drunk. He was not sober either. He was at the very tip of inebriation, at the very edge of reason. He marveled at how he can still walk with his back straight, clear-headed and majestically calm as he went down the road, passing an old, closed lot that used to be a park. Tall, untended trees, their branches spreading out well into the street, hid the overgrowth of weeds occupying beyond the perimeter fence. That should discourage the homeless, thought Jun. The rustling of leaves accompanied his footsteps, as he passed under the arc of brightness made by a flickering lamppost. He could see briefly, between the alternating light and darkness, the colors of seasonal flowers in full bloom. They must be beautiful during the day, he said to himself. Unfortunately, he won’t pass this way again. He stood there absently for a long time.

When he got home, the first thing he did was kiss his son.