pangarap cong maging pintor

Painter’s Room

A four-post bed here, a 1986 stereo there,
This room will stay the same, father says.

The smell of oil paints and egg yolk will also remain,
It goes the same for the patches of colors on the floor.

His brushes and palettes will need not to be burned.
His paintings will all go to the family heirloom.

With hair in burnt-brown curls and eyes askew,
That portrait alone will hang on the wall.

His smile, together with his shoes and plastic fruits, will
Forever echo a sigh: silent, unmoving and still.

Tonight, mother will secretly gather the photos from its frames
And will read the unsent letters hidden inside pillowcases.

She will empty the glass jars filled with murky waters
And will bleach unused canvasses white for keepsake.

Can I have his guitar and CD collections, Papa?
No, father says, everything will stay the same.

This room will be untouched, un-trespassed.
This room will stay the same, father says.

Except for the heap of laundry on corner unwashed
And your brother that still hangs alone by the door.

let’s sing a song

The Royal Song

I write songs on this white shiny
bowl, sitting like a king
on his ceramic throne,
gathering distant inspiration
from muses locked up
within walls of roof tins
and stain-old plywood.

Up in the ceiling of cobwebs
in this comfort outpost,
a bulb hangs and glares
in a yellow-dull stare,
solitary and rusting,
lighting the darkness of
this kingdom of cold, mossy tiles,
illuminating subjects
of born silence:
a soap dish, shampoo sachets,
and the living sound of water
dripping endlessly down the drain.

I scribble words to describe
the rat stealing glances on
my unpolished toenails
while a black little spider,
shining in the dark,
moving in a polygonal dance,
weaves another house of silk,
adding another lot to its estate of dust.

Standing up to wash my past,
I gather the muses of the ripples
and of the undaunted scents.
I flush the world and there goes another song,
singing its way down the cesspool
where all my works they say should belong.
I leave my position and kingdom
to live a life of an ordinary man.

Tomorrow night, my throne will sing
and I shall reign again.