THE FALL & OTHER POEMS

1.
A.
It’s a different time,
Bono of U2 explains.
They don’t think of famine
in Africa
as they did in the ‘70s.
People these days
are busy with their own
desperate lives:
mortgages to pay,
welfare cheques
to underwrite hard-pressed families;
payroll cut
that forced them to abandon
furnished houses
for cheap apartments…
Who would be moved
by a bloated child
dying in Somalia
& parents who have lost hope
after travelling miles
across barren region
to a refugee camp
only to bury their children
under mounds of sand
while a hot wind savagely hums.
Nobody cares anymore:
the medic who is exhausted
after doing the rounds
in a hospital tent
as if chained
to a spinning wheel on the ground?
The dead litter the compound
& survivors loiter
listlessly,
too tired & weakened to care.
B.
The Somalian father impassively
stares into the camera,
his thin child peeking
from behind
as he squatted
in the swirling dust
of the barren land.
He must be thinking
of queuing up next day,
next time at refugee camp,
ad infinitum.
He wearily sighs,
but his eyes will not close
as if in perpetual waking…
Is he dreaming
of a break in the future?
What moves him
to see it on an arid desert
that promises only shrubs
& wind?
His spirit is indomitable,
says a believer.
He has been walking
for 30 days
with family
to survive famine in
his point of origin.
He has lived long enough,
will live longer
for his children
who deserve more than
his existence
in this failed governance…
There must be an end
to lifting buckets
of flour to stock up
in dirty tents
& move toward
the imagined patch of green.

2.
“Indifference is violent,”
sums up Jean Baudrillard.
& he thereupon finds out
he maybe the loneliest man
in the world –
he has forgotten her now
the beloved
for whom he would have
sacrificed a lot
in the heat of desire
o not so long ago –
but for the faltering spirit
that overwhelmed him
because he needed, after all,
to survive.
O He cannot bother himself
with humanity’s pain,
far out in the horn of Africa
where tribes wilt like
equatorial flowers
to be shoveled under.
He, who deems himself
a victim,
cannot reach out
to the unfortunate
fellow sufferers.

3.
But he’s such a self-indulgent
decadent.
No longer the ‘60s
when hippies fucked around
& saluted the sense of life.
It is I, me, mine
as if no other penitent exists,
only he & he alone
licking his imaginary wound
in a corner
& sulking at the moon.
He has done away
with the referent.
I is purely I,
ever singular
never universal,
unable to connect
with the predicate
that can be most humane
because he fears
always the incompleteness
of things,
like a barren tree
at the edge of a slope,
slowly into the abyss slipping.

4.
So you stay cooped-up
in a half-lit room
like a poet manqué,
throwing, as if in distemper,
objects against the wall –
kitsch ceramic vases, et cetera –
insisting the world
must not be asymmetrical,
in aesthetic disarray…
The refugees on TV
destroy visual harmony,
swarming on the screen
like Egyptian flies
the holocaust of Moses’.
Is there a space in his heart
for compassion?
But he refuses to be moved
by the tears of a child.
The world, after all,
is a cauldron of contradictions,
in constant war
with its own multiple definitions.
Everyone is a monad,
abandoned on a raft of ice…
Should it be wiser
not to look back?
All the sounds
that approximate human voices
are notes
from a distant flute
slowly into silence muted.

5.
Just as he thought:
not yet a quarter of the year
& the family cats,
who purred when he stroked
their heads
like kings pleased
with their subjects’ obeisance,
would turn shadows
in his mind.
Too heavy a scene
to remember?
O the wound of mourning
is deep, never to heal,
& when she whispered,
as if to herself,
it’s K’s anniversary
no word he could utter.
He loathed being maudlin
like a Mexican telenovela:
the night before
as if in Freudian premonition,
when he turned off the lights,
he caught sight
of their figurines’ afterglow
at the foot of the stairs.
Strange coincidence?
Shallow symbolism
but these days
of dark skies & heavy rains –
like poetry that repeats itself,
a psychic addiction –
he is bitten by the bugs
of memory
just when he is about
to fall asleep,
forget the days inconsequential
drift…

6.
He is shocked
somewhat puzzled…
He doesn’t dream about her
anymore?
Has he gone weary
of this imaginary lover?
He has been an idiot, anyway,
to concoct fantasies
about the future
& heartful destiny.
Everything is far from real:
he has always missed the irony:
imagination keeps playing tricks
on him
who is fixated on impossible endings.
So when he thinks
it’s a self-fulfilling wish
it’s God,
who designs the lovely narrative,
as if he has surrendered to ill logic:
But his, alas, is just a pedestrian joke
culled from trivia & pettiness.
Nothing so majestic
that the earth, as in Romeo & Juliet,
would tearfully quake.

7.
He sips his beer,
the day’s papers
strewn across the floor,
as if has purposely thrown them
in dramatic fit:
markets have plunged,
stocks are sold-off,
fear grips the players
at the bourse.
It’s a warzone out there,
quips Morgan Stanley,
warning of world recession,
as in double dip.
Does it bother him a bit?
The disarray is semiotic
of a superfluous cool,
he’s also nervous
like a racehorse.
Tomorrow, the café
will up its price
& companionship
with boozers
spewing cheap poetry
will be too difficult to hold.
Capitalism, alas,
is a ship stranded on the coast,
& there’s no strong wind
to bring it back to mid-sea.
The direction points downward,
& Marx has never been
so right,
says Eagleton
despite disasters of decades
like hell that broke loose.
Does he sniff like a dog
the ominous burning
in the horizon?

8.
Of course, the Christian tourists
trooped to Spain
for roots of their faith –
enclave of conquistadores
where colonial hearts
earlier stirred.
But Spaniards
were protesting their alien presence,
counterchanting the delegates’
hossanahs toward heaven.
Anti-riot police
“had blocked off
Puerta del Sol square
and used vans to hem in
[furious] demonstrators…”
What black theatre is this?
What matter of deliverance
would issue from Madrid?
The caucasian natives
“were venting their ire
over the offences
of the Pope’s visit
and WYD celebration
at a time of belt-tightening
and massive unemployment?”
Who could beseech God’s grace
in the midst
of rioters’ uproar over pay cuts
& hunger?
Can man live off spiritual feast?

9.
They marvel at his
silence:
words, he say, lie.
Silence will not, he adds,
obfuscate the nothingness
of meaning resonant
with truths
of the febrile heart.
A logical gridlock there,
one points out.
St. Exupery, the aviator
who navigated
European skies,
had his own meta-take:
truth that is
invisible to the eyes.
So he prunes his lines
to their barest,
his ars poetica
of few as more,
nothing as everything.
Silence is also words
pared to the bone…
When he spells out
his name,
he is terrified
he has been dealing,
like a bad merchant,
with surfaces.

10.
“It is thinkers
who are in short supply,”
rues Neal Gables
who cautions internet experts
that they don’t have
what it takes
to franchise real knowledge.
“It informs,” yes,
but will not produce
Big Ideas
as in the century of Marx,
Nietzsche, Einstein, Freud –
Big guns who shook
intellect’s battlefront.
The old fogey shakes his hand
upon hearing the boy
brag while pushing
the computer button:
“Can access facts quickly.
No big deal really.”
Repository of useless information,
master of trivia,
this kid who snorts
about expertise
at his fingertips.
11.
Past lunch time
& he is informed
a writer has passed on.
“She had a way with words,”
a fan remembers,
but “she paid homage
to the Dicatator
whom she mistook for
her second father,”
psycho-analysts conjecture.
She kept her peace
after the EDSA fall.
She will however be missed
by craftsmen & novices
for her journalistic venom
& colorful turns of phrases.
O she was textual memory
of his grim childhood
& couldn’t imagine
why she bartered
her literary soul
for something victims
of martial rule
found unthinkable.
She had her reasons,
of course, that seemed inviolable –
this freedom to choose
a life of her own,
maverick denying populist role.
O who grieves over the loss
of fallen idols?
Only loyal friends
& sentimental fools.

12.
A.
He just couldn’t have
enough of it.
He couldn’t let go
once he got it.
Is it always damned heady?
Why must he rule
as if there’s no other future?
Has been at it
for 42 years –
this “king of kings”
now fallen,
who used to throw even
close confidants out of favor
in jail.
O Why did he believe
his own imperial words?
He who ruled by terror
must scurry like a rat
out of the compound!
Yet everyone auditions
for the archetypal role:
Sarkozy, Merkel, Obama,
Chavez, Putin, Assad,
First World dudes
& local senators
who aspire for being First Choice…
When will they cease
booming, “The People & I”…
Until everyone wakes up
as if from ancient stupor
they’ve been duped
by another common fool.
B.
But the young protestors,
who knew no other
since they were in diapers,
would have none of it:
that the Dictator stay,
immoveable pillar,
because he is most desired,
the transition period
toward history & progress
can never be brief
& all must line up behind –
tribal warriors & chiefs –
as if in holy service.
The colonel personifies
Allah’s gift…
No, no, no!
Even civilians rage
at the consulate,
“Grabbing Gadhafi’s poster,
replacing the regime’s green flag
with [the rebels’] tricolor…”
Why can’t the old generation
learn nothing lasts forever,
time’s are a-changing,
& the moment can’t be shackled
to fealty & empty deeds.

PROGENY

1.
In Cuba,
a “privileged creative class”
would include
Alejandro Castro Soto del Valle
& Camilo Guevara
sons of revolutionary icons
“who stage regular fashion shows
and cocktail parties…”
O generation has its own
ideological statement to make –
& the past crashing on the wall
of the present
puzzles no end tunnel-visioned
revolutionaries
who persist in the linear trajectory
of history.
How then should the spawns
follow the path of their fathers?
In this age of fast-tracked
lives & communication,
they’re re-interpreting
Lenin’s texts of his times
& the old fogeys
given to sentiments of dark
landings & gunfire
could only watch
themselves
watch time swiftly pass by,
speechless at their own
glorious speeches
at the public square.

2.
Rockers like Tyler
are writing their hedonistic memoirs,
hoping to stamp their faces
on an era
they vainly signify.
But do they really have
anything new to share?
A novelistic epigraph
& virtual epitaph
to their psychedelic monuments
dedicated to something gone forever
& beyond recall.
Ronstadt,
reaching 50,
double chin affirming
Time’s savagery,
is putting out her own
to mark her ’60s frenzy.
The yesteryears
have a footnote to conclude?
Maybe a dash or a period
to stress a postmortem
to what was once
the glory of youth.
Only a waiting game of grandchildren
surrounding the icons
calmly sipping cocktails
as evening slowly dims
the veranda by the shore –
memory is a blur
in a world spinning
with quicksilver speed,
heavy with history’s ghosts.

3.
Will he also
write his own?
But it is all a scape
of whiteness
that staggers the eye
with its intense
nothingness
as his speaking voice
bounces off the windswept
walls…
The infinitude of sand
covers the flat space
where he slowly walks
as if on a journey
that leads to an endpoint –
where is the pier
he can drop off anchor?
What for, my dear, what for?
The air recoils
at the sound of his own voice.

4.
Art a pornography?
The Catholic crowd
is all up in arms
against the exhibit,
as if their privacy
& bucolic world
were exposed to ridicule.
For instance,
if these were the times of Christ,
& pharisees held dominion
over all,
the artist would have been
executed.
But would Christ mind it at all?
He would probably be cavalier
at the protestation
his sainthood had been sullied
beyond recognition.
Yet in the beyond
where His spirit roosts,
earthly conversation
is dropped at the door,
notions of morality
are never sacrilegious,
& art is daily dose
noise & harpsichord.
Art as pornography?
This is the 21st century,
distant from the lynch mobs
that tortured Giordano Bruno
& women philosophers
of the ancient world.

5.
But these snot-nosed
school children
are high on earning a degree:
they don’t relish
dropping out of the rat race,
& fleeing to the hills
cocksure as in the ’60s
the world is worth dying for.
Too young to be gripped
by nihilist philosophy
& despair?
Puritan sacrifice for
the other & country?
Things, they see, unfold
as in old metaphysics –
in the circle,
the beginning is one with the end.
No more the mountains
serve as metaphor
to seduce
the romantic poet-warriors.
They act & get on the high-end lift
oblivious of Marx & Lenin.

6.
The batch of freshmen
at the other table
outside Katag
is cool:
in shorts & flipflops
sporty boutique-cut hair
& strutting like peacocks
to pass the day.
Laughing heartily,
smirking on the side
at shabby dudes
painting graffiti on basement wall.
As if to say
they are beyond all this,
but smart-assed cannot be commandeered
into the barracks.
Rather they would be corralled
into spacious offices
with credit card & pricey valise.
What century is this?
The old activist
with his knapsack & tubao
must have lost his way
out of the forest –
he cannot hack
abandoned principles,
be done with the central Director
to advance the cause.
Here the CEO
with humongous pension fund
rules,
he who deals
with facts & figures
to underwrite investment
in gold features.
But what if
the US empire
is in virtual free fall?

7.
He would rather ask
the old guerrilla
about his choice of wine
or cigar
than probe the schism
that ushered in the historic
fall…
[& they were only a heartbeat away
from Malacanang,
almost nullifying the impossible.]
That is not his metier:
he is into acceptable profiling,
painting with words
that cross out the relevance
of ideologues,
O issues must be on hold!
If it were the time of Christ,
he would have popped the question:
did He get bored
at Gethsemane,
or really mean those words
spoken at the cross?
Philosophic discussion
is not his cup of tea:
he writes for pleasure
& wants his public icon
cut down to size.
He actually sends
the common message
this ex-subversive
may have a bigger carbon print
in the pig sty,
but that is all there is to it,
he’s no different from you & I.

8.
The sons are leery
of their elders
who trekked to the hills:
O they see no future
in the crusading enterprise:
PH is still a basket case;
when money talks
everyone listens
never to Mao, Marx or Lenin…
O What is there to do?
No-man’s land is Libya,
Riots stir madly in London, Syria,
Asian labor is cut down in Arabia,
& infidels are hunted by Talibans.
But Sierra Madre
is a denuded mountain range
while state troopers
breach the hinterland…
Where lies direction, then?
The faint-hearted are however warned:
something suddenly explodes
beyond all philosophic diatribe
& fools will likely wake up
with half-blind eyes.

9.
In the end,
the father “would be convinced
by his son” to his
“own way of thinking
& reasoning.”?
But he’s gone now –
would have been
a human rights lawyer
as was his wont –
“shot four times
at terminal
right after he boarded
a bus bound
for Legaspi City.”
Rei Mon, after all,
was spokesperson
of the League of Filipino Students…
His killer hasn’t been caught,
sad fate of activists
shortlisted by the “military”
who “are well equipped
and trained to do that.”
Rei Mon would argue
they share their food –
which was never plenty
but sufficient enough
for family –
with the hungry,
rejecting left-over
as “fit only for animals”.
O How the son had trained
the father to be
more human…
But for the state,
Mon Rei was only a rabbit,
moving target in the hunt.

10.
He’s insomniac,
sign of senior moments,
when he can’t lay
his head to sleep
the sleep of the just:
is it the nightmare
of dreamt images
whose bestiary
of symbols
is all mixed-up?
Meaning is a wayward mistress
shrugging off cheap jives
as he rewinds
the ghosts who come & go
like wild wind of sorrow:
O he loved his pet dearly,
yet they seem to have
slipped out of his mind
completely…
When they required him
to undergo medical check-up
the sign was up:
But would his body
hold up?
Of late, it has betrayed him
like a cheap lover,
& he can only cross
his fingers
if he’s going nowhere.
The circle is getting
smaller & smaller:
Women have long deserted him
& no longer can he
keep off the lunatic fringe.
The Beatles have long
sung/rued it in melodic
themes:
money, money, money
to dry the tears
as time showers him
with descending fears.

11.
a. The peace negotiation between
PH & NDF is ongoing, as per
history’s bulletin.

b. There are 300 political prisoners
rotting in jails all over the country.
Release them for good will,
the revolutionaries offer.

c. There are police captives
in the countryside. Stop the
ambushes, the commander-in-chief
counters.

d. The exchange of maneuvers goes on,
both preparing for the war of attrition.

e. Who claims the first move?
Whose interest is served, after all?

f. The dove of peace, with the olive branch
in its beak, circles in mid-air.