on aliens and cream borders: a haibun

Piet Mondrian, ‘Broadway Boogie Woogie, 1942-43, moma.org More than a year I have been living inside this box with no divisions. Cream borders keep me company without judging my daily dancing alone and my full-hearted concerts on my own. Identical squared-rooms from my right and left stood the same size as mine.  The closest left

the garden of 17 syllables: a haibun for Basho

Five decades of wandering, in every step perhaps your heels planted seedlings of words, of love,  of wisdom, of life. So much of your history remains a hidden story. We’re you a slave, a samurai, a cook, a poet, or everything and more? We can read scrolls after scrolls but never can we know. A

inside a journalist’s mind: a book spine poem

wild embers die trying the fourth estate and still i rise. — 04.24.2020 ©2020 Rosemawrites@A Reading Writer. All Rights Reserved. Photo by me This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. — For dVerse Finding poems in bookshelves

spring reeks with laughter of birds

April air reeks of unperfumed killer floating with spring, bobbing as daffodils sing, there goes selfish whims ransacking shelves of kindness, in a bid to survive hunger for toilet paper arrived, common sense of supposed “high- er beings” flushed, hummingbirds, sparrows, laugh at us. — 04.21.2020 ©2020 Rosemawrites@A Reading Writer. All Rights Reserved. Photo via

well, we are all caged inside aged standards: a string of landays*

‘Tween legs without hanging, cloning tube, hands tied inside kingdom of plates, forks, knives, fittingly. Rugged palms even at birth, first cry should be the last, plow land, tear not. Masculinity. Fingernails painted in red welcomes thin sheets of cloth be stripped, cream breasts bared, unwillingly. Broad chest cracks in silence, no one wants, your

thank you winter, for letting the spring in: a haibun

When I was young there was this Koreanovela titled Winter Sonata, a part of a series titled Endless Love. I was nine or maybe 10, innocent and clueless, but that was my first encounter with you— season of snowflakes and magic. It has been more or less three decades and you remain a dream to

find me inside this hodgepodge: a haibun

For some reasons, a year ending has never made me reflective. I always feel like my heart is sprinkled with pastel joy from December until the first few days of January. It is the time of rest, no, not really. It is the time of doing and travelling a lot, but not for salary, but

again: an aubade

My clingy heart has never been fond of the dawn’s pending fog everyday sitting outside our window, drinking its daily sunrays-made tea as it waits for the official ending of our last night’s nectar-sweet tryst. Another day, another sun, I have to wait for another moon to inhale your scent again. r. c. gonzales –

Poems for S: Book Cover Reveal

… my third baby book is here!!! Do you also believe that long-distance love is tough and scary? Do you also believe that relationships, the romantic ones, require so much of bravery? This book of poetry believes so. Containing over 100 poems written for several years, this collection features the unsure and the blurry beginnings

blanket and shame (a dizain*)

Still wrapped in blanket of soft innocence, like a butterfly fresh from its cocoon, a young breath given too short existence by evil desire of a maniac goon. A lifeless, cold shell wimps a wordless croon. An animal act, perhaps it is not, for mammals, reptiles, these kingdoms just ought to kill to survive. But