DEJA VU

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BLUE TIDINGS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Declension

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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