The greatest comic book villains
weren't the anarchists,
the nihilists,
nor the manipulators

It were the romanticists.

Thanos snapped his fingers
and half of the universe's life disappeared.
Not to balance the scales like in the movies, no

in the comics, Thanos committed genocide
to court Death -- in the form of a woman

Mr. Freeze cryogenically froze his terminally ill wife, Nora.
Committing crimes to advance his research to treat her yet incurable disease

Dr. Doom built a machine that would project his astral body to hell.
Scarring his face in the process, in a futile attempt to rescue his mother

But I am no villain,
I do not have infinity stones
the manhandling effort
nor the cosmic intellect

though I have been defined
[nonchalant, cold, and anti-social]
by whose vocabulary lacks
to grasp what I am

Yet I do not mind,
it is human nature to simplify
what we cannot comprehend.

A theatrical free-will,
a Newtonian dissonance,
a deterministic philosophy;
the illusion of control.

But what I do fully grasp
is when fate comes between me
and you,
the sisters would know the definition
of arthritic hands.

God shall be challenged to create a stone he can't lift,

gouge my eyes out when I pull you from the depths of Tartarus,

make a Faustian bargain,

and sing unto the crossroads
until my fingers bleed plucking the strings.

I shall stand before the powers that be,
all in exchange for your soul.

But at the end of the day,
I am no romanticist, nor a villain,
not stoic, nor Machiavellian

I'm just a boy, standing in front of a girl...
like most villains, in the right circumstances,
left with no choice against something that they cannot control

But darling, if it were to come to that
I will make sure,
to conquer the world
with an iron fist on one hand
while clutching yours in the other.

Inakyat ko ang kabundukang Kordilyera,
kung saan
mataas at matayog
ang mga puno

bawat hakbang ko sa paisahe
ay mabigat ‘pagkat
malumanay.
sa sindak sa panganib
ng paghulog
at pagpalya

walang polusyon dito ng mga sasakyan,
ni init ng mga nagtataasang gusali

sa lupaing ito,
hinarap ko ang mga anito
ng aking mga
pangangamba

ako'y lumuhod,
nag-alay ng dasal
para sa aking mga hinarap
at haharapin pa

kasabay sa indayog ng tinik
na tumatarak sa aking dibdib,
sa tibok ng aking puso
ang pagkalas ng aking mga dinadala

ako'y muling umakyat;
lumipad,
sa kabundukang Kordilyera

at bumaba akong
mas mataas
at mas matayog
sa mga puno

‘This world is not for me’
I said to myself when I took a drag of my cigarette

I will never understand
human nature and its dependence
so I pretend I do

To quote Bukowski:
“and when nobody wakes you up in the morning, and when nobody waits for you at night, and when you can do whatever you want. what do you call it, freedom or loneliness?”
  
misunderstood by many that it poses a question.
it’s rhetorical;
to be free, is to be lonely
and to be lonely, is to be free

Midway through my cigarette now
‘Why am I even smoking?’
I do not derive pleasure from this, nor drinking

I chuckle at the epiphany
‘The trouble with a mask, is that it never changes’
said alcoholic Bukowski again

My old utter indifference to molds and shapes
and eternal disdain that I am still in one
no matter how the disconnect, no matter the growth

I guess this world not being for me, is paradoxically;
still for me

I am both all, and none

The anomaly of anomalies
The outlier of outliers
The misfit of misfits

I let the ember of my cigarette
burn through the filter, then to my fingers

I felt alive
then nothing

You are my consistency

The consistent spark
the consistent laughs
the consistent stares
the consistent adoration

The consistent longing
the consistent desperation

Every encounter
would just be
the consistent fall
from the consistent height

The consistent joy
with the consistent smile

As my letters run through
inconsistent strokes
I write these consistent lines

For you are my consistency

The night is dark
and the day seemed
to have blurred behind me

As I slither and fight my way
through every night of restless work
and a buried regret from a love
I let slip through my fingers
again

While a dozen
and a half brushstrokes
echoes around
All protruding one image
Until she comes around again
I lie and wait
for the sun to set
three hundred
and sixty five times

The night is dark
darker than usual

Shotgun equipped by you
Ready to fire
Locked and loaded

Aimed at every existence of mine
Its muzzle residing
at the very linings
of your lips

I feel it violently close
You pull the trigger endlessly
And we both perish
over and over in unison

And every kiss
is a fierce blow to the brain
And a gentle poke
to the heart

As the drinks
start to end
As every laughter
gets replaced with good bye's
And as they depart
The place just feels
more quiet than ever