Blue ternate
Someone bought a new Orocan
He left the light of his tricycle on
A dog sits on a road before cars resume
Drums
A cat
Garbage left scattered by dogs
The dogs bark at me
Where is Chewy?
Trixie is standing up
Beware: more dogs
Oh just one
Afraid of me but barks at me
Cumulus over the horizon
Nimbus across the sky
Dry everywhere hasn’t rained for a while
A child cries
He blows his cigarette
as he leans his belly on the car’s window
She throws the water she drained her mop on
to a line of ornamental plants
His motorcycle starts without a noise
He pressed on his phone while driving
Dog and chicken chorus
Was that durian?
Must watch those dog shits
Peel off your ref and there’s a foam
His children, five of them, at the back of his motorcycle
I felt water kiss the back of my feet
Stench of old sweat on thick sofa
White kitten barely alive
Pink hair
I though she sold something
I looked and saw nothing
No one watching the store
Tempted to take a supot of bread
But everyone was watching
The bird almost broke my broken eardrum
Jeep passed in front
Students passed from behind
The closer I look the more I want to live
Clearer skies I predict less rain ahead
Two bags of ice really is one not enough?
Cicadas and a lady with a folded umbrella
Is this Narra or Lantican?
A single lampost lights all of us
”Los Baños Walks” sounds like a good name for a book
People talk and so I write
When silence sets in what will I write?
The Mitsubishi parked means she’s there
Balitbitan leaves glow in the dark
A bright light calls my pupils
When nothing happens in the landscape memories arrive
How is the house at Sta. Maria?
The cloud moved to show Makiling’s nipples
I follow a brown butterfly
A guard coughs
Are they missing?
Doña Elena is as clean as a street could be
Laughter breaks a journey I have taken inside my head
Wet brown leaves and white Calachuchi
I smell paksiw na isda and remember my father
They left a table and two chairs under the tree
A cat meows and insect sound fill the air
Dogs bark at me
The lady and her large black dog
Lucky barks at me and the lady worries
She calls her he follows
And I settle
A red butterfly follows me
Red wigo
I piss
These are birds right? Awake at night
I hear the train from a far 7 pm
A thing at the middle of the road
Pitch dark
I looked closer
A coconut?
It moved
Hair at the back of my neck stood
I see patches of sweat on my shirt
A plane passes by
Who would let a car rot on the side of a narrow road?
This is the first draft of a poem written by piecing snippets of observations during a two-hour walk. Streets walked equals stanzas.