Blindside

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.

Road Rage & Other Poems

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.

Enter, the Tiger

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…