How to Carve a Roast Baby

Everyone is a secret-sadist-butcher;
craving for little carvings of baby in a platter.
(If it's below three, I don't consider it murder.)

Mothers are natural baby carvers,
trained from teen years to pierce flesh with a skewer,
Everyone is a secret-sadist-butcher.

Baby's meat when grilled is always tender,
it drips with juice to keep separate in a saucer.
(If it's below three, I don't consider it murder.)

The only way to check if it's dead is with an iron poker,
to gouge soup eyes and serve in a dish made of pewter.
Everyone is a secret-sadist butcher.

I checked for bones under her bed of flowers,
to see if I had there a family of little brothers.
(If it's below three, I don't consider it murder.)

Large families go poor until they make it better,
but to cook a few babies shouldn't be quite a disaster.
Everyone's a secret-sadist-butcher.
(If it's below three, I don't consider it murder.)

The Clothes Dryer

There was once a little boy who liked getting dirty. He would spend all the day out in the sun, rolling around the wet grass and getting grass stains all over his pajamas. His mother, who was not particularly cruel, but ran ship of the house, had to care for his three other younger siblings. He made her life completely miserable, by climbing trees, and doing all the nasty things that little boys would do. This included eating mangoes from these trees and letting the yellow, sticky juice stain his hands, his face and his fingers. To avoid getting punished for his ways, he would always wipe them clean on his pajamas' pant legs. He would run home at the strike of 6 pm, when his mother would ring the dinner bell. His family was accustomed to running home when the dinner bell rang. One day, his mother was particularly tired and saw him running home covered in mud, grass stains and the various dirt that stuck to him like second skin. She marched up to him halfway down the porch steps and grabbed him by his ear. He yowled and yelped and kicked all the way as she dragged him up for a bath. But because he was being particularly stubborn, his mother stuck him in the washing machine for thirty long minutes. Right when he was hiccuping bubbles, and sputtering soap, his mother took him out of the wash into the dryer. She stuffed him in amidst his protests and watched him with a satisfied smirk, as he spun around and around like a lost balloon, spiraling out after a long day traipsing to the sun. And when he was done, his clothes, like all clothes are customary of doing, began to shrink. It restricted him first in the midsection, at first too tight to breathe. When it began to cut against skin, the progression ran faster until it became a solid blade that cut against him. Grinding against bone and flashing. Next to be severed was his head, it lolled against the bone like a giant cherry tootsie-pop. His hands and feet too, tumbled alongside his lollipop head, like waving children.

The Aggressively Cheap Car

Who said that love could not be born out of the
backseat of a beat up yellow Volkswagen Beetle
circa 1961, as it cruises down EDSA
and swerves from lane to lane
like a slow dying turtle that sputters out gas?
These storytellers don't know the legend
of the map at the back of your hand
and the kisses I mistakenly lay on your closed eyes,
because of the rocks and the speed bumps and the yellowing gutter
that reflected stars more telling than Van Gogh could imagine.
What do they know of the whispered sighs from you
as you lifted your shoulders in a half-shrug
and shifted to let your head rest against my shoulder,
I felt I was created for one sole purpose to sit as your prop
as I whispered “I love you” in the same breath and lull
as John Lennon's “Imagine” being sung in the bar,
both of which could not permeate your (un)consciousness.

Houdini (06/07/07)

You to me are effacing,
slow against the wind.
Like the sunless sand in the ocean,
you are the stark contrast of Picasso,
reborn to create Monet.
The summer wind has faded,
along with it your hand
or the whispered words of Neruda
from the desperate poets' land.
On the empty nights you echo,
like records long ago--
faded struggling artists,
now buried deep below.
You to me are effacing,
slow against the wind.
like stiletto walks- on staccato,
and the wilting deep within.

I Waited and You Didn't Show (02/17/06)

I waited

In the strictest sense,

In my best attire,

With borrowed hours.

To pass time,

I counted stars,

And paused at blur-three hundred.

The moon was familiar,

The shrapnel that lined the sky an ominous calling

I dreamt.

Until everyone was a glassy reflection in a bent silvery sliver spoon.

All and sundry passed,

In a long, drunken samba

With limbs and limbs and pairs of feet

I wait, and I count.

Pliant (06/10/07)

You to me, dear, stir
something i thought i've neglected--
in dire need of replacing
(i have hired a surgeon for this purpose)

his hands were unsteady,
his scalpel fingers cold.
i heard the voice of george harrison from beyond,
singing about the sun. but the anesthesia wore off

quicker than ticking i was displaced,
into something worse than that note between
the third and fourth fret.
the ringing sounds of effects multiplied like children

from amplifiers.(the droning bass reminding me of you.)
i am a patient, up for your observation.
(do you like what you see?)
we shall fix it to cater to your needs.

they say, i have fine teeth.
(do you want me to bite, do you?)
we shall file it down into violent streaks.
there is no solution, too small for me.