New moon

new moon
by paolo macariola

dawns awakens above us
a vast neon blue
spilling across oceans
as did our happiness

until twilight came
and colored our guilt
we try to measure what we see
with our emptiness
imitating the foolish sky

but everything darkens
when the world fades to black
the moon weeps
it haunts us

defining commas

"defining commas"
by paolo macariola

sometimes i forget
to pause at the commas
and maybe take a deep breath
everytime i read that old letter of yours,

the same way i stop
for a fleeting moment
to catch a glimpse of you
before our lips challenge embers.

strange, how a mark
made with the faintest sleight of hand
could resemble the ocean's silent longing
for the sun,

as any body of water
such as the raindrop
awaits that certain ray of light
to forge a rainbow,

as any star
endures the day
to breathe in
the first whisper of a night.

and thus i learned:
a comma is a gate
of pauses that slowly opens
to reveal its true intent,

it is the gap which fills the absence
within another absence.
an assumption of something
to come. a prolonged adlib

that delays the climax
of a tragic ending
and a definite farewell
of conclusive defeat.

then it came to me
that maybe this emptiness
is your heart's true intent.
and it ends,

"oblivion"

"oblivion"

by paolo macariola

my heart is a sea of shadows

camouflaged in ice

my soul is in the abyss

i am in oblivion

i bleed now

as new wounds peek from old scars

you walk away from me

in the silence

of my own pain

i used to wish

that your heart is a sanctuary

where mine could strip off its armor

and reveal its true nakedness

but your words still

repeat itself hollowly inside my chest

my heart is a sea of shadows

waiting for oblivion

"confession of the innocent"

"confession of the innocent"

by paolo macariola

far into the darkness

sprawls a thousand corpses

rotting in its innocence

like wild flowers

i am a murderer

and tonight i shall kill again

in praise of the blind gods

in whose mercy lets murderers like me

wander unforgiven

to cut another wrist

to slit another throat

and to squeeze the life

out of another heart

clamoring for redemption

this is my conviction

there is blood in my hands

that could never seek forgiveness

so i dig another grave

into my own skin

to bury a hundred more corpses

to hear their last breath

and to forget

yes, to forget

how they used to be me

"underwater"

"underwater"

by paolo macariola

to dream of coming to surface

is to forget the waves

that has rippled

whispers of imprisonment

above our murky existence

hence we try

to imagine ourselves as stars

willingly trapped in the ocean sky

that falls into fireballs

after eternities

of aimless combustion

but we are no more than a constellation of two stones

you and i

so we forget the waves

and wish for sunlight

we come to surface

only to find ourselves

in some part of the world

where the sun never rises

"Poet writes beautiful filth"

"Poet writes beautiful filth"

by paolo macariola

I ruminate endlessly

on the grotesque

concepts

of my self inflicted

methods to madness

trying to decipher Venus

is to dismantle

its equations

into bite sized smidgets

a piece of sanity at a time

but i dare not swallow

this beautiful filth

as one could never

challenge to regurgitate

a rock

on the other hand...

possibly in another dimension

i may have been

just like you

rapidly spewing

trite distractions

but in the meantime

i shall go on

ruminating venus

and dismantling madness

on a piece of paper

stenciled endlessly

with grotesque metaphors

i dare you to swallow

my beautiful filth

somewhere at the tip

of your tongue

will scatter the taste

of my madly concocted delusions

laced with bitter nectar.

-- and if somehow

you manage to swallow it

you would feel

a disruptive cramp

as though you've ingested

a rock

that your mere cliche'd existence

could never regurgitate

Mariposang tala

"Mariposang tala"

by paolo macariola

sa dulo ng sigarilyo

mariposa'y tumakas

pusong apoy ang sumibol

naupos ang tala

binurda ang mga ulap

sa aking kalamnan

mula sa pulso'y tatakas

lalangoy ang mariposa

sa kaibugturan ng tala

hinimlay ang upos

nagnulo sa lupa

nalunod sa mariposa