three six five ;

 Maybe it wasn’t the froot loops, is what I was told.

“No, no. You idiot. You don’t understand. It was a dream.”

“Why are you so upset?”

“She died. And I couldn’t help her.”

“But she was a dream. She isn’t real.”

But the tears were real, as was the grief, as was the loss. I would know; upon waking i tried to hang on to every sliver of my dream self, a man with a hat, weeping over a desk. 

When I realized I wasn’t a man, and that I didn’t own any kind of hat I stopped crying, but the aftertaste of the dream remained, images of a woman on the floor asleep in her own blood. Salt at the edge of the tongue, thickly sour at the back of the mouth. Like a saltwater cave, hollow and dripping lime. The taste of despair? 

Half a blue loop bled into the white of the milk and i tried drowning it with my spoon. The blue must have blended with the milk, who knows if the milk wasn’t white anymore but of a bluish tinge, but I couldn’t see the difference yet. If she wasn’t real then why have I felt so much, too much? 

I couldn’t see the difference yet.

Katrina Del Rosario

you and I are (broken) bottles of beer:

residues of last night’s affair
sit
inside
(what is left of) us.
these last drops left

                untouched

are our souls:
golden
and (almost)
transparent—
capable of producing body heat.

one day,
our souls will be poured
unto the same glass.
and they will become one
as our (broken) hearts float
atop that glass of leftover beer:

the ashes that escape
from lit cigarettes—
they will dance in the air
but eventually
fall into place.

Literal situation: The persona and the beloved will fall into place.

Interpretation: Same thing. It’s not really that hard to understand. Love is a vice, people are vices, and this just goes to show that people, here, or the beloved are like Sid and Nancy or that, like in Ang Shiu, The Store Keeper by Manuel Viray, humans “are made out of the same soot and silt”, which translates: humans are dirty.

Reaction: I’ve never been a big fan of these kinds of poems. It only sounds like they’re repeating the same themes over and over again. I see no epiphany, no nothing. I’m just being honest. The strikethrough represents my personal interpretation of how this written thing could be salvaged.

Note: No, I’m not picking on anyone. I’m using New Criticism. This is the internet. This is a blog about writing. I’m not that low. At least I took the interest to read it. No, I don’t hate the author. If I did the name would be here or I would have not given the time of day. I do have a lot of time in my hands. This is called constructive criticism. If this were to berate I would have hinted on the syntax. :)

1. I am a tiny piece of gravel
2. on the ground 
3. among others as you walk by.
4. I could be the piece of gravel 
5. with a size that sits perfectly 
6. on the palm of your hand 
7. before you throw me away 
8. into the sea
9. or somewhere
10. you can never see me
11. be that tiny piece of gravel
12. that clings 
13. onto the sole of your shoe.
14. So I could be with you
15. with every footstep.
16. So that I am with you,
17. until the day comes 
18. I can no longer hold on.

Literal situation: Person who wrote this proclaims of being a piece of gravel on the ground. Then when the beloved walks on the narrator, who is a piece of gravel, stone, asphalt — whatever— the narrator may just cling on to the sole of the beloved’s shoe up unto the narrator gets dislodged.

Analysis: Well, the literal situation had described the feeling of being a human doormat in the name of love. This untitled (for now) piece of writing states that a person becomes small in the face of love. The persona in the untitled (for now) piece of writing also states in lines 1-8 that the gravel-self, may be plucked out of the shoe or out of the ground and may sit on the palm. (This kind of reminds me when you sit on the floor and those annoying pieces of rocks get stuck on your hand. Those little pieces of rocks tend to be more itchy and do deserve to be picked out of the palm and hurled off somewhere.) In any case, the persona of the poem is stating that the lover shall cling to the beloved, even if the beloved may no longer want to be there anymore. And that the little piece of gravel, which is the personal will hold on until s/he can and then just leave after s/he’s fed up with the foot that’s been stepping on her.

Judging from what is written, love is treated as a teenage romance similar to that of Twilight. I’ve read the books and this is how Bella exactly feels towards Edward. The glittering vampire may opt to devour her, but she does not care. Why? Because she is in love. But in this poem there’s some kind of retribution for the speaker. What is it, you ask? Lines 17 - 18 states that, when the persona has realized that she can no longer be there, s/he will release herself from the shoe and s/he will be that little piece of gravel — that obstacle on the road, that will make any passersby’s walking uncomfortable.

Thus the moral of this writing is that never be that little piece of gravel on anyone’s shoe. Or the other moral of this writing is that love makes you realize you may be a difficult person to deal with. Or the moral of this writing is that you can be easily replaced by that someone you actually wanted to be with. Yeah, something like that.

 Note: I put strikethroughs there to at least, in my case, make this written piece of work look less like a twilight poemfic. Yes, I am mean. But was on the internet, meaning to say it’s free for all to react on. No, this isn’t cyberbullying. Did I name any names? Did I link any links? No, I am just an alumni of that organization and no versus any organization or guild. Yes, I know who the author of this is. Yes, I used New Criticism. Look closer, no biography and situation included except that of maybe the leading guys of Twilight.

We don’t own anything.

Our faces aren’t ours to look at. Our names aren’t ours to call. Our bodies weren’t built for us, but for others to touch, feel, live for, live from. Men were made for women, and women were made for men, puzzle pieces that allow themselves to fit once, only once.

And then we made mirrors. People started touching themselves and pleasuring themselves and calling out their own names and man loved men or men and women, and women loved women or women and men, they all loved both an all and everyone and hated and left whenever they pleased. 

In the end we are all rebels.

Katrina Del Rosario

WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST HUMAN MEMORY?

At first he was thinking how the walls would be clean, the furniture in their places, her body nowhere on the floor had he, last night, held her back. Had he, last night, ran after her. Had he, last night at the very least, taken her home.

They told him she died hours after he put down the phone, hours after she sputtered to him, “I’m sorry, I—I…” Hours after he said, “Look, I don’t know anymore. We’ll see tomorrow.” 

Did she suffer, he asked, and they told him drowning in your own blood was no easy way to go, and he thought, heartbreak isn’t easy for those who remain.

Katrina Del Rosario

Deadliest month of Summer prayer wanes
in full moon, blasting nets of light
glimpsing on the world as a spur

of sunlight dews the nightly cold. In April,
we live by the rule of painting rural ceilings in sky
as the wasps take heed of warmth

blessed in their construction of nests.
Sky, is a blue one fears to condone,
too vast and endless, too beautiful

and senseless while the bees work
in obsession. Light grounds the blessed
beasts to warmth. The heart of a bee,

in a hive, stored in a queen who whispers:
protect me from the enemy my children,
surround them like light, and from light, feed

their wasping heat.

Dominique Santos

 I killed the ants out of trust
that they will never haunt my dreams
unless they were willing to cancel
or wait out on all the other nightmares
waiting in line—

when they go inside that little mound
I know the queen waits in hunger
to be fed – all my candy wrappers scraped

by their little mouths to make royal jelly;
something as sweet and potent for the her
to reproduce. I killed all the ants out of want,

so maybe I can feel like the queen
for a little while. As I impose my reign, I watch
them in their droning little march,

to know where they lived,
and watched closely, savoring
the micro image before pouring

a jar full of gas: setting them aflame
along with dead leaves. Inside

the house, my grandmother complains
why the jar used for iced tea smells
like potential fire – I tell I did

something about the mosquitoes,
an excuse blatantly in cohorts with evenings
to remember all the nightmares to remember

how they will always come –to remember
that I will must smoke the notion out
once in a while.

Dominique Santos

I awoke from chasing tigers to chasing the cold in spaces beneath my pillows, edges of the bed. I kicked off the sheets, my face covered with sweat, sought solace by pressing it against the window. Outside, it is raining. From the corner of my eyes, raindrops against glass looked like a thousand butterflies beating their wings to a rest. I breathe until my head is surrounded with haze, and out of fancy I squeeze my face harder on the surface to see my face at sideways glance, painted with the beyond window view, my own breath as foggy backdrop. But there is no world outside the windows; at least none I knew of. No-World is white and gray. The rain sounds like a louder silence; the calendar stuck on March of last year. Shoes lay with notebooks, strewn across the floor, indifferent to the cold; discarded clothes lay as I left them, keeping the joints of chairs warm. Had I chosen to, I would have lain still and have become included in the room’s secret conference. Had I chosen to, I would have lain still and not gone out to the empty hall, the empty rooms, to see that I am left out of this conversation, uninvited to this grand event. The wall clock is frozen at six; I look under the blankets, pillows, bed for my phone for hopes of telling time but as the search ends in vain, outside, the rain could only fall harder and I, in surrender, could only lie still.

Katrina Del Rosario