Dog-Life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOAH’S ARK & OTHER POEMS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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