by Benro Francisco Pabia Balaoing

“this infinite curve
licked by chromatic flames
in labyrinths of reflections

This gong
of polished hyperaesthesia
shrills with brass
as the aggressive light
strikes
its significance”
– “Brancusi’s Golden Bird” by Mina Loy

though it sounds like an illness,
it is a far cry from the doctor,
though if it were, it’ll be a cancer
of modest proportions
this is not a call for hallucinatory
delight, after all, nothing is to be
had from staring at a frame
bathed in the expert lighting of a
curator

what we have are desks from which
numbers are crunched, and a
lifetime of dreams left behind
the morning news talks about dead people with guns
in their hands, floors and corners caked in blood,
farmers marching with nothing
to their names, just principles left
many ideologies and failed attempts ago.

we dock into the consciousness
of every day, like desperate boats
adrift all night, finally hitting land,
finally respite.

there is really nothing more to a
book, a painting, even bits of paper
scratched by pens, there is
nothing to a brief moment of
thought in all these hotbed of
scandals, no end in sight

a hundred dreams are being made
every day without the mention of
something real — like how life has a
way of knocking you down, and when
you get back up, the world has
already decided what should change

so hyperaesthesia, a cancer
to cure this utter sense of loss, to
eat us up from the vileness of our
insides and rebirth us into something
more careful, more in touch, less
adamant to find answers even without
asking the right questions first

like the golden bird statue, we can
never take flight without the words
of a poet under our feathers, like dreams
we are nothing without thought and
a little more imagination, that if we
were to be finally struck down,

at least, strike us with
patient significance