Julius Marc G. Taborete
Poetry

filipinx Oedipus

the only way
to cure people’s
heart is
to gouge your
eyes out


and exile—


(and empathize)
says the Oracle,

Asclepius’ myth
          Asclepius’ demise meant that a mortal man can reach only one certain limit
          in the natural order of things and it is forbidden to him to exceed this limit

A dream is one harmful thing.
I was a harmless six-year-old
sputtering senseless words.

White shirt with a miniature stethoscope,
given by Papa. It kept falling,
but I always clung to it.

We played doctor-patient
pretenders. Tended his life and my
stuffed bears, nursed from here to there . . .

until now . . . but
here’s a doctor’s advice:
put a swab inside, thrust, and wait
for disgruntled moans. Slowly
pull out, catch the colorless liquid.
If it bleeds, rest. If not, wait
for the result—and keep
on repeating until tons
of sweat trickle
down your coveralls.

Asclepius’ myth is similar, too—
I was given a bare elixir to dream, yet
to live was another;
senseless words are harmful.

10 hr

. . . here’s a 10-hr uniform for September,
that
heats up like an unsung August protest,
sweats like July’s national address.
Or maybe that
tightens up like empty June promises, later
breaks down in May working holidays
and isolates all alone in April,
then gets discriminated by March.
That has been the same difference last February.
Here’s a “Thank you, frontliners!”

(counts up to 7 seconds)

. . . with(out) pay.

By Julius Marc Taborete
Poetry

Youth
wakes up at dawn to sweep
the brown multitudes of the Fall.

Youth plants the fertile soil, reaping
the withered land and pours
spite of rise on gray expanse.

Youth is the pollen of our prime—
disperses through the sky,
never pulled back from ancestral gravity.

Youth
spews parts of our best days;
swooping the flesh of fading ritual
in a feast of the age of rising sun.

Youth
does not heed the silence
of vestige; in scaffolding of the melody
of the Sun and Stars.

Youth
is just our history,
a mirage in distortion of reality; an induction
to the surreal slums of life. Ancestors,
as they would say,

“Youth
is the gift of nature but age
is the work of art.” Hues of

youth
cascade from the canvas of tradition,
depleting the fountain
of the past.

Youth
has not stepped on the shadows
of 1972; the freedom we once
quenched,
now has the brimful of the

youth.
As mirrors reflect the wrinkle
of time, old is still new. Has

youth
been the roots of The fallen bough?
Ah! The dawn has come
and so as the

youth
comes to sweep the last
leaf to plant a
new tree.

Julius Marc Taborete
Poetry

I
Song of the Moon River

Once has crossed
the River underneath the stark
roundness of Blood Moon
where one, but two
shrieks have struck his skimpy
Legs. Discordant ripples
break the current as the lean Toe
resonates ragged
waves of indecisiveness;
upon touching the manic flow,
bloodshot eyes waver
back and forth to each Vortexes
of the bewitching screech.
One
is from the downstream
and Other is from the upper;
tugging for directions
to occupy with.
Voids to fill in.

He stills
in the water,
waiting for
the decision;
to persist or accede
from the pressure.
For one last time,
and for the last time,
he goes with the flow
With the flow
comes defeat.
From his escape,
Hunger and oppression.

He dreamily rests
with the current;
He embraced
the current.
Washed with the blessing of the
Blood Moon,
he calmly succumbs to the raging
current.
And Once stood
in the middle of the River
has gone with the wave,
ebbing in His own
swirling pool, saying
“It’s Alright.”

 

II
It is the Call

You have the Wings of
my freedom,
the shackle to my lifeline;
the land where I pursue
the beatdown. I am not
to be captured
nor caged.
Not to sink nor swim
in the shadows.
Not to fly in foreign Wings
nor in foreign skies.

Propelled in Blue Hues
grazed by the Sun
once,
Mother had kissed
My skin with patches
of Brown, with the songs of
my ancestors but
swept away in
my Father’s proud façade,
Whitewashed with features of
the East.

In the land where my feat
seared the ground
thawed the color
once
my Mother had touched.
Turning into White
ashes, they have locked me in
my own freedom,
in the delusion I dwell.
They have singed me,
my roots;
and now
I
mock those
with Brown skins
pursuing the beatdown
I was once flying for.
It is the Call.

 

III
Antler

“Find the Antler”
in snow covered hills,
in icy patches of fields,
in cold whispers of barren cliffs.
“Find the Antler”
where stark eyed wolves search for prey,
where landslides melt villages,
where echoes resonate over
crystalized cries of nature.
She says,
“find the Antler”
who runs in the deep forest,
who glides in the mist of lakes,
who basks in the warm light of
Majesty.
Seen underneath the gleaming
rainbow butterflies
perched in the stalwart horns,
strewn with sonnets of Eve,
detached from the writhing blight
she rings in my ears,
“find the Antler.”

Strained in my naked eyes,
seeking for its loftiness
in the full bloom of its own
Spring yet runs
swiftly where
no one has seen or heard.
In its wake
a wind bites the frost,
heating my thought,
constricts with invisible thorns;
She appears in a chant
cracking
in my mind
that the Antler is near,
is here,
that the Antler stood
in the shadow of Her voice—
of my shadow.

For once I stopped
in search for the moment,
yet
for spare bats of my eyelids
She has escaped astray,
The Antler has run away.