All the mournful songs

They pick the finest days
To play from the treetops
Where the orioles whistle
And dogs howl at the feet
Wailing branches bridge
Into dirges at sunset
When I go out for a walk
Along the shore –
Saturnine sea sighing
To my face as I gather
Pebbles for a headstone.

This body is a cemetery
Once a bustling urban complex
Now it is riddled with ghost
Towns – hearses and keeners
Walk through my empty
Roads to bury their dead
Out in the churchyard
Of a huge estate
Willed to my sadness

Emeniano Acain Somoza, Jr.’s works appeared in The Poetry Magazine, Moria Poetry Journal, Fogged Clarity, Everyday Poem, Loch Raven Review, The Buddhist Poetry Review, The Philippines Free Press, Troubadour 21, Full of Crow, Indigo Rising, Asia Writes, Triggerfish Critical Review, Gloom Cupboard, TAYO, Haggard & Halloo, and elsewhere. His first book, A Fistful of Moonbeams, was published by Kilmog Press in April 2010. His second, Kleenex Theory, published by Kindle-Amazon, came out in 2015. Aside from being Editor-at-Large of The Syzygy Journal, he considers himself the Official Spiritual Adviser of his roommates, Cabáng & Agtâ — adopted stray islander cats, both of which are eponymously named—the first meaning, ‘spotted’, and the other, to mean, ‘a giant black mythical creature in Filipino folklore’.

[image: Abandoned Grave In The Churchyard | Gill Billington]