The Plant

There you are my muse

in the nook of my soul,

looking out for my god

dressed in my faith and hope.

How the silence of your mien

perpetuates through my afternoon,

is to my indignation not;

it is the fuel stirring 

my affair with solitude.

I delight in your fine expression

-- coy, playful, full of conviction,

yet unpredictable.

You carry the eyes

watered with spring and summer,

and direct which to mine;

and for that, so grateful I am.

Despite all the nuisances

dangling and screaming around,

you remain calm and steadfast,

only to breathe with me,

to sleep in our own pulses

and be swayed by our simple happiness.

I catch the phrases let out from your foliage

-- young, smiling, and still wading

in the ruffled air and storms.

I love you.

Image: Toa Payoh, Singapore

Lungs and Nicotine

Left with the unavailability of tables for starving beings with pink lungs and nostrils that unwelcome their nemesis called nicotine, I lunged myself to the far side of the hawker centre. It was the perfect spot for the addicted patrons who were puffing away on a cigarette as if smoke would be contained in their own boundaries, their imagined vacuum, and wouldn't dissipate to elsewhere. My butt sat like it owned a puff smoke shop. However, in a snap, there was the prune-skinned uncle, the sole master in command, not of a sinking ship, for, as he claimed, he had lived a good life. And my thoughts came running from old age to "the calling." I am sorry; I have to euphemize the latter. I am just caught up in a paradox. 

I hoped for an easy trespassing that I felt I did. My lungs said no worries; all things would be very well, anyway. 

I carved my teeth into my pork pao, and it caused a scene in my mouth. My taste buds met it as a father would his prodigal son, making me hungrier, yes, salivating even more. The pork and the pao milled out of their juices, forming mini-balls and bumpy plains, finally, were pushed down to my storage, making me a fraction of a pound heavier. Oh, how my gut worshipped anything but pork! It sang in glorious harmony! I took a sip of my iced lemon tea bombarded with ice barrels -- ah, just a perfect companion for my pork pao. 

I enjoyed my afternoon cravings. I really did, until four more smokers joined uncle. Our circle swelled with nicotine and rained ash. Indeed, they had their own vacuum, and that just killed someone else's pink lungs.

Images: Toa Payoh Central, Singapore

Fragile

As the paws of your power reached for my feeble spine and limbs, through the golden grass and earth of the safari, I looked into your weary eyes borne out of my carelessness. Unknowing, toothless, and short, I was raked back home. I was in dire peril. There was true commotion when I left the perimeter, yet I would never realize that. Closing in on your midst, I felt your growingly normalizing heartbeat, and it unwittingly pulled your upper lip up and lower lip down, revealing your hunting sharps that scarred a mighty history. All was converted into a relief. Comforted beneath the warmth and strength of your mane, the expanse of your kingdom is all but your arms entangled around my fragility.

Photo source credit: The Telegraph

Boracay Island in Frames

I won’t necessitate gloating over how stunning and awe-inspiring Boracay Island is. It is what it is: the Philippines’ premier tourist destination, which has one of the world’s top beaches under its pocket -- the White Beach. I let Google and Wikipedia stand by their own definitions of the island's face.

A haven for water-sports junkies, nature lovers, foodies, children on the prowl for water and the sun, couples silly-crazy for romance, and party-stoked creatures, it isn’t easy not to love the island. I love the life it breathes.

From the long stretches of Stations 1, 2, and 3, and back, to Diniwid Beach, until the colors of the sunset peppered the horizon, I was there, like a reclusive soul drifting on the shore, unfazed by the miles and even when all turned up its silhouettes.

Here is what has become of Boracay Island through my lens.

Gecko Lizard

Despite the limitations of his parents' bed, the kid forces himself upon them. It isn't an intrusion of privacy. For them, it isn't too small anyway to accommodate their kid who has grown up tremendously, looking lengthy, and, perhaps, plumpy too. They welcome nothing but those childish yearnings they missed, however nonsensical and annoying they seem, and those narratives of his long journeys. Overwhelmed and rested, the kid sleeps soundly back to his little world, while never forgetting the gecko lizard peeping through the window. It is a rare moment of him being at home, at last.

Image: Cebu City, Philippines