dahil wara katapusan an duon san mga mata
mabubuhay akong minamatay
san dating kaaway ko sa lawas na ini
sa lawas na ini naghambog an talawon
pinapagubtik an kaaluhan na nagpapamuda
muda na nagpupukaw saakon gurugab-i
kendi na nagpapahibi
mesias na naghahala-hala

magiging madalas an pagsid-ip niya sa bintana
para laen ko makita an liwanag
malaog siya sa kahon ko
laen para magkawat
kundi dagdagan an pagub-at
makasakat an pagbagsak
siya na ako
masurat tula.

~Written by Melton Balicano
(a bikol dialect)


since these eyes have been weighed down on unending
i shall live while being slain by an old foe in this body
this body where the craven had once boasted
surging chagrins that blaspheme
blasphemy that rouses this corpse in the dark
treats that shed tears
a messiah that taunts.

he shall constantly peep through the window
so that I see no light
he will break in my casket
not to thieve
but to burden further
the downfall shall rise
then he becomes me
penning a poem.

~a translation of Balicano's masterpiece
Glenn Sentes

You’ll never know how many times a day I fantasize about running a blade across my skin.
Feeling that dull burn and the pull of my flesh against the blade.
The sweet crimson relief pouring from my soul.
I feel the blackness in me.
It’s toxic, flooding my veins with poison.
Causing sepsis within my heart.
Killing what is left of me.
I need to release it before it eats me alive.
It can’t get out if I don’t make an opening!
It’s fingers reach through the wound and slowly tears me apart.
Pulling at my skin until the hole is big enough for it to slink out of.
I am frozen.
Forever haunted by my shadow.
Forever tormented by her words.

Snared heart kept, imprisoned could be potential dying day,
Lips regaled in ischaemia, blue blood,flows.....cold,
Face scarlet,temperatures up, pyrexia rules, as she tries too cool,
Mouthing  strange babble,  
She's talking in tongues,
Beaded mask  sparkling,  droplets trickle,
Tachycardic, heart beats, trying not to escape this life desperately, Heart trying not to explode!
the forties....roaring!
She breathes, so fast...  the forties....roaring!
It's  tragic,like everything's trying to meet  demand with supply........!
Inadequately,
Currently on remand, waiting for  her sentence to be be passed,
Docs and nurses they rally, running with obs,
All taking their roles, while doing their jobs,
Mews activated, doc visits he's, anxious,
Iv antibiotics he orders,
In plastic sachet, hanging up high, hereby, lies the awaited decision, if she'll  have the will to live, or will she die...
Hope not!
It's not in an instant, but, recovery apparent, as breathing slows below twelve,
Heart beat, it settles,
Her kidneys show function,
Her temperature chills slowly, 36.5, she's still alive,
Thank God,
She got off the train at sepsis junction!
Copyright Livvi Kent (RGN) 11 /04/2013

To smile at the carnation,
So gallantly growing,
At peace with this world.
In silence...
I tune in a short conversation
Between minds and bodies -
Incredibly cold.

My heart has surrendered
To nightingale's song.
I dream of Rhode Island...
I'm leaving! So long!

The winds of Sonora,
My nannies and friends.
My love for Evora -
My tears know no end.

The shadows of Mordor,
With sunrise they fade.
Grace, Kindness and Splendour:
Three Buddhas in jade.

I feed roastede pidgeone
To poor ryebread crumbs.
Avoiding curmudgeons,
I'm playing professional dumb.

Caressing the grass-blades,
I live in a drop.
Arcadian arcade:
There, God has no job.

In hurting the Nature
We drain our souls.
Let’s all at once cease
Being ignorant ghouls.

...To stroke the carnation,
To gently kiss buds.
To eat simple meals
Like lentils and spuds.

To carry some water,
To chop down some trees.
To stop feeling rotten.
My soul is at peace.

The time is forever,
The purpose is now.
No “when” and no “where”,
No “why” and no “how”.

The light effervescent,
The sound circumaural,
The hearts ever-pleasant,
The dreams polynomial.

...Collapsing eternity,
Upheaving humanity,
Rock-bottom fraternity,
Defying the gravity.

Creative destruction
Is staunchly forbidding.
The wisdom of ancients
Is widely-misleading.

Depleting our anger
Is key to survival.
Harnessing the hunger,
Improptu revival.

Combustion of senses,
Precarious laughter.
Incurable sepsis,
Delirious canter.

Regrets are forgotten,
Bright days are all-cherished.
Let’s live unbegotten
Until we all perish.

13.06.2012

They say we are free.
Free to bark, if no one listens.
Free to scribble, if no one prints.
Free to inhale, if it doesn’t cost too much.

This is not anthem.
This is not lament.
This is autopsy.

Let the ink blister the page
for those whose stories
were throttled before sunrise.
Let the silence rupture into
a thunderclap of what should have been...


Judas of the Womb

Her name was reduced to a whisper.
Her death, a technicality.

She died of sepsis? No!
She died of legislation—
the sanctified paralysis of law.

Izabela.
Thirty years haunted by patriarchy.
Twenty-two weeks into a doomed gestation.
One human life overwritten
by a cluster of cells wrapped in legalese.

“They’ll wait until it dies,” she wrote,
"Or I will."
She did.

The state shrugged.
Three men in coats clutched
their degrees like shields.
Guilty, but not too guilty.
Penalized, but not inconvenienced.

And somewhere behind a mahogany desk,
a BBC editor ticked the
"Do Not Disturb Poland" box.
Because truth, like radiation,
is best contained to domestic fallout.


The Jester Beheaded by Branding

He made them laugh.
He made them uncomfortable.
Then he made them look at themselves.
That was the mistake.

He survived presidents.
But not the quarterly earnings report.

The axe did not fall.
It slid.

No cancellation. Just de-prioritization.
No outrage. Just polite press releases
and quiet exits.

The revolution will not be televised.
It was tested poorly with key demographics.


Soft Guillotines

Not fire.
Just foam padding and soft lighting.

No jail.
Just "violated community guidelines."

No riot gear.
Just Terms of Service.

They won’t stop you.
They’ll just stop broadcasting you.
They’ll hide you in the cellar of the algorithm,
behind un-skippable ads and SEO oblivion.

Your words are welcome—
as long as they sell soap.
Your outrage is valid—
if it fits in a drop-down menu.


The Global Echo

Warsaw, Manhattan, Manila, Paris.
Different names for the same soft boot.
The same velvet rope
around the neck
of the narrative.

They don’t ban the voices.
They dilute them.
Filter them.
Render them un-shareable,
un-searchable, un-fundable.

We live in a marketplace of ideas,
where truth competes
with cat videos and loses.


The Hollowing

When liberty must pass through a monetization filter,
it is not liberty.

When satire must first clear advertising compliance,
it is not satire.

When journalism fears its own clicks,
when editors redact themselves,
when profit margins call the morning meetings—
we are not in a democracy...

We are in a theme park of tolerated dissent.


The Sliver of Soil

But still—yes, still.

There are cracks in the concrete,
uncatalogued by surveillance,
unpolished by PR.

In those fractures, we gather.
Not to shout—but to build.
Not to trend—but to outlast.

We will forge our voices into chisels.
We will scratch our stories into steel.
We will be inconvenient.
Unprofitable.
Relentless.

So write what they won’t publish.
Speak what they won’t air.
Sing the verses
that sour their brand strategy.

And if we rise, not in hashtags,
But in habit—
not in virality, but in volume—
not in fury, but in fidelity—

then liberty may yet bloom.
Not fast.
Not free.
But truly ours.

Liquify,

Modernize,

Affix,

Me.

Dicast parts,
Formalize,
Metastasize.

I am Growing this agar's too small.

Feral,
Lycanthropy,
Hearts.

Through the stigma,
my bones bleed,
my wreaths hanging,
Sagging.
Of unwelcome,
all my being.
of unwelcome,
all my being.

The Truth of getting older,
the senescence of emotion
The people we love and once were,
Are gone forever.

I am not for this heartless place.
I am but Peter Pan,
understanding.

A bitter struggle,
While trampled underfoot.

Of a world,
Not built for us.

Built for no one.

When the eggs all hatch
inside of our bellies
and begin to bore holes
we will bear it
because we're
not good enough
for a doctor to touch

When we give birth to the babies of flies
we will love them like our own.
Because they're
not good enough
for better parents.

When our fly babies grow up
they will ask us why
they are so different than the other kids
We will tell them it's
because they are better
than the other kids.

When we die slowly and painfully
from sepsis when the holes
in our stomachs finally leak out
because we were too engrossed
in our fly babies
We will wonder if it was worth it.

After our funerals,
attended by our fly babies
and our parents
there will be hor d'eourves
with which our children
will mate.

Our dads and our moms
will eat the food
crunchy with their eggs
because they are not good enough
to ignore free food
we will be reborn.

And leave holes in the stomachs of those who made us not good enough.

Staccato's of clasping chains.. feverishly flaying your wrists...

As a rabid dog chewing off its own limbs to crawl away.


You hide in my shadow.. The only place where they cannot get you...

While your children burn...

A sour scent of ***** floods richly within these forsaken walls...

A tranquilizing melody of ****** gargling


I will mutilate the memory...

I will stain the status you built...

I will pluck your fruit and devour it with voracious appetite

Gnawing your rotting tongue bit by bit...

i drink sepsis that drips from the shank of your thighs..

My hunger everlasting...

Ravenously, depraved, my claws rend and maim your angelic wings...


A carpet of feathers gusts at your final gasp....

A cold lick on your eyeballs...

We drag you into our grave...

Rats...

Swarms of rats...

And i wear a crown baptized and blessed of your blood....

Adorned with warm and beating entrails of the defeated and the devoured...

Bricked in walls....


I can still hear you clawing during the  most sleepless of sleeps...

And taste your rotting tongue...

By your leave, let I slumber once forever..
And my moment shall never realize itself.
My portfolio possess no wherewithal wager,
My seat of affection is now dull and rough.

Sepsis leak a foggy black since blight is nigh,
The sea is feeble whilst the sun shine naught.
The corpse of venal men flow unhealthy dye,
Henceforth pervade the soil with miasmic malt.

Lest my mistimed demise be not remembered,
Shall the script mark y'all failed to deter abuse.
Today my ember is snuffed and plundered,
On the morrow a bright star will rise, I muse.

Heed thine auguries borne from frigid stupor,
Vicious tendrils cascade upon my rigor mortis.
O gray vision as though gazing through vapor,
Hear that silent gasp veiled under my spicy lips.

I aimlessly drifted in teenage years,
From subtle scion to zaftig plebe.
Seen phony glory, vanquished fears,
And the stench of a wicked glebe.

From below, saw the stars up high,
Igniting horizons with callow wonder.
Beheld colossal beauty with mine inner eye,
Begged for chained thoughts asunder.

Amidst the serene flock to be slain,
Oft' a titan, seldom a vacant savant.
Known sorrow, elation, gain, vain, pain,
This mortal hour, hear joyful lament.

How quick we are to bid farewell,
How slow for friendship to pierce the cloth.
The rhythmic ache of that darkened knell,
The sobbing whimpers for a lover's warmth.

Nix for reciprocated amity, yet!
My seat of affection thrives in twilight.
Herein discipline is adamantly set,
Whence shall this ****** ire take flight?

Into the night that covers my soul,
Unleash that verdant star I see.
The divine abyss have taken its toll,
I pray the shadow is only me.

Note the ease to neglect one's clan,
Yet savored glee of reunions by blood.
Fury cease my elder ties, an infant plan,
By filial ardor, I still kneel in mud.

Star-shine ablaze onto vivid blooms,
Arise the stench of broiling debris.
Beauteous summer-tide metronomes,
The sinking scythe follow gales of peace.

Labor come sweat yield sweet fruition,
Tis annual come the bronze harvest.
Wrongful vengeance seek humble redemption,
Autumn under siege of well-fed zest.

Stormy vista rime graying meadows,
Entrench the sepsis by the ice age.
Taste weeping woe of guilty widows,
Lest their beloved hunger in cage.

Arise young lilac out of barren frosts,
Touch the vital aura to begin anew.
Altruists gladly pay auric costs,
To stalk vile leviathan into dew.

May stones bear indistinct distinction,
So my stride shall stumble and falter.
Peace paint heroes of sluggish fiction,
Chaos rouse prodigies from quiet slumber.

They must not hear of
things that have gone on,
under this roof,
during these hours,
they would scream at the top of their lungs,

You do not want to know,
pressing intentions
why his waist bulges over his belt,
why his face is so red,
a murky sky,
eyes slits in ebony stone.

she is gone,
someone must know why,
others are left to guess and to gossip,
hens clucking,
you must not know,
what they whisper with thickened tongues,

There is a kind of pride,
in being the one that sees and knows,
nervous,
menaced by petty stimulants,
Events become like a sepsis,
webbed,
sickness  multiplying,

years kind pass like temporary paralysis,
fear is  a currency,
sometimes.

Damaging thoughts invade my mind,
enveloping all the parasitic positivity
poised to curtail them.

Resurfacing memories surge like viruses;
enlisting others to help send
septic suggestions racing through my
Synapses. Converting creativity
into anxious apprehension
Overcoming the entirety of my being…

No one understands this feeling.