Dagmay.online

Every night, in this city,
my peripatetic eyes seek
phantoms on ceilings,
where darkness gazes
upon my trembling body.
After the clock strikes
twelve, the moon is pale
from loss of blood.
The dogs begin to howl.
There are no clattering footsteps
nor human voices, only
the whispering wind speaks
of cyanide and tears:
for the night here in Bais
is an ocean that drowns
rainbows and luxury ships.
For the night here in Bais
is a gathering of poets
who wail before streetlights
and broken bottles of beer—
Naked
I lay
surrounded
by sugar canes
and decrepit ancestral houses.
Here in Bais,
night is longer
than day because
the sun hides
in shame.

As always, the same old sun rises
over my weary eyes in the city
of desiccated peasants and wooden caskets.
The whistle of maya birds echo, again
and again, in my garden. The same apparition
of faces remains sullen in the starving streets.
The same zephyr sways
the leaves of sugar canes and water apple trees. Here,
where everything is filtered by my quotidian breath,
is a horror of mangled realities
of a past within faded photographs—
Every morning, my shadow has the scent of ancestral houses.

—
Simon Anton Nino Diego Baena is an undergraduate student of MSU-IIT, Iligan city.
Originally from Bais, Negros Oriental, now based in Iligan. Some of his poems have already been published in Philippines Free Press, Philippines Graphic magazine, Eastlit online literary journal, and Kabisdak online.