Leuven

White and Gothic the Town Hall stands there
Immovably silent like sorrow
Impassive Jack hammers the bell
Intimating Time and his kin
Clouds hang like dimming curtains
For keeping within to oneself
The Great Market square is bare
But for a few stragglers wafting by
Cloaked and hugging themselves
Out of the pits of the Longest Bar
No chatter sighs, no songs cheer
The Kotmadam rests disturbed
Ah Leuven, you're for leaving!
Built up to be bombed
Sprung up to be split
A city that embraces so tightly
You'd soon want her to let you go.

Mark my words, my dearest

Never forget beloved:
The distance may be daunting,
Planes and trains punctually late,
Slow people blocking my way,
Disasters waiting to strike,
Failure might be built-in too,
For gods may have other plans,
And you may spurn my love's fire,
Out of blind timidity.
Yet I swear on what's human,
Against all morals and laws,
With time and patience as friends,
I have ways to get to you.

Yolanda and other perfect disasters

Feeds are buzzing, scrambling to be the first to relay

Super typhoon Yolanda is just hours away from landfall

She has, somebody said on Twitter too, reached perfection

At such and such devastating speed and impressive enormity

"Wow epic satellite pics man," came the quick compliment 

Wait, taste, and see our walls and wills be inundated with pleas 

Please please Abba spare our kin in the homeland oceans away

Please please Abba spare the brown masses of our compatriots

Ever poor and hardened, steadfast, unbowing and resigned

In the name of our Lord who declined divinity to take flesh,

Was dastardly kissed and met gruesome death on the cross, 

Like royalty, dived into hell and ascended to the clouds of glory

For to lift us, wretched as we are, drenched in the waters of sin.

We pray to Thee and Thy bloody Heart, once more like last year,

Polish the Pearl with torrents, but save us your flock, spectacularly.

Amen amen amen! And follow us ye faithful and Like Comment or Share.

Thus far

April was born in Bulacan, a Philippine province famed for its writers and poets. The second of three children, his family lived in the countryside until his parents’ fortunes brought them to the margins of the capital region, where April attended a local school and played games like tumbang preso, agawan base, and patintero on the hot streets of Novaliches with other neighborhood kids. After six years, encouraged by his mother and imitating his older brother with little reflection, he entered a minor (high school) seminary in Makati. For years he endured the strict daily routine under the watchful eyes of stern clerical authorities and hostile upperclassmen. Despite the growing realization that the priestly life did not and never would agree with him, upon graduation he moved on to a college seminary in Quezon City. Though he learned to love philosophy and applied himself to his studies, his true feelings expressed themselves in his blatant disregard for seminary rules. While he was allowed to continue his studies in the same school, he had to leave the religious community after a stay of one and a half years. He has, nevertheless, rather fond memories of that place where he forged friendships with simpler and happier people who taught him genuine love for the poor.

Thinking (erroneously it was to become evident later on) that he wanted to go to law school and believing himself not yet suitably prepared for that, April decided to first attend graduate school.  The difficult choice between UP and Ateneo was settled when the latter’s philosophy department gave him the chance to pursue an MA while working as a teaching assistant. Coming from a more modest background and having always been acutely aware of this, the change in environment was frightening and bewildering at the outset. He did his best to fit in and gave himself over to work and philosophy. Studying under luminaries like Ferriols, Dy, and Calasanz, not to mention working with other teachers gifted with true and deep afición, his days then were filled with epiphanies—sudden, hard-earned, or generously shared. After a few years and upon the completion of his MA, April started teaching with the department. It was also around this time that other momentous decisions and life-changing events occurred: he got married and became a father.  The happiness of that period was accompanied by the growing burdens of work, the challenges of starting a family, and the stirrings of ambition. Foreign shores were calling and April responded eagerly.  An almost impersonal email from Belgium telling him of admission to the Higher Institute of Philosophy and the grant of a PhD scholarship signaled a decisive turn in his life.

Medical issues, the necessary effort to adjust to a comfortable but heavily grey time and space, illusions and distractions, episodes of madness, self-doubt, and an inborn restlessness all mixed together with the concomitant difficulties of family life and the pursuit of a doctorate abroad. The scholarship ran out, the agonies and despair have passed and made their mark. Yes, the dissertation had been written and defended (in February 2013), but there is at this very moment no clear and grand telos in sight. In the meantime, April still lives in Leuven, Belgium with his son Isaac, studying literature in Antwerp, sustaining himself by bartending, translating texts from Dutch and French into English, and teaching philosophy and religion. Throughout the years, April has been writing poems in English and Filipino and now he’s also trying his hand at fiction, still in search of a vision, speaking in a voice that's gradually emerging and becoming more and more his own. 

S/he's yours

Isn't it funny how you see someone

Speaking with pure and clear conviction

Or biking past on a carefree day

And they're gone from your mind like a cloud

Then you two come close enough to kiss

Randomly on some bright street corner 

The unseen switch flicks, then you do see

That here s/he is. You are here. S/he's yours.

The heart's fateful judgment is decreed

It commands You, stop here, with him/her

Out there, are many, but s/he is one

Whether the word's yes, no, never, s/he's yours.