Hesitation

"How much time do I have?"
I don't know, but not very much, it seems.
"Will there still be enough time to..."
Talk to her? Of course. But for what?
"Will I ever find someone like her again?"
...
"I love her, you know."
After all this time. Finally, you chose someone again.
"..."
But you think it would be futile, right?
"I know. She doesn't love me."
She does.
"Yes she does. As a friend. As a brother, at best."
And that saddens you?
"If only she knew that I love her differently."
Have you told her?
"Why would I? Would there even be time for her to think..."
And realize that she can love you too?
"Don't pretend you know things about me."
But I do. And you know it.
"It won't last long. Even if she will love me as I love her. It wouldn't last long."
...
"I'm afraid."
Who wouldn't be?
"I love her."
I know.

by James Miraflor

The Masses

I

One burning August evening,
I found myself despising the
masses.

They, who I swore to serve,
even with the most petty-bourgeoise
of the revolutionary ways,
had earned my ire
that fateful day.

II

That evening,
I heard myself cursing them silently,
mocking them for their ignorance of ethics,
their selfishness and lack of respect,
their fondness of breeding children
who will be as selfish and rude
as their mothers and fathers.

Unlike the toiling proletariat,
who earned the world's sympathy
by proving the dignity of labour,
I suddenly cannot see
why these indolent masses
equally deserve social justice;
I suddenly cannot imagine
why the Movement
is also at the service

Of these masses,
who in vain arrogance,
chose to live in shabby decadence and sloth,
who are suddenly, in my eyes,
no different from the parasitic
capitalist class, as selfish and venal
as they are.

III

And how wouldn't they be,
when they indefinitely cling
to us progressives to protect
their interests? Are they really
any different from the Capitalists,
who, as indefinitely,
cling to the proletariat's labour
to protect their estate?
Had their poverty made them
less exploitative?

And why won't I think that way,
when these same masses,
whom my comrades sacrifice their
very lives for, would not
even hesitate to side with
their elite masters,
as long as the latter,
exercising their innate
exploitative abilities,
can dangle to them pack
of rabid dogs, little chops of
stale and rotten meat?

IV

The hell with the masses.

Let them wallow in their own poverty,
as their spirits have already
embraced poverty long before
we got here.


Comment: Gout can be painful, and I just realized that pain does alter, however briefly, even paradigms and world views. Sacrilegious thoughts, though, often gives those who dare to think them a more balanced view of things.

I don't intend to apologize for writing and posting this. After all, crude and toxic frustration is as much an element of every activist as passionate love and perseverance, so is the hypocrisy that compels them to deny that they feel it from time to time. The hypocrisy, however, does not make their love less passionate and persevering.

Fear

by James Miraflor

This is fear I feel, I know.
This is fear.

So much, I know, that I'm afraid
to take a step,
knowing that I'm as close
as I have ever been,
with the thing that hurt
me the most.

So I scream in terror, in hope,
in anticipation.

Fool

by James Miraflor

So I had been a fool,
to think that I am meant
to have my next days full
of love, to imagine that
I will have to regularly
buy flowers for someone,
that I will have to save
more now for dates and
weekend trysts.

I guess, I am not meant
for that after all.

I thought I deserve
to have someone with me as
I sip my café au lait while
watching seafarers return
to Manila bay during afternoons
in Roxas Boulevard. I thought I will
now have someone to talk to during
dreary protest actions in Welcome
Rotonda and Batasan.

I thought someone will now
fetch me from boring meetings
(or have me cancel them) to lovely
dinners at cheap diners or
fancy restos. I thought there
will now be someone to help
me contemplate the bleakness
of my life if lived
without her.

I thought it was you already,
and that as your sudden unexpected
appearance erase the pain
of the past love, your continuing
presence would redraw whatever
affection left in my
old, beaten-up heart.

But, I realized that it was
not you. You simply don't
want me.

And so, I had been a fool
after all.

Written sometime in the early second quarter of 2007.

What kind of a poet am I?

What kind of a poet I am, people ask.

I tell them. Before, I am a poet of desperation. I can only speak of anger, of hatred, of pain, and of suffering. I am incapable of seeing the splendor even of the most splendid of what life can offer. I am blind to bliss – for I am, or had been, but a poet of grief.

Now I am a poet of love. Now I can write about beauty, bliss, and enlightenment. I can write of hours wasted so that one can get a second of glimpse of his dear. I can write about absurd thoughts, idyllic trivialities born in the shadow of a moment.

But I can also now write of love that is profound – love that begins and ends with the spirit, or love so complex and so deep and so intense that it is comprehensible only to the lover, or the one being loved.

You changed all that.

Yes, I’m still a poet of love, but unlike the others, I can only speak of love that had never been, or love lost but never returned, or love dying a natural death, or love exploding due to passion of hatred, and imploding due to the coldness that was left.

I can no longer speak of love that is a connection of two hearts, because I can only speak of love slowly fading after wandering too far from its source. I cannot speak of love that is borne by mutual choice, because I can only speak of love that is never chosen, and was never intended.

I can speak only of love that had been responded to by hatred, by mocking laughter, by caustic comments, by the stinging silence of rejection. I can no longer speak of love that was requited, for you never reciprocated mine.

Maybe I can about one’s attempt to lie to oneself that the love was reciprocal, that the hatred is indeed of love. Maybe that – but then again, that is a lie.

Until when will I write about love?

Until when must I write about pain?

Written sometime in 2006.