Cover photograph is by my Axlepino brother, Branden B. Banko. His poetry is in the visual presentations and mine is in the literary simplification of shared experiences.
I wish I can say I chose poetry to transcribe personal accounts that do not show up as yet in self-help books because it would then be easy to explain the philanthropic work I have done for the love of sublime art I espoused in both FB and in my website.
Poetry instead, chose me while I was busy figuring out the metaphysical implication of metaphors in my life that made me realize the magnitude of words both spoken and written in the arts. At the rate I was going, I figured it was easier to let these words guide me to uncharted territories where the passage leads to wholeness...where all the hypothetical "Ifs" in my life are laid to rest when wisdom happened with the accident in the poetry I have become.
IF
If l stay closest to the edge to watch life unfold
Will I marvel at the limitless horizon beyond
The confines of the center I left behind?
Will I spread these clipped wings
And find the instinct to fly
Back to the berthing place
Of nascent light,
Conscious only of being alive?
If the idea of soul mate
That gives rise to the relentless search
For the elusive other
Is deemed reductio ad absurdum
Why do incongruent emotions
Juxtapose with a maelstrom of
Multiple personalities?
If my soul mate is the elusive love of a man
Would that he come
At a time when my restless spirit
Tire of metamorphosing.
When I find a fertile ground in his heart
Where sacrosanct roots can be planted
And nurtured
Until I am able to watch the fruits of my labor
Bear the life it gave.
Would that I see in his eyes the tears
Of limpid crystal
With which my faith can glide on.
Would that I find
I grow in the circle of his arms
To reconcile with my disparate selves
And finally commence with the final stages
Of my eventual homecoming.
What price this reunion with him takes?
How much will it cost my heart
To rise with the ashes of my phoenix
When all the worldly possession
That remains in my embrace
Is solitude?
Will I risk losing wisdom gained
If l trade independence
With the marriage of souls?
What freedom have I to speak of
When all along my conscience
Battles with daemons
That weigh down my onus?
If a man is able to withstand suffering
Beyond human endurance,
Would that make him less of a man
And more of a Saint?
Or would that make him more of man,
Perfected in his becoming?
Why is God
Thought of as the Alpha and the Omega?
Is He drawn in a straight line that Point origins of time?
What if He is a circle?
The beginning has no roots,
The ending has no finality?
What if the great thinkers who pondered
And attempted to extricate the life from tie source
Come back from their graves
Incarnated into beings
Who think less but live more?
Would they exemplify the truth we seek?
If truth sets one free
What power does it hold
That prevails over the Unknown?
Why do we spend so much time
Unraveling the truths of the Unknowable
When time has limited our resources
To the now?
If we know the structures of our time
Would we be better off living the truth
ln our faith that escapes reason?
Should all conundrums that begin with these Ifs
Be summed up in one hypothetical word
Would life hang in precarious balance
Because I vacillate with this –
IfIfIfIfIfIfIfIfIfIf
If
If
If
If
IfIfIfIfIfIfIfIfIfIfIf
And so I began,
The philosophy of “Ifs” or the existential hypothesis
The great romantic Pepe Le Pieu
Philosophized the frustrating Pursuit of love
And I took that to mean –
You lose your sense of your smell
If you have been a skunk all your life.
If fishes in neon tanks
That swim with theatrical mouths
Thirst for water,
Do they drink the life around them?
If the skunks can’t smell themselves
Of what use are their noses
If not to sustain their being here?
If fishes know the purpose of gills
And fins and the cycle of birth
Would all of them subsist on plain water
Because all forms of life exist with them in
The conscience of the sea
And those rooted in land and air,
Even as the world outside
Remains beyond their understanding?
If the eyes can't see beyond the visible spectrum
Of the universe
Of what use are they except for the Science
Of knowing the functions of body parts
And the quest for absolute control of
Everything possible?
If Pepe knew he can smell
Through these eyes
Would he see the cat in the dream
He is chasing?
If the fishes knew
About dying
Would they fear living?
What if l take off the blinders?
So that my eyes can smell through Pepe's dreams
And my thirst for water is satiated
With the fishes I swim in the sea of onyx skies?
If I retrace my steps from
Being to nothing and from
Nothing to being
Would I find my way to becoming
All there is and
All that could be
Because there is something more
To Pepe’s nose
Than the missing sense of smell?
If l swim like the fishes
With legs that take me
Everywhere but the waters
Would I find myself flying
Instead like the blackbird in the song?
And if l fly with the blackbird
Will the hypothesis of my being with
Pepe and the fishes
Free the spirit from
The agony of metamorphosis?
I am waiting to fly and blend with the winds
That take me across the vacuous ifs
Where hypothesis of being is no more empirical
As it is divine transcendence.
And then perhaps if l return
To tell Pepe that skunks with jaded noses
Have greater sense of directions
Would he swim with fishes
Who begin to drink air and finally
Find the cat with white painted stripe
On its back falling in love with him?
Will all my Ifs come with
The defining moment
The one that tells you:
Who you are,
What you are,
Where you are.
The same one
That defines your purpose,
Your strengths,
Your Weaknesses.
The sudden burst
Of the genius hibernating in
A looking glass,
Tracing amorphous shapes,
Of the breath of poetry
And of fluid alphabets
That slid from underneath
Closed eyes.
The mind that opens books
Of untrodden pathways,
That has feet flying from
Pages of unlimited grace.
Deep within what comes alive
Where poetry is drawn
From infinite Possibilities,
The Unknown is known
The known is Unknowable.
The Unknowable, not mine to keep.
The moment is made certain
And the truth set free.
Words are for the taking
Reality is empirical, relative, defining “If”.