Mother, I am insane 
for leaving the desk lamp open at night, 
but leave the man in the metro train out of this. 
Let him sing, 
let him ring his bell, 
let him bring his voice to a halt only when the train stops bolting shut with mouths full of sweltered souls and stolen spirits.

Mother, I am insane 
for performing poetry in my room, 
but leave the wandering women in the streets alone. 
Let them pet their cats, 
let them whet the air with fairy dust, 
let them lust for sea and breathe, seething, the traffic of stop signs, before they tow their trail of cats into the heavens.

Mother, I am insane 
for twisting my hair,
for shaving my head
for every tale; I’ve tried to tell the truth,
that I am not insane for loving another man, but that I loved at all to begin with.

Mother, I am insane 
for yelling at my pillows whenever the sun sets too high above my bed, 
but do not yell into my students’ heads thinking they are all like me.
Let them think that they are better.
Let them think that they are more than me—because they are.
Let them think the stars on their hands will send them into space, because they might, and they will look upon our ashes brighter than the night. 

Mother, I am insane
for looking at the sun beneath the clouds and thinking of tomatoes,
but leave my brothers in their straitjackets alone.
Let them sit in silence until they discover their language;
let them language all they want until they think of breath and use it sparingly.
Let them paint with their elbows a picture of the sun as a tomato; let them be starfish and mermaids in space, because we cope with life in our own ways. But never let them drift into its depth without a spacesuit and an endless tank of love.

Mother, I am insane 
because the world has been hard on you and you have been harder on me,
but leave yourself alone
and let yourself breathe the air I breathe,
and let us dance as mother and child upon the fields of peanut butter and jelly.

Mother, I Am Insane

A mash-up (sort of) of Miley Cyrus's "Wrecking Ball" and Katy Perry's "Firework." Just for fun. ;)

Fireball

The storm returns the lips
it stole into the night’s torrential claws,
and the sun finds its way
and tickles my feet with its heat:
We crawl in the morning; kiss
in the noon

You told me
that the tree understands the clouds
only in the sense
that paper understood the dot that landed
along the lines that, once, we rode;

that the sand is darker on my skin
than when you found it lying in the sky
waiting for the seraphs to submerge it
into hair, then flesh, then metal;

that the eyes on every nonexistent flower
return a petal to the nose
that, once, could smell;
and, twice, envision;
thrice could reach for open caskets for your breast.

When we do not kiss tonight,
this is what I picture

this is what I feel, this is what I know:
that when I kiss you, I must
hold you as the tree understands the clouds
as it has never before, under, stood.

Prescience As The Flood Drains

Don’t think I don’t see you at the back of the class whispering about something that isn’t nouns or pronouns.

Don’t think I don’t see you out in the hall, strutting about like you own the world. And maybe you do own the world, because I’m 6 years too late, but I would hate to think what that does to you. I would hate to think because you tell me you hate to think.

Don’t think I don’t see you munching on that bag of chips, because I hear it crunch, crunch, crunch clear in the quietude of my classroom. Well, if you like to eat so much, here’s some food for thought:

Don’t smile at me like you’re not afraid. I am afraid of getting struck by lightning, and you’re afraid of failing and doing it over. 

Don’t tell me I’m not doing my job until you have done your worksheets.

Don’t tell me you’ve had enough, because the world never sleeps until you have had enough of this.

And don’t tell me you will never use the 8 parts of speech, because you live them every day:

‘Relationship’ is a noun—but so is ‘perseverance.’

And this [*points to head*] and this [*points to chest*] are the only antecedents to the pronouns you need. D’you hear what I said? This one and this one are the only determiners you need.

‘Need’ is also a verb, so you need to buckle down—and you ain’t going down, because ‘believe’ is a verb, and I believe in you for the both of us.

You are amazing. ‘Amazing’ is an adjective. And I want you to know that when you walked into this room: You are amazing. Could you repeat that for me—I am amazing! [Audience: I am amazing!] I can’t fucking hear you! [I am amazing!]

‘Fucking’ is also an adverb. When you passed that test, you were fucking amazing! And if you failed, I want you to fucking try again. Because it’s true what they say about tests—they don’t make your future, but they sure as hell build character.

‘Over’ is a preposition. I’m sure you’re parents’ll be over the moon with joy, but you have to stop doing it for them, and do it for yourself. And don’t burn the midnight oil for work; do it to learn.

Because everything else comes in conjunction to giving it your all. Of all your FANBOYS I am the biggest:
For your potential is as endless as the number of stars we have yet to uncover;
And you do not deserve anyone less than the best,
Nor should you think of yourself as anyone less than the best;
But that doesn’t make the road less traveled is any less steep,
Or maybe that means we just haven’t seen it all 
Yet;
So, if you wanna tell me you don’t have it in you to try, what am I leaving behind? What are you leaving behind?

Parts Of Speech

I try my hand at impressions. Norm Lewis, Philip Quast, Russell Crowe, and more!

Stars - Les Miserables (Impressions)

Run Away With Me

My melodica cover of "The Rains of Castamere" from Game of Thrones. My hands were super shaky throughout the whole thing. Haha.

The Rains of Castamere (Melodica Cover)

Mother and her child have found their voices on the highborn jeepneys, dodging
blazing, two-wheeled chariots of isolationists that breeze through time at our expense,
 wiping shoes and banging plastic bongos with the words that fade from our scrapped-tank language, cruising 
at the yonic doorframes of the moving black-hole platforms where they sing.

Mother and her child leave phantom envelopes precarious upon our laps.
Perhaps the definitions of “magnanakaw” and “nawawala” have traversed into oblivion’s love shack and then left us paralyzed upon the vinyl seats,
zipping through cardboards and tattered sheets containing a heartbeat teetering uncontrollably in a hunger for place, unlaced on the streets.

The voices have existed far too long beneath the candy walls that we’ve assumed they’ve been assimilated into our primetime broadcast:
Like the toxic air of ‘like’-ing into which we’re weaned to be an inverse language (bless you, Pepe);
Like escapist plane rides to the sexy buzz of fat Olympus where the words are understood and relished into arroz caldo on a rainy day of wading rat piss streets clogged up by politician feces that we fund by breathing;
Like blinking off  6 a.m. words to zombie toward EDSA monochromes and be victimized by MMDA officers who promise change but never change, as loose change from a bus falls, promised changes and all;
The circadian circuit of the thirteen women who in fatalism have become machines by the finely worded arguments of baboon thespians who fuck machines that vote for baboon thespians;
Or my brothers on the war fields who will never dance as I have stumbled time and time to Pop and Folk and absent bodies;
Like C who plants his seeds on our tiny patch of land to suffocate us weeds, my half-half-half-breed brothers, sisters breeding to be weeded out by C who cannot see through deeds and deeds demolished by the “freed”;
Like light-headed bodies flitting past the yellow tiles to zip past C and President and Spaniards—to be seen—to see the two heads of Bathala—to be freed in a stellar collision breaking static chains, congenital;
Like rainbow dynamos all loved and thrown into the Pasig River’s feverish arms
for harming sanctity of marriage with dirty ice cream, homo breaths;
for damning holy government with holy watered rice fueling activist machinery;
for tarnishing the good name of C and another whose name starts with C by using the voice, Pepe, with which you fell in a bed of American shrubbery, raised from the dead, like some literary Jesus turned to wine, turned to money, turned to Damaso in golden lights;
Like burnt, burning chairs in smoky, pyre politics all suffocating dislocated causes causing pamphlets crumpled. Mangled words. Only fire sits on chairs tonight:
Lalahon sings with voice unheard.
Lalahon waves her flag but is not seen.
Lalahon burns in thinning cinders.

Lalahon withers. Lalahon dies.


Circadian Circuit - Part II

This poem is rated SPG:
It contains scenes with themes, language, violence, sex, horror, or drugs,
Which may not be suitable for children.
Strong parental guidance is advised.

You pulled my legs over
Your shoulders in the pool,
And a lifetime shifted
Between water and our flesh—
But they cut away the seconds:
We were dolled-up husks
Of star dust still suppressed
In a suitcase, New York-bound
By theocratic artistry.
Sex is always public in Manila.

When you looked into my eyes,
I swear, I felt the earth move;
You grabbed me by the arms;
I drifted into your penny can eyes—
But they cut away the seconds:
We were two men on a bench;
Two men staring at the clouds
That looked like sunflowers;
Two men, strange and stranger; skipped a second.
Two men in Manila: always the horror flick.

Nighttime party, thick-plate fingers
Barely grazed my bony leg but,
God, the electricity that surged across my body
Into pastel sheen upon my brown-splashed face—
They cut away the seconds:
We were hand and leg in asymptotic knots
Devoid of clarity in a removed split-second
Influx of dragonfly jazz between two men
Pulled from reality’s ribcage.
Dragonfly jazz is illegal in Manila.

Your lips, infused with absent springtime
In Manila, crumbled in finality to mine.
I sighed, sunflower in dragonfly jazz intact,
In tactful hide and seek in zombie telecasts.
They cut away the seconds:
Love in language, strange; queer love, horror;
Hands holding hands, violent in water; sex;
You are my drug; reality in my spirit—
The MTRCB has cut away the seconds.
What will I ever tell my children?


Filipino TV by Rigel Ordinario read by Rigel Ordinario

At one-year old: I wished for nothing
than the sound of planes entering my lips;
At two: I wished for something
other than the sound of my mother singing, 
people, strangers in my house singing “Happy Birthday”—
Happy Birthday to you; then you can open your gifts.

Three: I knew what a birthday cake was,
and I knew to wish for something 
other than the toy cars they told me I should play with because I was a boy.
At four: I wished for a brother,
and instead received a baby sister in September; I lost my father that year.
At five and six, then seven: I wished for my father to come back.
And each and every year, I lost my faith
in birthday cakes—I’d blow
and blow
out the candles; my lips had grown
tan in sugar and candles; I’d fondle the boxes
to see if the Birthday Granting Gods had heard my prayer.
They hadn’t.

At eight: I lost my faith completely, and ate my cake like any good boy whose birthday it was that day.
Nine: We partied poolside, 
cool water, Coke and Sprite and pork and cancerous food,
but I was a fool to wish again for you; 
the candles were probably broken.
At ten: I knew they were not. I put gum in my sister’s hair,
because she was a girl and I was a boy with no father to tell him no.
Eleven, twelve: I wished for nothing; my mother told me he was dead,
and Big Boys no longer got gifts for their birthdays.

Thirteen: I wrote novels of leaving and fairies; impossible things like fathers, publishers.
Fourteen: I wrote poems till I rhymed ‘heart’ and ‘apart’; ‘go’ and ‘don’t go’; and ‘sniff’ and ‘snuff’; ‘English,’ ‘Tagalog.’ I learned, I learned that I was better than my birthday wishes.

Fifteen: I fell in a screaming pit of sticky ‘love, love, love’s and ‘skies and blues above.’ A girlfriend was all I wished for, until
Sixteen: I discovered I was gay, and the only thing I wished for was that I wouldn’t be.
Seventeen: I loved myself and spent my birthday daydream ripping through the socks I got on my birthday about the boy in my class—
how he smelled like mangoes (I wished for mangoes); 
how he sang like airplane propellers (I wished for airplanes in my lips); 
how he looked at me like ripe tomatoes (I wished the tomatoes would grow in our garden);
how his chest felt like poetry in my mind;
Eighteen: I wished I was a better poet.
Nineteen: All the poets I have been have been pretentious sons of
B+ poems in the English class of my mind. 
I forgot to make a wish on my nineteenth birthday.

I am twenty-years old today,
and I am tired of blowing candles
if I cannot swallow the cake that comes with the wish.
I do not wish to be strong—I will be strong.
I do not wish to be happy—I will be happy.
I do not wish to forgive myself—I forgive myself.

The 20th Candle

Rigel Ordinario is a spoken word poet in the predominantly Catholic Philippines. By day, he studies to become an English teacher; by night, he doubles as a writer and Pokemon trainer. #SpeakPhils

roardinario

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