The Master Speed

by Robert Frost

No speed of wind or water rushing by

But you have speed far greater. You can climb

Back up a stream of radiance to the sky,

And back through history up the stream of time.

And you were given this swiftness, not for haste

Nor chiefly that you may go where you will,

But in the rush of everything to waste,

That you may have the power of standing still—

Off any still or moving thing you say.

Two such as you with such a master speed

Cannot be parted nor be swept away

From one another once you are agreed

That life is only life forevermore

Together wing to wing and oar to oar.

______

Para kay V, na laging handang tumigil

Upward-beating heart, hay Rilke

from Letters to a Young Poet

Most people have (with the help of conventions) turned their solutions toward what is easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must trust in what is difficult; everything alive trusts in it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself any way it can and is spontaneously itself, tries to be itself at all costs and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must trust in what is difficult is a certainty that will never abandon us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it.

     It is also good to love: because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation. That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love: it is something they must learn. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered around their solitary, anxious, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and therefore loving, for a long time ahead and far on into life, is: solitude, a heightened and deepened kind of aloneness for the person who loves. Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent?), it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances. Only in this sense, as the task of working on themselves ("to hearken and to hammer day and night"), may young people use the love that is given to them. Merging and surrendering and every kind of communion is not for them (who must still, for a long, long time, save and gather themselves); it is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which human lives are as yet barely large enough.

-Rainier Maria Rilker, May 14, 1904

How to say it in Pastiche

I see us in the park,
Strolling the summer days in the imaginings in my head.

In the evening when the day is through,
Summer breeze, makes me feel fine,
Blowing through the jasmine on my mind.

You keep your rights, I'll take your nights
No one can lose when we take the lights out.

Let's start with the ABC of it,
Roll right down to the XYZ of it,
Teach me tonight.

Aye, aye,
Teach me how to dougie,
Teach me, teach me how to dougie.

Then one by one, the stars would all go out.
Then you and I would simply fly away.

I may be climbing on rainbows, but here it goes,
And if you're wondering what this song is leading to,
I want to make it with you.


***
Knocks me off my feet - Stevie Wonder
Summer breeze - Seals & Crofts
Sweet surrender - Bread
Teach me tonight - Dinah Washington
Teach me how to Dougie - California Swag District
If -Bread
Make it with you - Bread

Dahil kailangan talaga bawat personal blog ay pagdadaanan ang cheesy lyrics na post.
(♫ All my bitches love me,
All my, all my bitches love me,
You ain't fuckin' with my dougie)

Short musings

You know what, I'm at a point in my young life where all's good. It's far from perfect, definitely. Uncertainties old and new may be creeping up at times (numerous, actually), I'm still messed-up as everyone else is, but I am getting more of these quiet moments when I could honestly say to myself jeesuz, I'm fine (so relax and stop whining). Well, I admit part of it is because of a certain somebody who likes to microwave adobo and hates carrots. This is not an uncommon result, so my imagined surveys say. Well, I've got nothing else to say. Just got lucky, I suppose. Here's to hopefully more luck on its way, who knows maybe I could  someday go to Mongolia and travel with horses like a nomad, live in a yurt, and learn to play the morin khuur (a horsehead fiddle) and throat-sing. Oops forgive that bit of random dreaming there.

And oh, I've come to write a little something by way of reminiscing.

***

Premise

We needn’t have hurried after all

he says when he missed his 3 A.M. bus, a hint

lingering in the air you ignore, but you give in

instead to a last kiss before closing the car doors

meant: Well, have a nice life, good luck

with that fight you’re having, cheater

you turned out to be.  But you are tired

and fumble on the double locks, you wanting

to just close the night after you

on a bed you do not share. Next time

perhaps this you’re getting is a nicer screw

with fewer surprises, like the taste of his mouth

you’re now discovering, heavy breaths you’d like

of it quicken as he takes you in, out. Come later

you would invite him to your room but tonight

the time being must just be a detour so

I think I’ll go now you address the room

buckle your belt as you must leave

nothing, again it’s same way easy. You could

be polite and not betray a little too much

smile learning to keep yourself in check. But

suppose convince yourself you are not that

pleased, suppose, yes, you could stay for the night.

___

Studies on Postscripts

I posit that a love letter is a written as token of one or more of the following: a promise, an act of humility, a confession, a belabored apology, a defense,

 a surrender, a risk, a dedication, perhaps even an ending, or a prologue, a roadmap, a sweet nothing.

That although a love letter could only be written for the first time (could it?), what you add hastily or otherwise at the end’s always is.

I said I sometimes get scared. What I didn’t say: don’t forget I never said I’m unhappy. I found out one can inhabit these states at the same time though I muddle my saying it with double negatives. It’s an affectation I’d like to keep when I walk in on difficulties.

For hours, we lie like beached creatures on the sheets where sleep shallows into somnolence, breaking and foaming gently between the crevices our locked bodies try to close. The sound of tall bamboos and the wind that rattles them when I wake, this is that I am writing for the first time. There you were, with your habit of shores I imagine you to have, telling me it was like a rain-forest instead.  Which turned out to be a trivia, my hesitation secretly turning to embarrassment at that. And our quiet laughter that filtered out the window and was lost to the world outside bathed by the weak sun and abating rain.

___

Phases on a Haiku

The midnight pulls in the remnants

of day, the moon in its fullness

it should be enough

***

The midnight pulls in the remnants

of day, you are the moon in its fullness

is here yet elsewhere, nowhere.

***

The midnight pulls back the remnants

of day, the moon in its fullness

stays, resists the turning of the hour.

***

The midnight pulls all remnants

of day, ours is the moon in its fullness

ripe between your teeth, my fingers. 

___

Somebody aced it: "The Secret Lives of Gay Men" by Ryan O'Connell

Boys love each other like this: shirts off, blue jeans, smoking a joint in bed maybe listening to some old records. They’ll take their fingertips across each other’s chests, down arms, and almost to the penis. They’ll circle it curiously and then either go for the plunge or shy away. They’ll bury their heads into someone else’s arms and have their hair stroked. It will feel like you’re getting shampooed at some fancy salon and you won’t ever want them to stop. Boys love each other like that.

Boys love each other when they’re wrestling. It’s a thing amongst gay men. We use our aggression, beat each other up and then switch gears when we feel the need to get all tender and soft. It feels strange—switching seamlessly from physical aggression to absolute devotion and tenderness—but it’s what lives inside us. We tread those lines constantly. We want to punch you hard on the arm and then hold you tight.

Boys break down each other’s walls. It’s an exercise in patience, getting a man to surrender to you, but when they do, their body explodes with feelings. They lock themselves up and when someone finally opens the floodgates, a whole lot of everything comes out. They’re a piñata and you’re carrying the bat.

People always seem to marvel at men who unravel and show their sensitive sides. A woman delights at seeing such a change. It’s such a victory to see a male become unchained to their machismo. When it happens between two men, however, it’s truly magnificent. The sight of two boys loving each other like they’ve been taught not to do is a revelation.

We know what you think of us. We know that there’s this image of gay men just being detached and hungry for sex. There is that. There is a lot of that. But there’s also thoughtfulness, concern, monogamy, Sunday afternoons in bed, I love you babe, I love you a lot, and you make me so happy. There’s so much of that and it’s never really talked about. It’s the secret lives of boys who love boys. Let’s blow the lid off of it, okay? Let’s expose every sweet moment, every kissed neck, every intense hand holding session. It’s super progressive to treat us like loving human beings rather than horny animals, isn’t it? So progressive.

____

original here