Neither Here
Nor There
Poems from the wide and open ocean
I.
I am a migrant like you are
Looking in from the outside, from within, from afar
For how much of ourselves are here but there?
There but here?
Our bodies are worn out witnesses out in this ocean
Where we float
As our roots sway searching for land
We allow them to feel what they feel
To yearn what they yearn for
To record all the loss,
And what we’ve accidentally found
In these bodies lie our capacity
To rise above the injustices and indignities
We hostage this world to
We were sent to this wide and open
To speak of it’s ills and failures
Sit with me
Stay in silence
Rest, my dear friend
In solitude, we will arrive
For every step now is towards home
For home is anywhere, everywhere, elsewhere
And if you could not go home,
That in itself is a way of a return
For it means you never really left
You just went farther into the ocean
Do not worry
Do not be ashamed
Our land, our gods, our longing, our people, our history, our family, our friends, our ancestors,
We carry them
As they carry us
They are us
As we are them
We will all arrive
We will all get there
II.
Don’t worry,
I know you are tired as I am,
Come with me,
A city will emerge when we can rest in our contradictions,
To the last breath,
To the edge.
III.
Aimlessly, I walked in the streets of Yerevan.
If I wanted to eat a crazy amount of pork or indulge myself in sugar, I could.
I could stop and marvel at a Soviet architecture, a local artist’s painstaking painting on leather goods, or observe lovers kiss each other and wonder if their love would survive the test of time. I hope love to always survive.
I could share life blessings to someone in need. I could pause in the middle of the street, sit on a bench and quietly think of how I’m making my mother worry and how I wish I could tell her I’m so sorry that life had beaten me and that I’ll be okay.
I just need time.
Maybe that’s all I need: some time to rest so I could either finally go home or forge forward to a new place that could make me feel alive again?
We live in our thoughts. We often stay in the dark crevices of our mind. I’m trying to shake myself out of it because there are so many reasons to be grateful for. We are our own enemies. If we could only be kind to ourselves the way we strive to be good every waking hour.
Here & Now—-that’s what the Buddha said. What else is there but this?
The past is gone and the future is an illusion. If I am to answer who am I now, I am no one but a wandering soul.
We will all be forgotten and the world will move on as if we never existed.
So why do we bother to attach ourselves to anything?
To our perceived problems that in the grand scheme of things are actually nothing?
Pause, breathe, bring your mind home to your body.
Let go of thinking.
Do not let them cast shadow on your heart that already endured so much.
What else could we not endure?
IV.
Lift it all up, my brother and sister
They are safe and protected
Everyone will get to where you are
It will be a difficult and painful path
But they will get here
Here, where there are no more worries
Where you could rest
Where you could breathe
Where you are not sacred of your loved ones not being warm
They will get here
Where life no longer weighs us down
Where one could finally be
Where life, art and dream—
The imagined and imagine
Through hard labor and love—are all one
Where you no longer need to understand
Where you are just light
Where everything begins and ends with you and in you
V.
Let the vitality of life touch your deepest sadness
It is by being here and now that we become truly alive
Do not seek for happiness anymore
For happiness too is an illusion
Contentment—-that’s where we must live
To be at peace with contradictions
To be alone but not lonely
To be present
To accept life as it unfolds
To accept your transmutation into the light that you are
Where the world no longer bothers you
Because you have transcended the temporal
Because you have become who you are meant to be
Because you no longer need reason
Because love is found nowhere else but in you
That there is no longer any need to attach yourself
To property, to people, to memories, to dreams
Because we are all just passing through
Death will arrive
And you must welcome it as rest
It is alright to be aimless
You do not need to reach a destination
You do not need to achieve anything
You just have to be kind
And love without possession
VI.
After Lucky Plaza,
Singapore, Singapore
If I were to write this poem many years ago,
I would romanticize it.
I would write,
“I overheard her say,
I’m going home this June because my son is graduating from high school.
Finally, there’s the looming promise of a return home.”
If I were to write this poem many years ago,
I would be an activist and say,
They all speak in multiple languages I don’t understand
Indicating them to come from the outlying islands
Away from Imperial Manila
Where the elites are busy maneuvering their next move to outwit each other
But now, I will write this poem the way it is:
The dawn breaks
And these women break the dawn.
VII.
To no longer struggle is not to give up
To no longer struggle is to see the finality in the struggle
When it has become a part of who you are
It's the part of your body where light gets through
Your are transparent and translucent
Your body is with grace
It endured
It persisted
You are here now
This is the work