SUMMER REDUX

1.
A.
Legion they are -

most human, concrete, real -

poised to assault the castle,

yet they’re invisible,

their chants,

shopsoiled & repetitive,

fall on deaf ears…

Has the Palace battened its door?
Does the mob exist?

What is the power in number,

the tumult of heaven

on Mendiola St?

But the walls have not

tumbled down at Gideon’s

cymbals & trumpets!

O they have been at it

for centuries,

drumming a proletarian spring.

Millions have perished,

yet rogues in fancy suits

still call the shots!

The future keeps drifting away,

like a wave that rolls back

from the sand…

But beware!

They keep on coming,

swarming “like flies!”

[If the scene is repeated,

alas, easy lies the crown

on the king’s head!]

B.

A world broken into

multiple spaces…

Barangays of the underclass

enclosing the gate enclaves

in a topographical embrace,

as if to serve as Janus sentinel

of the privileged.

They who clamor for shelter, rice,

even imagined human rights,

say it clear & simple.

“But they scream,” bosses dismiss,

“so they won’t be heeded.”

What if words morph into guns?

“That’s a long time coming.

We shall fire like Gridley when needed.”

What if a tipping point has been readied?

2.

Early dawn

with streets almost empty,

& Carly Simon’s “Moonlight Serenade”

plays on the radio,

like a soft hand gently on his brow,

calming him down

from last night’s summer languor…

But it surprises him

it no longer tugs at his heart:

Sadness seems to buzz about

like an unwanted fly.

Has he finally learned his lesson?

Love & desire

are indisputably one & same,

both linger, then expire.

Too brutalized by a history

of loss, misfortune?

To start on a clean slate

of nothing at all?

Always, the heart turns suddenly cold…

O it no longer beats

for her who has

dug her own foxhole…

3.
The seniors toss

their graduation caps up in the air,

whooping it up:

finally done

with books & attendance:

the world is finally

at their fingertips.

Like bulls, they charge out

of the corral

& into the open field,

as if there is still

the frontier space to conquer!

O If only the mentors

“told it as it is”

the path to Xanadu is beaten,

old,

bodies & silent prayers litter

both sides of the road.

But old men dare

not utter a word…

4.

How impossible to live

under the hot, equatorial sun

that burns the sky!

His body, simmering to a boil,

is vised in stasis & will –

he can barely move,

like an orphan lost

in the woods.

Only if he were Camus’s

flaneur on a Mediterranean beach

who would blame the sun

for his murderous rage:

all is absurd,

he can’t explain why certain acts

suddenly erupt.

Why one lives,

why one dies…

O the sun that dries up

the planet

all of its reason,

all of its emotion…

We are puppets on strings

pulled by the stars,

as if unlamentably cursed.

5.

The teacher surveys

the morning class,

then steps back

as if pushed out by

the blast of air…

O How we wished

he could scoot back to the car

but he’s not a millionaire,

he needs some fast bucks.

A con men is he

who sells words

to placate the crowd?

O What is there, really,

to say

to the young blokes

eager to conquer the world

with their blank look?

All dream, like rodents,

to scamper in & out of the void…

But the world hurtles on

in an expanding universe,

never knowing

its own future.

6.

She’s been cremated,

someone said of the professor’s wife.

In this season of interminable heat

of a merciless sun,

the news of her demise

in brief conversation piece

on campus

to break the monotony

of the day.

The other month,

a classmate from the province

had passed on,

as if his batch’s expiration date

has started to lapse

O How his body reminds him

24/7 neurons have gone haywire

& flesh no longer obeys the mind.

Never has decay been

real: aging faster than the seasons,

a fool falling down

by the wayside.

So this is how the world ends:

all know about it,

yet it still comes as a surprise.

How the dark clown

at the end of the road

finally breaks into laughter

at the disasters

he has piled up.

7.

She pointed to a guy

on J.P. Rizal, all dolled up

as if for a noon party.

O How sad! she said.

He was all powdered up,

his face weathered,

undeniably past his prime.

The driver by the side quipped:

It’s always sad to be old. Period.

Silence broke the tedious dialogue

as they sped toward the office

where clerks on bundy clock

talked about pension

& retirement options.

The empty desk

of a newly departed

was now occupied by another

old dude.

Someone had cracked.

He must have raised

the age of the crew

a thousand fold.

O How they had giggled, as if

it were a joke.

8.

A.

He must have minded

his job seriously

against the advice

of superiors -

never to leave the office,

lest he get involved -

that he is now changed

by the informal settlers

with various crimes, etcetera.

He only wished

to stop the horde

from grabbing university land;

he had no inkling

he was against a professional

syndicate

who craftily bought the court.

A brief exchange

at breakfast,

when they bumped into

each other -

he to his class,

the ex-official to the G.C. hall

to confront leaders

who had made

life so difficult for him:

They now find solace

in the embrace

of shrewd politicians.

No, he won’t extend

his hand in friendship:

they are brigands

who parlayed their youth

for some Judas silver.

B.

J was calling his name

as he hopped into the jeep

for Jamborlee:

O was she delighted

to see again an old “teach”

who barely recognized her:

her skin was smooth,

no longer ravaged by asthma.

Had a boyfriend in tow

who shyly smiled

at his discovery.

She’s still doing well

with the informal settlers,

this activist-writer

who carries the load

for the “untitled.”

Yes, she would text back,

she nodded

as he stepped off

& vanished at the turn

of the road.

9.

Summer.

The barker, assisted by a woman

who wears a hat shaped

like an ice cream cart,

shouts at passerby

about the new flavors on stock.

She smiles to affirm the delicious fact.

But people nonchalantly pass them by.

Did they make a peso that day?

Will the Boss bawl them out

for sleeping on the job?

Will they be required to report tomorrow?

Every day the supermarket opens

casual employees teeter on the edge of despair.

10.

J., beautician,

is sullen,

observably grim,

until an old matron

breezes into the shop,

extending her condolence.

He grunts:

His mother in Samar

had passed on at 76,

right after the cruel Holy Week.

She was tormented

by her heart ailment,

had tired of medication

& hospital visit,

decided to close her eyes forever

for that indefinable place.

O A page of summer

in everyone’s mortal life

when death is most real

& brightly smoulders

like the tropic sun

in the heart.

11.

The festival of death

this summer

is the pestilence of infinitude

that drives all to quick remembering

& quick forgetting.

Names,

familiar & strange,

keep on coming

& he wonders who’s next

to report for the Reaper.

Certainly, only a clutch

of fascist dictators, taipans

& priests would be noted

as iconic heroes-

but the working class

buried in paupers’ lot,

would perish in oblivion,

as if they never existed,

didn’t really matter

even in the imaginary

of the universe -

Only these insectlike

tragedies of the proles

would be made to fall in line

at the pier in Hades

for the Boatman,

there to be ferried

across the river

& into the heart of namelessness.

O Death does not equalize.

In this season for reaping

where flowers & weeds

are harvested

for the unjust burning!

May First, labourers,

will again hit the streets

to “rage against the dying

of the light” & the closure

of heaven…

O To die nobly

but poor?

Is this history’s

supernal moment?

CLUELESS

1.
Jesus Christ
must have wondered
why, of all the infinite points
on the planet.
It is here, at Gethsemane,
the celebrated garden
in Jerusalem,
he must commune with
his Father,
alone, away from his sleeping gangmates
& agonize why
His will must be done?
Is it worth the bloody sacrifice?
The offer of innocent
animals or humans
is Jewish tradition…
In His name, therefore,
the Crusaders killed Moors
& heathens,
women were burned at the stake,
wars had been launched
to propagate the faith.
He was wiser than Nicodemus,
had foreknown the future.
But must follow
the holy message
from above…
Jesus Christ
at Gethsemane,
couldn’t fathom
God’s strange, cryptic ways?
It is supreme blasphemy,
of course,
to even raise
the possibility…

2.
Her name
is at the tip of his tongue:
but the search engine
of his psyche
has failed to mark it down.
Has he succeeded
to trick himself
into forgetting
all the seasons of folly
& minor infamy?
She did exist, after all.
But when a woman
flashed her smile
at him who was walking out
of the lobby
& into the parking lot,
he was seized
by a spasm of familiarity
that turned him giddy,
also empty
as if strangely gripped
by the clammy hands
of personal history.
She, however,
as if to exorcise the spell,
must be named –
it is a power elders claim –
Bubbles,
for she would as quietly
burst in the air
as he exits
through the glass door.
Is he lucky that way?
He, who is
forever damned,
is given to the ancient disease
of falling in love
so easily.

3.
They agree
that a dear friend
whose mother
is convalescing from
an illness,
must be taken out
of their abode
that smells of liniment
& medicine
lingering the air.
Perhaps, to a concert
of a piano prodigy
& soothe her nerves
of insufferable ennui…
The patient has been,
of late,
allegedly petulant –
demanding of her children
extreme love & patience
as she nurses her pain.
But is she too damned old
to take note
of maidservant misery?
Too boorish/
insensitive
of the minor others?
Asking too much of her brood
who dutifully labor
under the onus
of filial servitude?
O She has counted the years,
all right,
starting at the womb
when she carried them protectively
through the difficult childhood
when they cried
for solitude & care…
Is this payback time
for all the years
of female solitude?

4.
He is loitering around
in search of familiar faces
on old campus
that can break
the monotony of a listless afternoon.
Days before summer break
& kids are deep
into the academic shit
of paper load…
Transfixed by computer screens
they cut & paste
pages of discourses
they don’t really mean –
but submitted
for official use only.
& when he comes around,
making out like some vagrant interloper,
they lift their faces up,
blank-eyed/frowning,
annoyed at the adventitious visit:
O remembering
how they have been incongruously
assaulted?
O He has known it before:
Odd man staying on the outside
& looking in.
He has not really belonged.
His presence
is ever an irreverent intrusion.
How long has this been
going on?
A decade? A century?
5.
He was bumming along
that day.
O He didn’t know
how the moment could start,
or end.
Never aware of the tipping point
that would prove
something of the existential
would be beneficial or disastrous
for him, a statistical monad,
swimming in daily crap.
O He was not inclined
how things would eventually add up.
But when she smiled at him,
he was despondently perplexed
at such luck.
So much encountered trivia
of surprises to weigh,
so may ghosts of losses to exorcise.
The morning after,
he’ll surely go about
his stolid business of busyness,
heavy with the stoic presentiment
he can never be
a mathematician,
nor a prophet.
His third eye
is finally shut down.

6.
On the cosmic radar
he won’t be worth a blip.
How he must exist that day
is left to pure chance.
Being mirthful or sad,
like any ordinary bloke,
is never in the equation
of human governance.
Is he an insect,
like Kafka’s
in social landscape?
He ends up
with eyes shut open
like a stage curtain
half-pulled down.
Will there be voices
to massage the spirit
as the moon edges up?
Will he seize the day
when night is forever
on sight?
No one answers
but himself
who only hears
the thumping of his heart.
Is this the essence
of solitude?
Monks are better off,
even if they commune
among themselves
in silence.
7.
Amelia Earhart,
who vanished mysteriously
in the South Pacific
in her attempt
“to become the first female
pilot
to circumnavigate the world”
may have “managed
to land on a reef…
and lived for days or weeks.”
The high-tech
probe of an old photograph
showing a “blurry object
sticking out of the water…”
Yes, after 75 years
of incessant searching for clues
there seems to be
that wished-for closure.
& he, the reader,
on a reflexive mode,
seeks the point
in his life
he can finally adduce,
if at all,
in the mathematical pattern
of his trajectory?
Is he purblind
or what?
But in the summing up,
by whatever calculus,
he won’t be around
to confirm or deny
the mutable facts.

IDES OF MARCH

1.
They are all white lies!
He screamed inside
his skull
as he heard the homilies
in the solemn church.
True, he must remember
as a cautionary tale
only the deeds,
most human, most loveable,
of the departed
must be fervently told
for him who no longer
can renounce the laudatio
strewn like wild roses
at his feet…
Must he cup his ears
& mute the voices
that buzz about
the perfumed air?
& stop all imagined meaning
in the missal of the cult?
He wasn’t sure
if what he should do
was proper, honorific
never a privilege.
O if only he knew
how to act
according to the fashion
of the faithful
who observe tradition
for those who have gone
ahead,
never to come back…
2.
A.
Can you spare a dime
of compassion
for him who lies
helpless on the dais.
Surely, he had had
his secret heroics,
even humanity
in moments of authenticity
never the patent grossness
of his frailty & folly
when he was alive?
O let the sleeping dogs lie then.
It won’t cost a penny,
an old man advises,
if one holds his horses
& flows calmly
with the evening tide.

B.
But you exaggerate!
[His intervention was soft
but firm.]
He was a middling guy, all right,
sharp in his droll ways
like a fancy table knife.
At the time of generals,
he served as privileged lackey
to official satraps
in the corridor of power.
But his hands were not stained
with blood.
They put him on a leash
so he could justly survive.
O, he was lucky anyway
when protestors were picked up
from the crowd.
Was he evil in Mussolini way?
His family needed him
to survive.
[His voice trails off
as if shocked himself
by the sullen trust
in the logic
of his mediated art.]
But he’s gone anyway.
Did he run off
with the state loot?
His was a petty crime
of not being heroic,
like you & I
of the common tribe.
C.
Were his generation
only given to cheap sentiments?
[He bottoms up
as he opens the door
& into the dark, befuddling night.]

3.
How then to sum up
a life?
Everyone vanishes
in the blink of an eye
in cosmic time…
We, who are comfortless,
are left with no one
to console our grief
in the avalanche
of everyday loss
as we travel on the road
winding toward the edge…
Must we be kind
like angels
or hold to account
the dead who made us
suffer?
Is there truly a summing up?
It is all zero-sum
for the world to tally?
& we stare at the bloodied moon,
like stray dogs
howling in the distance.

4.
Summer
when the sun turns merciless
yet we fear to pray for
the savagery of rain:
the prospect is metaphorically lonelier…
Any loss,
such as it is,
is ever permanent, infinite.
& he who once
raised our fury,
emptying us of the clutter
of emotion,
won’t be witness again
to our forebearance, weakness.
By his sordid existence,
we turn,
by our own measure
angelic,
phantoms of dignity & sorrow.
5.
So they let everyone
hear within human distance
how great & vulnerable
the One
who cannot raise a howl
at the portrait
the mourners have painted.
It is him,
the dead on the other side
of the world,
they are talking about?
O how death brings
honor to the fool,
the criminal
& they sin
a thousand times more
by crying
how dearly he is missed.
But roses cut
in summer season
wilt, die.
In days like this
which we count on our fingers –
slowly, penitentially –
life just the same would cough
& hum again
like a spectral engine,
as if nothing really serious
has happened.
6.
It is almost
as if the heart,
by its own dark compulsion,
wills itself to eventually forget
her who never answered,
even vanished
without a trace
in the blue, blue hills
of memory…
She is painfully remembered
after some ceremonial
sighing,
then quickly erased
as if she never existed.
O One must survive
the daily conflagration
that pestiferously visits
all the days
of love.
7.
So-called left melancholy
among those who gathered
at the impromptu feast
of aging warriors
& detainees
should never,
it is warned,
be nurtured like an old wound,
lest it turn into an incurable disease
that scarifies, never leaves,
its imprint like a medal
for all to behold & see.
Never harp on the losses
but celebrate life
as if it were a godly gift
which their hearty laughter
showed anyway.
8.
The ides of March:
We are cautioned
about disasters
that lie in ambush
at the corner.
Globules of invisible blood
stream up on the wall
of the ramshackle fortress
as if to protect us
from the inhuman siege.
Yet they are there,
to flood down
empty streets
& mix with the torrent of tears
that define the fateful
month of March,
when emperors perish,
& women rise.
The configuration
that visits our dreams
of waking…
& we cross our fingers
that the gods
may spare us
from unholy wrath.

QUERIDA

1.
Her husband,
a postal carrier
in a one-horse town,
pilfered the mail
he was supposed to deliver…
Convicted to a prison term
in Munti penitentiary,
he was consequently
absent from domestic
embrace,
leaving her, young & pretty then,
to fend
for herself & children.
Of course, the story
would stay old, the same:
She fell for the guy
who would drive by
her house –
& in due time
got her pregnant:
couldn’t she hack it alone?
Could there be love
between the ersatz lovers?
O the circumstances
were too tempting to let pass –
intimacy turned
into something deep
as to meet the definition
of the four-letter world
love.
But what if such union
be sundered by a husband
freed from the prisonhouse?
They however persisted
as if in a true covenant
as man & wife:
The children, after all,
had grown,
dismissing all the
sordid events
of the ancient past.

2.
The young cop
must have a lover
on the side:
it is as if any rookie
on the beat
must have a
perversion to meet,
an unwritten code
of the masculine job.
The young aspiring singer
in a mining town
had wanted his company,
secured from strangers
in the pawing club…
Now, she’s heavy with child,
croaking deep into midnight
among the drunken punks
who won’t hear her
struggle over the raucous crowd.
O there’s nothing much to do
but stick to the routine
of crying into the microphone
until sundown…

3.
She feels trapped
like a mouse.
She’s got no money
to make her move around,
being never legal
who could claim cash
from the domestic habitat.
If only she could wiggle out
of this hopeless grip…
But she can’t do it
all by her lonesome:
there’s the child
who’s used to high-end
lifestyle…
O How can she start
all over again?
She looks in the mirror
& sees gray hairs
that stick out
like some queenly crown.
If only she were,
she sighs,
young & beautiful –
but time has passed her by,
& leaving is simply out
of rhyme.

4.
He’s mine.
She says it with the finality
of one who
conquered victoriously.
Of course, he’s spoken for,
but she doesn’t give a damn
to the voice of the tribe.
Is she a barbarian?
It is an old, old jazz:
whatever Lola wants,
Lola gets…
Who would therefore dare
to stem the overwhelming flood
of her desire?
O To the victor belongs the prize.
Love itself
cannot be faulted
for being such.

5.
They are gentry bred,
given to power & luxury.
In the carousel
of love & passion,
they bump & bruise
according to sporting rules:
Yet now they wrangle,
as if everyone is fair game,
all have turned predators.
In the name of common love,
they haggle over
the repatriated body;
the legal wife
demands observance
of her conjugal right;
the other her logic
of invested intimacy
& all that mawkish crap.
But cynics aver
what’s at stake really
is the body of billions
a court must rule
for whom it must be honored.
Love is always a flimsy excuse.
6.
Yet, she says,
she has been most loyal.
It is her man,
not his bank account,
that mattered,
as if her desire
was never for sale,
even on hold
for the object of her affection,
passion that quakes
the stolid heart,
& turns the head giddy
as if once again
both were young
& easy…
She vows
to be the very first
& the last of whatever
looks impossible
on sight.
But the outsider can’t believe
his ears –
it is as if movies
never lie.
7.
She was young then.
But her life
was in shamble;
She didn’t know
where she’s heading.
In a reckless instance,
she got hitched
to some dude,
as if in settling down
she could find some direction
& be done with
playing around…
Did she calm down?
She fell silent,
as if weighing something
heavy & indescribable.
She admitted though –
when she met
this new guy at a party,
her heart skipped a beat…
Now, she’s the Other Woman
& forever child?

8.
“You don’t bring me flowers
anymore”.
Barbra Streisand
can never be truer
about him who slowly
disappears.
Time was when…
But nothing lasts forever,
wise men say.
He is out on a hunt
feigning saccharinely tough.
about having fallen out of love
& confessing
it just happened,
like an inevitable accident.
O lovers are forever truants
in a carnival crowd.
9.
She has always been
a difficult child,
elders aver,
as if to say they knew
already what was in store
for her in the future.
But who would dare
question heart’s affairs?
Desire infests everyone’s
will to live, love, expire…
So sayeth her defenders
who hardly find fault
when she shacked up
with a married man
but warned that love would be fatal…
But is she happy?
Strangely, she says she is —
being the other woman
is but a blessing, never a curse,
“To hell with those
who made her an outcast.”
This is her life,
her man, also her all…
Will she eventually eat
her words?
Let things be,
we are warned never to despair.

WATER DRAGON

1.
Her choice of lovers
is deplorable, the therapist says.
I could have helped.
So the heart, after all,
could be mapped out,
if it made a terrible decision
to choose a wayward or upright
direction toward
the deep, dark side.
But can Romeo & Juliet
be rational?
Being prodded toward
the true route of happiness, joy?
Words of certainty & truth
sagely fashioned,
as in sirens’ call?
O It is precisely the art
of not-knowing
its final path,
that quicksilver plunge into the abyss,
that makes lovers
thrill & exult
to the fantasy of having each other,
as if the act itself
is an angel’s craft
to make all things fantastic,
real.

2.

A.
The litigants argue over the text,
the hermeneutics thereof,
that would spell out
the configuration
of the truth,
the deepest layer of
Dostoyevsky’s onion
that reveals the essence
of the core,
the incandescent singular,
the nadir of the absolute,
Holy Grail of the pursuit…
Yet a total farce, after all,
shrugs the cynic,
for in the pyramidal space
they claim to speak
on behalf of the people
who flock outside the hall,
wired in cyberworld,
yawning & gritting their teeth
at the ballgame
being playued by the well-heeled,
the hoodlums in robes.
Who is inside the cage
like a flock of monkeys
watching the grim spectacle?

B.
O He is a man of integrity,
volunteers a colleague
in the court.
Years ago,
he remembers
he signed dutifully,
according to the law,
arrest warrants
for “hooligans”
who objected to the iron rule.
O He couldn’t believe his ears
how time has shifted
its paradigm:
snake then,
chameleon now,
an angel hiding its tail…
O everyone must have
a second chance,
the faithful aver.
But he, the witness,
is not inclined to listen:
There were so many tortured,
so many dead…

3.
The floozies
at the end of the apartment row
are practicing their gig
for the evening show:
no one complains,
throws shoes at the noisemakers –
like a rabid Iraqui journalist –
at the neighbors
who think their métier
is above the common din
of cats in heat
on a hot tin roof:
it is not for the civilized
that they sing,
but for drunken thugs
who will slip their hands
into their thighs…
Should he curse the working class
for their merry act?
O Ever true-blue communists
won’t allow their wanton disregard
for peace
at night when there is nary
a carnival…
Utopia is not a praxiological
free-for-all.

4.
The two lovers,
living underground,
will have their
ceremonial feast
for the sake
of family & tradition:
They, who live at the edge,
won’t dare displease
the elders who guard
against sin
& biblical error.
They must flourish
according to a moral wish.
But this is New Age
when love
trespasses all rituals,
for passage into the future…
Staying together,
through thick & thin,
is proof absolute
they’re meant for each
other –
the rest is empty gesture.

5.
He just can’t help it –
K’s eyes
are fixed on him
moving about the room
where its presence,
though spectral,
is most solid, palpable.
A year almost,
but he is in mourning
for the little guy
who playfully pounces on the rat
of his imagination…
If he doesn’t chill out,
he’ll go mad,
like the widows
who silent squirm
in remembrance
of those who vanished
in the night
of the generals…
The grief is not
for humanity alone,
but also for lowly creatures
who roam the planet
as if they’re
the truly beloved.

6.
Like worms
they come out of the woodwork –
oriental astrologers
who read tarot cards
& animal symbols
to foretell if the year
of this coming life
will be fruitful, or bare.
The faithful seek them out,
assured they’re
never liars nor angels,
will not utter
any contrary omen
to disprove the heavens.
What necromancy holds
dominion over
our hearts
wracked by tempests & hurts?
Yet we persist
to accept the blessings
& warnings of the divine,
even if they turn profane,
an idiot savant’s muttering.

7.
But the Water Dragon
augurs prosperity
& calm after the Rabbit’s
tempestous reign,
he says,
as if to comfort
the teary-eyed orphans
living at the margins
of collective psyche…
As if the universe
has cut mankind
some slack,
making sure
that God’s children
could have this breathing spell
in-between
disasters & pestilence.
He was, of course,
ever the unbeliever,
clutching at his heart
that wouldn’t settle down –
O He has not heard of her…
& ever like a fool
he sits waiting on the hill.
O If only the Water Dragon
were real,
cradling him on his belly,
spewing fire –
love this time must stay…

DEJA VU

1.
After the flood
that flushed her
like shit down the river,
she is cradling
her dead child in her arms.
She doesn’t see the crowd
milling around her,
speechless like the clouds.
O How she had
probably wanted to go mad!
But she doesn’t have
such privilege:
not even poets
can lay claim to that
easy escape.
She will fill her belly
again
with another child.

2.
In Somalia,
they travel hundreds of miles
for the nearest refugee camp,
driven by wind & hunger.
Along the way
their children die like flies:
they dutifully face Mecca
as they say prayers
at their shallow graves.
O Why do they bring forth
children
in this hostile clime?

3.
He’s waiting for the phone
to ring.
Sitting by the window
& looking out,
he sees nothing in the sky.
O He never learns
hope is for fools
who see refuge
in circular reason.
But when he heard
she had run off
with another guy,
didn’t he feel relieved?
That he can finally
push her out
of his mind?

4.
A.
The general is on the run,
reliving the terror
he visited upon his victims…
But his circle
vows to save him
from the crimson mob….
O the secret graves
are mouths
grimly opening in ivory-white skulls!

B.
The criminals
thought it was a perfect crime;
there were no witnesses
but themselves
who carried out the evil act
But when the brothers
dared speak out
as if to clean
the shit from the pig sty,
we knew Sandino’s ants
crawled into our ears
to tell the murder most foul.

5.
He watches the scene
like a cheap movie reel:
He has seen it before,
the conflagration of mud & water,
the shrieks
that drowned all…
But he’s old & can no longer cry.
When will there ever be
an end to this folly
of cheap, anonymous
deaths
around him in his time?
He drinks his hot black coffee,
but it tastes stale,
as old.

6.
It is the same old tales
of despair:
how they clung on to trees,
stayed on rooftops,
floated on waves of mud…
O How his heart sunk
at the drowning animals
who never chopped
mountain trees down…
But tears are difficult
to come by
these days…
Is it okay to feel like a stone
to survive?

7.
He is neither thrilled
by the firecracker merriment
around him,
nor the banter
of long-lost friends:
the blind are fumbling
in the dark
as if another Great Narrative has unfolded…
words are always
light like air
when the real strikes
the eyes…

8.
They don’t say it officially,
They vow however secretly.
Some ways must change,
the rhythm of passion
recalibrated
to survive the death throes
of emotion…
How can you walk the
other way
in a wink,
shift direction
as if it were the true path
to Socratic happiness?
Decisions are made in the
spur of the moment,
truth unveils itself
by accident…
So he notes the imaginary list
saying the blind
are on equal
footing
with him who grunts.
Everything is always uncertain;
why worry over
a future that is yet to exist?
Today is prey
to fortune’s whim…

9.
The student
is taking an informal survey
for comic relief, of course:
Would you rather be
a brooding genius
or a happy idiot?
The score is confidential:
No one can decide?
So he walks out
of the house,
grinning
like an ordinary bum
who assumes
knowledge & joy
are a heavy load
split even on the scale,
like the crossroads, anyway.

BLUE TIDINGS

1.
The Vargas coffee shop
has been shut down…
The kitchen has been demolished,
chairs & tables
cleared out of the aisle
like a toothless gum
that eerily smiles.
Trees outside stare down
bristling with its gentle breeze
in the vacant space.
He has nowhere spot
to sit in & break the silence
where once students chattered
in the caverns of his mind.
O He needs no fancy cafe
but the old one
would be
for his two-penny life
to work out
the season’s fairy tales.
O just a “clean, sunlighted
place.”
for another unwanted guest
in the art exhibit mall.

2.
He was pushing the supermart cart
along the shelves
when a clerk rushed
after him,
inquiring if he had ordered
the “sand” for the litterbox.
O How his heart sunk –
could it be his cat
reminding him about the season
in the hereafter?
He is puzzled by the sign:
must he believe
in the beatitudes of the world
of spirits?
O Ever spectral presence torments!

3.
December hurries up
its yuletide merriment:
he is perplexed,
as if there is fear
the glad tidings won’t last
a day…
In this time of chaos
& disorder
what must he say
to affirm joy
is for real,
would last beyond
the timeline of the 25th?
People come & go,
moments wash away
like waves on shore
& he squeezes everything
into his memory box
that melts like ice…

4.
There she goes again,
imploding in his mind
like a witch
come to make
a villainous visit:
Will she mock him
with her impregnable distance?
Will she mark out
his forever misfortune?
She always does that,
as if on cue –
whenever he scans the azure blue
& sees clouds
that mimic her image…
It never ceases to plague him:
once upon a childhood
as he lay on the grass
& looked up the sky
he felt the wind move,
he, on the patch of green
like a stone, unmoving…
Sages say,
nothing happens without reason,
still he couldn’t
fathom why.
O should he have encountered her?
Ever the towering trees sigh…

5.
RO is in the hospital,
he who lives alone –
anemic, weak,
as if subliminally
he had wanted to die.
He had left his job,
didn’t have a terminal pay
in return –
in his copyreading job
that made a lot of writers
look smart…
Is this all he has wanted
in life?
To pass by unnoticed
like the wind
as old friends merrily chatter
while he sits in a corner?
O who is Emily Dickenson
who would leave scraps of papers
in cracks in the wall,
like arms flailing in the air
as if drowning?

6.
Meynard has passed on,
his cremation in Calapan
soon to follow.
He was a childhood
playmate
among the many seniors
in his huge family.
Last he heard
he was a meter reader
for Meralco,
but that was more than
a decade ago…
For sure, he didn’t go
to college,
that’s for the well-to-do…
Now, he is just
a trickle of memory,
wartime dispatch from
the old town
forever buried in rank ignominy.
It was punishment
twice over:
being poor,
being anonymous.
Why do such things happen
in so common a manner?
No one could answer,
as guzzlers point at
the glass of lambanog
that would be gulped down
in his honor.

7.
He can’t make plans
for the season:
happiness rarely comes
his way.
If he expects a cheerful day,
that is a miraculous
gift from the stars
who don’t reckon
by his infinitesimal presence.
O the universe will happen –
as it does –
& expire
without him big marked out
in the cosmic map.
Now, he takes pleasure
in stride,
hoping a spoonful of it,
sugar from friends & family,
will suffice.
O He has learned
to know the limits
of desire
to survive, anyway.

8.
“Stop & smell the flowers.
Have a mug of beer.
Drop a coin in the jukebox.
Swap stories with drunken guys.”
But he is a blue-collar dog
strapped to a whirling top
& everything is a blur
as he spins by.
He doesn’t know where he is going –
just a machine
on the verge of breaking down.
When it stops,
the clanging sound echoes
in the hull,
lights are turned off,
everybody’s gone for home
& he’s mercilessly alone.
“Stay & smell the flower.
Have a mug of beer.
Drop a coin in the jukebox.
Swap stories with the drunken guys.”
But the “reality on the ground”
is heavy with black humor,
he is bounced around
in a cosmic dribble…

9.
She’s looking forward
to the lantern parade.
She expects to be thrilled,
having calendared the occasion.
Yet she must pay the piper
for the instant sachet of joy –
dressing up/down in style,
gorging on junk…
O Enjoyment is a packaged deal,
served on the table
like a bowl of jouissance.
Has there ever been a free meal?
O she has to have the imaginary
of a postcard season,
but she must work for it,
like sex.
As a child,
she looks in the mirror
& sees Santa behind
the mistletoe.

10.
The political detainees,
charged with subversion plus
some criminal offences.
will spend another Christmas
in the dingy jail
while Arroyo, booked for
rigging electoral polls,
asks the court
for a holiday break
in her La Vista mansion…

11.
Language makes the person,
he says,
as if mimicking a lecturer
enamoured with linguistic theory
that reduces the real
to signifier/utterance.
Is he Bakhtin’s disciple?
Is he showing proof of the material?
Is he touching on social class
from where emerges the ideological creature?
He remembers the guy
who scowls behind the microphone –
usually attired in majestic robe –
& talks the talk
of the waiting rubble
at the steps of the august hall.
Though his words are not in sync
with his office,
he rallies the blind
to his call in defence of his honor,
as if he were the judiciary itself,
personifying absolute virtu…
I rest my case,
the flaneur quips,
as he moves toward the garden
outdoor
to hide behind the curtain of silence…
Who plugs his ears
from the babble of sages
in search of immutable truth?

12.
Lawyers are girding up for war:
the stage of combat is set
for the wizardry of wisdom
of their professor,
when once they were one-eyed gnomes
now they quote fallible sages
to mark them out
as holders of truth…
O How they thrill to Warhol’s
15 minutes of fame
while they jostle for the mob’s
attention!
O How they establish the absolute
by deconstructing commas, paragraphs,
Latin phrases, periods!
Are they truly the repository of wisdom?
The rabble outside could only
hail, without a clue,
how truth was forged
in the smithy of dark souls…
“& there’s the rub,,”
the flaneur
shrugs while sipping tea,
as if scoffing at the old, old scene
in a country of scoundrels
& tedious repetition.

13.
A question of proof
drawn out of an alien language
he won’t understand
marks the mad, mad notion
of his “human condition” –
the old cynic says
as he takes note
of his hands,
bony & gnarled
like ancient trees in a rocky land,
that grip the tools of a working man…
Yes, something must be done
about false prophets
& big-time scoundrels
who have robbed him,
ever under siege,
of his “interior sun.”
But isn’t it the same nightmare
if the verdict,
done in the name of the masses,
fails to cut
the Gordian knot
that binds him
for the promised pie in the sky
of justice & progress?
Always, he is a beggar
marooned on the outside
& looking in:
at a high-stake card game
pompous men play
in his anonymous name.

14.
O how they laugh
at the sight of bums
who pose for souvenir shots –
the dolts in the Senate,
the idiots in the SC…
Yet there they are,
intoning fair play
& wisdom
when none is forthcoming
anytime in the future.
Again, the unbeliever hoots.
If only he were God Almighty
who could rain down
lightning bolts from the sky,
but he is just a stupid mortal
bound to witness
the terrible spectacle.
Where lies the power, then?
The iconic protester,
Time magazine’s man of the year,
knows only too well
the answer.

Declension

1.
He hears
about Jorge Luis Borges,
the fabled Argentinian,
who met a woman
of “concrete indifference.”
O How unhappy he was:
so he wrote it out
of his system –
that’s what allegedly
writers do
to survive, anyway.
But our guy is just a bum:
myopic, lovesick.
O how his imagined
blood
drips from his wrists.
Even if it the cut heals
he’ll open it again
razor-quick
like a faulty leaking faucet.
It never stops –
does he love the melodrama
of Werther’s pain?
He’s no genius.
He won’t find a way out
even with his so-called art.

2.
He utters something;
she says nothing.
He keeps on again & again…
O the distance of the sea
in her silence.
Suddenly, as if roused
from deep slumber
she says startled:
Sorry, I’m a million
miles away –
he’s stuck on planet earth;
she’s somewhere
conversing with someone
in Alpha Centauri.

3.
O How long has it been?
She mopes
like a female Achilles
inside the tent of a room.
Looking at the sea,
behind the windows,
from where she originates?
Travel has been difficult,
tumult of the waves
hard to bear.
O how she wished
she could be the same again:
but always the wind
beckoned
& she fell for his
tales of strange lands
& ways…
She didn’t want to let go
of imagined breaks,
of being on her own.
Now, she fears stepping out
of the perimeter of herself
in the dark
where the waterline
ruffled by air still whispers,
O come, come, come…

4.
Hello! How are you?
That was months ago –
he only opened the email recently.
Is he exultant
she finally breaks her silence?
Does his heart beat
faster than it should?
Her averts his eyes
from the bright screen:
as if the passion
had spent itself
in febrile remembering
what is eternally absent.

5.
But what if
the imagined
like a miracle
happens.
Will he survive
the seizure of surprise?
That something divine
has been granted
by the stars –
& he,
speck of dust in the cosmos,
will be gifted
by chance
to realize
what he has long desired?
O He can’t believe
much luck,
He can’t read.
heavenly signs.
He can’t risk
misinterpretation.
He decides to stay put
in the old, old zone:
O someone
is cashing in
on his misfortune?

6.
Physics is under siege
& uneasy sits Einstein
at the ledge:
young Turks have reported
in the lab
neutrino, a sub-atomic
particle,
moves faster than the speed of light…
His head is suddenly
turned upside down:
his beliefs that guided
his everyday conduct
were all shot:
his logic
no longer holds.
Something malevolent lies
in the old, old truth.
O what then of love, passion,
libidinal drive,
its definition
but sheer misfortune?
It is none of the above
as he goes about
his blind, blind ways
while looking at her sitting
across the table.
What meaning
waits in the wings?
How can he move out
of the old framing?
What words
will pin down the moment’s
inexactitude,
misalignment?

7.
What of December then?
The fable of Jesus
sustains our earthly
trajectory of life.
The delusion occurs
every minute of the day –
like the cat that waits
behind the door,
then forgotten
if it crawls out of sight.
Too brutish to imagine
but the 25th
happens like clockwork
at the turn
of the page.
O How we expect
things may be better,
so we cross our fingers
as we move along
the wire.
What wish shall be granted?
Set aside?
No one calls the shot,
& the heavens don’t answer.
Always, December
is the pie in the sky.

8.
No longer is she
able to seduce him –
he, the lover,
has completely turned
visible.
No longer is there a dark
enigma to unravel:
The name of the game
is shadow’s puzzle.
If there is nothing
to explore
why linger?
No more seduction
is possible…
She finally closes the door
of his mind
& shuts it tight
to vanish in the blink
of an eye.

9.
Old songs on the radio
no longer make him sad.
No longer tears secretly flow,
no longer the melody
tugs at his heart.
O How he longs for the days
when his brain melts
as if lasered
whenever she drifts by.
Suddenly,
it’s May in December
& his heart turns desert-dry.
Is this how sadness
is exorcised?
He’s at loss for logic & craft,
pointing to a miracle
that is empty & beautiful.

10.
La’s special day
but she is slow to rise
from bed
as if the planet
were stuck on its pivot point.
She’s been beamed up
in New York
where the world
spins faster than a top,
& artists manque
are all juiced up
to finish their canvases
with rainbow colors
of their infinite blood.
In a crowded square
she can be all alone
with an indifferent crowd.
O She used to scream
silently, Stop the world…
Now no one hears
anomie’s gaffe!
Today, on the third floor
she wishes she’s a wolf
invisibly baying at the moon.

Dog-Life

1.
They line up
along with their children,
to view the bodies
sprawled in the veggie frozen
of a Misrata supermarket.
They want to see him
really dead, dead, dead,
having watched them
only from afar:
They couldn’t believe
their eyes,
with mixed awe & fear,
that their dictator
& his son
will ever again
be able to terrorize.
The NTC claims
they perished in a crossfire
though filmic evidence
shows he was
coldly executed
by the ragtag army,
brimming with pain & anger
like animals in heat
in the desert pig sty.
They won’t investigate,
transition leaders shrug off,
the manner of their demise.
But how could evil
end itself
if they justify themselves
being more forgivably bestial
than the man
who “whined like a dog?”
When once,
at the flick of his fingers,
he could have any guy
hanged
if he/she so earned
his majestic ire?
O The spectre of guillotine
ever haunts the Libyan air!

2.
They dragged him out
of the Sirte drainpipe
where he hid
after his convoy
was bombed by French jets
that aerially tracked
them down.
But the dictator
once upon a time
was a dear old friend
when he allowed
the West to open the oil fields,
only to abandon him
like a rat
when masses rallied
to telegraph his fall.
“Don’t kill me, my sons!”
he had pleaded –
delusional father
to violated children –
but what could he do:
he had reigned absolutely
whose word was law.
The people dared not show
any mercy,
as if the heavens
were on their side.
They couldn’t be diplomatic,
civilized:
the rebels turned beast
to devour the zoo keeper
who left them hungry
in steel cages?
But, what, alas,
if he threw them some
morsels…
With bellies full,
would they have
doused the fire?

3.
It was unbelievable –
he couldn’t understand
the professor’s drift:
Dr. Friesal Krekshi,
“the new dean of Tripoli University,
accompanied by 25 young men
who fought their way
into the campus with
kalashnikovs and hand grenades…”
found “war prisoners
in shipping containers
and drawers full
of intelligence dossiers
on students…”
Plus an “office suite
near Col. Khadafi’s”
that included
“a queen-size bed,
a Jacuzzi and a
gynecological examining table…”
Nura Bargan wished
however
the professor didn’t destroy
the DVDs of “students
being sexually assaulted…”
It was almost
as if the event
was too banal to be true,
but in the plethora of lies
that the regime cultivated,
he was bound
to disbelieve
any resemblance of truth.

4.
It was pure
schizophrenia:
fascist at home,
anti-imperialist abroad,
funding subversive
movements
that will shake America
& her cohorts.
But he didn’t play
the game well:
he left his flanks open
while driving toward
his imagined place
in the future.
Was he delusional?
Did he believe
his own imagined legend?
But all rulers
are rogues
who claim themselves
owners
of the house of cards;
Obama,
Sarkozy,
Putin,
Assad,
Merkel,
Chavez,
Castro…
The list goes longer
as impostors
troop into
the bloody turf.

5.
Surely, if the people
rise as one
there will be deliverance
– & chaos.
How can a revolutionary
turmoil
turn orderly & disciplined,
clearly delineating
the good & “evil
that men do?”
There will be hell to pay,
of course,
but to steer clear
of collateral damage
on the innocent?
A clear accounting of sins
when the smoke
clears,
the world turned upside down?
O How does one
start on a clean slate,
begin from the beginning?

6.
Overnight,
they have become
experts in handling
high-powered guns
mounted on pick-ups,
firing in reckless abandon
as cities fell:
casualties
would show their wounds
like medals of honor.
But how long
must the euphoria last?
It is as if
a bunch of kids
had pulled
Goliath
to the ground.
But when will street militias,
flushed with victory,
surrender their guns
like drunkards
giving up wine?
True, they have recovered
old voices of their dog years,
as if God
had sanctified
their just mission to vanquish,
kill.
But if the regime
rebuilds on a lie
that the dictator
was killed in a crossfire,
never in an ambulance,
will it bring back
memories of the past
like omens for
the future?
Is there another
colonel
waiting in the wings?
Blindly, they march
to the new beat of the drums.

7.
After the gunfire
has died down
& Nato jets are back
in the hangar,
what is there left to say?
He twits as he sips
his morning brew
at the side café.
Surely, did the people
really win the war?
Asking as if to demean
what populists aver
as the revolution…
If not, however,
for the bombing of Libyan cities
& decimating
the elite forces of the
strongman,
would victory be at hand,
the militias
beating their chests
like chimpanzees
or counting the dead
with tears of regret?
O, listen,
America’s drones &
Pentagon technology did
Gadhafi in,
the dictator, like all fools,
who didn’t see
his time was up;
couldn’t have his own
Arab spring from
his side of the bunker…
But the Allies cast moist eyes
on his oil
& he was a dead man
fleeing the desert town.
O God doesn’t take sides
like any victor claims:
the universe is amoral
& doesn’t care
about mortal affairs.

8.
It is time
for family role call
but some members
won’t speak at all:
their names will
eventually
be dropped from conversation
so that sadness & pain
won’t drown out
the music
around the table.
Was it worth
all the dying?
The gnashing of teeth,
the silent, helpless prayers?
When the sun breaks,
they hope tears
shall have dried up,
heeded the old counsel:
Move, carry on,
as if death
has never cut a shadow
on the land.

9.
They will bury Gadhafi,
like Bin Laden,
in a secret site
in the desert town.
O How the living
still fear the man
who made widows weep
& children
curse life
as if it were impossible
to live.
But if dogs
scraping for food
would suddenly dig up
his grave
would that be
commensurate fate of his bones?
O How they cower
at his voice
as if it were God’s
until someone in mourning
raised his fist
& cursed his name.
Then, the deluge
of waking voices.

10.
War, he drawls,
as if nursing a hang-over,
isn’t a matter of passion
or resolve:
it may make for
a gripping movie scene,
but the before & after
of the conflagration
is the counting of dollars & cent
in the ledger
of human holocaust –
O the curse on survivors
who must pick up the pieces
of their interrupted lives:
How long will they wait?
When will the tears stop?
When money gets tight
while starting all over again?
Dollars & cents,
Dollars & cents
for pain & sadness…
But capitalists
demand their military foray
be paid back,
like prostitutes
changing interests
for an orgasmic act.
O Bankers, not generals,
will always call the shots:
if the billions stashed away
by Gadhafi
for Libyan hearts & home
were channeled back…
But bureaucrats
are hedging –
they need the funds
for Washington,
Europe gone bankrupt…

11.
What if the
old dicatator
in Malacanang
wasn’t flown off
by Reagan
during the ’86 siege.
Would the family
have risen
like the phoenix
from the rubble?
O How the people
on the streets
raged like blinded bulls
but turned eventually
into corralled heifers!
What if, indeed?
O God has a lot
of explaining
for those who still linger
at the abyss!

12.
Of course,
it is bad poetry
to deem
Arakan Valley
as “a place
of innocence beauty
and natural wealth”
but like an orchid
showered with
drops of blood
of Father Fausto Tenturio…
But it was a death
so easily foretold
when the Italian priest
told the Lumads
the roots of their
communal poverty
“since time immemorial”…
He couldn’t be allowed
to freely roam
the hinterland
& get away with it –
while the military
& mining bosses
squirmed in their seats.
He must be a communist,
an enemy of the state,
& therefore,
should be done in –
easier it would be
on Christian conscience
to see a man die
for spreading Favali’s gospel
village assassins
won’t comprehend.

13.
Years ago,
she showed him
a small canvas
she had painted
in blazing black,
her future obituary.
Was she gutsy to face
the real
which everybody denies,
shuffles aside
like mown grass.
Or simply
gripped by a clinical
Freudian drive
all are heir to?
Always, it has been November
in her soul…
He knew some facts
but discounted them all,
refusing to pin her down
& declare “Elementary,
dear Watson!”
his imaginary pipe snugged
in his hand.
Life is a puzzle enough,
he no longer seeks
to untie the Gordian knot.
14.
(For Kayenne, on his B-day, Oct 24)

In a universe
rapidly expanding
into a vast, empty space
& may no longer harbor
any mortal memory,
let the little guy,
Kayenne,
break the inexorable law
of physics
& persist among the invisible
souls
about us,
he who used to sit
like a silent emperor
by the window,
as if in communion
with the sunlight
of the Great Feline in the sky.

NOAH’S ARK & OTHER POEMS

1.
The universe is expanding
faster than humanity imagines,
a physicist warns,
& may turn into an empty space…
How long will things last?
Memory will eventually fail
to exist,
even the soul that mythifies
the heavenward Rx
to hold the invisible together.
O like returning to a room
emptied of itself,
himself floating on an imaginary
network of cobwebs,
& how he will fall or rise
to the rhythm of shadow
& light
when nothing is within sight.
So much like her
who never left a trace –
she won’t even answer
whenever non-memory
seeks a question
that doesn’t even pose itself.
Between the point
of forgetting & remembering
where lies his being is –
like a solitary angel
dancing on a pinhead
at the edge of the abyss.
Nothing, nothing, nothing –
photographers have since
hit paydirt:
O the planet doesn’t even bother
with you & I,
& all our prayers
will never be heard
in the realm of the absurd.
It keeps thinning out at hellward
speed,
mindless of human disasters.
The headwind of stars
rushes in to break the human prey.

2.
Ka Roger is dead
deep in the forest.
He whom the enemy
claims to be misguided
was the son of a sugar worker,
turned unionist-activist
at declaration of martial rule…
He didn’t succumb
to offers of hospitalization,
fearing entrapment
by the fork-tongued guys
in fatigue uniform.
O Resolute was he,
never falling for the lies –
at his marked grave
comrade fired the guns
in salute,
remembering the heat of combat
& his indomitable spirit
as imaginary music
from his silenced harmonica
filled the mountain air.
So many have fallen,
so many will follow
but more will also rise
like the sun
every morning
for nothing has changed…

3.
She never knew
her father was an impostor
who killed her parents
fighting the regime
until forensic experts
exposed the unbearable lie.
Victoria Montenegro
of Argentina
couldn’t hack it
at first
that the Church worked
with the military
to steal the children of guerrillas,
as if they were spawns
to be delivered
from Satanic cult.
Her foster parent died
in prison
defiantly believing
“his actions during the dictatorship
had been justified.”
O How could she therefore
erase her childhood memory
of untruth
now that she was told to see it
in a new light?
O If only she could leave
the past behind,
but how must she break
the news to her three sons
who bask in the rainbow world
of lies?

4.
A.
He catches sight of her
sitting across him
at the back cafeteria.
Looks familiar,
some ghost of a deja vu.
Is she avoiding his eyes?
O she was a student
semesters ago,
who confessed
her difficulty keeping pace
with his readings.
He passed her on to the next level,
just the same –
no need indeed to concern
herself
with academic babble
that would only weigh heavily
on her future:
She just dreamt of being
a cog in the media machine.
He wonders though
why she quickly folded her
laptop
& rushed out of the canteen.

B.
We didn’t do anything –
the blue book confesses
as the examinee
aligns herself
with the rest of the class
for a higher grade…
But didn’t the mentor
hold discussions,
prodding minds
in the direction of juvenile sloth
toward multiple contradictions
that synergizes the world
of left & the socius?
& this gym rat
who flexes muscles,
never words,
simply shrugs off
the theoretical discourse,
as if
the whole season
she had plugged his ears
while dozing off
in the early morn…
Like a whore
who counts out the seconds
until she turns on her side
of the boudoir bed
& wraps with a towel
her young, nude body…
& the professor blindly
finds out
he has never existed
at all.

C.
The crowd is growing
like a swarm of locusts
at Wall Street –
they’ve been duped
by those high-end operators.
They want to be in control
of their own lives,
never stats in charts
at corporate halls.
The Diliman generation
of future bureaucrats
may be holding their ace
up their sleeve:
there’s nothing in the present
to claim a truthful order
& democratic rule.
How can they take
their mentors with their
Papal Bull?
The scene is in disarray –
even during the legacy
of cacique fables.
Should they break out
of the academic turf?
Should they rise up
early morning
to struggle like workers
in the salt mines?
Should they eye the future
with a sneer or smile?
Should they gamble
their desire,
driving headlong
into the inhuman fray?

5.
A.
He eyes them
like an interloping cat
bouncing from the ledge –
the young women
in the cafe
who puncture the air
with their boisterous cackle.
He’s sizing them up
like specimen
on a laboratory dish,
his clinical eyes
foretelling how they will be
years from now –
shrivelled breasts,
loose thighs,
thinning hair,
former magical phantoms
of delight
ravaged by a savage aging
of time, time, time…
This moment is their very own
to gamble away
or cry out…
O How he wished
he were wiser then
but it comes ever too late.
Now, he wears
the dark mind
of an old drunkard
whose right fingers
curl around his beer mug,
his left drumming on the table
as the nubile bitches
pass by.

B.
Has he lost his desire
that used to bedevil him
when early in youth
it kicked in
& he was adrift
like a leaf tossed about
in the spiral of the void?
Is this nirvana,
old sages pontificate,
that leaves him
standing frozen & still,
bereft of tears & anger?
O barely Solomonic,
almost like the second
visitation of death
– first in the womb
where nothing
in the mind’s eye existed –
as he surveys
the crowd,
& he isn’t moved –
compassion & arrogance –
because nada is
meaningless, pure chaos.
If Lacan’s jouissance
is forever drained, gone,
has he turned
one with the telamon,
a veritable stone
to be stepped on?
His lips are sealed,
like the trees around him.

6.
Like Noah’s ark
floating in the grey metallic sea
of floodwaters,
but this cold thin roof
is no haven
for a menagerie of abandoned
house pets snuggling
in the blast of wind & rain.
A clutch of Samaritans,
as if devotees of St. Francis,
aims to rescue them
yet straggles on the awnings,
nursing their own merciless hunger,
in the submerged site,
perched like drenched scarecrows
stopped in their flight,
simply shut their eyes –
as if in mourning
of their own drowning victims,
& deaf to animal silence?
O Why do priests & prayers
fail to civilize penitents
who churchly commune
with “miraculous” wooden saints?

7.
November, the First,
is upon us all –
but he refuses to celebrate it.
The departed have always
been living inside his heart:
like a beast
that keeps gnawing at his guts,
the stoic Spartan boy
who refuses to scream
at midnight
& into the dawn.
The loved & unloved
won’t ever let go.
& he is forever
grasping at straw
in his ocean of memory…
O What manner
of torment is this!

8.
If the world,
as measured by physics,
moves toward
its own annihilation,
something that vanishes
suddenly into thin air,
Marx’s mixed tidings,
then what for
is all the current joy
& suffering?
Their full value if weighed
on the scale of nothing?
The dead never come back
to regale us
with the tales of the beyond –
O how we freeze
on our feet
like deer stunned
by headlights
of an onrushing car!