1.
Tailend of summer
& rain has started.
This morning,
janitors trolley out
old books & bundles of paper
of a professor
kicked out like a mangy,
old dog.
His term has expired,
no need for him to stay put.
There will be no flowers
to send him off
into the land
of eternal sundown.
Noon, the school is half-deserted.
The smell of rain & thunder
in the sinister air
soaks the circle of foliage.
O To find some corner
where he could seek cover,
or drown under the leaves
of autumn!
But the cafe is on
a lockdown mode…
& he remembers Quasimodo
foretelling
how quickly evening dawns.
2.
She phones
about an aging poet
who was rushed
to the hospital.
Parkinson’s?
He was no pugilist
but may have been punch-drunk
from late-night booze,
warding off
the sacral demons
of his craft.
He was infant terrible
of his time,
but who remembers
his line?
Drunken young poets
slobber about their own,
oblivious of the patient
who partly started it all.
O Are we all victims
of time’s cruel
afterthought!
3.
A.
He waits for
the 7’oclock class
to troop in.
The grass still smells of dew,
light green in the sun’s
soft glow.
O They will finally vanish
after May,
like melted ice-cream:
will they find their own
helter-skelter way
into the world?
Who shall survive
to seize the rainbow?
But the old professor
dozes off,
as if drowning in the chatter
of shopping malls –
O, he who hums in his head
discarded verities
& old timer’s virtue!
B.
But reality, they say,
stares them in the face.
Nah, the classroom isn’t the world:
they know better
how to observe the rule
of the trade.
Campus is where emptiness lies
& shadows on the lawn
rise & fall
like gambler’s die.
Outside the window
birds, by the thousands,
drop to the ground.
The universe is telling us
something –
Where they ever warned
of the perils
on sight?
4.
The old woman
is following up
her apo’s admission papers.
“She’s a good kid,”
she says.
“She has brushed up
on Alighieri,
& the classics”,
as if the world hinges
on the wisdom
of the old…
The seven circles of hell
still exist?
She seems to be saying?
O Is it time
to outgrow marvelous
Shakespearean sonnets?
5.
Rather true, he admits,
you really cannot move on.
K & B are forever gone,
having melted into air,
& there is no balm
for the throbbing pain.
Memory is a permanent hole
in the mind,
a bloodless wound
that opens to the dark.
& To write it all down
will conquer the dread & fear
of daily existence?
O but the heart
shall quickly revolt
against substituted metaphors…
6.
The mothers of desaparecidos
cannot tell you
what grief really is:
it is beyond language
& mathematical measure:
any telling is in pursuit
of nothing.
Signs of despair –
a tear, a silent prayer –
can only be half-heartedly told:
Everything is beyond
customary human hope:
link of hands can’t ever
lighten the cross.
This, alas, is the unsaid brutal truth.
7.
O How to deliver
the living
from their own
irredeemable grief?
Sages say:
write about the story
& exorcise the devil
through the Word.
But ever silence falls
short,
cannot life the soul
over the void.
What language then
to signify an absolute truth?
O None, none at all.
This pain
that is beyond art,
beyond poetry,
beyond prose!
8.
Something malevolent –
& grotesquely calming –
in the breeze
that curls around the trees
outside Vargas
& muffles the chatter
of children
at noon
while he, like an orphan,
on an island
of a table, is marooned,
quietly sipping Americano,
pretending there is no terror
lurking in the foliage of shadows.
O What bad luck
to spend the day
in the coffee shop
while brats
on the promenade
make noise
about the future.
9.
He was released
seven years later
from the QC jail,
after having been found
innocent
“for a crime he didn’t
commit.”
It was “Christ”, he confessed,
who delivered him from the nightmare
of the legal quagmire…
Now he’s got a degree
to help out detainees:
Was it a miracle?
He wouldn’t dare
answer lest
metaphysic devour
his survivor’s logic.
Why him, of all people,
to have gone
through it all?
Was that the real message?
10.
She has turned to God
after her son
was violently removed
from a restaurant
& hauled into van.
It has been years since
& she could only find solace
in the arms of mothers
whose sons/daughters
have also disappeared.
God is merciful, she intones,
but the devil in the details
reads into her words –
Why did it have
to happen, anyway?
She’s resolute,
sticking to her guns
that in the end
all the dots would be linked,
enlightening skeptics
why death & life
of all the loved ones
in the world
would level up
to divine logic.
Have faith,
she whispers into the microphone,
this is not yet time
for wisdom to unfold.
So the bereaved would keep
on lighting candles
in remembrance of a deed
most foul, most monstrous.
11.
He was telling
his young friends
gathered around
the table
why at a certain age,
the body refuses
to heed the mind –
but they averted their eyes.
Time is yet to walk
the full length of the road
toward the finish line?
Now, now, now is all
that matters:
living well is only worth
its own proper measure.
They forthwith smiled,
the sun on the smooth faces
of their even, placid lives.
O if they were only warned
by Quasimodo
who had known it all along –
in the blink of an eye,
the moon eclipses the sun
“& suddenly, it’s evening.”
12.
Too early
in the morning to talk
about fiction.
But it is demanded
of him
to say something
about the craft:
O he could only start,
as if it’s an old revelation –
reading takes time
[the second or third route
drags one deeper
into the ocean of words].
Ignorance
must attend the ritual –
let it linger
in the mind
like an encountered
demon-lover:
is there something
of a deja vu
or an apparition
ultimately new?
Wine takes time
to sweeten on the tongue.
Truth doesn’t show up
quickly at the door
bearing gifts
like a miraculous angel:
O learn to wait
for the sudden visitor
who ambushes
like a robber.
13.
He prefers her
as a short story:
a novel would only equal
a lifetime.
O she who prefers to stay
quickly exits through
the door.
A shortened narrative
to mark the trajectory
of the visit?
O such is life
in a country
of malevolent passion
& brief relation.
14.
The epic
merely repeats events
of life & death:
every situation
remains the same
for a rat
in a revolving cage.
O The suspense isn’t killing –
the beginning & the end
meet like battered lovers,
trapped in smouldering air.
& they lived happily
ever after
as in the fable?
They cross their fingers,
hoping there is something
to salvage, repair.
15.
The professor looks
at the pile of blue books
on his desk
that define the wasted summer
of their youth.
He lets his eye linger
on the scribbled papers,
then leaves his chair,
sighing as if in great discomfort.
He remembers the ancient city
of Alexandria
burning to the ground
all the wisdom
the Western world.
But did it totally stop
all subsequent philosophers
from constituting
the alchemy of truth?
Outside, savages
in majestic robes rule!
16.
A.
It’s no longer his room.
The synage has been pulled down,
the key changed.
A glimpse of the inside
shows a new coat of paint,
erasing graffiti
of resistance on the walls.
Inside the clean, well-lighted
sanctum
postgraduates widely chatter
about gains in their career.
Someone comes out,
inquiring about the stranger.
O It’s been a long time,
no one knows him anymore!
He has retired years ago –
an ordinary mortal now
loitering like an unwanted dog
in the corridor…
Why does his heart
stop on a beat?
Why have all memories gone?
To the grave, to the grave!
Shriek the shadows
behind the stairs.
B.
Hours past noon:
Prof. Q says
he’s forced, per university rule,
to retire by July.
He plans to work on his songs
& his US visa
to be with his daughter
dangerously flirting with obesity
in New York –
this while waiting for
a student interview
about his quarter-storm days
that still rankle
in his soul…
& did you know
about an old chap
whose wife had passed on?
O they were inseparable duo
on campus…
How does he cope
with being alone?
Tomorrow a blank wall?
Evening:
in the settling dark,
do they see themselves
teetering over the edge,
vulnerable?
C.
She once knocked
on his door
to clarify something –
this woman who spoke
fluent Spanish
& sang arias operatic.
But she’s an English teach
& enamoured with literature.
An announcement
on the bulletin board
noted her passing
in America
where she stayed on
after retirement.
O Some people
suddenly vanish
only to return
in the obit page.
This is how life is?
You meet someone
for a second
on the cosmic stage
then lose her
for eternity.
D.
Is this the day
he’s always longed for?
Yet in the backburner
of his mind
he sees a white, white page
on which he would write,
write, write
all the cool passion
of his days.
Something tells him though,
the infinite is so vast a desert
he can’t even walk to the edges.
Metaphoric skulls & bones
lie buried in the shifting sand
of memory
& he can’t even spot
the X where he’s bound to fall
like those unnamed voyagers
who failed to finish
their vainglorious endeavor.
O All dressed up
but nowhere to go?
Days grow longer every second,
like a knife twisting
in the guts.
E.
While strong & avaricious
they have wisely
invested in their future,
the old man says.
Ph.D for tenure & position,
mutual funds
for security & comfort.
Dollar accounts, of course,
for bills when
bones creak
& flesh decays.
Being a fool, he shrugs it all –
this uncertified monk
who fails to note
the state only serves
its own servile buffoons…
Yet, secretly he has been
praying
for God to exist
& note him in His merciful way.
O This rat whose cage
has been opened
but is hesitant to flee
into the wide-open space.
O in this country
without mercy
for stubborn old men
& pious punks,
he is simply way off
the path
of street-smart merchants…
F.
The scholar-critic,
upon retirement,
retreated to his farm
in Bulacan,
domestic hands
& an adopted child in tow.
Was it probably
the country in him
that forced him into splendid exile?
As a child
he loved cicadas sing
at night
& the gentle breeze
that wrapped him
like a mother’s arms
affirming comfort & love…
He had had a stroke
years before
& limped about the threshold
with a cane.
But he didn’t imagine
he could run so fast
after poachers
ransacked his habitat.
It was reported,
he had to be rushed
to a provincial hospital
when his heart faltered again,
& did him in.
Yes, the rural scene
could be deviously blissful,
but evil lurks everywhere,
& always the poor
cast a moist eye
on small landowners
as if it were a crime.
Nothing has been heard of since
the fatal interlude
& friends in academe
are at a loss
about the fate
of the beloved orphan
who, rumors have it,
was kicked out
by relatives of the deceased
for lack of legal claim
to the land.
G.
He’s nearing that timeline
when the world
turns upside down.
But he’s quick to the draw
& bought a farm
he could repair to
when out of job.
With tenants to oversee,
he’s assured
of independent income:
Is this the way
things should turn out
for retirees
who stare at a blank wall
in the bureaucracy?
In the market of commodity
exchange
he thinks of his safety
parachute:
Only he can take care of himself…
But why bewail the lack of human conversation
from the old bureaucratic tribe?
What the hell!
It’s a new life altogether,
one stage on which to face
squarely the risk,
the fall of die…
Where can he, after all,
turn to?
Each to his own refuge
in the weather of storms, gales.
H.
He’s a rumored lothario –
sauttlebutt has it –
eager to get into women’s pants…
who won’t, however,
cast him a glance, alas!,
as he parks his car
& heads for the coffee shop
to banter with
ersatz acquaintance.
Has he ever learned his lesson?
Should he stop ogling
dudettes
sipping Starbucks chocolatte,
giggling over their secret studs:
they don’t see him, anyway,
all dressed up
like the ghost of an aging paramore
traipsing in the steamy air.
Is he Kilroy himself
his handwriting
on crumbling walls
nobody will ever read?
A forgotten hero
of the lost war,
a spirit nobody misses
in the age of rock & jazz.
I.
It was a number-coding day
as he had to rush
to the university
in a cab:
he was asked to explain –
Pronto! — an issue
his former staff
must clear up…
Can they re-sked it for next day?
No! Was the resounding
utlimatum
from the factotums he had hired
when they were still
wet behind the ears:
Now they’re calling the shots,
impatient to hear him out
as if he had committed
an impeachable crime.
He had recently retired,
& consequently vulnerable to power,
was even denied a class
he could expertly guide.
Where is justice here?
He must have mused
when generations after him
would never even dare
look back
at his impeccable record.
Alas, this is not a country for old men,
but for young, trigger-happy guns.
J.
He’s got a head
of jet-black hair
only a few years back,
& a moustache to boast
that made him up
like an imperial don,
but it’s a crown
of silver now…
How explain
this fast, hermit-like aging?
O When his dear wife
met a fatal accident
his world crumbled,
his voice lowered
to a raspy whisper –
this athlete of the mind
who had slowed down to a crawl.
But of late
he has recovered his spirit,
found a calling
to move out of mourning:
he’s mentoring greenhorns
of the legal profession,
the dialectical joust
renewing a passion.
Has he finally
moved on
toward personal restitution?
No one retires, after all:
always there’s something fortituitious
at the turn of the road.
K.
At the cafe,
he secretly watched kids
at the sideward table:
frisky & listless
like kittens
as they recycled stories
of adventures & mishaps
as if these were novel, new.
He was drained
by the explosion of energy,
but all the narratives
he had heard before,
known a long, long time ago.
Was his time ever like this?
He should not be therefore
inquisitive.
Did he have some boisterous
company
to idle away afternoons
with exultant camaraderie?
But what is there to do
when things repeat themselves,
like the days of wrath
& the nights of rain?
Must he cup his ears
& close his eyes –
it’s the same old scene
from the same point of view?
L.
The keyword is Emeritus.
O How she has worked for it
to be appended to her name
in this part of the woods.
Almost as if the Machine
is down on its knees,
nodding she’s no rebel, adversary.
Has her monologue
found its spectral roots?
But the children never understood
the theorem of words
she has told.
Has she successfully sold
herself to a crowd
who never cared a hoot?
What manner of sainthood
is this?
In a country of silence
& blind applause,
is she a victor
in the back-alley scuffle
among nameless ghosts?
O The keyword is Emeritus.
