Contributor: Jun Lit

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Here come the rains again –
with clouds of million emotions
pouring ceaseless streams
of interwoven musings
germinating seeds of void feelings,
like unholy weeds
you straddled upon, or deeds
forgotten in one remote corner -
good as they really were
but not a single soul did bother
to thank, or at least,
remember.

Sometimes I wish I were one poem –
at least one may, on one day, or one morn
read or declaim, remembering a line or two . . .
the poet who wrote it will long be gone
but a verse maybe recited or pass review.

Drips of tasteless wine from rusting roofs
Color the shadows down the wounded hooves
Intoxicating captive audiences
with illusory mugs of rancid ale
make-believe liquors now stale,
stark when faced with truthful pilsen pale.

Even the sweetest of ancient brews
turns sour just like cider of uncured juice.
People cherish sangrias and Bloody Maries
as freshly mixed cocktails, not as diluted whiskeys,
forgetting that once in the brutal reign of winter
within one’s freezing soul, the maimed ember
of a Shakespearean line, kept the mind sober,
long enough to survive the loveless glacier.

But I’m here in the midst of the tropics
And on more serious thought, I must feel sick
that winters like autumns become empty rhetoric
when the Sun Queen imposes its wish
to rule the plains, the peaks, the streams
and even when hiding in slumber it seems.
The clouds and winds just obey its whims.
Its warm royal hands energize
as raindrops turn to double-edged knives
that blessings maybe sprinkled here,
but a destroyer’s wrath sways on the other side

And so after a few moments of respite
Here come the rains again –
pouring harder, torrentially relentless,
holding me hostage
but freeing the sigh, hiding the frown
setting serious thoughts up
but pulling mixed emotions down
cheering the chilling inside
but calming the restless mind
happy and contemplative
ah, like poles pulling apart
yet . . .
ah still . . .
united at heart.


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Jun Lit (Ireneo L. Lit, Jr.) teaches biology and studies insects at the University of the Philippines Los Baños and writes poems about nature, people, and society.

Contributor: Jun Lit

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When the deep well of unwanted tears
have been emptied into deserts called pillows
but the orphaned sadness still flows,
where does one chase the smile
that brightened each day,
each day that stretched a step a mile?

If at the end of the dreaming rainbow
one finds not the proverbial wealth but naught,
where could one dig for the elusive pot of gold
that every pauper and prince sought?

When the last spring of cheer has dried up
and abandoned the riffles and pools
that used to be musical in the days of old,
where could one find the headwaters
of that reassuring look?

One thousand and one hundred questions
reached, discounting the ones uncounted,
now ages old and still unanswered.
And for every interested “What?”
and anxious “When?” that bade farewell,
one puzzled “Why?”,
or one astounded “How?”
and weary “Where?”
knocks at the doors of heart and mind.

Oft I was told by many,
almost a tyranny,
that one supernatural superhero
is the answer. Presto!,
Yet they didn’t know my question,
the questions.
Arrogance, the accusation -
but simply asking
not so simple poetic queries
on realities of nature – not poetry
and on nature of realities – that is poesy!
apparently, in nature,
is not that simple,
and the answers cannot be simplistic
and neither poetic.

I just know
that when I stop asking,
or writing lines, verses, rhyming
or not, and when questions stop coming -
that’s when life ceases
and I
would not
know.


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Jun Lit (Ireneo L. Lit, Jr.) teaches biology and studies insects at the University of the Philippines Los Baños and writes poems about nature, people, and society.

Contributor: Jun Lit

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Like a portrait of the dodo lonely
in one landscape by Savery,
or a royal castle, grandiose
in distant clouds of imaginary repose,
a demanding presence, you were there,
viewed from across the road gutter,
of a highway now made uncaringly busier
by the rushing waters of material progress
in the village of my childhood bliss.
in the Old City of my cherished memories.

the house is now gone, brushed away from the view,
the once-cherished home erased like sparrows that flew
from the maps of trails made by doodle bugs
as they crawled backward to their pits
made by tossing away dusty bits.
Once upon a time, it was there . . .
Once upon a time, a family lived there.
All that remains is a picture, frozen in time somewhere.

To see such mementoes brings smiles and tears,
flashbacks of joys as real as struggles and fears.
It’s just that some unexplained silence conquers my ears . . .
For the decades past seem to say -
youth is as ephemeral as the flowers of May
And childhood, albeit be precious as it may
was a just one quick, one volatile day.


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Jun Lit (Ireneo L. Lit, Jr.) teaches biology and studies insects at the University of the Philippines Los Baños and writes poems about nature, people, and society.

Contributor: Jun Lit

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Lenses and prisms are extensions of the eyes,
but the screen monitors are not the windows
of the millions of awestruck souls,
but the space satellites of closet peeping toms,
champion stalkers, and predatory spies
who shamelessly put chameleons to shame.

Lenses and prisms mimic reality,
and the innocent gels behind them
dupe the vulnerable - the eternally children
in hearts and in minds and in spirits,
as people become willing slaves
of these virtual telescopes to the outside world
and practical microscopes for prying eyes.

The LED and retina monitors maybe new kids in town
who everybody loves when they’re around,
yet they really are indifferent spectacles,
uncaring for the wounds that wars inflict,
deaf to the gunshots that delivered quick
to the unsuspecting innocents their death verdict,
blind to nauseating realities that poverty
reveals as it seduces buds of puberty
with monetary nudities, painted with selfie-starved charity.
The naive left cephalic lobe of the physical brain tells the right
that there’s no problem with a boy or a motorcycle rider
shooting black churchgoers or an alleged drug user
as it is sure that the bullets won’t come out of or break
the glaring bulb that overtook the picture tube antique.

Lenses and prisms burn paper hearts -
whether crumpled by restless youth
or neatly folded by aged wisdom -
at times to temperatures warm enough
to make a sketched smile last a lifetime.
An aging man poorly imitates Mona Lisa -
a pretense at excellence in putting on
the mask of oblivion, as tears turn to raindrops
gathering in an internal, transcendental storm.

In a few other moments, the heat
becomes too hot to handle, and then
a lonesome heart burns out,
leaving incinerated ashes of ‘what ifs’
and a hundred ‘I told you so’ sirens
and one just hopes that gusty winds
of sobs and sighs will soon blow off
the cremated remains of friendships long gone,
wisps of illusory incense,
like surprises of floral scents
vaporized in less than a second
or unrequited love so sadly ephemeral –
dreams of forever, but for a day
The eyes then bid goodnight
the tired mind who blames the heart.
Reason lost the fight. Yes, reason lost the fight
and lenses and prisms remain the lords and ladies,
- radiant majesties in the millennial day and night.


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Jun Lit (Ireneo L. Lit, Jr.) teaches biology and studies insects at the University of the Philippines Los Baños and writes poems about nature, people, and society.

Contributor: Jun Lit

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I know you’re there, and there’s no sense
in trying to explain the unexplained.
It just sets in, seeps in, like a ghostly presence,
just outside the door but not knocking,
just waiting for the door to open
and I knew the door was like a lid
of an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus -
no lock but only I got that key,
no knob but boulders heavily seal it.
A mummy lies inside, tied, bound -
the face shown in the burial mask
is not the rotten cheek and bone
and leathered skin within.

You prophesy the end of days
- times when the tired Sun would insist
that it prefers to shine in the West and not in the East
or the ambitious Moon stealing scenes
and photobombing the stars, it seems.

The hermit of a physicist argues -
No work is done without displacement.
The spiritist turned alchemist proposes -
Solve problems with corrosive solutions.
And presto!
All clogs of mental pipes go!

The soul-less pastor raises the cup
that apathy filled with martyrs’ blood.
The faithful then partake of the eucharist,
sanctified by the butcher’s bullets that pierced
the hearts of innocent kids and maligned priests.

We then offer each other the sign of sinful impunity,
for peace is a lie, when blind loyalty breathes tyranny.


- - -
Jun Lit (Ireneo L. Lit, Jr.) teaches biology and studies insects at the University of the Philippines Los Baños and writes poems about nature, people, and society

Contributor: Jun Lit

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The young man sweeps the mat of dried leaves,
all that decades-old bamboo clump has littered.
The tops and canes are green and fresh,
the over-matured culms are browning.

I am the old uncle watching,
feet raised on the extended arm rests
of my chair rocking,
a mug of brewed coffee on one hand, I’m sipping
just as in my childhood, aroma captivating -
to relieve the joints of uric pain, I’m trying,
to re-live the vibrant guitarist strain, I’m wishing.

The broom stick and rake he sways
with precise moves and muscular grace;
as accompaniment, the chirps of birds, the wind plays
as chickens cackling like backup singers race.

Breaking the seeming trance, the rooster crows,
"cock-a-doodle-doo" - loud and proud, the hens he wows
and I stare at this old boy - or the young man, he grows
He glances at me, then bows,
as I see my past, the youth that Sun did arouse
and he sees his future, as years thin and grey the brows.
Aging is inevitable, I know, he knows
And again, enjoying the day, the rooster crows.


- - -
Jun Lit (Ireneo L. Lit, Jr.) teaches biology and studies insects at the University of the Philippines Los Baños and writes poems about nature, people, and society

Contributor: Jun Lit

- -
Inside my cubic sanctuary,
metered four by three by three
alone is not equal to lonely.

Silence is a deafening music
to which I dance with muted speak
scribbled on the monitor of this phone petite
the one which plays my concert pieces
accompanied by cooling blows of the aircon unit

Within my mind, I think of nothing
Not a slight voltage of worrying
Yet rivers of images keep flowing
some familiar, some quite puzzling.
The dams of slumber are all collapsing.

Within this ‘Invictus’ heart’s galleries,
The messy series of documentaries
rolls, a non-stop soap, a marathon of movies.
I am the privileged viewer
of incoherent video clips, where
I am the major performer
The director inside me, forever
in this reality show, always a newcomer,
trial and error, action here, cut there
Mother Nature is the producer
Chance and some talent, the sponsor, the manager.

Inside my cubic sanctuary,
reminiscing makes me happy,
I know that my Love loves me
and yes, alone is not equal to lonely.


- - -
Jun Lit (Ireneo L. Lit, Jr.) teaches biology and studies insects at the University of the Philippines Los Baños and writes poems about nature and society.

Contributor: Jun Lit

- -
I asked friends much younger
if they have ever
tried catching
June beetles and tying
each on the hind legs
with a piece of string,
and swinging
it round and round to fly
like imaginary choppers,
whizzing,
buzzing . . .
and
they looked at me,
staring blankly.

nah, Sir, can’t relate (lol!)
and all they can say
is, they know how to play
fidget spinners
they’re online gamers
a year ago AngryBirds
and recently EverWing.

Ages apart
Worlds apart
Nature’s afar,
A place called Avatar.


- - -
Jun Lit (real name: Ireneo L. Lit, Jr.) teaches biology at the University of the Philippines Los Baños, conducts research & publishes scientific papers on insects, and writes poems about nature and society.

Contributor: Jun Lit

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“Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear . . .”
- from Thomas Gray’s Elegy

In the midst of growing weeds
I see the gold in your green beads
Fruits of the years your young hands swayed
The sword of life, survivor made

The brush of air on android canvas
Acrylic primaries touched by Midas
Sad as it may that your pen’s healing verses
Hide folded in the moldy corners of empty purses

As mute guest in dark streets of your youth’s animé
A privilege indeed for a hermit of hair grey
Tell me the stories of platoons of Jesuses
Battling seductive come-ons of a thousand muses

Heaven is the warmth of your worn mattress
Hell is the smoke, a neighbor burns the West
Prayers for the dead Chow-chow to bless
Prophets in denial that they were impressed

Amidst your season, your eighty-eighth typhoon
Witnessed by no one but your nth rented room
Imagine one Superhero ushering your Spring soon
Catch up, the ylang-ylang trees, tonight will bloom!


- - -
Jun Lit (or Ireneo L. Lit, Jr.) teaches biology at the University of the Philippines Los Baños, conducts scientific research on insects and the environment, and writes poems about nature, people and society.

Contributor: Jun Lit

- -
Sometimes I hate sad songs.
They make me feel the nights are colder
when you’re away –
in fields of endless greens
or islands of pollen-laden winds
smelling sweet nectary yellows
as you chase mimics of monarchs
regal in their black-lined orange capes.
Those dainty fairies never visit me here.
These sheets aren’t warm enough
to keep them flying
to sprinkle dusts for dream-weaving
into these greying strands thinning
on this stubborn head tirelessly waiting.

As Bruno hits the consummated notes,
I reach the empty pages of a companion book of quotes
but nobody close enough to hear soft murmurs
like one Adele begging for love
in one last night together in some distant abode.
The youthful pitch leaves me envious
and squeezes a pinch as my heart argues
for those wasted chances of holding those hands
or missed opportunities of touching your hair
as I pass the now cobweb-covered chair.
The red velvet cover’s long gone and bald
but the hint of Victoria’s still there

The Old Band wails of our yesterday
when our woes were simpler and far away
as adventures in the jungles of our life of awe
become frames in a passing slide show
of demented mementoes – an array
- this bed is the only place to hide away
and the linens cover reverberating questions
of unceasing why’s and what if’s of illusions
but the care-giving pillows have only mute answers.
For all things and persons come, warm wine and verse,
then most will go frozen into long winters
and only a loving heart remembers
and hums the last sweet song of dying embers,
caring not for the ghosts of lyrics that each beat enters
into that long list of departed love letters
now entombed in graveyards of their volcanic cinders.

Fantasies bloomed
as countless Blue Moons guided
the ylang-ylang scented paths
Tales of you, the Beauty inside,
and I, one Beast on the outside,
blossomed
The rich pink petals have now dropped
But the fruits are golden
and the sprouting of seeds
have never stopped.

Tomorrows may come –
near where Yellow Brick Roads
lead to dead Ends of missed Rainbows,
no pots of gold to find or mend
Yet as a distant Old Harmonica – a rusting friend
I am – blows and gasps struggling for asthmatic tunes,
those still familiar lines – mine’s not a Wooden Heart –
when the now creaking knees had once danced
cha-chas, boogies, swings
but promised the Last Waltz with you, tarried
but not tired. The acid-washed jeans are now faded,
but the double-stitched Love we have
endures
And again
I am Always – Right Here Waiting . . .
For You.


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Jun Lit (or Ireneo L. Lit, Jr.) teaches biology in the University of the Philippines Los Baños. He also writes poems about nature, people and society.

Contributor: Jun Lit

- -
That was the time
when apples of eternal youth
were confusing durians
hanging from that forbidden
tree of carcinogenic truth
offering orgasmic salvation
from rebellious damnation

and then
you silently struck
the wandering limbs
of my not-so-innocent heart
with your potion-filled fangs
of captivating smiles
and inviting glances

I was stunned
as you slithered
through the sclerotic veins
of cryptic insecurities
narrowed by hating gout
and calculating doubt
and dying hopelessness.

the soothing venom
of your benevolent soul
inch by inch digested
each muscle of resistance
- that stubborn self-withdrawal -
each fiber of dullness,
all arteries yielding
to every warmth-filled dose
of your embracing care,
all capillaries unblocked
of needless faithlessness
by each generous drop
of your comforting word,
supplied ad libitum
emoticons engorged

these arms
once pumped with apathy,
both angels and demons abhored,
now and forever captive
in the web of a redback
- not from one down-under outback -
a willing prey enwrapped, adored
by your vibrant spirit, like I was Lord.

with me, your life is not in Eden,
but I’m forever smitten,
neither is this hell revisited
and with you I remain intoxicated,
here in atheist’s purgatory enchanted,
the inner warrior pacified,
mellowed,

lysed,
mind, body and soul
surrender to be swallowed -
hook, line and sinker -
to fall
to this serpent,
now decades-old
and juvenile joules spent
but we still
continue to call
love.


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Jun Lit (full name: Ireneo L. Lit, Jr.) teaches biology at the University of the Philippines Los Baños, and studies insects and other things about the environment; he also enjoys writing poems about nature and society.

Contributor: Jun Lit

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I’ve been here before
I’ve seen these all, I’m sure

the priestly garbs of black and stripes
that fit this atmosphere of masquerade
the golden tasseled black berets
that hide
the emptiness,
the mindlessness,
the heartlessness
the flowing capes of silk and wool
too hot to wear – they’re never cool
in this clime of eternal steam…
the roll call of names
like summoning all the saints -
the confessor’s ears are ready
but nobody dares
to speak out the sacred truth
the naked truth
the blank walls
behind the pretending pomp
and disguising pageantry

these palatial halls
conceal with draperies of elegance
sculptured paupers
a multitude of shanties
an army of dark shadows
digging mountains of rubbish
for spoils to salvage

holy hypocrisy?
emperors parading naked?
or beggars in velvet cloaks
of royal blue?

The blind loyal servant bangs the gavel
as Lord Hunger knocks
at the door
of the Almighty Loo


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Ireneo L. Lit, Jr. (a.k.a. Jun Lit), Professor at the University of the Philippines Los Baños, is an entomologist who also writes poems about nature and society.