2.

A.
The litigants argue over the text,
the hermeneutics thereof,
that would spell out
the configuration
of the truth,
the deepest layer of
Dostoyevsky’s onion
that reveals the essence
of the core,
the incandescent singular,
the nadir of the absolute,
Holy Grail of the pursuit…
Yet a total farce, after all,
shrugs the cynic,
for in the pyramidal space
they claim to speak
on behalf of the people
who flock outside the hall,
wired in cyberworld,
yawning & gritting their teeth
at the ballgame
being playued by the well-heeled,
the hoodlums in robes.
Who is inside the cage
like a flock of monkeys
watching the grim spectacle?

B.
O He is a man of integrity,
volunteers a colleague
in the court.
Years ago,
he remembers
he signed dutifully,
according to the law,
arrest warrants
for “hooligans”
who objected to the iron rule.
O He couldn’t believe his ears
how time has shifted
its paradigm:
snake then,
chameleon now,
an angel hiding its tail…
O everyone must have
a second chance,
the faithful aver.
But he, the witness,
is not inclined to listen:
There were so many tortured,
so many dead…

3.
The floozies
at the end of the apartment row
are practicing their gig
for the evening show:
no one complains,
throws shoes at the noisemakers –
like a rabid Iraqui journalist –
at the neighbors
who think their métier
is above the common din
of cats in heat
on a hot tin roof:
it is not for the civilized
that they sing,
but for drunken thugs
who will slip their hands
into their thighs…
Should he curse the working class
for their merry act?
O Ever true-blue communists
won’t allow their wanton disregard
for peace
at night when there is nary
a carnival…
Utopia is not a praxiological
free-for-all.

4.
The two lovers,
living underground,
will have their
ceremonial feast
for the sake
of family & tradition:
They, who live at the edge,
won’t dare displease
the elders who guard
against sin
& biblical error.
They must flourish
according to a moral wish.
But this is New Age
when love
trespasses all rituals,
for passage into the future…
Staying together,
through thick & thin,
is proof absolute
they’re meant for each
other –
the rest is empty gesture.

5.
He just can’t help it –
K’s eyes
are fixed on him
moving about the room
where its presence,
though spectral,
is most solid, palpable.
A year almost,
but he is in mourning
for the little guy
who playfully pounces on the rat
of his imagination…
If he doesn’t chill out,
he’ll go mad,
like the widows
who silent squirm
in remembrance
of those who vanished
in the night
of the generals…
The grief is not
for humanity alone,
but also for lowly creatures
who roam the planet
as if they’re
the truly beloved.

6.
Like worms
they come out of the woodwork –
oriental astrologers
who read tarot cards
& animal symbols
to foretell if the year
of this coming life
will be fruitful, or bare.
The faithful seek them out,
assured they’re
never liars nor angels,
will not utter
any contrary omen
to disprove the heavens.
What necromancy holds
dominion over
our hearts
wracked by tempests & hurts?
Yet we persist
to accept the blessings
& warnings of the divine,
even if they turn profane,
an idiot savant’s muttering.

7.
But the Water Dragon
augurs prosperity
& calm after the Rabbit’s
tempestous reign,
he says,
as if to comfort
the teary-eyed orphans
living at the margins
of collective psyche…
As if the universe
has cut mankind
some slack,
making sure
that God’s children
could have this breathing spell
in-between
disasters & pestilence.
He was, of course,
ever the unbeliever,
clutching at his heart
that wouldn’t settle down –
O He has not heard of her…
& ever like a fool
he sits waiting on the hill.
O If only the Water Dragon
were real,
cradling him on his belly,
spewing fire –
love this time must stay…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

2.
As sure as the sun
rises in the morning
Putin will become
President again…
But Ivan V. Chaikin, 71,
is “philosophical”
about it,
his “hopes [having]
withered a decade ago.”
The former KGB agent
will by then rule
“comparable in length
to that of Breznevh or Stalin.”
The elect “decided
who will hold the job.
It’s like a swap in chess –
my bishop for your rook.”
The power to choose
no longer lies in the people,
but party mates
who vigorously applauded
the move.
O How Lenin must be
turning in his grave –
as if the kingdom were alive again
& the Russian czar
was back on the saddle.
Pasternak was prophetic:
the “train derailed
and lying at the bottom…”
[O What do you see
around your head
when you drown?]

3.
The students were at a loss
who would speak
before the discussion group
massed at the stairs.
They had run out
of mentors on the Martial rule:
only a few were available
but they were graders
during those fateful years.
Yes, stragglers there are
but most hide behind
dark glasses:
as if hiding from malevolent
eyes;
others could only hold court
on bar stools
to drink away
memory’s vivid tumult.
What possesses their young minds
now
that the same old, same old
seems to recur
like cliches in stories told?
O, But they will find
their way out of the woods,
a kibitzer assures,
there will be no end
to the undefeated
who shall raise their voice.

4.
A.
K’s leaving for Westminster
in London.
days after a typhoon
ravaged the whole of Luzon.
Her circle had gathered
at the feast of the able,
sending good vibes
in their own friendship mode:
all merrily trying to solve
their own situations,
she choosing her own direction.
But how would it be
years from now?
Can she still hold on
to her promise to return?
O Every generation
seeks its own answers & solutions,
crossing its fingers
there is still something going on
for it
in a pig sty
where friends & foes
dream to fly out.

B.
She will leave behind
flooded plains turned into
a sea of murky water,
wind that pierces like a knife
to the bones,
rains that drown
the guileless & the damned…
All this like a satchel
of sorry postcards
as she plunges into freshly-printed
books
while winter snow swirls down
like flowers from the sky.
Looking out the window,
what shall grip her listless heart?
Old country scenes
that are virtual phantasmagoria
of colonial dreams?
O But her heart needs
respite…
& when she comes home,
how shall she gaze
at old friends
with her defamiliarized eyes?
Will there be
some tipping point?

5.
They asked him,
as if he had the wisdom
off his years
to look-over their stuff.
The young guys
who would be poets –
as if theirs were a noble profession.
O If only he could confess
all art,
as in Baudrillard,
isn’t “a natural impulse”
but simply “an artifice.”
He could only pronounce,
like a witch doctor,
what could never be real
with language
cultivated, rhetorical –
was there ever space
for truth, or meaning,
their innocence could impart?
But he could only nod
& blurt –
OK, let’s see,
tactically denying
poetry is thesis,
as in Brecht,
not emotion…
But how do you
tell the green-eyed children
who would like
to simulate suffering
& scale imagined mountain?

6.
Nothing of course
stops them
form poetry.
To be guided by
old voices
that would muffle
their own?
Or assigned the language
that should
“stem from the heart”?
Like fruit
let loose by a flower
it shoots forth
from everywhere
under the rock,
in the sea,
on trees that murmur
secret sighs,
the dark gazes
from deep eyes,
the nameless tremor
in the heart,
O the invisible ghost
that communes
with the world…
What are mentors for?
Tradition won’t do –
with ears pressed
to the ground
for the sound of ominous drums,
being alone,
equidistant from human tribe,
would suffice
to forge one’s own celestial path.

How has it been since?
They manage to slog
through it all,
bearing invisible sears
on minds & bodies.
Mornings are slow to respond
to the lightness of being
under the sun,
aches & panes crawling
like tendrils of vine
in remembrances
that quiver like an insect
pinned to the wall
as the radio pushes them
to embrace the day
like they were butterflies
shooting out of cocoons.
O Even if they’re stuck
with a leader
who claims the need to unwind
in his Porsche
while he stirs his coffee,
sighing at his meager subsistence.
O If only he could smash
the ash tray against the wall,
but that would be cheap theatrics,
he was not cut out for the play.
He carries the day
like bricks on wheels,
can only grimace
as if burning in a mental furnace.
Done with living?
Yet life is too damned precious
to lose, even forget.
Silly it will be to cut wrists:
there’s the human race to finish.

Even while children,
baring their milk teeth,
bury themselves
in Neil Gaiman’s narratives,
he lugs his satchel
of bad poetry
for no one in particular to read.
His is the history
of the forgotten,
brief on loving badly
& desiring impossible objects.

2.
The survivors of NY
Twin Towers,
spires of Babylon,
thought it was the Armageddon
when skyscrapers
turned to rubble
in the blink of an eye.
& who will forget
the billow of concrete & bodies?
In the aftermath,
the world went on post-traumatic shock:
a bureaucrat enlisted in the Marine Corps
to even the score;
a flight controller lived adrift on a boat
to forget the spectacle;
many changed their lifestyles
& shared blessings with the homeless
while laying wreaths for the departed.
Surely, they were shocked out of their wits –
but in Iraq, Vietnam, every terra incognita
where soldiers clash,
the wretched victims morn theirs, too,
praying that drones & marines
may forever end their mission.
O if only, as in St. Augustine,
all believe in evil
is in everyone’s heart,
not exclusively on others we denounce,
we can be slow
to countenance
the dropping of hi-tech bombs.

B.
On the site will rise
the tallest building in US,
a dirty finger in the sky
at anyone
who can be racially profited
as potential criminals
who dare challenge the Empire.
3.
Who must have done right?
Splitists are raking it in
for trucking with the establishment:
they’re experts of the game,
never regretting the parliamentary swing.
Spawn nowadays
can opt to be partylist congressmen,
hobnobbing with dirty politicians
& talking the talk of ideological schism…
But comrades rot in jails,
having pursued the line
of encircling the city
from the countryside.
But how should one have
survived the martial holocaust?
Who remembers the many
who perished?
Children of the streets
can only watch the fall of die.
How long must the truthful endure?
Even the shrewd & wicked rule:
silent crime is their iconic signature
& the weak can only squirm
with their internet voice:
one guy of wisdom may come along,
but hundreds of fools back up
the evil warriors.

4.
A.
In the interregnum,
she has to return
to the university
to finish what she had left
decades ago:
she must earn her keep –
her first born has his own
family now
& can’t fork out an extra penny.
After all, where was she
when he was growing up
& making something of himself
all on his own?
She was engrossed with
the revolution,
so he must take it out
on her
for having suffered
an orphan’s affliction.

B.
He left the movement,
reconnected with state institution.
O How long has he been penniless?
He has expertise & skills
to serve him in good stead,
& shouldn’t beg for pittance
from strangers.
The passion of his youth
cannot warrant a pension:
the revolution’s fruition
can only be his secret wisdom.

C.
So he’s decided
to go legit –
he must wage combat
on another front:
Capitalism, after all,
is only for those
who can juggle options.
Not a matter of conscience,
but working within traditions
of holding poverty at the door,
investing on his failure.

D.
She managed
to warn herself
into the confidence
of taipans,
& succeeded accordingly.
She has her own
earthly possessions now,
far from the days
when she was a cadre
& her children
allegedly suffered the pangs
of hunger.
She knows no better now
than to hide under
a nom de guerre.

E.
As if to shock
the listener
in his midnight conversation,
he avers
he hasn’t abandoned
the revolution.
His voice slurs
but it makes up
for the imagined hurt:
it still happens everywhere –
Libya, Tunisia, Egypt
in varying forms.
Akin to first passion,
an addiction
that surpasses limits,
& his heart will only be
at peace
if the pursued realizes
he has all along been faithful,
despite the contrary allegations.
Is it insinuating
a sexual attraction?
No, he shakes his head,
it is more than
a Freudian fixation,
a dialectics of choice
& will,
synergy of heart & mind
that cannot be dismissed.
He hurriedly leaves
as if he has lost
his head
for overconfessing –
he who hides
behind perpetual silence.

E.
I.
She is finally given tenure.
A new regime
has seen it fit
to have her reinstated
after the department
booted her out
for breaching protocol:
she had raised the alarm
about her two students
who were picked up
& salvaged by military henchmen
in Bulacan;
she had not sought permission
from the chair & cohorts
for her spontaneous act:
What where they
Big Bosses for?
She was a brat,
with criminal behaviour,
& should not be spared
the rod.
No, they refuse to be tagged
small-town fascists,
simply interpreters of the law.
A collateral damage herself,
like the desaparesidos,
but who will confess
to the moral impasse,
gross ideological error?
Academics
with fancy titles,
who weigh facts
with their sense of justice?

II
She’s virtually broke.
The university is hard put
to decide if she’ll be paid
for her three-year hiatus.
But her mother had a stroke –
now she has to attend to her
by sleeping on the floor
of the charity ward.
When will her saga
of perdition ever end?
O lesser souls would have denounced
principled resistance:
if it doesn’t pay, they say,
to be firm upright.

5.
Martial rule
is the refuge of scoundrels,
& they are legion.
Resistance is an antidote
yet the revolutionary code
is full of semantic loopholes.
How do you keep
hope forever burning?
Every generation
has its own map of cognition,
continuity has different
looks & fashion.
So we seek signs
to forestall misfortune:
should we pray
for cosmic beatitude?
It would be a gambler’s choice,
not a logician’s,
that won’t define revolt.
What is left
for a layman then?
How could Mao
have persisted with his grand design
when apostates
wait in ambush
after his demise?
Philosophers can only diagnose
the social disease,
but never the cure:
anything utopian, beautiful
could only end up as windy fable.
So we live
twixt iron gloves
& hands with olive branch,
twixt the cult of peace
& the cult of war.
6.
A.
It’s been
Breaking News since,
this war on terror
that, for Henri-Bernard Levi,
is “war without army,
without frontline, and so on.”
It is everywhere
America feels threatened,
civilians under siege
by an invisible enemy
who lurks at every corner –
schools, cafes, neighbourhood,
churches where multitude prays
in joy, sorrow, solitude
because terror lies in every heart
that warmly beats
in fear & trembling…
But Washington is milking
the tragedy dry:
replays of burning Twin Towers
& people fleeing –
early risers “about to get on
with their everyday routine,”
stunned & bewildered
that morning –
are accusing fingers
at the dark minorities
who were also speechless
at the infamy.
Yet America saw it before
decades ago
when village children were
running naked, napalm eating
into their skin,
in the green paddies of Vietnam.
Will it take forever
for the lesson to sink in
that all victims
in Asia & Africa
relive as they breathe
the terror of New York?
War, after all,
is essentially evil,
debases all of mankind,
rues the French philosopher
who saw it all
on the battlefields.

B.
Americans simply
cannot get it:
they have believed
the democratic hype
they are verily
pacifists at heart.
Surely,
the death of innocents
is “unimaginable evil,”
but Washington
bureaucrats
tearfully argue
they do not deserve
the mass murder,
anyway.
How, outside its turf,
America is viewed
with mixed fear
& loathing,
allowing imams
to twist Islam
& rally the blind
behind the divine plan!
A dollar
to the piper
for a way out
of the metalabyrinth.

7.
There is contagion
stalking the land.
Filipinos are spellbound
there is lesser evil now
that the martyr’s heir
has become
leader of the pack.
But desaparecidos
have remained in
their graves,
generals are free
to fuck around,
people still bellyache
about the cost of living,
& taipans
are rampaging bulls
who breed labor discord.
Has something changed?
Was there ever
a tipping point?
Have the hacienda
tillers
lost their desire
to own the land?
He seeks refuge
in the “procedures of the law,”
but beggars have prayed
long enough
to expect deliverance.
If they look the other way
& tire of waiting,
what now
for the boy who stays
in his suite
& wakes up late?
O How his collections of music
soothes the nerves
for the job that is
too heavy, complicated.
There is a silent outrage,
but he won’t believe it.
Only activists,
not of his Jesuitical choice
spark the malicious discontent.

8.
A.
He is reduced
these days
of intermittent sun
& rain
to kill time
at Vargas
where they serve
Americano hot
while he coldly
stares at the trees
around
that sway gently
with the slow wind.
But time can never be
swallowed up.
He can write
all his silly poems
yet never be
at all relieved
of pain that
is metaphorically insane.
What salvation then
from ennui –
poet’s hype
as despair
of unique metaphysics –
that parallels
the soul’s disease
gnawing at
his heart & spleen?
This waiting
for nothing,
which does not exist?
On the table
are the day’s papers
full of gory events,
& he wishes
to crumple them
into a ball,
they never have solved
any problematic
why, for instance,
he is alone
waiting like a fool
while people jostle
at the museum?
Like a picture
mounted on the wall
whose familiarity
nullifies meaning,
a trigger for saying
the same old things:
again, again & again.
But he returns to
the café,
like an addict
who hopes for a new high,
something cool
in the flow
of events.
Again, again & again
to stare at the trees –
listless
but heavy with
perpetual silence.

B.
His is a state of mind
engendered by events:
he moves at a fast clip,
doesn’t have time
for tears & cheap sentiments.
He doesn’t even claim
being savagely sad & mean.
He doesn’t sleep:
he slows down time
by boozing himself to death –
& that is deemed an accident.
He functions like a machine,
being soft is not his element.
He crosses his fingers
evil may have its blessing.
Robbers kill & state lies –
that is the order of living.
In a poor idiotic country
where fascists comfortably reign.

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.

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.