soft grumbles

Time is never kind to me these days.
It places a pebble in my shoes
that keeps getting bigger
with each passing day.
It adds a rock on my shoulder
as we welcome every year.
I am burdened by permanent boulders,
the weight of youthful transgressions
best forgotten.

Time ticks continuously
as the heavy burdens
cause me to be left behind
while the world spins
and travels in its own orbit.
Time never ceases or falters
like a tiny droplet of water
incessantly dripping from a leaked
roof after a storm, irritating
every brittle bone

There shall come a day
when I can no longer stand,
feet succumbing to gravity’s pull
making me wish that my eyelids
could grow too heavy
for it to open and see what form
the clouds shall take
and all that’s left
shall be my unfulfilled dreams.

Labels: aging

I wonder where the river flows.
It is difficult to see what lies beyond.
Does it take you out to sea
where abundant fish swim freely,
colorful corals breathe to multiply,
or where giant turtles spend
a hundred years?

These waters could lead to a dead end
where algae is replaced by silt
accumulated through the years
of wanton neglect,
storage of the bowels of a city
long dead.

I have always stayed at the river’s belly
where troubled waters churn,
swell with the monsoon rains,
dry up with a relentless sun,
or rise and fall with the tide
as a fickle moon tilts the earth to its whim.

I never learned where it starts or ends.
I cannot be a spectator all the time.
I better start paddling, discover
where it will take me.
But which way should I go?
Together with or against the flow?

Labels: life

I chased a monarch butterfly
to keep in a bottle to cherish
but I could not keep up with it
as it fluttered aimlessly in space.
I got so preoccupied,
I never saw the intense redness of the roses,
the black tulips , chrysenthemums.
Not even the dandelions
that carpeted the lawn.

In my eagerness,
I stumbled and cut my arm
with a broken glass
left by some careless, lazy bum.
(Or maybe it was me?)
It hurt so much I wanted
to cut off my hand.

The butterfly flit by
reminded me of your sweet smile,
your lissom body, vulnerable
to the faintest gasp of foul air.
And I remember how I long to touch
your soft, long, silken hair,
your velvety hands.
But you are no longer there.
I had been chasing nothing.
The monarch butterfly and the woman
I longed to care for are just dreams
I wove in my troubled mind.


rolly