1.

The fisherman
mends the net
at the beach
after the tsunami
& earthquake
that sent Port-au-Prince
into a tailspin.
He can only remember
the neighbor & house
being washed away
in the ravaging tide.
He scans the sea
for dinghys swarming
toward points of nowhere
spared of bodies
piled up in trenches.
& the unrecovered
under the shifting ruins.
He’s old,
says he “takes life as it comes.”
His eyes are dry,
firmly focused on his
fishing gear
to set forth in the night.

2.

The young woman
brushed aside the old man’s
ambushing lips…
& she had to pay
a silly price
by being bowled out
on the internet
for her malicious conduct.
The Filipino expat
in Paris
had gifted her with
her portrait…
As if he expected
something in return?
O Why do old guys,
overwhelmed by senile passion,
expect to be reciprocated?
Their time is up:
like the river
that has turned spent & dry.
Calmly, with a secret laugh,
she sent the canvas back
to the old address
where cats scrounge
for daily scraps.

3.

She is telling
the other girl,
“There are issues;
He’s older….”
Her voice trailing off
as if a deadend
has been reached
& the walls
caved in:
But should that matter
if passion
is true to itself?
Yet the summer story
is always brief
& repetitive.
Something is always missed,
& Frank Sinatra
knows it too well
in his drunken gut
how Ava Gardner,
a transcendent beauty
beyond all the fashions
of time,
could be enveloped only
by his eyes.

4.

The academic was sacked
for an immoral act
of forcing himself
pathetically & sadly
upon a student
who resisted
his imagined charm.
Bystanders would chuckle,
Why did he do that?
Did he lose his head?
What text
did he read
to enflame his fantasy?
He must have turned
so goddam desperate
to drop his pants
before a raucous
& invisible crowd.
Surely, desire ever leaps out
of the despairing heart –
but he who is struck
by the gods
in the head
will ignobly perish.
O Old lovers
really never grow up.

5.

A logician,
by presumption,
he keeps hypothesizing
about the old fogey
who tries to pin down
Lolitas far beyond
his habitude & age –
What strange beast
is he
who seeks the company
of her
who knows more
at her young age
all the pain & pleasure,
the comic & the tragic
of whatever pursuit?
He, of course,
is bound to lose,
too little time
to note of things less essential
to passion’s
real route.
He can never rely
on his masculine allure;
behind her nubile smile
lurks Venus’s
fatal fly-trap.

6.

He says,
he’s in control:
he can pick up
any floozie
that smells of brand
perfume,
& they can at the drop
his thick wad
seductively perform.
Hungry virgins
ever in need
even of promises
to survive the hard times
in style.
O How they look
with moist eyes at
high-end prostitutes
who also pray in church.
He says,
he’s in control.
Everyone has a price.
Money talks,
that no one disputes
in the age of capital
where virtue
is worth a hoot.

7.

The lovers are young,
always in heat –
& all the seasons
of intimacy
they’ll smell of carnal sweat
& orgiastic moans…
They lock hands & groins,
like the classic statue
of lovers
in deep embrace,
steel melted into steel.
They are its paradigm,
no one can tear apart.
Why did the publicist
report recently
they have finally
& cordially agreed
to call it quits?
Desire wanes
like sun in desert evening…
Cool of summer
turns to rainy season’s
humid air…
O the workings of the heart
have always puzzled
both the insane & the wise.

8.

But, of course,
he is branded
a dirty, old man:
& bystanders
in dark cafes
would smugly disdain
details from petty conversation
snatched like motes
in the festering rain.
Does he care?
Headshrinkers aver,
his addiction
is for something he continually
misses,
like women,
like his mother who left him
behind…
They are imagined antidote
for his interminable losses.
He is wont to mistake the Virgin Mary
for whores…
But there will be end
to all this gruesome sadness:
one morning,
when he wakes up on the
wrong side of the bed,
he’ll smash the mirror
& virgins will flee
from his important rage:
he’s old,
fossilized like a corpse.

9.

Will there be
surrender to prose?
In due time
when evening sets in,
nothing is far behind?
Poetry, for Sartre,
is never instrumental;
other disciplines
won’t allow themselves
the ambiguity of language
unveiled by the infinite:
opaqueness
is blindness
that rules against logic.
Thus seeing
the signs on the wall,
he was seized by
inexhaustible fear,
as old mad people are,
for the abyss
may empty itself
to a zero finality.
They say
he’ll finally walk the talk,
& lead the parade
to the framed discourse.
Here, truth as alleged
fails to be elusive –
a tear is to be equated
with mix
of salt & water.

10.

The old senator,
ex-warrior
during the Marcos years,
groped for wit,
but instead
pulled his pants down
for the raucous gallery
to snicker
at his wild, wild gaffe.
It must be
his senior moments
coming in avalanche.
He bats for a big-time
billionaire
to lead Congress
down the road,
like a chariot on fire
because he was once
of the tribe.
Now, the guy’s deep
in money scandal,
but he’s not wanting
in allies
who’ll sing hossanahs
with blind eyes.
O How badly
people age,
as if wisdom
had gone out of style.
History plays tricks
on those
who insist they dawdle
at virtue’s side.

11.

The first time
he bristled about
transparency
written into
party policy.
Next,
he intones
he’ll stick by him
through thick & thin
because his candidate
will be a loaded gun’s victim.
Alas, when militants
bed with cheap politicians,
they’ll find the harlots
least guilty of sin,
for the pleasure
of their comradely company.
Who asks:
didn’t Mao traffick,
for revolution’s sake,
with
calculating warlords?

12.

Tempest in a tea cup.
Paradox of metamorphosis.
For idiocy in the academe
is never countenanced
in its unjust halls?
But she’s fair game
for chancellors
who would bounce
the ball to the other side
of the court:
decision is not theirs to make,
but somebody else’s.
She’s too hot to handle:
activism here
is never an acceptable rule.
Her pedigree is ordinary:
no big shot would lift
the phone
to bamboozle them
this is
the age of reason.
Justice is always outside
the ambit of the poor
who make for bad politics
even if they are so gifted
as to challenge authorities.
In a country
of pelf & power,
if you let on
you’re head & shoulders
above ministers
you’re done for.
O How old people
unmask themselves
with so much sophistry –
they’re naked emperors!

13.

She looked at him
for nanosecond
& he squirmed inside –
he didn’t exist!
She’s young,
arrogantly pretty,
& didn’t take it well
that old man
seated in a corner
would throw furtive glances
her way.
But she’s pleased
it unsettled her guy.
When she brushed
past his table
on their way out,
she slightly giggled
like a temptress
flicking off an insect.
O How his blood
rushed to his head!
O Where was his gun?
Years later,
remembering the scene,
he would still kill her
a thousand times
even if she wasn’t worth it:
That look had always been his
everyday nightmare.

14.

Desire is eternal –
The body terminal.
But he continues to drift
in the company of women.
Is he Satyr personified?
An autistic idiot
who lives
in an imaginary planet?
He is clueless
why he’s still at it –
hunting for them
but getting kicked instead.
Longing for companionship
of those
who always leave.
A fixture in cheap cafes
he is,
a million cups
to still the unease.
He is stupidly tormented,
as any old man believes.

15.

She turns gazes
into dollars
& she is all smiles.
The dirty glances
give her real high:
she strips
& teases
soft cocks
for it’s all body business
where old men
who pass wicked time
in dark rooms
stonily
savor carnal delight
they used to have
like ice-cream
under dim lights.
They dodder back
to their empty nests
heavy with impotent sighs,
dreaming about
this cool, wild girl
who stokes
again the embers
of their once-upon
ramrod lives.
Do they grumble:
Damn those women
who hold strange issues
against old men
who wet their bed
so badly
in the night?

16.

Ozzie Osbourne
of Black Sabbath
is done with booze
& sex
like a Russian roulette.
He’ll keep on swinging
though
& won’t abandon
the band
that keeps the blood flowing.
He’s issued his memoir,
there will be more coming
if memory jags him right.
He views the world
from a different angle now,
committing to text
what his body electric
bled.
Is the horizon closing in?
Is the tremblor
growing louder
in his inner ear?
He’s on a long pause only
after such tumultuous journey.
Of course,
no one succeeds
in pulling back the clock,
but words,
he vainly hopes,
can stall
the coming of the dark.

17.

The old couple
jogs down
the Diliman oval,
as if outspeeding
the growing grass.
Stop the ticking of the clock
for human cells
threaten
to turn to dust?
It is, of course,
a wise thing to do:
the mind persists
what flesh resists,
& if this be rare violation
of nature’s physics,
it is arrogant spirit
that tries to break through
the universal limit.
They only know it
too goddam well:
the sun will turn
them into wax.
they will seek refuge
in the shade
as if to register
an impotent protest
against the infinite.

18.

The boy brags
he has scaled the Carillon:
he’s disappointed
it lacks mystique
oldtimers prattle about.
Nothing to marvel at,
angularly bare
but for the towering bells
that send musical chimes
resonating
all over,
thrice in the evening
when the sun fusillades
its orange rays.
The old companion
pauses,
as if deeply hearing again
the sadness of his early
years…
But what was it
he can no longer pinpoint
with his gnarled finger.
So long ago, so long ago,
& still pain
shoots up
like screams
of insane mistrels.

19.

It isn’t fair:
she has to do
some balancing act
between diapers & computer
in a room
that should have been
all her own,
gazing out the window
& into a future
of texts & lectures
to signify a life
worth her scholarly measure.
Not this
kitchen & other worldly
trifles.
She fears going on in years,
her body ransacked
by surgeries…
Her most cherished child
will crawl
then vanish outdoors
like a loveable ghost…
They always
leave gently
with lovers in tow.
What is there to do?
For now, she’s content
seeing her make
her first steps toward the infinite.
It has been thay way
for centuries…

20.

He’s got an odd habit,
he must be old,
he says.
He skips the front page
& heads straight
for the comic section
to celebrate briefly
the day with his snicker.
Then perchance
glossing over
familiar & strange names,
noting how
people disappear
not even with a sigh:
A popular guy here,
a moneymaker there,
who seems to have left
nothing significant
but for family members
who briefly cry.
How did such existence
happen?
Like fruits that fall
unnoticed?
God wouldn’t answer:
no prayer isn’t even noted,
as in Congress.
Like a quick afterthought,
some pause & wonder.
Then it becomes a blur
& no one dares
to utter the names
of the departed.

21.

The drunkard
sagely poses:
what’s wrong?
Don’t brood.
Life is always
an accident.
No one leaves anything
worth keeping,
even heroes
ceremoniously proclaimed.
Do we bother about them –
only on special occasions
when nothing true is said,
but empty encomiums.
All, my friend, is
misspent emotion.
Be ready for loss –
the heart concocts
stupid reasons
why old fogeys
feebly pass on.
It’s all psychic fixation.
Tears dry up
in fleeting seconds.
The child in the crib
makes up for the dimunition.
Luck & love
is repetition.

22.

After 20 years
Mila del Sol
is back,
her memorabilia
of Golden Years
with movie stars
Jaime de la Rosa,
Norma Blancaflor,
Nida Blanca…
all hauled in
by 40-footer truck.
Heavy with
bells & trinkets,
Chinese vases
& gifts from travels
to France,
Mexico,
Holy Land
that marked her
peregrine tales.
But will the artefacts
fill the lacuna
when she moves around
old places
& the heart
listlessly longs
for that distant pass
when she was
lovely & young?
Mementos
are indices
of happiness so brief,
to her who contemplates
the final plenitude
of sadness.
The perfect bliss
of those
who haunt
the edge of sunset?

23.

She would have been
down in the dumps
if she didn’t make it
to New York,
her mother says.
She had always wished
to hotfoot it out of the chaos
that makes travel
to local suburbia
pitifully perilous –
in this country of disasters
where one-eyed idiots
rule the roost.
Her steps, after all,
are suffocatingly monitored,
like Kamikaze plane
on the telescope.
Overseas, she’ll be
on her own
drawing images
of contrasting colors
& cultures,
where vision
defies the horizon.
But she’ll be back
after pushing the limits
to a newer route:
& why, of course,
in a world of possibilities
the infinite
should serve the market?
O She who rides
the subway of art
must safely get down
at the Brooklyn station.

1.
Gunman

Something boils
uncontrollably inside him
whenever he eyes on the road
single-digit plates
& the driver
looking down from his SUV
like he were a peasant
on a slow cart to town.
He gets his imaginary gun,
points it at the punk,
& pulls the trigger,
his lips muttering,
Bang! Bang!
like Frank Sinatra crooning.
In another story,
he was a Special Force
trooper
with combat experience
in Iraq
& he couldn’t possibly let
the smug expression pass…
PTSD
& the story had long been written
before
it disastrously happened.

B.

Tough to tangle
with guys
of high-priced connexion,
for at the end of it all,
they’ll turn your story
upside down…
Yes, he was,
by the looks of it,
ill-tempered,
spoiled as if the world
wasn’t really cool,
a source of just rage
but too often out of place…
When he killed
Middle East militants,
he never felt so good,
refreshed as though
shooting up
from the depths of the river
of his sorrow & ennui.
But here in Manila
he carried back
the smouldering ruins of Iraq –
& that made all
the difference.

2.
A,

What can a Mother do?
She can only lie & kill
for a son beloved but truant.
Can she disown him
& feed him to the dogs?
She cannot even pray
that her son be spared
the tribulation
that never even happened
in Jerusalem…
What can a Mother do?
Defy conventions of the tribe
& sacrifice him
for the sake of another Mother
who is deep in sorrow’s vice?
O She will be selfish
& almost brutish
for their child is her very own,
her flesh & bones.

B.

The Virgin Mary,
mother of Jesus of Nazareth,
was never quoted
by disciples
to have uttered a word,
allowing herself
to be swallowed by the shadows
as the son
was drowned in the avalanche
of light.
Michaelangelo,
freezing her image to stone,
soothed the dying
with her gentle silence,
as if that is all
the universe could utter
in the heart
of affection.

C.

The mother of the hunted
wears her grief
on her sleeve
& hunters
would rather she take
a drug test.
Such has been
the evolved face of passion
since the crucifixion.

D.

Let this be
the dark caveat:
did Jocasta
weep
so wrathfully
when Oedipus
blinded himself
for acting out
a prophecy?
The Pieta,
in Lacan’s equation,
is dramaturgy
of the Madonna
& the errant child
as secret lover
who is not,
but beyond him
that is everything
she’s been missing
all her sad, sad
life.
O let this be the sorrow
of all women.

3.
Hell City

Haiti keeps him on edge.
Images of decay stay in the mind
for a nanosecond,
then vanish with the cares of the day.
He is done with imagining
how hell happens
on the other side of the hemisphere.
It has always been here,
right down the street
this alleyway of the archipelago,
& he walks the dreary neighborhood
with a strange fear
nothing is always the same.

4.

Should he care?
Is it a bourgeois frame of mind?
What with humanity?
A child pulled out of the rubble
will perish just the same –
wretchedly –
in Port-au-Prince
where grief is the voodoo sorcerer
you bump into –
customarily.

5.

They clapped,
extremely buoyed up
by their efforts
to pull out a Canadian
from the concrete belly
of the hotel
that crashed down
like a house of cards.
Recharging their spirits
in their mission
to overcome the flagging hopes
in Haiti
which camouflages
its suicidal metaphysics.
Though faith,
charity, even love,
are in short supply
hereabouts,
they aim to dig up
the others mercifully trapped…
But life, like anything,
is just another dirty word
at Port-au-Prince
that is in perpetual ruin.

6.

So precise
is the caption
for the devastation:
“A nuclear bomb
gone off…”
Or even Marat’s asylum
where men & women
have turned violently mad.
A preview of the future
where survival
without food or water
returns to the primal.
Who must explain
all this?
But God has all along
made known
that the world
continually rocks & rolls…
O There with soft, soft hearts
know only too well
the line between North
& South,
between peon & banker,
is root of it all.

7.

He kept to himself
about the death
of peacekeepers in Haiti:
but, slowly, she pried out
a distressing note from him,
like black pearls
from a strong depth:
yes they kept the place
in shape…
But frankly, they sought
decent wage for family
the state could not provide
here in our godforsaken country.
There’s no money
in common soldiery.
Who must pay for this?
Of course, of course,
if we trace back
the history of puppets
& global misery…
But his voice trailed off,
as if harboring a secret
no longer worth keeping
the lid on.

8.
Class

He hesitates to enter the room.
The very point of entry
is the very fulcrum of forgetting –
& he compulsively repeats
what usually happens before.
They look you up,
then tighten their emotion
like bubbles about to burst
at the point of expansion.
O Why is forgetting
so unforgettable
than remembering?
You turn the page
into another page,
& so forth & so on,
as if everything is worth the action.

9.

You remember a face,
worse, a name.
& they will as well
not have a sense
of who you had been
in their petty lives –
though they had walked up
your back
without leaving tracks.
They may assault you sometimes –
anywhere, howsoever –
a hint of recognition here,
knitted eyebrows there…
But that is all there is to it
& nothing really
you may conjure.

10.

You’ve written on the board
words bound to be erased.
But they don’t care a hoot.
Everything is in the order of things.
Even if you dutifully hold
the white board marker
& meticulously spell out
stuff you think would make
the difference –
as if Frost were telling the truth…
But they sooner than soon,
look out the window
where the world appears
more real & true.

11.

They are perusing the poems
prepared for the day’s session.
It’s Robert Penn Warren’s
dredged out of the trunk
like a mothballed truth
made handy
for text-savvy youth.
& he secretly giggled
at how their faces tried
to smoothen their brows:
they have always been so smug
about literature,
preferring Math as the more rigorous
course.
Does it please him
to see kids tortured
so early in the morning,
like babies crying for milk
from breasts that are dry
& withered?
But their perilous moment
they will throw out of memory
of their amnesiac day.
Just the same.
Just the same.

12.

She says
she doesn’t know
what to do after leaving school.
Everything is enveloped,
as it were,
in a deep purple haze,
& she can’t make out
the acceptable nightmare.
She wishes to spend
her young life
writing –
but we know the twaddle,
secret ambition
of future housewives
who’ll be constrained
to wipe babies’ butts,
then impress upon their offspring
with their know-it-all
ambiance.
They too,
once upon a time
were seduced by colors,
or signs…
But can he be sure
she’ll follow the same, old route
of the sick & the aging?

13.

They are prolix with
endearing words
but are not even equidistant
from its other’s fears.
Texting heavily,
hoping to pin down a signified
that is always not.
How can hearts communicate
when words are spoken
in split-second
while coming in or getting out
of doors?
Habermas knows it
all along –
dialogue is total communion,
or fatal disaster
that is meant for none at all.

14.

Old dreams revisit him,
& he can’t duck them
like bullets in the war front.
He fails to mark them down
in his early morning mind
but they always end up storyless,
always evanescent.
Strangely repetitious
of primacies of returning grief,
sadmen defeats –
as if the very forgetting
is itself a remembering.
The future,
like the past,
will ever be the same.

15.
Blanket

So he’s pissed with the boys
she escorts to the table.
They look like brutes
in diapers
or gym rats who can’t make
anything of what
he pompously says.
Always, she’s in dire need
of security studs
like Linus’s blanket…
O But love & affection
never really exist
like the fabled angelic guardians.

16.

Out of the blue, a word from her.
Coffee, yes?
Of course, as a matter of ceremony.
Suddenly, he’s all juiced up,
but as quickly cools down.
He knows how it will start & end:
the initial conversations,
the helpless look behind the rim.
The ritual too often ignored
is all gentle torture.
She will leave, as before.
He will drive alone, as always.
O Every two-penny lover
must learn the heart’s translation:
nada means nothing.
Zero is all languages’ common junction.

17.

A courtier has died.
Something that would leave
him speechless:
after all, it’s uncivilized
to harbor ill-will
toward a departed.
His lips are sealed,
as much as the dead’s,
who covered up
for the inequities
of his Masters:
of course, a loyal servant
who would never bite
the hand that feeds.
Here then the epitaph:
Only those who know him
up-close
will remember
his quiver & his tear.

18.
Perpetual Obit
(for the departed)

So many deaths
at the year’s unfolding:
coming in mathematical subsets,
as if the planet spins
a maddening puzzle
why they should come & leave.
Neither angels nor devils
can divinely predict
what the day shall offer next,
& knaves & saints
live & perish on equal footing.
The door revolves
in a merry way:
departure & arrival
are one in the infinite?
The dead always bury the death:
who then really exists.
Why be seized
by love & passion,
fear & dread
if only to end up
vised in the hands of death?
Always, the wind howls
its senseless obit.

1.
Metamorphosis

He had turned to stone
but it was not devastating:
the annihilation
into nothing
was a usual event:
such as the lava
that froze rocklike
on the volcanic slope;
ripples of wind
that struck the hands,
all in the order of things.
No word ever from her?
No big deal at all –
in Liebniz’s world,
monads we all are
thrown helter skelter
everywhere:
souls without windows
for something to exit or enter.
Simply, all things
happen
even without God willing.
If you grit your teeth,
injustice remains.
When he became
one with the elements
the heavens
simply shrugged
as if in celebration
of a non-existence.

2.
Auld Lang Syne

How do you meet
night stalkers in your
dreams?
They slip out of your head
& into the wee morning’s
nightmare
when the sun turns
the room upside down:
yet always,
you are mortally moved
by cheap loverly mood:
the circular conversation,
the Medusa look,
the averted eyes,
then the crystal silence
that seems to tell all
that limps
at the edge of worlds.
Eventually,
between cup & teabag,
the perpetual void
that sucks you in,
as if in habitude.
Your vanishing
is always foretold:
why you have to linger
around
only fools
sick of empty gestures
would dare
crack a joke.

3.
Imprint

The customary resolution
for the future
is damned silly.
Trace, like a jaguar’s ghost,
lingers in the air,
& the misdeeds
are snarl recoiling
from the wall,
as if it has always been
there
upon visitation.
But the heart occasions
itself
to write it down –
“the quiver & the fear” –
as if it were the truth.
It is all a lie.
It has always been
that way.
& you salvage it for yourself,
this Minotaur
trapped in the labyrinth’s
mirror.
Nothing seems to change:
She goes her way.
He stays put
& he is not the first
to have been
unremarkably fooled.

4.
Rx

So the entering year
carries the tyger’s growl.
It is tradition –
& omen –
that texts
all possible misfortune
that befalls
your daily dreaming:
But this is to retrace
what the ancients
take of the circle:
It happens
the way it should,
like a rat
running in circular hold.
It’s not going anywhere,
but the mileage
is marvelous to behold.
You are back
to where you started.
The decade’s end
returns itself
to a sad becoming.
What was forecast
centuries ago
repeats itself
in fatal infinitude.

5.
Deadend

What must be done
to shift paradigm?
He could stare
her down –
in anger or distress? –
like any anchored slut
who once held him
in a vise,
but now is wrestled down
to be kicked aside.
There is no other choice
lest he perish
in her jujitsu hold.
If he wavers
& stalls his heart,
he’s doomed
to repeat his servitude.

6.
Revolt

He was a laughable
slob.
She pinned him down
with her Medusa lock,
& he whimped like a dog
for the bone
in her hand.
But it was all charade.
She was simply playing
millions of guys
out there
to fuck
& he surmised
he was the Holy One?
Lovers who take themselves
profoundly,
like Socrates with his hemlock,
deserve to be the butt
of divine comedy.

7.
Probe

& how should he prepare
his face
for faces he must meet?
He must gaze into their eyes
& assume the stance
of a clinician:
recommend an ice-cold
solution
but only to his blurred vision.
This is an inverse operation
when the doctor
turns into a patient
to minister a cure:
nothing magical here –
the instruments of emotion
must be wiped clean
of blood,
& the patient himself –
who is the healer –
& etherized upon the table,
must be pushed off
to give way
for himself the client
down the line.
A tear, a frown
is just disguise for strategies
to survive.
In the world
of reflexive wisdom,
nothing lasts,
especially when everything
seems to hold fast.

8.
Way of Truth

Solidarity
is the millenium’s
jargon:
Marx & Lenin
founded a fundamental
line of discourse
on it.
But the ancients
minced no word
of censure
when Big Daddies
of Words
beat their chests
as in jungle lore.
O He knew the arguments –
how they bloomed
then died
at the crossroads.
Yet he can’t still figure out
why he feels stupid
thinking he’s all alone
in a world
that drifts away
like a wayward balloon.

9.

First Version
A.

1.
She could have been
anyone
of the warrior tribe
who aims an arrow
as her privilege.
No more the stoical, waiting
that chains her to the throne.
She puts her foot down
alighting from the moon.

2.
He could have been
anyone
of the warrior tribe
who hunts
to his heart’s desire.
He smells of blood,
everyone is for the taking
but the country has shrunk
to his claim of rule
& obedience.

3.
O, Is there a middle ground?
Will each eventually
hunt each other down?

Second Version
B.

1.
She ups & leaves
when he’s unconscionably late.
The kitchen
is no room of her own,
but the well-lighted one
where she plans
the day with friends
& sums up her life.
The children’s future
is not her decision alone;
wiping their asses
is a shared parental job.
She has her own
Sunday circle in a cafe
where they hold court
to chat about
the weather & men
who catch their eyes.
She’s a busy bee,
her day is not
for her husband only.

2.
He’ll find the air waiting
if he forgets an appointment.
He mixes his own health juice
while fixing the car…
He prepares his own sandwich for lunch.
He too must shop for grocery
& resked his activities
to give way for her own female time.
His room hums
with computers to connect
with Stock Exchange
along with magazine & tool boxes
picked up from
the kitchen.
He shares quality time
with kids at the ballpark
while she shoots the breeze
with tired sorority wives.
He sleeps on separate bed
to contemplate the stars.

3.
There is a claim of parity here.
They make necessary arrangement
when & how to make love,
break off
when the seven-year itch
sets in:
if everything goes stale
& there is maddening rush
to start new lives.
& where love has gone,
neither of the lovers
would dare look back.

4.
They agree on
exclusivity of space.
Love is now,
never forever.
The world changes
in every orbit;
hearts do
in every pulse beat.

Third Version
C.

Space is the key.
He was quietly observing
the couple
who make out
as if they’re close,
inseparable twins –
as if a moment less
would prove disastrous
to a passion
that burns everything down.
Too far, too close
each should maintain
that yin-yang equilibrium.
A bird in hand
should never be gripped
as if in a vise.
Allow it to wiggle
as if for possible flight,
yet gently caged
in the finger’s
prison house
like a Minotaur.
But this is fascism,
she protests.
Let the winged creature
swim the ocean of air
& if it settles back
& flutters on your open hand,
it may yet stay
to warm your heart.

10.
Trapped

A.
The usual monochromatic
setting –
dim lights in a cafe corner
& he sipping his whiskey
while muttering under his breath
interminable tirade
against the order of the universe
having any oracular meaning.
How do you say farewell
to all that?
2009 was as worse
as any other year, anyway.
His voice drips with contempt.
Does it matter? He smirks.
It’s a done deal
with the lord of chaos,
anyway.
If Nicholas Malebranch
of France
four centuries ago
to this day,
airily deemed:
… “God could have created
the best of all possible worlds,
but [he] did not do so…
Nor can [he] interfere…
to improve it
[for] that would mean
God changed his mind…
What he wills
he wills timelessly…”
Ergo, “evil — like good –”
is a rule of thumb.
Chuckling, he drawls on –
Hello & goodbye
have equal valence.
Only sentimental poets
dare invent
a difference.
She’s not here;
she’s there.
Presence & absence
are one & the same.
You laugh, you cry.
It wouldn’t mean
a thing
to the universe.

B.
Invention

He’s uneasy
with the total extinction
of truth-values.
Meaninglessness
of living & dying.
In effect, it is said,
we should sit back,
puff on our pipes,
& enjoy the show
of pleasure & carnage.
All the virtues & vices
are singular, one
for those
who unsheathe
the sword of war
& those who turn
the other cheek;
those who applaud
the executioner
& those who blindly
enter the gas chamber;
those who run off
with the loot
& those who hold
the empty bag;
those who stay
in sunlit hermitages
& those who minister
in blistering fields…
If there is no dividing line,
should he be an insect?
He wishes to reinvent
the metaphor
for Descartes,
maligned for his reign
of reason,
even concedes
“the human mind
does not reach
into [animals'] hearts.”
They too must have
souls –
& religious sacrifices
only turn priests
into mice.
There must be
boundary between
money & work,
beauty & terror,
reasonably good
& treacherous evil
in the empire
of our finite times…
Let the future
debate on the prescribed
& drawn ethics
of our signs.

11.
Memory

Nabokov,
the Russian aristocrat,
is being viciously ironic
when he asks
for memory to speak.
It has, after all,
nothing really to say
but gibberish
of figures inside his head.
Those around him
will ask
why he’s so hung up
on himself,
torturing his spleen –
for what?
No need to be hypersensitive –
Can’t he just be
a regular guy
who lets things pass
& be in tune
with the ways of mice
& men?

12.
A Minor Incident

A.
Somehow
he thinks he’s paranoid
like America
& the world,
like Bin Laden,
is closing in on him.
The other night
the neighbor’s househusband
who deals
with pedlars
for their market stuff,
got holiday drunk.
He walked up
to his closed gate
& dared to light a bawang,
the while shouting
Fuck you! Fuck you!
But he caught him
in the act
& remonstrated –
Never at our house!
Quickly, he scooped it up
& exploded it
in a distance.
But hadn’t
the would-be victim,
kept all along to himself,
rarely venturing out
to drink with the gang?
O If you’re not one of them,
& don’t speak the language
of the tribe,
you’re courting trouble,
man!

B.

The aged children
of Kamuning
must be jumping
they’re in tune
with the myth
of driving away
evil spirits of centuries
while lighting
firecrackers
& bursting the ear drums
of celebrants
who keep their peace.
Just a casual
fascism of idiots
inflicting
their method of madness
on those locked up
inside their houses,
& howling
their saturnalia
of lumpen & petty-B
politics.
If you raise
a hue & cry –
you’re an oddball
who can’t groove
with the tribe’s
common crimes:
a candidate indeed
for imaginary stoning
like any woman
who breaks the rule
men observe
in the breach.

13.

The crystal ball
is ever hazy.
Fidel Castro
would never know
how Cuba would be
after his time.
No philosopher
could outline
how the horizon
would color itself
even if he had
all the tools of logic
& the plenitude
of genius
to spark
something old
for something new.
So saying,
he sleeps uneasily
until the next day,
opening the window
in the morning
to see
the streets
heavy with drifters
who never worry
about tomorrow.

14.
A.

So
what now?
Back on campus,
the same old route,
& rote.
Still weary
from holiday break,
& wary of the room
that snatched them
from vacation.
The stupefied look
& timorous fingers
make them fit
for academic execution.
Is this
the gas chamber
of Auschwitz?
The stock exchange
of Wall Street?
O lessons
are never learned:
acolytes
stoically inching
toward the synagogue
before they themselves
become
beatific popes.

B.

Impossible to break
the ice.
After the hiatus,
he is mired
in cobwebs & dust
of the early morning room
that speaks
of another year’s tide.
of impasse & misfortune.
Knowledge doesn’t live here,
where words in the head
snarl like leopards.
Do they need this,
the basics of lit?
Errors & travails
of passing through the mill
when gladiators
before them
now rethink their folly,
barely asking
why the world
is recklessly spinning.
Impossible to break the ice:
the globe is warming fast,
spinning wildly
as if on a hara-kiri drive.
Impossible to break
the ice.

15.
Metaphor

When will poets
realize
the volcano
is bad social metaphor?
After the lava flows
submerging fields
& slow peasants
life would pick up
as if there never were
geysers of ash
& grey clouds
that blanketed the land
& sky.
Farmers would repair
to their dingy huts,
hitch emaciated animals
then mumble arcana
for next day’s odds.
Back to the salt mine –
without knowing why
life should be brutal
as if anaesthesized
by a faith in God
who coughed up sulphur,
then turned on his back
to snore till dawn.
Unease?
Travail of disasters?
Only a few would
lose their patience
& retrieve rusty guns…
Easy life
is a Russian roulette
for those who wait
by the roadside
for Samaritans.
They may rage
at their own sorry state
but as quickly,
like Mayon,
quiet down.
O But the ballot revolution
is fever
in the blood
in need only of quinine

16.
The Eternal War

CIA Director Leon Panetta
has vowed revenge
for the death
of seven agency officers
in Afghanistan,
noting it as chillingly gruesome
as the eight earlier killed
“in a bombing
of the US Embassy in Beirut.”
The nine lives can be repeated
with latest data input
but the thematic of war
stays the same
for all future newsbreaks
& combatants:
war machines have revved up,
wreaking havoc
on all human fronts.
All manner of death
would leave no bones or flesh
intact,
as if the air had swallowed
bodies in a flash.
When will it ever end?
Until the field is covered
with layers of corpses
& there is nary a space to spare
for footsoldiers to move about?
Generals will forever devise
ways & means to get a W
& flash their shining medals;
fundamentalists
will forever besiege Allah
for the holy sacrifice
of suicide bombers
& claim victory for Islam.
Shall mankind perish
by fire, by water, by plagues
from their own bestial hands?
O The idiocy of it all!
Pestilential insects
may yet inherit the future.

17.
Orphan
(for Raia)

Freeze time.
Just imagine
your old man had left
for a secondment,
the sudden change
you didn’t bother with
when you were a child
deeply engrossed
with guns & dolls,
the while expecting
gifts when
he returned…
Part of the job,
your ma had studiously
pointed out
while tucking you
in bed
& putting out the light.
Didn’t he get back
& pick you up
for the carnival?
His smile,
like your Teddy Bear’s,
should be left
inside your head.
Soon,
you’d be eating again
with a hearty appetite.
Just freeze time.
& Imagine.

18.
Poses

The weather
is “grey November”
in his soul.
Western poets thrive
on wintry skies
& freezing hearts.
At Starbucks,
they talk endlessly
of things
that don’t matter,
except to mark time
for tea & supper
in a country
of shitty movie stars.
Been that way
since colonies
have nurtured
shadow boxers
priming themselves up
before the mirror,
here where poetry
is revolution
of brewed coffee
& fancy talk.

19.
Subalterns

Waiting virtually kills.
You wouldn’t know
what to do or say.
If you stayed too long,
you presumed
being taken for a fool;
if you didn’t
you cursed what
could have been lost.
Filipinos have mastered
the art of queueing
& praying for mannah
that won’t be forthcoming.
Malacanang only knows it
too well –
governance is a low-risk gamble
on people’s patience
& twisted reason –
the threats of revolution
as empty
as their electoral promises
cast like seeds
on fields of stone.

20.
Journey

The perimeter guard
was professionally polite.
[He didn't wear
his rubber shoes
& looked properly dignified.]
& pointed at Gate 3,
where the grantee
quickly vanished
in its maw.
He waited under
dismal sky.
At Starbucks
across the Embassy
the clock moved
excruciatingly slow
as he sipped coffee,
& gazed out
the front window
where white studs
& nubile women
walked by,
hand in hand –
brown companions
somewhat exultant
for future deliverance.
Of course,
the clients inside
were middle class,
freshly scrubbed
& smelling of cologne,
except for rednecks
who talked loudly,
as if they owned
the territory.

A guy
with a brand T-shirt
festooned with Dickies logo
in Dallas, Denver,
New York
was smilingly stirring
his brewed coffee
while nature
confreres
ogled passersby.
The air was heavy
with hope
& certainty,
as if waiting for visa
were an elitist
honor.
& you wondered
how it was
at the turn of the century
when bodies
of fallen insurgents
were paraded
around kapitolyos
& civilians
nursed
silent anger in their heart.
In the 18th century,
a brigand wouldn’t
have even second guessed
if their dreams
were damned silly,
visibly relishing
independent glory.

But times
continually change,
& the grantee,
seeking her space
in dialectical history,
will seize
pursuit of her art:
discoursing
with fellow artists,
opening up
her Third Eye.
Is it fatal
to tell the truth
about Maguindanao,
the massacre
that would puzzle
Rockefeller Center,
why Barthes’s Lucida
makes for
a newer way
of crafting images
in the light
of suicide bombers
who don’t let up,
the falling subjects
suspended
like black birds
over a murderous valley?

There must be
reason
why this pilgrimage
in the time of H1N1
must be denied:
The world has shrunk,
Berlin Wall has
crashed down,
& the prairie fire
in colonial climes
has reached
witnessing mind.
Will there be discoveries
in words & rainbow colors?
She hopes to reencounter
what was dormant
in herself
for liberation & revolution
could be rekindled
for her kind:
continents
reemerging
from oceans of female desires.
So here at the Embassy
she starts
the journey of a thousand miles –
space cleared
of grass & dark clouds.
O Departure
is start
of final arrival.

21.
Enders

A.
Gloria Redux

She presses the buzzer…
& informs the masters
she won’t be able
to wash for the family
anymore.
After her househusband’s demise
she’s decided
to set-up a turo-turo joint
by the roadside,
hoping to make up for
the financial loss.
She’s trying to find the energy
to leave the house
& ride the bus from Bagong Silang
to Quezon City…
Obviously in shock,
she’s a rat
running scared
in a maze
& faces a blank wall
whenever she eats
like Andromache
but dreams of someone
who’ll never return.

B.
In Memoriam: Henry Dacanay

He was on Christmas
furlough
from Saudi
& drove a cargo truck
for his brothers-in-law.
He must have slept
in the cabin,
away from his crew
who spent the night
singing their hearts out
at Karaoke.
When M/V Baleno
suddenly sunk
off Verde Island –
deep channel between
Batangas & Mindoro –
as if struck
by a thunderbolt,
he must have been
trapped in the roro ship’s
aging belly…
He rarely visited;
spending time with family
was a high prize to get.
(Always it was not –
the money to send –
enough.)
His wife received
his fate with equanimity,
having been accustomed
to his absence & long journeys.
They have virtually lived
separate lives:
O How the poor
“stint themselves”
the pleasure
of their young company.

21.
Sinatra

That old fogey
whose ears
were pressed to Sinatra
on radio
had puzzled him
no end
when he was
knee-high.
The words registered
jazzy rhythm –
stiletto shoes,
cocktails & tuxedo –
& he couldn’t
figure out
why the thin guy
would tightly
close his eyes
as if in a trance
whenever Ol’ Blue Eyes
crooned.
50 years later
& quietly listening,
he felt the song
as if he completely
understood
the secret
lovers’ call.

23.
Upper

Heavy snowfall
that extends from London
to China
forest fires that torch
Australia,
lava that spills out
of Mayon,
quakes that shake
Asia.
& refugees
seeking asylum
everywhere…
But the old dog
won’t budge from his seat,
texting vainly
a fix
who never replies…
Can he take it
like some guerilla
time has forgotten?
In his stubborn mind,
he’s dug deep
in a foxhole,
gutting it out
to survive the holocaust
of signs…

1.

“The world is coming
to an end.”
Deservingly so,
utters the blind charlatan
who has tired
of prophets who come
his way.
It’s final:
there were announcements
before.
Everyone has turned cynical.
& He points in whatever
direction
his blindness sees,
where endless palaver
mounts dry nights & days.
How is it
idiots in fancy suits
would look so pontifical,
virtuous?
Why do criminal jesters
hog the stage
& concoct laws
for spectators to obey?
“The world is coming
to an end.”
Earth is warming up,
slowly glowing
like molten lava
as in the beginning.
& No filibustering
will slow down the disaster.
He laughs at his tirade:
so early in the morning,
& beer still flowing.

2.

He should not remember
them anymore.
The children frolicking
in the sea,
then vanishing in the foam
of a dark season.
But this month
is given to tearful sentiments;
he couldn’t squeeze out
of its melancholic grip.
It keeps him moving
when tears freeze to stone,
making him look
demonic –
his marshmallow heart
turning brittle
like a dry leaf of autumn.
It’s so amazing
how he has survived
the years of diseases
& empty words
with the repertoire
of banging his head
against the wailing wall.

3.

So it’s Father Time
gone old & weary
while the child of the zodiac
enters ancient astrology.
Nothing ancient is ever new:
the rules remain
as in years’ ago,
the horizon ever expanding
against a narrowing vision
of what was once
always conceitedly returns.
Can he still put up
his dukes
& foray into the future
as if it’s another novel
adventure?
The pendulum swings
to & fro
in tedious monotone.
Here now, there again –
as he stays in the same
spot & position,
never removed
from mourning
what used to be so proximate
swings back decaying –
his heart stumbles,
desire studded with mold.

4.

New poetry
for old?
How can Now
be left out in the cold
when New
rings out the same, old tune?
Mathuselahs
can no longer jump
into new skin suit:
that would shock
the bejesus out of bums,
who would heckle
like prison wardens:
same old rhythm,
you can’t escape judgment.
Time for young poets
to take over,
they who undream
all manner of holocaust.
“Political is dead.”
“Language is all.”
O Remember those Russian poets:
how they were betrayed
by revolutionary cause!
But remember Walter Benjamin
on the run in the Alps
In his name, too,
we pray for justice in art!

5.

Should old acquaintance,
indeed be forgot?
Your generation, like the wind,
is gone:
lost beyond the blue, blue hills,
slobbering like drunkards
in dark, dark corners…
Cherubic faces
press their noses
against the yellow windowpanes,
never knowing
how it was before the massacre:
Hello! Hello!
Two boats
steered apart,
calling each other out…
Their eyes stare you down,
you close tightly yours –
too tired & decrepit
to regain balance.
O They come & go,
never even singing
of Michaelangelo.

6.

She flew in from Jakarta,
bearing malong,
Intochinese tea & pastry
from midnight banquet.
Been years
since she left for overseas:
she had promised
to comeback,
for home is family:
Kinsmen have new or
false addresses.
But in her alien country,
grief can be put on hold.
But this site is a doghouse
where criminals
slaughter innocents
like animals.
It is as if
her old, old dresses
in musty closets
still fit –
& she has never even left.

7.

It was bound
to happen:
they stand cheek by jowl
with the dictator’s son
whose roots
once tortured his kind.
It was bound
to happen
when they forayed
into the playground
to hustle big-time.
It was bound
to happen
when they sized up
the working class
& rued it lacked
the power punch.
It was bound
to happen
when the struggle
opted for words
& left the guns
underground.
It was bound
to happen
when street guerillas
surfaced
to battle it out
with Palace henchmen.
It was bound
to happen…
Even if Marx counters
Wall Street is not forever…

8.
A.

He always drives around
in a frenzied momentum
of an inward lack
because the world
has stopped on its axis
& he wishes to outrun
the planetary spinning
that leads to apocalyptic ending.
O He travels light,
speed the essence of flight.
& gets through the morning rites
of moving perpetually his ass.
Like an amateur astronomer
who scans the sky
for something to kill his time:
the fusion of stars
is never whimsical, but mathematical
& won’t configure an omen,
like any warning biblical.
When he saw a couple
down on their luck
with a mangy infant
by an empty pushcart,
he pressed their hands
with some bills for luck:
cheap politics, he thinks,
in a country ravaged by want.

B.

Who knows if the kid
would turn out different
from the slew of beggars
down the streets?
A thief most probably,
even a charlatan
who would spearhead a rally
against the order of misery.
It’s everybody’s guess –
this dime-a-dozen affair.
Compassion has multiple definition
& love is just a pure kitsch.
He prefers to travel late –
for fear & anxiety, its
love & sentiments
are cheap backpacks
to hold him down.
But some stupid day,
somewhere, somehow,
he will be waylaid by a secret glance…
His world will surely haha! be undone.

9.
A.

& Where do you go
from here?
Question asked
but never answered
by wise men
who have failed
to read the map
& could only sigh,
somewhere
mst be better than here
where everyone struggles
to be alive
& thanks God
for promises of an afterlife.
It’s here
where machine guns bark
to open the day
& drums beat madly
for the dead
to close the night –
& so on & so on,
each time repeating itself,
living & dying
one & the same.
O Where do we end
the long-ago travel?
Wise men
could only sigh:
Enough the guts
to lift your feet
& perilously wander.

B.

Hey, hey, it’s 2010!
Fire crackers
break the silence,
but plugging your ears
you’ve failed to listen.
Last year,
you passed it off snoring
as if the world
were perpetually the same.
Hey, hey, it’s 2010!
Don’t you see them
count the wounded
& the dying?
Do you hear
the strange, wild laugther
of warlords & troopers?
Do you feel
the temblor at the Palace?
Do you know
they’re already counting
the numbers?
Must you, like Achilles,
stay in your tent?
Hey, hey, it’s 2010!
Will it be deja vu
all over again?

10.
A.
(for Aleng Glo)

When the phone rang,
he knew she wouldn’t
make it to the appointed hour:
washing the laundry
that has been her task
for decades now.
Conflict of sked
with other clients?
Foot swollen again?
But the voice was plea
for understanding:
such a pro
for one who never entered college.
Her husband,
for whom she cooked pancit
to give away to the celebrant’s
commune of idlers,
died of asthma
the night before.
She was calling from the morgue,
adding she could be back
by next week
in view of their business
of wake & burial.
No sense of panic in her tone,
only a brief regret
to insinuate she’s now
most alone.
He hurriedly put the receiver
on hook,
wary of her breaking down.
That would be a mess.
He wouldn’t put up
with such torrent of emotion.

B.

Her son died at
a very young age
& through the years
she virtually compensated,
doting on neighbors’ kids
as if they were her own.
With her earnings
as servicewoman for hire,
she built a little house,
the ground floor of which
she rented out
to lumpen transients
& two-penny pedlars.
Tight-fisted & wary
of cheats & the penniless,
she however loaned out
to cunning relatives –
to prove she’s a somebody
they can honorably claim
by blood?
Christmas & New Year
she will be fleeing
her empty nest
& wash furiously
to grieve away
in her fatalist style
of surviving the personal
& the savage times.

11.
A.

He’s pissed.
It slipped his mind
that such accident,
like death of a poor guy,
could happen
without any sign
from heaven –
although it’s precisely that
& none could wisely
claim
he had foreseen it coming.
Of course, probability theorem
could theorize
in number & curves
its occurence,
but nothing for sure
of the specificities
of how death would strike
where, why, how.
All the wisdom of mankind
would never divine
with precision
the expiration date
of mortal existence.
He could only scream inside,
as though his bookish intelligence
had betrayed him
one more time.
Such conceit.
Such vanity
that made him appear
so inadequate
as to contemplate
burning the books –
it happened in Alexandria of old –
but what would that be for?
None is in control.
The world happens that way.
We are ignorant
of conclusive metaphor
as when he fell in love
& out of it:
he could neither
exult
nor grit his teeth.
His math
could never explain why.

B.

She texted
to resked the lunch,
or whatever…
X’mas activities
were everybody’s business,
too tight
to make anyone relax
& enjoy the coffee
& the breeze.
Next year, conversation
will be more focused,
warmer, friendlier…
Of course, he can’t
talk about everything
except the weather:
that will be off-key
telling about the ricebird
that flew into the room,
twittering as if
mocking the class for performing
rites of acquiring wisdom:
The winged delight
must have been teasing –
no need for presumptuous learning –
Humans can still not fly.
& we, over lunch,
will probably count
the chiming of the clock,
gather our bags
& bid each other
a pleasant goodbye.

12.

O well, she sighs,
as if distressed
by having asked him, anyway –
did you like the lanterns?
Everybody seems
to have gotten a lift
from the parade.
But he retorts honestly –
& regrets it instantly
for her brows knitted darkly –
The designs were run of the mill.
No expertise here
but shoddy craft
of pretentious painters
& architects.
In an afterthought,
he makes a u-turn
as if to give cold comfort –
O But they’re still full
of childish wonder.
That is the magical rule
of carnivals & fiestas
that make of fireworks
& bright lights
the order of the day,
blasting the ghost of mourning,
anyway.
Be happy, just the same.
Even for once
as she snuggles in his arms.

13.

But the season
requires a certain
sense of flirtation –
old friends
who show up
with tidings
& new ones
who stray in
to regale
with strange events.
But there he is,
sulking in a corner
as if the world
is only worth
a bottle of cognac
to toast himself,
then brood
why people
steer clear of his path.
Being alone
is an art
but he fails
to do it in glam style:
who would love
Scrooge anyway
even when he dared
smile?

14.

He has become
of late
too negative,
a student remarks.
Nothing seems to please him,
all texts seem to lie
& fall short of real reading.
As if night
has mantled day,
& blindness
rules the lair.
Yet he is alive,
enjoys his coffee
& goodhearted chika
with old fogeys
& snot-nosed tykes.
Never having suffered
at all
like he who sits
uneasily from
across the table.
She had emerged
from combat
in her guerilla days,
& knew only too well
the welcome break
from quick deaths
& torture
in military campsites.
As if twisting
the poniard in his heart
that, like a cup,
runneth over
with esoteric crap,
she reminds him
of Lenin,
who feared listening
to Beethoven’s
“Appasionata”
lest he “won’t finish
the revolution.”
Has he worn out
the welcome mat
in Diliman
where talk is cheap
& money
for top dogs
is so damned easy?

15.

Two weeks
in another town,
he’s back
on the job.
Has sufficiently
recharged
to soak up
on the old routine
& find a new angle
to the world.
“Life is beautiful.”
The song goes,
& he must prove
its elusive truth.
Besides,
the horoscope
forebodes
New Year is most
propitious:
get out of the box,
peek into the future:
it has malevolently
moved out of the past.
The morning
is a haze of colors
& the sun shines
in his hair.
Against the light
he’s a virtual saint.
When he starts
to write on the board
for snot-nosed kids
& affirm the quotidian
that rankles against
the universal,
he is suddenly pushed
into another time
of long ago
when he was
an exploring young…
In an instant,
the old country
of desolation
zooms back in his mind
& he wonders
when will it ever be
alright.

16.

The worker,
like a lover,
is a sentimental fool.
He’ll pack up
for home,
bearing Andok’s
for family to share
in a festive air.
Nothing to digest
thereafter
but stories of how
things had been
would hold the peace.
O How the regime
adores his kind
for having only desired
what the law
permits.
Theory is academic
shit;
confessedly just a mason
who can’t venture
beyond the border
of his occupational tools.
& when he does –
toothless, tubercular –
they’ll bury him
in some rocky hillside,
as if he never were
ever celebrated
or despised.

17.
A.

Last night,
he dreamt of her,
as if a ghost
had risen
from the grave.
How strange it is
that after
so many years
of lying dormant
like a worm
in his id,
she would flutter
malevolently
like a dark butterfly
& plague him
like an incurable
disease.
Is he troubled
by the sudden
visitation?
This image
he has willfully
torn to sheds?
If ever they meet
on another plane,
they’ll be total
strangers
hardly sharing
any story
for the long absence.

B.

Love songs
no longer
make him
vulnerable, sad:
his ears
would never
be ambushed again
by cheap sentiments
that lovers hear
into sudden waking.
He has plugged them
to scare the sirens.
Has he really
in vengeance changed?
A leaf falls
from the tree,
shifting colors
from green to brown
as it drifts down
the stream,
then settles
to perish
on a sheet
of mud & stones.

18.

He has pronounced her dead
countless times already,
but he keeps bumping into her
in his dreamwalks anywhere:
the mall, parks, cafes,
even in the wee hours
of the morning
when the world is sick
with melancholy
& nightmares skitter like rats
in the ceiling.
She is the ghost
who will not leave,
beyond mortal exorcism,
as if she’s etched deeply
into his skin
like a tattoo of a tapestry.
25th of December,
pagan ritual
for a Christian god,
yet she, unlike Christ,
leaves neither hope
nor mercy
for the stupid heart
she flogs mercilessly.

19.
A.

The retired teacher
mumbles to himself
mantra of his monotone,
liken Joaquin character
of the post-Spanish revolution:
“Dust & crabs,
dust & crabs…”
Adding,
as if to stress
a dried-up vocation:
“They just won’t listen.
They just won’t listen.”
What arcanum is this?
O obvious & plain –
psychos sum up
what fate has ordained.
Time is its own epigraph:
generations will
their own learning;
truth is quaint angle
of their way of doing.
People come,
people go.
All wait for their flight
at the air station,
tunnel-visioned
on their own destination.

B.

Tradition
is mere stepping stone.
The old steps back
for the rushing platoon
who sets up
their own definition.
Another clone
of Benjamin’s angel
takes over
& lifts them
toward a blind horizon.

1.

It’s the Castle
all over again.
Will the trial start,
if ever?
Will victims
linger at the gates,
patiently waiting?
Will the Kingpin
stay in his air-conditioned room
as if it were an accident?
There were bodies, sure,
but nobody did them in.

2.

Warlords, like flies,
are all over the place.
The Palace
knew it all along.
They’re her children
turned prodigal
& must be reeled in
like sharks
to cover the trace
of blood.
O She’ll do anything
to change into snow-white
the tyger’s stripes.

3.

She’s doing
her darned best.
Still they claim
she’s party to the deed.
Isn’t servitude
her pledge of highest order?
Why don’t they believe her –
hook, line, sinker?
She can’t do otherwise
but insist
her people’s claims:
yet assassins
lurk in the wings,
& she stays
with her loyal liege
in the shade.
Somehow,
the equitorial sun
will filter through
the clouds
& lift her veil.
Like some chance encounter.

4.

When it’s over
it should be over.
Final is a terrible
word.
A child in a fort-da
narrative
can only think so,
lest it perish.
She surveys the swarm
from the balcony.
No, the falcons won’t swoop
down to perch on her arms:
has she changed appearance?
O In due time they will:
she smells of blood,
as before, anyway.

5.

Time to glance
at the wrist watch,
& take note
of declensions
of spinning word.
That is to say,
he’s a paper boat
idling on a spot
in the ocean
& assaying the wind blows.
In a lightning glance,
something
has shifted paradigm.

6.

The TV replays
like a pendulum
film clips
of the hoary carnage:
& he is hardly moved.
The bad old days are back
but have they ever left?
Dunce caps
fall down from the sky,
& idiots
scream at electronic screens
without knowing why.

7.

Evening is a corpse
no longer on the table.
It walks the land
like a bad omen:
Everything looks familiar
though
with the regimen
of Cafgus & army men
marking off civilians
with scissored tongues.
They can easily herd them off
like animals,
tear them apart
& no one would dare
report the crime.
They’ve done it before
while generals play cards
at the garrison.
Night smothers
day with chloroform.

8.

It is not magical
“like the seagull”
Xoce had badly
misheard its squall.
Only the silenced ones
know it too damned well:
how easy it is to live
under the gun.
Mounted guns
on armoured cars
are beads of rosary
in daily procession.
They can always dance
to the beat
of deafening drums.

9.

He speaks through Allah –
& they mistake it for God’s:
Oh how peons quake
at his presence
as he kneels in the mosque
at dawn.
Is it the Koran that keeps
them in thrall?
Is it the black stone of hajj
the holds thing in abeyance?
O Heaven be praised
for generations of blind men.

10.

That is too metaphysical:
it is all kismet,
sacral happenstance.
Chaos has its peace
& order too,
almost mathematical.
The young punk
can still squeeze out
of the paper bag –
the law can be
played around.
He is a keeper of secrets:
he can spill the beans
& the queen will shake
in her corset.

11.

Rebellion is futile.
History is a narrative of failures.
Revolt is an illusion,
& in this country of repetition,
doomsayers manufacture poems.
War begets war,
& he who flourishes in carnages
can survive the charges.
Survival to the
shrewd, the fittest?
Christians say only the virtuous
will enter the future:
that ain’t so.
Angels fly backward
& will never see it through.

12.

Christmas
& Jesus pops out
of the manger
to mythify salvation.
After the wine
& karaoke singing,
we’re back in the groove
of ersatz happiness again –
that is to say,
bearing the old faces
like ice cubes
that won’t melt
in winter.
Killings will be
fashionable occupation;
like a broken record
we won’t do
without the same, old tunes.
The cries of orphans
will put us to sleep,
like drowsy droning in the ears.
Yet silence in its sudden
cut
will wake us up.

19.

He has pompously decided
it will be all rain check
in a dry season:
he won’t lift the fone,
he won’t text
any celebration.
This is 09 A.D.,
almost like the space-time
of mankinds ago
when savages claimed
for themselves
the dinosaur land.
& you,
who infest memory
like an archeological fossil,
are buried deep
in the pantheon
of his thoughts.
Everything turns to dust:
nothing matters.

14.

Time, like chaos,
reigns ever supreme.
Deaths peek behind
the curtain of words.
A child plays
in a dry mountain gulley,
all by himself.
Will he survive
his game?
Is there faith
in something beyond,
after all?
Is salvation
at the other side
of the mountain?
The fatal equation remains:
Dress up
for anything,
but where do you go
from there?

15.

This town inches
slowly
toward the sea
to drown.
Oceans will reclaim
mountaintops
& the dead will forever
swim
in the old fantasies
of the living
that they will be forever
alive in remembering.
But the dead will not
speak otherwise.
Their minds forever
shut down
& memory is forever
done
with their passing.
An old Santa doll
that floats like
a leaf in the trough
of waves
may reconstruct
a sense of Christian being.
But that’s all there is
to it.
Lovers’ bones
are forever scuttled
in watery graves
by the wind
to affirm the nothingness
of day’s remains.

16.

But the assassin,
in a Lacanian world
of the imaginary,
is a psycho,
like any infant
who desires everything
& nothing,
knows no borders
or territory.
Having imagined himself
a bullet
in a magazine chamber
of his frail body,
he gladly embraced
the target
& pulled the trigger
of his infernal wish.
So when she died
in the world of the real,
the specific,
the concrete,
everyone applauded
his welcome madness.

17.

In this godforsaken country,
things normal happen:
Law enforced
as constitution
for justice
in favor of the nouveau riche;
the common weal
is prostituted for
oligarchic interest.
Of course,
someone may get out of the box
& mess things up.
But words are always
hypervalued,
will not approximate
the deadly accuracy
of a bullet.

18.

The clown
reposes on the dais
but her subjects –
generals & peasants,
workers & tragedians –
will not dare laugh
lest the listing crown
signal a murderous harvest
of irreverent bums.
Fear, they say, stalks the land.
But haven’t they lived
under the gun
for eons now
& have frightfully gotten used
to being eternally damned?
A boy with a slingshot
stands at the gates…
This is everybody’s choice
of an old, old plot.

1.
Massacres

The coffee shop
is abuzz
with diconcerting news.
But he’s trapped
in the vise
of mourning daily
that greets his cup of tea.
As if he’s dog-tired
of all the usual disasters
that assault his ritual.
Will he scream
he’s done with everything,
media-wise?
That will be too theatrical.
He looks up from the paper,
pretending he’s on another
planet
where nothing fantastic
ever happens.
Suddenly, he’s laughing hard
– & secretly –
into his coffee.
From the standpoint
of Archimedes
he finds out the world
from Millennium One
has really been insane.

2.
A.
Expiry Date

There was
the professional routine.
He had prepared himself,
preening studiously
before the mirror.
Breakfast
was done in a huff:
a car to catch
to ferry him off
to the convoy site
where the procession
would start.
O Nothing troublesome
in sight:
blue was the sky,
breeze was all right,
clouds were
sweet cotton candy
to signify
the day would happily expire.
No sign at all
to make him stop
& think twice.
At the highway
armed men ordered them
to step out of their vans…
Suddenly, the sun blacked out.
The clock stopped.

B.
The woman pleads
she needs to find
her husband’s body
so there can be closure
& they can move on.
She, of course,
is lying whitely,
for an absence
heavier than a stone of air
sits in the room
& she can’t push it away:
one false move
& it crushes the heart.
Silence
in the garden of leaves
& flowers?
It catches in her throat
& she can’t speak,
much less scream
the hurt.
No one really moves on.
All must make do
with the illusion –
like Andromache
she must also “eat
after so much weeping.”

3.
Squeeze Play

57 bodies
so far have been dug up
but the pinpointed culprit
couldn’t care less:
The law prescribes
his initial innocence,
can still duck
the legal musketry.
No cuffs on him,
of course,
contrary to police rules:
For that would be too harsh,
vindictive,
on a high-priced member
of the Palace & paramilitary!
The poor guy is badly missed
by his gun-toting wards
in his southern territory.
The world watches however
the goose-stepping figures on TV.

B.
Square One

Of course,
the skeptics
will just snicker
it’s over & done with:
the criminals
will go scot-free.
For the formal bodies
will declare
only wayward underlings
misinterpreted
the marching order.
Kafka had known
it before:
in the castle,
no question was ever
answered.
Of course,
things will stay
the same:
secrets must be kept
under lock & key
even if the owl
of Minerva
has flown the coop
way, way before
the inquest.
Of course, of course.

C.
Probe

Elementary dear Watson,
says the pub house sage
of a wannabe
who puffs on his pipe
while hot coffee steams
into his face.
There is no perfect crime:
always forensic evidence
betrays the perpetuators
of the deed…
Bullet shells that construct
the specific act,
& the backhoe excavator
sitting atop the hil
like a lonely minaret
that speaks its coded message
of a managed mayhem
that jumpstarts
the war of generations & clans…
Yes, criminals can seek refuge
under umbrage of innocence
but let it be.
Scoundrels always speak
about the majesty of the law.
Just an argument, of course,
to forestall the dreaded destiny.
It banks
on the sense of history
that nothing is ever finished
in this godforsaken country:
months later,
the state will suffer
loss of memory.
How shall it end, dearie?
Read my lips, he smirks
as he blows
a circle of smoke
before he sips his cold coffee.
Oh yes, he quotes the daily,
the President assures
all & sundry,
they’re still her kind of ally.
Our Sherlock Holmes
breaks into an acid smile
as he keeps to himself
the perfectly unsaid
of everybody’s story.
O the public secrets
that hold her
like a vise!

D.

The farmer shook his head,
then chuckled,
the seeds
were planted years ago;
it’s harvest season now
& fruits fallen on the hillside
merely shows
how elements like rain
can be gleaned
from the drift of clouds
& wind.
Nothing is unexpected,
adding an old wisdom:
What you sow is what you reap.
About time
that blood be shed, he said.
When the family
gifted the youngest –
because small & cherubic –
with a toy gun
to be at par with his bigger
playmates,
old women
peeking through the curtains
would seem to read
a page from a grim fairy tale.

E.
God’s Warrior

They didn’t stand a chance.
A hundred they were
armed to the teeth
to mow them down,
as if to deliver civilians
from earthy pain & grief.
[This is not justice.]
Sure, the convoy
wasn’t a retinue of saints
marching on the road to Sinai;
nor were they dangerous criminals
who looted & murdered
helpless beasts & humans.
[This is not justice]
They didn’t stand a chance
when a punk with warrior’s
head band emblazoned
with a crocodile insignia
gave the signal
as if the off-road site
were Samar or Vietnam,
Take no prisoners!
Clear the area of witnesses!
[This is not justice]
Newsmen could no longer
beat their deadlines,
terrible words
wouldn’t pour out their hands…
[This is not justice]
But the wind of Maguindanao
will carry their message
across the dark land
about warlords & henchmen
who kill children,
rape women
& pray to Allah at dawn…
[Executioners
will not define justice.
Victims shall keep
track of infamy]

4.
Same Old

Same old,
same old,
massacres
from Magsaysay to GMA.
But he doesn’t seem
to care.
Deaths are daily fare,
ending up with the resolve
to end all
with another round of murder.
There is no let-up
in the flood of blood,
& people have lost
all fatal memories
that used to shock
in the crimson past:
crimes to bead like rosary,
repeated monotonously,
like chants
of cherubims above.
Wake me up,
he says,
when the killings cease,
but if everybody
falls asleep,
letting criminals
pull the trigger,
who shall be left
to remind him
things have changed?

5.
No Exit

She blows in
from the office
in a foul mood.
She’s pissed off
again
by the dose of tragedies
that passes over
her computer keys:
orphans,
husbands & wives
& the blanket of blood
that smothered
their instant cries.
She can’t take it
anymore?
But her job is to process
events that shake
the world
that drives her mad.
No way out
but to leave
the hoary scene:
But the world outside
the editorial room
is just as
terrifyingly grim.

6.
Theory

He claims
being world-weary
so when he hears
the two waiters
chatting at break time
across his table,
he suddenly realizes
he is eavesdropping
on nothing,
petty & insignificant
to matter in a world
between living & dying,
for the ersatz lovers
will quickly forget
what they have said
in the cheap conversation
at that particular time
& place.
Nothing will remain,
for memory is buried
deep in the psyche
like ashes in columbarium.
O In consonance
with his theory
the world is all beautifully
mucked up.

7.
No Way

He is a total
stranger to the world:
every face
is scrutinized
if it sends signals
of familiarity & pain
that grips his heart.
Nothing is confirmed
by what once upon a time
was sacral at the start.
Data have been
compromised,
everything has been devoured
by the chameleon of time.
So this is all
there is to it?
Neurons that stored
all desire & loathing
one by one
like hardening arteries,
expire.

8.
Dead-End

Always
the world of imagination
turns out badly & false:
allowing him
to drift like a paper boat
in a stream
true but unreal.
At the snap of fingers,
everything melts
into air,
& nothing crumbles
like liquefied steel.
Didn’t he take
himself seriously
as minor Nostradamus
& two-penny seer?
What if imagination
is a lie
which he has lived
off all his life?
He shouldn’t be pitied.
A sucker
for hope & salvation
when really
there is none.
The game is forever lost.
& gamblers
perish at the fall
of die.

9.
Stasis

He finally,
as he crushes
the cigarette stub
into the ash tray,
& the trail of smoke
eddies toward
the ceiling,
realizes
in the catch in his
throat
that he has outwasted
memory
in the summing up
of encountered figures
that hide
everywhere & nowhere
like pestiferous mice.
Was it all worth it?
O the fatal truth
of looking at himself –
hunchback in the mirror –
with a caravan in the Sahara
of meandering time.

10.
Register

It will,
he booms,
slowly dissolve
like a cube of ice
in a wine glass.
Who will remember
what was said,
this or that time?
A point of order here,
a rule of discord there…
None shall persist
to mark in the mind
a quiet ambiguity
in the learning curve.
All, alas,
shall vanish
as if the air
has whisked them off
into a corner
of the universe
where the river
of forgetting silently rushes.

11.

The kids fill in
to read a poem
on Akhmatova:
lit on love
inexplicable,
fleeting & yet eternal,
for children
just roused
from their infantile sleep
of Cinderella & Wolverine.
he screams inside
at this misfortune
of marking time
with them
whose notion of love
brims with chocolates
& bear hugs.
Of course,
Blok, author
of the lyrical stuff,
“supported the Revolution”
but became “disillusioned
by the Bolshevik’s
repressive policies.”
Torture at 7 in the
morning:
he laughs,
like a hyena
of a Cafgu militia.

12.
Persistence

Wedged
under his armpit
are sheets of print-outs,
petition for reinstatement
of a colleague
badly screwed
by the local satraps.
We linger over coffee.
After so much light
heckling,
he admits
he’s really tired –
but he can’t help it.
Something must be done.
Inertia mustn’t cease,
lest flies feasting
on power
shit
take over.
There will be new faces
to augment the rally.
With fingers crossed,
he ups & leaves.

13.
Wrong Way

They hunch over
a fistful of rice
& cup of watery dish,
stuffing it
into their dirty faces.
Of course,
they live miserably.
But they do not think
they do.
Looking up their plates
they glumly eye
the posterized candidates,
hoping to earn
a few bucks
come May.
What can they do
but accept their Godly fate?
Besides,
they fear/hate communists.

14.
A.
Blind Spot

He caught the sight
of her
crossing the corridor
& into the street
to hail a cab.
She would probably
attend a meeting,
as required of her profession,
or hie off to her new lover
in their private nest.
O Whichever
it shouldn’t be his concern:
she had made her
sudden farewell
by not responding to his call…
& he wondered
how idiotic he was indeed
to have missed
the symptoms
that would push
the button
while he blindly strutted
like a peacock
with a knowing air.
O How he rued
wasting himself so much
on her & her only
every second of his waking
only to come to this.
But fantasy is infantile,
regressive,
Freud postulates;
& he can’t even console
himself with this
cruel, scientific fact.

B.
The Wasted Years

The last time
he saw her
she was slim & lovely
so fragile a petal
He could feel
her vibrate like a membrane
at the touch of his eyes.
There, staring at him
like his dark coffee
is a photo
of a matron cutting ribbons
to a pastry shop.
It must be her,
years have gone
& no one has kept
in touch.
She had always had
sweet tooth,
& the enterprise
affirmed a childhood appetite.
She’s grown mercilessly fat,
almost like a doughnut…
& sadness swept
over him
like an allergy.
Time, written on her face,
had run her down,
& she floated like a corpse
on the ocean of his thoughts.
If they bump into each other,
will sparks fly?
They’ll just nod,
smile a bit,
talk of kids & weather.
Then speed off
in different directions,
as if regretting
the happenstance.
He himself looks like Ichabod,
a ghost lurking in the woods.
Will the moment
be bittersweet?
But shit!
Memory
is always a brutal joke.

15.
Eternal Puzzle

The Archdiocese of Dublin
has kept under wraps
cases of child abuse
by pedophile priests,
having subordinated crimes
to keeping the church’s
respectability intact.
O Faith is the Holy Terror.
Christians pray to Christ
to lead them off
harm’s way
in Iraq & Afghanistan,
& refreshed by an internal light
blow up the brains
of turbanned militants
& passersby who won’t roll out
the welcome mats.
& Allah’s poor children?
They pray devoutly on their knees
at the hajj
to lead them to salvation,
then swiftly set-up roadside bombs
to blast infidels
pulled down by the weight
of bullet-proof vests & machine guns.
O When combatants
from both camps
claim God for their side,
who must root like a soccer fan,
will there be ever an end
to mutual annihilation
by saints & angels
dancing on a pinhead of religion?

16.
Postscript

A.

Former Khmer Rouge
prison chief Duch
has asked
the UN war crime court
to be acquitted
of “overseeing
the murders of 15,000
men, women & children
at the notorious S-21
or Tuol Sleng
torture center.”
He has also “begged
forgiveness for his crime.”
He is clueless
why he must be punished
when “he was not
a senior member
of the Khmer Rouge hierarchy.”
O Just a small fry
who diligently followed orders.

B.

The memory of thousands
of chalk-white skulls
piled up in sheds
keeps haunting
survivors/witnesses.
Will the jury have
the conscience
to stamp out a cockroach
for being one?

C.

He exterminates pests,
pumping insecticides
into nooks & crannies
of the house.
He does not cry
after flushing the vermin
out
with scientific precision.
He is mighty proud
of his job –
decent & acceptable
to all.

17.
Party-list

A.
For now,
Satur & Liza
must go it alone
with their faithful
working
to buck the odds
that the masses
could no longer
be fooled.
Is it the dawn
of new truths?
But did Lenin raise
false hopes?
Alas, the wisdom
of Marx
is still at the fingertips
of the poor
who claim
God loves them
because they’re a multitude.

B.
Hope,
like prayer,
is just an attitude.
We wait outside
the door.
But the dark stranger
knocks on the other.

C.
If life is a game
of chess,
what variation is this?
But Fischer died
& paid his debt.

18.
Tipping Point

Anytime is May 10
& the world
is speeding
like a bullet
in space.
He wants to get off
but where?

1.
Lifewatch

Dead people
live inside his head,
studiously watching him:
do they smirk
when he makes his move?
Do they retch
when he falters?
Squirm
as he does his apocalyptic
fall?
He presumes
they do not let up
in ministering his pain,
but he can’t feel
their comforting hands, anyway –
unlike their old
remembered presences
that served as weather vane
to recurrent heart’s disasters.
What must be done?
Where will all the sadness
lead?
For an orphan
left alone
on the circus ground…
Dead people
living inside his head,
& he gazes at the crumbling
world
like a stone statue.

2.
Loser

He had lost everything
in the recent typhoon.
The Laguna lake
overrun his shack
in a mighty swirl
of watery backlash
& he could only soak
his hands & feet
in the soft, soft mud.
But did he really
lose,
for all his photographed
misery,
everything?
He had nothing
to start with –
only air in the belly
& lost prayer of the rosary.
It was always
his sidereal state:
& the old, bad days
like clockwork
will be monotonously
repeated.
He never did lose
anything, really:
nothing begets nothing
unless
he rewrites
the understatement
of his being.

3.
Askew

A.

It is the first day
of the Yuletide season
when students,
like bats in a cave,
flock to schools:
it has been that way
since “time immemorial”
& he has since forgotten
all wide-eyed creatures
in musty rooms.
Has he deserted them
in same measure
as they have him:
always, they meet
under erasure.
Certainly, a sense of injustice
here;
a streak of cruelty
there.
But each has inexorably
moved on,
fireflies avoiding collision.
First day of season
& this poem a repetition.

B.

Glanced at their
wrist watches.
Then rushed
for the exit
as if from a plague
of him
who had been pontificating
at the rostrum.
His hands,
gnarled like drift wood,
were empty,
as if imaginary birds
had squeezed out
of his desolate grasp.
Yet it was morning still.
A light breeze
crawled in through
the windows.
But leavetaking
for all was most
welcome.
No one dared
to be sentimental:
as if they had cozied up
to the strange reprieve
in a life
full of chance encounters,
where all are bound
to become perfect strangers,
in a day, in a week,
a year…
But like a beggar,
he still waits
for something symmetrical
perhaps magical.

C.

He has lamented it
before:
what they know
never issued from him:
signals, after all,
fizzle out
in the dead zone.
They merely play the game
& mimic
like shrewd actors
what needed hyping,
as in tragicomic films
where lessons learned,
in the cosmos of
uncertainty & chaos,
are quickly forgotten,
like a wound
that heals so fast,
so perfectly,
that no scar appears
to make one remember.

4.
Rectification

The secret
of his passion is
having learned
to put it under erasure
the instance
she moves hypnotically
across the table
toward her new paramour.
That way,
he pulls the curtain down
on any fantasy
that may stir
the hornet delirium
of having lost something –
an impulse,
a short story,
a tear –
which has never been.
Thus,
the day passes
without the glare of passion
blinding
his renunciation.
It must have been
too late
for his age –
but secrets of survival
are never known
to be sealed off
from tremulous hearts.

5.
Metamorphosis

A.

He has turned
vulgar,
cheap,
coarse.
When the guy
who briskly walked
down the road
pressed on the buzzer,
he shooed him away,
averring he had already
done his part for
the collective malaise,
& could you look
for another sucker
next door?
O This country
is never meant
for sensitive fools
who’ll be devoured
by the rising mob
holding hostage
soft, soft hearts.

B.

The two street kids,
sitting on the pavement
& taking stock of plastic bags
beggared from the neighborhood,
saw him open the gates.
& in the wink of an eye
they were peeking through
the slits:
“Please, we haven’t eaten yet,”
changing their repertoire
of affliction
as they drone on…
& he thought of metro refugees
lugging in the night
sackful of relief goods
to be sold at cheaper price.
It must have been plastered
on his eyes
he’s a sucker for saccharine tales
& widow’s mite.
[He's still wondering
why he seems to have broken
out of character.]

6.
Words

Who talks of freedom
justice, & all the isms
of a positive metaphysics?
O But he doesn’t give a hoot.
Nothing in this world
is worth the trouble, after all:
everyone hopes for
the coming of the saviour
but the heart pumps
& stops alone:
Kahlil Gibran,
poet-mathematician,
could only vouch
for the anguishly possible:
the now
& all the joy & sorrow
that the moment
offers & abjures.
The rest is accident
that means nothing at all.
So when she said
what would make
his heart leap
he wanted to believe her,
of course,
even if it’s only words
& their truth
never really existed.

7.
Fall

When the Berlin Wall
fell twenty years ago,
who would have thought
that it would rise
from the ashes of Marx & Lenin?
They must have turned
in their graves
when Moscow rodents
took over their work.
Much like Christ
who would have raged
at pompous priests & popes
with golden vestment & crozier,
when during His time & place,
his lowly gang of fishermen
would walk across the land
& share fish & bread
with seashore crowd.
Always, generations
after the First Cause
mess things up
like acrobats
breaking their necks
in somersault.

8.
Fracture

John Allen Muhammad,
aka D. C. Sniper,
finally died from lethal injection
for the random shooting
of multi-ethnic victims.
His ex-wife professed
she was the sole target
of his vengeful whim,
but murdered the ten
to serve as decoy
for his heinous scheme.
O The ploy was bad
calculus:
the shortest distance
after all
is between two points,
but he thought it was
billiards
where to pocket a ball,
you hit a number first –
which makes for
Bata’s magical lore.
He didn’t know
how to configure his anger
that simmered since Iraq
where killings give pleasure
but also make one combustible.
Theologians & pacifists
are wont to clear their throats,
as if to deliver an empty parable.

9.
Punishment

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is a Muslim.
He was set to deploy in Afghanistan
& couldn’t imagine himself
killing warriors of same faith.
He had sought release
from the service,
but the US government refused,
having paid for his education
to be a psychiatrist,
& assigning him at Fort Hood, Texas
to mend the psyches
of broken soldiers from Iraq.
But wasn’t he also on edge?
No one had conveniently noticed.
He eventually snapped:
now he’s being kept alive
at the hospital,
under heavy guard,
for shooting fellow troopers down.
O little people
don’t really measure up
to the immensity of war
& the Big Picture
that Presidents
& Pentagon hawks dream up.

10.
Mourning

There will be more
bushfires of memorials
as shoot-outs
& blow-bys
rage across the white
mainland.
War vets from overseas
are on the loose,
their itchy fingers
still pulling at memories
of dark people
falling, falling down
before automatic rifles –
& where madness & pleasure,
like Kool-Aid acid mix,
linger in the zip of bullets
& silent cries
in war zones of the mind,
there will be no end
to good mourning
in America
for its sons smelling of gunpowder
have come to roost
& vent their troubled anger
on everyone that moves.

11.
Image

Surface is depth,
image is reality –
the PR consultant
professorially utters
as she hands out
her calling card.
So saying,
she lays down
the master plan:
take note of twitch
or frown,
the strut or slide;
the decibel of voice
that must effect
a meaning common
to the target crowd.
Are you out of reach,
or within jovial grasp?
Do you look cunning,
or provincial?
Fix your gaze
on the other,
or avert your eyes?
Everything is formulaic,
know the winning style.
There is some quaint logic
here,
not Cartesian but hyperreal.
O She turns the devil
into a household icon,
knows the suckers
like the palm of her hand:
People, after all,
pay for their own execution
as they giddily watch
the spectacle of misfits
in the name of techno verities.

12.
Poetics 101

His work
reads like a newspaper –
they heckle –
& turn old & smelly
the day after.
A chronicle of what
pedestrianly passes,
stopping short of universals
of what art encompasses.
Journalism
makes for bad lit –
they hoot –
& his stuff is wrapper
for fish in the market.
But what –
he vainly argues –
is the quirk of infinitude
to which bards
must majestically allude?
Didn’t events
that passed their way
& im/personally encountered
make for aesthetic truth?
History is in vanishing details;
poetry happens
everywhich way.

1.

He knows
it will happen
as foretold:
the conversation
tiptoes around
October catastrophes –
several weeks’ old
& not worth
the lessons learned.
What should be
forgotten, anyway?
Everything
& nothing!
They ought to leave
their god-forsaken country
for anywhere,
lest all breakfast stories
over hot coffee
taste like black forest
frosted with mold.

2.

It’s difficult
to drop him off
the cushioned bed.
Heavy as stone
in a room with drawn curtains
as if in deep mourning:
how can he map out
tomorrow
when casualties litter his path?
If one’s young,
everything is trouble-free,
even if he walks
on wounded knees.
If one is old,
is there time
to beat the clock
& start anew?
Everything is damned repetitious,
& rare is the burst
of energy
to push him back
on the road.

3.

The kids at the next table,
all management majors,
are absorbed with their org
& its succulent goals:
they were obviously spared
of the watery tragedies
& could giggle luxuriously
at the days after.
Young,
full of bravura,
they swore
to steer clear of danger zones.
The future is theirs
to claim,
as if immortals.
O Blanking in their minds
choreography of disasters…

4.

The evacuees, of course,
left a trail
of looting & misdeeds:
unscrewed bathroom faucets
to install
in their riverside sheds;
yanked off wood panels
to fix their makeshift houses;
pilfered school stuff
to sell cheap on the side;
threw plastic bags
& littered the smelly site.
Should they be shot
for such mess inflicted?
But they wouldn’t give a hoot
even if accused
of causing the instant flood!
They have lived off
state margins:
in the lumpen realm
they have exacted
their vulgar class revenge.

5.

The northern folks
wouldn’t have anything
to do with dole-outs:
they’re just waiting
for the sun to peek through
breaks in the clouds
& off to the hard terrain
they must work again
with their weatherbeaten hands.
They have struggled
all of their lives
without sense of government:
just milling around
delivery vans
unsettles them no end.

6.

The city settlers
feel it in their bones:
they deserved
to be relieved –
by conscience-stricken
patrons –
of their pain & destitution:
but trucks brimming
with goods
they assaulted,
having suspected
distribution was premeditatedly
stalled.
No longer it was
gift for the downtrodden:
was theirs from the start,
as if mandated
from above
for being perennial underclass.

7.

He realizes
he cannot give them
anything anymore:
He was in shock,
in fact drained
by all the tragic bellyaching
& pleas for understanding:
He had suspected tickets
were xeroxed
for barangay captain’s kinfolks…
He could have been killed
for directing his heart
to pump for the hungry mob.
The relentless are still
camping out there.
O Askals are easier to hug
in a playful sport!

8.

It’s not so much
nature
that terrifies him –
it has been there
since creation –
but the state
that rules his life
is ever so distant,
leaving him
absolutely alone
in time of disasters
& fatal premonitions.
He obeys the rigid laws,
but only gets
faulty directions.
Floodwaters rush & ebb
like promises
of lying politicians.
O How his hands tremble
at any impending doom
when rain pours down
& he quickly remembers
the cannibal act
of neighborhood gangsters
& state minions.

9.

They clog the river banks
but rule out
guilt for the flood:
the favored developers
who worked around the law
must be pointed out, too.
That they sanctimoniously brag.
O Who shall be
punished for the death
of the innocent & cunning
when almost everyone –
the state & ignorant citizens –
proves mutually guilty
as sin?

10.

Cagayan folks
would feverishly bead the rosary
before conducting town meetings,
assuring themselves
God heeds peasant devotees’
mortal request
for the typhoon to veer off
toward the Northeast…
Ramil, the scourge, did.
& prayer had never had
a more spectacular effect
than when lives & properties
were spared
from the cosmic tempest.
If only believers asked
why their faith
must be tortuously tested
in a morbid way
such as this.

B.

The Palace,
clueless as to how to cope
with the infernally
rising waves,
read a Catholic prayer
of exorcism
to shield the islands
with its metaphysics
of despair.

11.

At the impromptu refugee shelter
where they settle into disrepair,
children buzz around like fruitflies:
their parents used to sitting around
stolid with sex & drugs.
Sooner than later,
when wind & rain stop,
boys will return to sidestreets
to rape & hold up
as if on warpath;
girls will turn hookers
to hype their celluloid ambition…
& bishops who intone
men & women are meant
for natural procreation
are murderers themselves
of unwanted generations
who shall die of gunshot wounds
while bumming for shabu
& petty-B comfort zone.
Of course, in state fashion
officials will hem & hew
in this country of repetition…
Drunken morons will make
for prophets who grumble
beginning is mirror’s end
in a circle of reruns.
Never is the lesson learned.
Always, the future
stays frozen like a storm
on the horizon.

12.

A child frets over his books
damaged by the flood
& the library forcibly closed…
He had something going
for him before:
he loves to write/draw
in his notebook
anything he could envision
& be doctor for the poor.
But his eyes say it all:
after the storm,
he hopes to go back to school
vandalized by goons.

B.

Flotsam
like water lilies
clogging river channels.
They multiply
exponentially,
forming layers of leaves
like planks
across the water.
But where will
they relocate
if flow
makes for smooth traffic
as in superhighway?
They are
Neferti’s “refuse”
dumped here & there
until the state
wakes up
to their stink & noise.
If they shit around,
who must pay?
They are pure garbage
sleepwalking around the city
like a ragtag army.
They’re ancien regime
spilling out of Intramuros
& laden with evil schemes.
Hear! Hear!
Their barbarous singing!
Close the doors
& windows!
The country is bursting
at the seams…

14.

The event is basic
yet he’s missing something…
Always that sense of disaster
lurking at every corner
like evil so enchanting:
her new lover
who cluelessly smiles
at his strange tirade;
the news of tropical depression
that makes his heart leap
why old women cringe
at the sound of water;
the day of the dead
in gray November
that grips him
with permanent loss
& obscure wonder.
Yet he’s missing something…
That which terrifies
& pinpoints his Xs & Ys
eluding the cerebral:
like some shadow
hitting him from the side.

15.

She makes sure
her lover is in tow:
dog on a leash,
loyal, protective.
& he who secretly reads
the couple’s semaphore
must his words measure
like a friendly neighbor’s.
How long
can he survive
a presence
she carelessly inflicts
with her density,
as if the world
of triangulated passion
were chocolate concoction?

1.
Litrato

They found him
standing by the door
of the abandoned house.
The owner must have
felt secure
with him tied to a post,
guarding his stuff.
& couldn’t imagine
how he would violently
tug at the leash
once the murky floodwaters
reached
his collar.

2.

He sits there
at his desk,
far from the chatter
of officemates,
as if he were
somewhere else.
He has nothing to say:
his house
was inundated by the flood,
prized car tumbling
like a toy boat
in the avalanche.
He’s perpetually dazed.
The past is nightmare,
the future blank.

3.

How do you start over?
To begin from the beginning
is to work
on a clean slate:
But he’s old, retiring,
his heart scarified,
by sad histories
of ruins.
Can he still make
that first step,
like a child?

4.

Suddenly,
she felt inconsolably tired.
It took her a lifetime
to map out a journey.
She has no more lifetimes left.
The blueprint
has vanished in a wink.

5.

Would he end up
sad & bitter
as predicted?
The stupid old man
finally realized
he had to give up
everything –
words, ambition,
desire:
leave everything to chance.
He’s free
drifting in the waters
on a block of ice.

6.

When it’s over,
it is over –
He is finally told.
Why does he think
he could hope
for a better deal?
She’s gone. Like air.
He didn’t foresee
the daily humiliation
of marking the impossible.
He’s the perfect fool:
A poet
he thinks he is,
of course.

7.

The women
dragged swiftly
by the current
were waving furiously
at him on the rooftop.
But he couldn’t move,
as if petrified,
to fish them out.
He could only watch
helplessly
as they vanish
at the watery turnpike.
He could carry
a load
at the factory,
but couldn’t lift
the nightmare
on his mind.

8.

“I lost a million
in the flood –
but it’s ok,
we’re still alive.”
He consoles himself,
assuring everyone
who cares to ask.
But he can’t believe
he’s saying all this
as though the future
were bright, possible.
(Love the second time
around
is a romancer’s
incurable gamble.)

9.

The students chatter
about the recent flood
with flourish of giggles
& nonchalance:
Yes, the water was neck-deep,
soaked everything precious.
They did shed a tear
over a toy destroyed,
a shirt streaked with blood…
But their vibrant steps
measure how
they have quickly
set aside
talks of nerves’ failure.
For the day’s
school lesson,
juvenile spirits
still magnificently bloom.

10.

The old shop-owners
were taciturn
while raking through
salvageable merchandise.
They would mumble
now & then –
Maybe we can resell this
cheap?
Maybe the bank
will offer a moratorium?
Force majeure, anyway.
They stir the coffee
slowly,
as if weighing time
heavy as air.

11.

Her husband
is puzzled:
off & on
she whispers
something almost inaudible,
then turns hysterical
at imagined
rumble of flood waters
that stirs her mind.
She’s a nervous wreck,
prefering to sleep
outside the house.
A drizzle on the rooftop
sends her packing up.
He cannot leave her alone.
She’s a prisoner
of her fears in the room.
The nightmare
of the past days
still drill through
her head
like a secret plague.

12.

No, they won’t return
to their house
as they try to fit
into the new site.
Old memories
of ruined loves
must be buried
for good.
But they would wake up
at unholy hours,
as if visited by ghosts.

13.

Five or ten years hence…
Who shall remember what?
That chilly September
when hundreds died,
small fortunes declined?
They will steer clear
of stories about it;
if ever,
only the lightness of banter.
Death,
like love,
is a transition play.
Oft we hear
the common counsel,
Move on!,
as if it’s a popular tune.

14.

What is there to do?
He stares at his palms
to look for signs.
None is forthcoming.
He stands up,
does his stretching
as if the marathon
has just begun.

15.

Only sentimental slobs
look back
at the mess
left behind
by the twin storms:
Optimists bustle about
as though pursued by demons:
Reopen lost ground,
reset ambition…
In a country of repetition,
there is no end
to retellling
of grief & perdition
that predictably return,
like stragglers
of unfinished revolutions.

16.

After the Event
the house staggers
with muffled cries,
survivors grope around
like blind mice.
O What madness
creeps in –
the trembling hands,
the buckling knees –
when everything settles in
& the phantom storm
again starts?
Everything is deathly still,
but always that
uneasy silence.

17.

The overseas call
was anxious, disturbed:
She had seen
the ghastly episode on TV…
The answering voice
was motherly, calm.
Each managed
to stay cool
but with the distance
of thousands of miles,
who wrings
whose hands
at the end of the line?

18.

The dead
are such in various states
of fear & disarray,
frozen in their tracks
as the avalanche of soil
& rocks
turned them into statues
by an invisible sculptor
come to pay homage
to the fury of nature
& the obscene wisdom
of dictators:
A mother shielding her child
from the landslide,
a rescuer
trapped under the rubble,
a swimmer
drowned in the flood…
It’s Mt. Vesuvius
all over again,
as if to prophesy –
in the country run by idiots,
death is no longer
a grand spectacle.

19.

Finally, he concludes:
this is a country
of constant mourning:
days count the number
of dead & missing
who fill morgues
to the rafters
while cemeteries disgorge
corpses into the waters.
A shortage of coffins,
much like Benguet vegetables,
is the common staple
of radio-TV talks
where hosts turn
ad executives
& opinion editors.
Here lies the crux of chaos:
the cosa nostra heads
make like Canutes
ordering people
to stop clogging the airwaves,
after bumming around the world,
with their frantic calls.

1.
Delubyo
A.
They slept soundly
the night before.
A tropical depression
could just nick the island
& head northwest
en route
to China or Vietnam.
But the morning after,
water rose skyhigh
to submerge houses,
people scampered
to the rain-lashed rooftops.
Calls for rescue
clogged the airwaves
but the marooned
were advised
to say their prayers
because the rubber boats
were few to spare
at “100 to 1,000 dollars
per,”
they could have mounted
a magnificent fleet
for the fearful & defeated.
Money to burn
for dinner at Le Cirque,
but nary a cent
for the drowning, the dead.
Nature, as predicted,
exploded its equatorial bomb:
O why do loyal citizens,
leery of hotheads & communists,
gnash their teeth
& wail the poor & the rich
are savagely hit?
O This country
that prides itself
as encased in heart
of Christ
should show His temper
at the marketplace:
Time to line up
politicians on the wall
& unlearn the myth of piety,
never in the business
to stupidly endure.

B.

Will Manila end,
not by fire,
but by floodwater?
We’ve been floating
like debris in its ocean
since continents
shifted plates
& dinosaurs roamed
the earth.
& we drown
in cascades of dreamscape.
Water is good fortune,
say Chinese sages,
but excess of it
is murderous plague?
We’ve cut trees
off mountain slopes,
drilled the plains
for copper lode,
blocked the river routes,
sold native patrimony
to Yankees & Japs
who tear up the land
into toxic dumpsites.
O When will all
this catastrophe
of gods & men
ever end?
If the people’s health
& well-being
in collective measure,
never statistical progress
& mean profit,
make for humane creed.

C.

He was too jaded
to be moved
by the loathsome spectacle:
bodies stuck in deep mud,
refrigerator cradled
by electric wires,
cars piled on top
of each other
like dominoes gone wild,
old women
catatonically staring
at water-ravaged houses,
men confessing
helplessness to save
their children,
families screaming for help
as makeshift shelters
float swiftly by
in the torrent…
Death & destruction
are repeated hallucination
that is barely virtual:
but it’s not
act of a sullen God!
People & politicians
brought it upon themselves
in squandering their lives
by discarding rules
of planetary existence:
If only they didn’t play along
with Malacanang
to ignore the fatal signs.
They were rats
led madly by
the piper of Hamelin
to be drowned.
Prayers they desperately mounted,
but who hears
voices from the dead
& the damned?

D.

Time to come together
& be done
with backbiting
about whom
to line up on the wall
or praised as Savior:
the top dogs grin,
who ate off Parisian plates
in New York.
It’s all of us,
rulers & plebeians…
But did the masses share
their luxurious hotels
& business-class fares?
No, there must be
justice in all of this –
fingers must be pointed
at those who planned
national future
in double speak
& power-point figures.
The flood came
without Noah’s ark:
O why do we allow
hoodlums
to fix our herded lives?

E.

They cry a river
over the savagely drowned
& if miraculously found
give them decent burial.
But the lowly animals
who were helpless
to scoot up to higher ground,
they would ask
dump trucks
& pay scavengers
to pick them off
the muddy foliage & streets –
their gross stench
assaults the educated.
O The damned & afflicted
by the sudden sea,
aren’t they no more than
Neanderthals
who treasure animals
for food & ritual?
The civilized
they seek refuge
for themselves.
O Rare are the human masters
who cradle
dogs & cats, whatever
for their gift of comradeship.

F.

The family
is “sell-shocked”
to utter a word
while sifting through
the waterlogged:
broken vinyl records
that wept out his sadness;
TV sets & computers
that would explode
if plugged;
clothes soaked
in the brackish torrent;
books, passports,
torrens titles, photos
of a trade that
career-wise mattered…
He would walk
his fears from now on
since the Revo
was sucked down
the creek…
How many years
did he sweat it out
to build the nest
so he could on weekends
just read the paper,
nurse his gin
with the crazy gang
who has gone to ruin?
He felt spent
with all his time
like drops of blood
dripping from his veins.
Can he start
all over again?
He’s past his prime
& can’t summon
the blind inertia
to keep on rolling.
What has he done?
He cannot let the state
map out his future:
it doesn’t care.
It only waits
for his withholding tax
to splurge on
presidential jives.
He looks up at the sky
but no bird
flies by.
He is all by his lonesome,
but for the family
that achingly salvages
mementos of their lives.

G.

He doesn’t want
to turn on the TV
& hear the bad news
anymore:
the continuing body count,
the wretched tear
& repressed anger,
survivors
who at the camera
automatically smile.
He’s had his share
of daily tragedy,
plugging his ears
to unhear
even the signs of positivity:
friendly hands
of strangers
as though kith & kin,
the derring-do
of the intrepid,
the little heroic deeds
that almost strain belief.
He’s tired of it all,
the pestilential cries
God & men inflicted.
But he can’t
shut off his mind,
a machine
always running on empty.
He’ll madly toss
throughout the night.

H.

He cracks:
that idiot,
zonked out by drugs,
is better off.
He smiles blankly
at all passersby.
He has been at it,
like a fairy child,
shielded from
the idiocy & wisdom
of the tribe.
Of course, he can’t
hook up
with any tart:
He lacks desire,
sex is just organic,
mechanical.
A stone
with blood & bones
like any human
with a soul.
But he hardly exists,
exempted
from personal
& natural crises.

I.

They were,
as in classic movies,
shivering in the rain,
menacingly hungry,
eyes closed to tears
as if to semaphore
O for kindness of strangers.
The doors of a Paco school
were flung open
for the pitiful mob.
Days later,
when sun filtered
through the clouds
water had subsided,
they made for makeshift
houses
to guard against looters
at the riverside.
The school principal
could only shake
her head
as she inspected
the classroom
where the helpless
evacuees were billeted:
cabinets had been
ransacked of books & charts,
chain upended
& thrown across the floor,
the smell of bodies
festered like spoiled meat
as if to argue:
we’re the disinherited.
You can all forgive.

J.

There was no clearing
in the ocean of mud;
the chopper decided
to drop the goods
down the raucuous crowd:
Rodriguez, Rizal
is not Darfur,
Myanmar
but people rushed
like rampaging bulls
for “bottled water
boiled eggs & packets
of instant noodles”
to ease their day.
Their bodies,
caked with sledge
& gooey mud,
looked like cannibals
hunted down
in ages past.
O The hordes are back!

K.

It was a disaster
waiting to happen.
Decades back
the green architect
had a plan:
but the state
looked the other way,
shelving the blue print
to forestall nightmare.
Business tycoons
wouldn’t hear of it,
politicans wouldn’t give
a damn…
Therefore, the dead & damned
must float like debris
into Malacanang.
O It was the handiwork
of mice & men,
who couldn’t see beyond
the clink of gold coins.
O How money
derailed common sense
& wisdom!

L.

One has to be
on dry, high ground –
writing table
in lighted room
above the raging water,
beyond the reach of wind
& secret prayers –
to record like camera
the obscene season.
He’s chained himself
like a prisoner
to the swivel chair.
But there is no other
message
to cryptically tell:
the masses
are grievously suffering,
but if the rich & poor
trace the same old paths
God’s fury will return
with its customary mayhem.
There’s nothing really new
to be written.

M.

He has been peddling
“religious icons,
rosaries,
sampaguita garlands,”
serving as barker
at jeepney stops
for side income.
The church items
must signify
trading in God,
the promised salvation,
faith & love heavenward.
But his wife
& five kids perished
in the flood,
sending him to wail
“I wish I had died
with them.”
Is the virtual acolyte
being tested?
Isn’t poverty enough?
Remember
the agony of Job.
But for what purpose,
end?
He wrings his hands,
unable to understand.

N.

Kids do the rounds
of the neighborhood,
knocking on doors,
pressing on buzzers,
pleading into faces
with their sullen mien:
But he can’t trust
their spiel,
they would be selling
second-hand items
for a bargain,
then sniff rugby
in the yard.
O These times
challenge the bourgeois
heart
for the begotten
of the underclass:
this is vulgar Marx,
reactionary hogwash.
In a flash,
they’ll bare their fangs,
run off with your bag.
Rodents
making like humans?
O how the flood
has unleashed
vicious savages
& tender-hearted folks.
(A crocodile
in the dark
was out for a swim.
But the terrified
will hunt it,
though harmless, innocent.)

2.
A.
Post “Golden Age”

The place
where I once lay almost
dying
is nowhere in sight.
Here now
stands a high-rise
where the rich & famous
cavort over Mediterranean wine
on what was one
burial ground
for anonymous skulls;
where once wild cries
punctured the cavernous sky,
concert bands & toy dogs
ululate & howl.
Has the regime succeeded
in erasing all traces
of conflagration?
I alone remember
this X, this painful site:
witnesses are dead
or dispersed over the land
secretly scheming
like avenging angels
or wailing
like lost orphans.
O A fresh wound in the psyche
that doesn’t let itself dry,
hurting only
when I laugh.

B.

The soldiers
without name tags
but masked
hauled him off
to a safe house
where, of course,
despite the President’s assurance,
he would never
be safe & sound.
They waterboarded him
as in Vietnam,
to squeal on his friends
suspected to be
commies, militants.
They turned his body
into an ashtray,
the while taunting –
Never was he tough
as he screamed like a child.
Yet, he survived it all,
but marvelling how.
God, he presumed
must have averted his Eyes,
then plucked him out
of the ziggurat.
O How long has it been?

C.

The camp,
newly painted
& smug in the glow
of sunlight,
has been relocated,
hidden from public eyes,
as if an invisible sign
has been posted
on a spot to assure
passersby:
We stand by
to protect you from harm.
But the wind
stirs the bucolic silence:
As if foretelling
they’re at it again:
Madame Fuhrer
is alive & kicking.

3.

The words
were epigrammatic,
brutal,
as if the forbidden
has shot out of the dark
& into the light:
I was gangraped.
The soldiers were vicious –
as if they have always been
to women & unarmed men –
& no amount
of heroic lore & image-building
could change the order
of things.
The regime enforced obedience ,
even if reason & freedom
were traded off in the backroom.
Was it a just war?
Was it fair
for a payback to Revolution?
Nothing could shift
the paradigm
that orden y progreso
must reign
if the innocent
are violated…
& murder
is a holy sacrament.

4.

It is happening again –
the battle-scarred
ex-detainee
keeps mumbling to himself.
He sweats feverishly
in an air-conditioned room.
But he’s not strapped to a chair,
free this time
to walk out of his nightmare.
Yet he stays put,
almost frozen,
like a nail.
It’s happening again,
the air heavy with
grim rememberings.
Too, the children
keep tossing in bed:
they cannot calm down
to sleep
alongside his fearful imaginings.

5.
A.

The guy says
he’s done with women.
He can’t believe his ears.
He has heard it before –
a thousand times anyway –
while he watches him stir
the breakfast coffee
at the cafe
as sultry gamines
stare out of laminated pages
of a magazine.
Yes, he’s done with women.
He repeats himself
to convince the wind.
They’re pests,
left him struggling in mid-air
as if he were a vermin.
(O But was it a crime
when he’s so damned insignificant?)
He was prey,
he admits,
to cavalier dreaming,
mistaking the furies
for the vestal virgins.
Now he knows
how sirens trap
stupid sailors
marooned on upturned boats,
who succumb
to their own love’s metaphors.

B.

1.
Looking past him
& into the deep horizon,
she’s oblivious
of him hovering in the wings.
Her future blazes forth
like a lover incandescent.

2.
To stop the clock
he cannot command
the word arcane:
O he who gazes
from the other side
of the track.

3.
O Love is neither
foul nor fair.
The furies sing
in the mind’s labyrinth,
their eyes closed
throats slashed open.

4.
Truth is Cleopatra’s serpent
on love’s breast.
Voices turn louder, intensify
as it strikes to bereaven.

C.

Are you done
with love poems, too?
A fellow drinker baits him.
In the whirr of passion
the head swims,
& you can never be lucid
if only the heart whines.
But he looks spent
with the friendly ribbing
& turns the glass
upside down
as if to move:
Am signing off.
Am already drunk.
O Love is never
a happy carnival ride.
She who once
made his heart leap
is a heavy stone now
that pulls him down.
Who hasn’t, after all,
changed his mind?
Romance novels
never told Everyman
love’s faces
are comically drawn.
Ha-ha!
Was he ever in love?
Aks the warriors of old:
they would only shrug.
There’s time to speak,
time to finally shut up.

6.

He’s old.
Almost a doddering fool.
& the TV host
keeps glancing at the clock
because words
of affliction
under martial rule
were too slow
to fall off his mouth.
Yet, hasn’t he been
through the years
orating before wide-eyed kids
about the old, cruel
regime?
Why was it so difficult
to trace the route back –
monitoring the neighborhood
for strange appearances,
budgetting the measly budget,
disciplining bohemian hearts
who suddenly were swept
into a revolutionary creed? –
When men
were dumped in cogon fields
& women vomitted blood
as their speech…
Do they still haunt him
like dogs of nightmare?
He’s old.
Almost a doddering fool.
Vicious images
still linger
like monsters
in his sleep.

7.

He has made a pile
for metastasizing
exploits in the underground cells.
But that was years ago
when people took gently
to his kind.
But does kindness last?
Does history travel
a straight line?
He’s still at it,
reprising his pain & fears
to elicit tears
from a country desperate
for heroes,
where an excess of knaves
makes possible
the rule of thugs.
In due time,
he’ll be just one of them…
O He never expected
torture can be invested
for the future,
things will turn all right
when once upon a time
he lay dying,
like Faulkner.
Thrown like a rag
into a dumpsite…
O He may yet enter
halls of Congress,
as if riding a white horse
into Paradise.

8.

There’s a woman
who kept rearing
like a white shadow
in his mind.
Where has she gone?
In the labyrinth
of the city
that steered him blind,
he’s bound to lose
her
who once dazzled
his febrile eyes.
Like a rat
in a revolving cage,
he keeps running in circles,
spurred on
by calamitous desire.
What could be a worse
misfortune?
In dark alleys,
hungry vagrants
dumbly pass the night.
But she surely won’t
be lying among those thieves.
She’s a survivalist.
She’s gone past him,
playing with her
new toy & instrument.

9.

There he is again,
mumbling to himself,
this will be the last
with his class
of adolescents
out to man the future
apparat.
Will they live
the stupid status quo
all over again?
Where will pantomime stop,
& truth & justice
be actualized signs?
He has had no share
of academic absolutes…
There must be a period
placed at the end of falsehood!
O how he feigns
a heart attack,
his hands feel
like tearing up
the papers & books
that will start
another lie…
When all leave the room
& out into the sunlight,
will their little learning
mercifully survive?
O, like their elders ,
they will accommodate evil
to survive in style.

10.
A.

How do you
erase memory?
If only it were a disk
one can push a button
& let things
precious or trivial
blank out
like pages
burning into ash.
But always
something lies dormant
in the fire
to smoulder back
in the mind.
Return with a vengeance.
Nothing rots forever
in the dark.
Scavengers there are
to turn the hidden
inside out.

B.

How can generations
perish
deserted of remembrances?
Always,
there are orphans
to rake out relics
from the fire:
an old shirt,
faded photographs,
letters
to jumpstart
the journey
to the holocaust
& salvage threads
to weave
the tapestry
of forbidden history.

C.

Never lose hope,
the mother
counsels herself
to outwit grief.
She has walked
thousands of miles
for a desaperacido
whom masked men
had hauled off
into a van.
O She knew it would
be doubly tough
but has steeled herself
for the logical facts.
If only the ripples
of words
would eddy toward
the criminal mob.
Does she know
what history is?
How it happens
as the world
summersaults?
Her faith is enough
never to lose hope.

11.
Those Young Poets
A.

Those young poets,
the old buzzard sneers,
are drunk with words,
as if showing off
to the world visible
their treasure hoard
of signifying stones.
But only a few
should suffice
to deal with the mystery
of love & life.
& if Word is excess
of emotion,
no need indeed
to regale the unwitting
with unnecessary tears
for spiritual beheading.
Pain & sadness
are beyond signs.
Sure, choices you can
count on your fingers,
but you can cut
the line
to a word,
a maximum of two,
for what could be
essentially true.
But no!
Those young poets
would rather dazzle
with their carnival
of mourning,
& we, who have gone
down the full route,
would even drop out
of the scene
& into a wilderness of silence
where everything begins.

B.

He is fatally wrong.
Or rather off the mark.
It’s not technique
nor prolixity
that damns the young –
the hothouse breed
that dazzles the literati;
they only take pains
to nurse their wounded hearts.
They don’t inhale
the violent air
that whirls around
fallen bodies of protesters
hit by motorcycle men
out to stop
the jail strike.
Nor throw a line
for farmers slain
over contested land.
They wail instead
over a darkness
that metaphysically mystifies.
Yes, it isn’t
the anomie of their craft
that veers them off
the path –
It’s their eyes
they willfully shut down
when parapolice
raid the workers’ camp.
O How they adore
themselves
in their sullen art!

C.

The young poet bristles,
as if he were charged
with a majestic crime.
But poetry, he argues,
is language
“pushed to its limit”
to walk the edge
of what is essential.
It doesn’t have
to be about peasants
or workers
or any rough hand.
We speak for all
who cannot understand
what the crux
of sadness is…
If we rage against
the disenchanting,
it strikes deep
at what afflicts anyone.
Figures in the landscape
are false, even anonymous.
So saying,
he hies off
to a clutch of confreres
across the street,
gracing the affair
where literature
makes possible
grief without tears.
In chatter over cocktails,
they let loose
chirping voices
to overwhelm miasma
of accusing fingers.

12.
Credo

A.

So he finetunes
his wayward emotion:
love these days –
or any day of this age –
comes cheap.
As if to spite
a remembered one.
Goods & bodies
are thrown away
in mercantile
& carnal enterprise.
Permanence,
as in old romance,
is a cruel joke
on lovers
who claim passion
is eternal.
Parents sell their kids,
sons & daughters
tun away parents,
wives & husbands cheat
in one-night stands,
as if the world
has been swept away
in the avalanche
of beasts & angels.
Is everyone half-human?
Who swears by
the infinitude
of trust & love?
Only the first moment counts.
Indifference eventually
drowns, like rain,
the sizzling warmth.
& when freezing cold
creeps in,
will they look at each other
darkly stunned?

B.

But the world
is in constant war
for territory & possession.
Geography & people
seek refuge
behind shifting lines.
Loyalty turns betrayal,
good turns evil,
the globe forever framed
in their dimension
between fascists
& militants.
How can love flourish
in these murderous times?

C.

There must be a way out
of the global fix
but victims
since capital called the shots
forever perish.
Lovers & warriors
must design a world
& keep it open,
as the iron curtain falls
on those who secure
the reign of reason.
Is true love possible?
Can the bull of freedom
be held by the horn?
Always, the future
must reinvent itself
in the hearts of the people.

13.
Breaking News

Margareth Moth,
CNN cameraman,
once asked
why must women
adopt their husband’s name?
She opted
to change hers
after an airplane
she would jump from
in her sporting youth.
She had been
covering the wars
in the Balkans
where anyone can be shot –
even a neutral observer -
because all are presumed
combatants
of either side.
A bullet shattered her jaw,
but she was soon
up & about
covering the conflicted zone.
She, who refused
to ride a rig
drawn by a horse
because it would
burden the lowly
animal,
has recently
entered a hospice
for the terminally ill…
Of course, she is afraid
of death,
like anyone else,
but does not fear it:
after all
“I’ve got everything
out of life.”

14.
A.
Sub Rosa

They lined up
the mangled bodies
like slaughtered animals
at the abattoir
in front of the municipal hall:
to affirm a victory,
show futility
of a struggle
& stop the “reign of terror.”
By, of course,
their own brand of terror.
This ritual is endless.
As if authorities
have lost their heads
why, in finishing a plan,
another plan
must be executed in place.
A variation on a theme
that means the same.
O So damned elementary,
yet the frontmen
have to see through
the circular logic
of a serpent swallowing its tail.
They’re focused,
like a gun sight,
on body count
& the cherished statistics
for whoever
writes the edict.

B.

Sometimes he chuckles
to himself:
he has outlived old comrades,
even abandoned dear ones
who probably have left him
for dead…
Yes, he has managed to pilfer
news
his daughter is now a nurse,
eldest son is off to Dubai,
his youngest has joined the militants…
But he can’t indulge himself
to nurse that tinge
of sadness.
He has been at it,
walking a different path,
since the start.
He hasn’t known any other life:
of times he cracks
if he can still adjust
to the city of neon lights.
He has learned to navigate
under the stars,
read in the luminosity
of fireflies.
To move & endure is all?
Like Einstein’s biker
to stop is to lose balance,
then fall.

15.
Recurrence
A.

Yuri Fidelgoldsh,
Gulag survivor,
is listless –
he has noted
pro-Stalin graffiti
in subways
& felt
chill climb up
his spine.
Persistent when young
he would burn
nights
discussing philosophy
& poetry
with comrades
until they got to Siberia.
The rest is history
twisted into tabula rasa
for children to read
in books & media
how Stalin
defeated the Nazis
& saved Mother Russia.
But what of millions
of intellectuals
& writers
exiled to labor camps?
O Nietzsche’s recurrence
in realpolitik
turns obscene
in the Superman
who is Dictator
gently smiling with his moustache.
A KGB agent
is now president
& Mensheviks are on the saddle
again.

B.

Mohammed al-Hanashi,
31, Yemeni,
“held at Guantanamo Bay
without charge
for seven years”
died in his cell,
allegedly of “suicide.”
But his jail
is monitored by video
& a guard
to prevent such
in any psychiatric ward…
He was designated
representative of detainees,
“who have been tortured,
or abused by whom.”
The US military
investigated itself
& came out with
the verdict:
“he was asphyxiated.”
Technically
he was a desaparecido
under American custody.
Questions are asked,
but no one replies
to Commander Brook de Walt
has not been heard from,
since Naomi Wolf, reporter,
“asked for further information.”