Sagaba

Sister sits on the steps

Cigarette rests on fingertips

Takes a sip of slow death deathly through her lips,

She blows a kiss

Which I can only resist in vain

She got the gift of gravity pulling to ask her name

She says Sagaba

What?s it mean ? she says in Ilocano

It translates into suffering

I?m pondering the irony to conjure up the fearlessness to find a conversation

She offers me a square, I decline the invitation

It reminds me of the days when I would chain smoke

Broken with no hope

Like broken like the manner she spoke

We both

Two people seeking

Solace and remembrance

And wondering if miracles were meant for us

But intent was just an innocent thought between a sister and a brother

Who been building in the guidance of a mother

And the storyteller stops

Waiting for the beat to drop

Gathering his thoughts in the wind, breathing in like?

Now

I couldn?t stand to see the queen breathe her dreams away

And tell me her tomorrow will never become today

I say I used to know a woman just like you,

Beautiful but jaded by the multitude of men who?d often try to

Justify their lies with twisted notions of survival

And hide behind their armor when karma completes a cycle

She replied

That just because I knew a woman well it doesn?t mean I know them all

She begins to bade farewell

Eyes up to the sky, she sighs, I need nobody

True indeed, sister, but you still need everybody because

We hardly know ourselves if we know nobody else

And only in our loneliness can home become a hell

Exhale

The cloud in the loudest form of silence

Watches as it rises like suns over horizons

The storyteller stops

Waiting for the beat to drop

Gathering his thoughts in the cloud, breathing out like?

Dreams be the ashes

Burns and thrashing in the wind

Flying out the burning bush attached to sister?s hand

Who whispers ?word?

Smiling and giving thanks, living in doubt no longer

As she figures out the riddle to the song

Saying why must we suffer now and not suffer later if later

Never comes soon enough to soothe the hatred

And hatred

Is the cancer born ____ of love?s absence

And the absence is the void left from missing every chance to

Challenge our fates and perhaps our very names

Sister says peace and prayers for rain and change

Tosses out her lighter

Walks out of the cipher

For shizzle it starts to drizzle and then I begin to write this

Inhale the imagery ? a queen walking steadily

Effortlessly

Ready to be

Every woman and now the

Story teller ends

Waiting for the beat to fade

Gathering his thought near the edge of the day like?