1.
Lifewatch

Dead people
live inside his head,
studiously watching him:
do they smirk
when he makes his move?
Do they retch
when he falters?
Squirm
as he does his apocalyptic
fall?
He presumes
they do not let up
in ministering his pain,
but he can’t feel
their comforting hands, anyway –
unlike their old
remembered presences
that served as weather vane
to recurrent heart’s disasters.
What must be done?
Where will all the sadness
lead?
For an orphan
left alone
on the circus ground…
Dead people
living inside his head,
& he gazes at the crumbling
world
like a stone statue.

2.
Loser

He had lost everything
in the recent typhoon.
The Laguna lake
overrun his shack
in a mighty swirl
of watery backlash
& he could only soak
his hands & feet
in the soft, soft mud.
But did he really
lose,
for all his photographed
misery,
everything?
He had nothing
to start with –
only air in the belly
& lost prayer of the rosary.
It was always
his sidereal state:
& the old, bad days
like clockwork
will be monotonously
repeated.
He never did lose
anything, really:
nothing begets nothing
unless
he rewrites
the understatement
of his being.

3.
Askew

A.

It is the first day
of the Yuletide season
when students,
like bats in a cave,
flock to schools:
it has been that way
since “time immemorial”
& he has since forgotten
all wide-eyed creatures
in musty rooms.
Has he deserted them
in same measure
as they have him:
always, they meet
under erasure.
Certainly, a sense of injustice
here;
a streak of cruelty
there.
But each has inexorably
moved on,
fireflies avoiding collision.
First day of season
& this poem a repetition.

B.

Glanced at their
wrist watches.
Then rushed
for the exit
as if from a plague
of him
who had been pontificating
at the rostrum.
His hands,
gnarled like drift wood,
were empty,
as if imaginary birds
had squeezed out
of his desolate grasp.
Yet it was morning still.
A light breeze
crawled in through
the windows.
But leavetaking
for all was most
welcome.
No one dared
to be sentimental:
as if they had cozied up
to the strange reprieve
in a life
full of chance encounters,
where all are bound
to become perfect strangers,
in a day, in a week,
a year…
But like a beggar,
he still waits
for something symmetrical
perhaps magical.

C.

He has lamented it
before:
what they know
never issued from him:
signals, after all,
fizzle out
in the dead zone.
They merely play the game
& mimic
like shrewd actors
what needed hyping,
as in tragicomic films
where lessons learned,
in the cosmos of
uncertainty & chaos,
are quickly forgotten,
like a wound
that heals so fast,
so perfectly,
that no scar appears
to make one remember.

4.
Rectification

The secret
of his passion is
having learned
to put it under erasure
the instance
she moves hypnotically
across the table
toward her new paramour.
That way,
he pulls the curtain down
on any fantasy
that may stir
the hornet delirium
of having lost something –
an impulse,
a short story,
a tear –
which has never been.
Thus,
the day passes
without the glare of passion
blinding
his renunciation.
It must have been
too late
for his age –
but secrets of survival
are never known
to be sealed off
from tremulous hearts.

5.
Metamorphosis

A.

He has turned
vulgar,
cheap,
coarse.
When the guy
who briskly walked
down the road
pressed on the buzzer,
he shooed him away,
averring he had already
done his part for
the collective malaise,
& could you look
for another sucker
next door?
O This country
is never meant
for sensitive fools
who’ll be devoured
by the rising mob
holding hostage
soft, soft hearts.

B.

The two street kids,
sitting on the pavement
& taking stock of plastic bags
beggared from the neighborhood,
saw him open the gates.
& in the wink of an eye
they were peeking through
the slits:
“Please, we haven’t eaten yet,”
changing their repertoire
of affliction
as they drone on…
& he thought of metro refugees
lugging in the night
sackful of relief goods
to be sold at cheaper price.
It must have been plastered
on his eyes
he’s a sucker for saccharine tales
& widow’s mite.
[He's still wondering
why he seems to have broken
out of character.]

6.
Words

Who talks of freedom
justice, & all the isms
of a positive metaphysics?
O But he doesn’t give a hoot.
Nothing in this world
is worth the trouble, after all:
everyone hopes for
the coming of the saviour
but the heart pumps
& stops alone:
Kahlil Gibran,
poet-mathematician,
could only vouch
for the anguishly possible:
the now
& all the joy & sorrow
that the moment
offers & abjures.
The rest is accident
that means nothing at all.
So when she said
what would make
his heart leap
he wanted to believe her,
of course,
even if it’s only words
& their truth
never really existed.

7.
Fall

When the Berlin Wall
fell twenty years ago,
who would have thought
that it would rise
from the ashes of Marx & Lenin?
They must have turned
in their graves
when Moscow rodents
took over their work.
Much like Christ
who would have raged
at pompous priests & popes
with golden vestment & crozier,
when during His time & place,
his lowly gang of fishermen
would walk across the land
& share fish & bread
with seashore crowd.
Always, generations
after the First Cause
mess things up
like acrobats
breaking their necks
in somersault.

8.
Fracture

John Allen Muhammad,
aka D. C. Sniper,
finally died from lethal injection
for the random shooting
of multi-ethnic victims.
His ex-wife professed
she was the sole target
of his vengeful whim,
but murdered the ten
to serve as decoy
for his heinous scheme.
O The ploy was bad
calculus:
the shortest distance
after all
is between two points,
but he thought it was
billiards
where to pocket a ball,
you hit a number first –
which makes for
Bata’s magical lore.
He didn’t know
how to configure his anger
that simmered since Iraq
where killings give pleasure
but also make one combustible.
Theologians & pacifists
are wont to clear their throats,
as if to deliver an empty parable.

9.
Punishment

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is a Muslim.
He was set to deploy in Afghanistan
& couldn’t imagine himself
killing warriors of same faith.
He had sought release
from the service,
but the US government refused,
having paid for his education
to be a psychiatrist,
& assigning him at Fort Hood, Texas
to mend the psyches
of broken soldiers from Iraq.
But wasn’t he also on edge?
No one had conveniently noticed.
He eventually snapped:
now he’s being kept alive
at the hospital,
under heavy guard,
for shooting fellow troopers down.
O little people
don’t really measure up
to the immensity of war
& the Big Picture
that Presidents
& Pentagon hawks dream up.

10.
Mourning

There will be more
bushfires of memorials
as shoot-outs
& blow-bys
rage across the white
mainland.
War vets from overseas
are on the loose,
their itchy fingers
still pulling at memories
of dark people
falling, falling down
before automatic rifles –
& where madness & pleasure,
like Kool-Aid acid mix,
linger in the zip of bullets
& silent cries
in war zones of the mind,
there will be no end
to good mourning
in America
for its sons smelling of gunpowder
have come to roost
& vent their troubled anger
on everyone that moves.

11.
Image

Surface is depth,
image is reality –
the PR consultant
professorially utters
as she hands out
her calling card.
So saying,
she lays down
the master plan:
take note of twitch
or frown,
the strut or slide;
the decibel of voice
that must effect
a meaning common
to the target crowd.
Are you out of reach,
or within jovial grasp?
Do you look cunning,
or provincial?
Fix your gaze
on the other,
or avert your eyes?
Everything is formulaic,
know the winning style.
There is some quaint logic
here,
not Cartesian but hyperreal.
O She turns the devil
into a household icon,
knows the suckers
like the palm of her hand:
People, after all,
pay for their own execution
as they giddily watch
the spectacle of misfits
in the name of techno verities.

12.
Poetics 101

His work
reads like a newspaper –
they heckle –
& turn old & smelly
the day after.
A chronicle of what
pedestrianly passes,
stopping short of universals
of what art encompasses.
Journalism
makes for bad lit –
they hoot –
& his stuff is wrapper
for fish in the market.
But what –
he vainly argues –
is the quirk of infinitude
to which bards
must majestically allude?
Didn’t events
that passed their way
& im/personally encountered
make for aesthetic truth?
History is in vanishing details;
poetry happens
everywhich way.

1.

He knows
it will happen
as foretold:
the conversation
tiptoes around
October catastrophes –
several weeks’ old
& not worth
the lessons learned.
What should be
forgotten, anyway?
Everything
& nothing!
They ought to leave
their god-forsaken country
for anywhere,
lest all breakfast stories
over hot coffee
taste like black forest
frosted with mold.

2.

It’s difficult
to drop him off
the cushioned bed.
Heavy as stone
in a room with drawn curtains
as if in deep mourning:
how can he map out
tomorrow
when casualties litter his path?
If one’s young,
everything is trouble-free,
even if he walks
on wounded knees.
If one is old,
is there time
to beat the clock
& start anew?
Everything is damned repetitious,
& rare is the burst
of energy
to push him back
on the road.

3.

The kids at the next table,
all management majors,
are absorbed with their org
& its succulent goals:
they were obviously spared
of the watery tragedies
& could giggle luxuriously
at the days after.
Young,
full of bravura,
they swore
to steer clear of danger zones.
The future is theirs
to claim,
as if immortals.
O Blanking in their minds
choreography of disasters…

4.

The evacuees, of course,
left a trail
of looting & misdeeds:
unscrewed bathroom faucets
to install
in their riverside sheds;
yanked off wood panels
to fix their makeshift houses;
pilfered school stuff
to sell cheap on the side;
threw plastic bags
& littered the smelly site.
Should they be shot
for such mess inflicted?
But they wouldn’t give a hoot
even if accused
of causing the instant flood!
They have lived off
state margins:
in the lumpen realm
they have exacted
their vulgar class revenge.

5.

The northern folks
wouldn’t have anything
to do with dole-outs:
they’re just waiting
for the sun to peek through
breaks in the clouds
& off to the hard terrain
they must work again
with their weatherbeaten hands.
They have struggled
all of their lives
without sense of government:
just milling around
delivery vans
unsettles them no end.

6.

The city settlers
feel it in their bones:
they deserved
to be relieved –
by conscience-stricken
patrons –
of their pain & destitution:
but trucks brimming
with goods
they assaulted,
having suspected
distribution was premeditatedly
stalled.
No longer it was
gift for the downtrodden:
was theirs from the start,
as if mandated
from above
for being perennial underclass.

7.

He realizes
he cannot give them
anything anymore:
He was in shock,
in fact drained
by all the tragic bellyaching
& pleas for understanding:
He had suspected tickets
were xeroxed
for barangay captain’s kinfolks…
He could have been killed
for directing his heart
to pump for the hungry mob.
The relentless are still
camping out there.
O Askals are easier to hug
in a playful sport!

8.

It’s not so much
nature
that terrifies him –
it has been there
since creation –
but the state
that rules his life
is ever so distant,
leaving him
absolutely alone
in time of disasters
& fatal premonitions.
He obeys the rigid laws,
but only gets
faulty directions.
Floodwaters rush & ebb
like promises
of lying politicians.
O How his hands tremble
at any impending doom
when rain pours down
& he quickly remembers
the cannibal act
of neighborhood gangsters
& state minions.

9.

They clog the river banks
but rule out
guilt for the flood:
the favored developers
who worked around the law
must be pointed out, too.
That they sanctimoniously brag.
O Who shall be
punished for the death
of the innocent & cunning
when almost everyone –
the state & ignorant citizens –
proves mutually guilty
as sin?

10.

Cagayan folks
would feverishly bead the rosary
before conducting town meetings,
assuring themselves
God heeds peasant devotees’
mortal request
for the typhoon to veer off
toward the Northeast…
Ramil, the scourge, did.
& prayer had never had
a more spectacular effect
than when lives & properties
were spared
from the cosmic tempest.
If only believers asked
why their faith
must be tortuously tested
in a morbid way
such as this.

B.

The Palace,
clueless as to how to cope
with the infernally
rising waves,
read a Catholic prayer
of exorcism
to shield the islands
with its metaphysics
of despair.

11.

At the impromptu refugee shelter
where they settle into disrepair,
children buzz around like fruitflies:
their parents used to sitting around
stolid with sex & drugs.
Sooner than later,
when wind & rain stop,
boys will return to sidestreets
to rape & hold up
as if on warpath;
girls will turn hookers
to hype their celluloid ambition…
& bishops who intone
men & women are meant
for natural procreation
are murderers themselves
of unwanted generations
who shall die of gunshot wounds
while bumming for shabu
& petty-B comfort zone.
Of course, in state fashion
officials will hem & hew
in this country of repetition…
Drunken morons will make
for prophets who grumble
beginning is mirror’s end
in a circle of reruns.
Never is the lesson learned.
Always, the future
stays frozen like a storm
on the horizon.

12.

A child frets over his books
damaged by the flood
& the library forcibly closed…
He had something going
for him before:
he loves to write/draw
in his notebook
anything he could envision
& be doctor for the poor.
But his eyes say it all:
after the storm,
he hopes to go back to school
vandalized by goons.

B.

Flotsam
like water lilies
clogging river channels.
They multiply
exponentially,
forming layers of leaves
like planks
across the water.
But where will
they relocate
if flow
makes for smooth traffic
as in superhighway?
They are
Neferti’s “refuse”
dumped here & there
until the state
wakes up
to their stink & noise.
If they shit around,
who must pay?
They are pure garbage
sleepwalking around the city
like a ragtag army.
They’re ancien regime
spilling out of Intramuros
& laden with evil schemes.
Hear! Hear!
Their barbarous singing!
Close the doors
& windows!
The country is bursting
at the seams…

14.

The event is basic
yet he’s missing something…
Always that sense of disaster
lurking at every corner
like evil so enchanting:
her new lover
who cluelessly smiles
at his strange tirade;
the news of tropical depression
that makes his heart leap
why old women cringe
at the sound of water;
the day of the dead
in gray November
that grips him
with permanent loss
& obscure wonder.
Yet he’s missing something…
That which terrifies
& pinpoints his Xs & Ys
eluding the cerebral:
like some shadow
hitting him from the side.

15.

She makes sure
her lover is in tow:
dog on a leash,
loyal, protective.
& he who secretly reads
the couple’s semaphore
must his words measure
like a friendly neighbor’s.
How long
can he survive
a presence
she carelessly inflicts
with her density,
as if the world
of triangulated passion
were chocolate concoction?

1.
Litrato

They found him
standing by the door
of the abandoned house.
The owner must have
felt secure
with him tied to a post,
guarding his stuff.
& couldn’t imagine
how he would violently
tug at the leash
once the murky floodwaters
reached
his collar.

2.

He sits there
at his desk,
far from the chatter
of officemates,
as if he were
somewhere else.
He has nothing to say:
his house
was inundated by the flood,
prized car tumbling
like a toy boat
in the avalanche.
He’s perpetually dazed.
The past is nightmare,
the future blank.

3.

How do you start over?
To begin from the beginning
is to work
on a clean slate:
But he’s old, retiring,
his heart scarified,
by sad histories
of ruins.
Can he still make
that first step,
like a child?

4.

Suddenly,
she felt inconsolably tired.
It took her a lifetime
to map out a journey.
She has no more lifetimes left.
The blueprint
has vanished in a wink.

5.

Would he end up
sad & bitter
as predicted?
The stupid old man
finally realized
he had to give up
everything –
words, ambition,
desire:
leave everything to chance.
He’s free
drifting in the waters
on a block of ice.

6.

When it’s over,
it is over –
He is finally told.
Why does he think
he could hope
for a better deal?
She’s gone. Like air.
He didn’t foresee
the daily humiliation
of marking the impossible.
He’s the perfect fool:
A poet
he thinks he is,
of course.

7.

The women
dragged swiftly
by the current
were waving furiously
at him on the rooftop.
But he couldn’t move,
as if petrified,
to fish them out.
He could only watch
helplessly
as they vanish
at the watery turnpike.
He could carry
a load
at the factory,
but couldn’t lift
the nightmare
on his mind.

8.

“I lost a million
in the flood –
but it’s ok,
we’re still alive.”
He consoles himself,
assuring everyone
who cares to ask.
But he can’t believe
he’s saying all this
as though the future
were bright, possible.
(Love the second time
around
is a romancer’s
incurable gamble.)

9.

The students chatter
about the recent flood
with flourish of giggles
& nonchalance:
Yes, the water was neck-deep,
soaked everything precious.
They did shed a tear
over a toy destroyed,
a shirt streaked with blood…
But their vibrant steps
measure how
they have quickly
set aside
talks of nerves’ failure.
For the day’s
school lesson,
juvenile spirits
still magnificently bloom.

10.

The old shop-owners
were taciturn
while raking through
salvageable merchandise.
They would mumble
now & then –
Maybe we can resell this
cheap?
Maybe the bank
will offer a moratorium?
Force majeure, anyway.
They stir the coffee
slowly,
as if weighing time
heavy as air.

11.

Her husband
is puzzled:
off & on
she whispers
something almost inaudible,
then turns hysterical
at imagined
rumble of flood waters
that stirs her mind.
She’s a nervous wreck,
prefering to sleep
outside the house.
A drizzle on the rooftop
sends her packing up.
He cannot leave her alone.
She’s a prisoner
of her fears in the room.
The nightmare
of the past days
still drill through
her head
like a secret plague.

12.

No, they won’t return
to their house
as they try to fit
into the new site.
Old memories
of ruined loves
must be buried
for good.
But they would wake up
at unholy hours,
as if visited by ghosts.

13.

Five or ten years hence…
Who shall remember what?
That chilly September
when hundreds died,
small fortunes declined?
They will steer clear
of stories about it;
if ever,
only the lightness of banter.
Death,
like love,
is a transition play.
Oft we hear
the common counsel,
Move on!,
as if it’s a popular tune.

14.

What is there to do?
He stares at his palms
to look for signs.
None is forthcoming.
He stands up,
does his stretching
as if the marathon
has just begun.

15.

Only sentimental slobs
look back
at the mess
left behind
by the twin storms:
Optimists bustle about
as though pursued by demons:
Reopen lost ground,
reset ambition…
In a country of repetition,
there is no end
to retellling
of grief & perdition
that predictably return,
like stragglers
of unfinished revolutions.

16.

After the Event
the house staggers
with muffled cries,
survivors grope around
like blind mice.
O What madness
creeps in –
the trembling hands,
the buckling knees –
when everything settles in
& the phantom storm
again starts?
Everything is deathly still,
but always that
uneasy silence.

17.

The overseas call
was anxious, disturbed:
She had seen
the ghastly episode on TV…
The answering voice
was motherly, calm.
Each managed
to stay cool
but with the distance
of thousands of miles,
who wrings
whose hands
at the end of the line?

18.

The dead
are such in various states
of fear & disarray,
frozen in their tracks
as the avalanche of soil
& rocks
turned them into statues
by an invisible sculptor
come to pay homage
to the fury of nature
& the obscene wisdom
of dictators:
A mother shielding her child
from the landslide,
a rescuer
trapped under the rubble,
a swimmer
drowned in the flood…
It’s Mt. Vesuvius
all over again,
as if to prophesy –
in the country run by idiots,
death is no longer
a grand spectacle.

19.

Finally, he concludes:
this is a country
of constant mourning:
days count the number
of dead & missing
who fill morgues
to the rafters
while cemeteries disgorge
corpses into the waters.
A shortage of coffins,
much like Benguet vegetables,
is the common staple
of radio-TV talks
where hosts turn
ad executives
& opinion editors.
Here lies the crux of chaos:
the cosa nostra heads
make like Canutes
ordering people
to stop clogging the airwaves,
after bumming around the world,
with their frantic calls.

1.
Delubyo
A.
They slept soundly
the night before.
A tropical depression
could just nick the island
& head northwest
en route
to China or Vietnam.
But the morning after,
water rose skyhigh
to submerge houses,
people scampered
to the rain-lashed rooftops.
Calls for rescue
clogged the airwaves
but the marooned
were advised
to say their prayers
because the rubber boats
were few to spare
at “100 to 1,000 dollars
per,”
they could have mounted
a magnificent fleet
for the fearful & defeated.
Money to burn
for dinner at Le Cirque,
but nary a cent
for the drowning, the dead.
Nature, as predicted,
exploded its equatorial bomb:
O why do loyal citizens,
leery of hotheads & communists,
gnash their teeth
& wail the poor & the rich
are savagely hit?
O This country
that prides itself
as encased in heart
of Christ
should show His temper
at the marketplace:
Time to line up
politicians on the wall
& unlearn the myth of piety,
never in the business
to stupidly endure.

B.

Will Manila end,
not by fire,
but by floodwater?
We’ve been floating
like debris in its ocean
since continents
shifted plates
& dinosaurs roamed
the earth.
& we drown
in cascades of dreamscape.
Water is good fortune,
say Chinese sages,
but excess of it
is murderous plague?
We’ve cut trees
off mountain slopes,
drilled the plains
for copper lode,
blocked the river routes,
sold native patrimony
to Yankees & Japs
who tear up the land
into toxic dumpsites.
O When will all
this catastrophe
of gods & men
ever end?
If the people’s health
& well-being
in collective measure,
never statistical progress
& mean profit,
make for humane creed.

C.

He was too jaded
to be moved
by the loathsome spectacle:
bodies stuck in deep mud,
refrigerator cradled
by electric wires,
cars piled on top
of each other
like dominoes gone wild,
old women
catatonically staring
at water-ravaged houses,
men confessing
helplessness to save
their children,
families screaming for help
as makeshift shelters
float swiftly by
in the torrent…
Death & destruction
are repeated hallucination
that is barely virtual:
but it’s not
act of a sullen God!
People & politicians
brought it upon themselves
in squandering their lives
by discarding rules
of planetary existence:
If only they didn’t play along
with Malacanang
to ignore the fatal signs.
They were rats
led madly by
the piper of Hamelin
to be drowned.
Prayers they desperately mounted,
but who hears
voices from the dead
& the damned?

D.

Time to come together
& be done
with backbiting
about whom
to line up on the wall
or praised as Savior:
the top dogs grin,
who ate off Parisian plates
in New York.
It’s all of us,
rulers & plebeians…
But did the masses share
their luxurious hotels
& business-class fares?
No, there must be
justice in all of this –
fingers must be pointed
at those who planned
national future
in double speak
& power-point figures.
The flood came
without Noah’s ark:
O why do we allow
hoodlums
to fix our herded lives?

E.

They cry a river
over the savagely drowned
& if miraculously found
give them decent burial.
But the lowly animals
who were helpless
to scoot up to higher ground,
they would ask
dump trucks
& pay scavengers
to pick them off
the muddy foliage & streets –
their gross stench
assaults the educated.
O The damned & afflicted
by the sudden sea,
aren’t they no more than
Neanderthals
who treasure animals
for food & ritual?
The civilized
they seek refuge
for themselves.
O Rare are the human masters
who cradle
dogs & cats, whatever
for their gift of comradeship.

F.

The family
is “sell-shocked”
to utter a word
while sifting through
the waterlogged:
broken vinyl records
that wept out his sadness;
TV sets & computers
that would explode
if plugged;
clothes soaked
in the brackish torrent;
books, passports,
torrens titles, photos
of a trade that
career-wise mattered…
He would walk
his fears from now on
since the Revo
was sucked down
the creek…
How many years
did he sweat it out
to build the nest
so he could on weekends
just read the paper,
nurse his gin
with the crazy gang
who has gone to ruin?
He felt spent
with all his time
like drops of blood
dripping from his veins.
Can he start
all over again?
He’s past his prime
& can’t summon
the blind inertia
to keep on rolling.
What has he done?
He cannot let the state
map out his future:
it doesn’t care.
It only waits
for his withholding tax
to splurge on
presidential jives.
He looks up at the sky
but no bird
flies by.
He is all by his lonesome,
but for the family
that achingly salvages
mementos of their lives.

G.

He doesn’t want
to turn on the TV
& hear the bad news
anymore:
the continuing body count,
the wretched tear
& repressed anger,
survivors
who at the camera
automatically smile.
He’s had his share
of daily tragedy,
plugging his ears
to unhear
even the signs of positivity:
friendly hands
of strangers
as though kith & kin,
the derring-do
of the intrepid,
the little heroic deeds
that almost strain belief.
He’s tired of it all,
the pestilential cries
God & men inflicted.
But he can’t
shut off his mind,
a machine
always running on empty.
He’ll madly toss
throughout the night.

H.

He cracks:
that idiot,
zonked out by drugs,
is better off.
He smiles blankly
at all passersby.
He has been at it,
like a fairy child,
shielded from
the idiocy & wisdom
of the tribe.
Of course, he can’t
hook up
with any tart:
He lacks desire,
sex is just organic,
mechanical.
A stone
with blood & bones
like any human
with a soul.
But he hardly exists,
exempted
from personal
& natural crises.

I.

They were,
as in classic movies,
shivering in the rain,
menacingly hungry,
eyes closed to tears
as if to semaphore
O for kindness of strangers.
The doors of a Paco school
were flung open
for the pitiful mob.
Days later,
when sun filtered
through the clouds
water had subsided,
they made for makeshift
houses
to guard against looters
at the riverside.
The school principal
could only shake
her head
as she inspected
the classroom
where the helpless
evacuees were billeted:
cabinets had been
ransacked of books & charts,
chain upended
& thrown across the floor,
the smell of bodies
festered like spoiled meat
as if to argue:
we’re the disinherited.
You can all forgive.

J.

There was no clearing
in the ocean of mud;
the chopper decided
to drop the goods
down the raucuous crowd:
Rodriguez, Rizal
is not Darfur,
Myanmar
but people rushed
like rampaging bulls
for “bottled water
boiled eggs & packets
of instant noodles”
to ease their day.
Their bodies,
caked with sledge
& gooey mud,
looked like cannibals
hunted down
in ages past.
O The hordes are back!

K.

It was a disaster
waiting to happen.
Decades back
the green architect
had a plan:
but the state
looked the other way,
shelving the blue print
to forestall nightmare.
Business tycoons
wouldn’t hear of it,
politicans wouldn’t give
a damn…
Therefore, the dead & damned
must float like debris
into Malacanang.
O It was the handiwork
of mice & men,
who couldn’t see beyond
the clink of gold coins.
O How money
derailed common sense
& wisdom!

L.

One has to be
on dry, high ground –
writing table
in lighted room
above the raging water,
beyond the reach of wind
& secret prayers –
to record like camera
the obscene season.
He’s chained himself
like a prisoner
to the swivel chair.
But there is no other
message
to cryptically tell:
the masses
are grievously suffering,
but if the rich & poor
trace the same old paths
God’s fury will return
with its customary mayhem.
There’s nothing really new
to be written.

M.

He has been peddling
“religious icons,
rosaries,
sampaguita garlands,”
serving as barker
at jeepney stops
for side income.
The church items
must signify
trading in God,
the promised salvation,
faith & love heavenward.
But his wife
& five kids perished
in the flood,
sending him to wail
“I wish I had died
with them.”
Is the virtual acolyte
being tested?
Isn’t poverty enough?
Remember
the agony of Job.
But for what purpose,
end?
He wrings his hands,
unable to understand.

N.

Kids do the rounds
of the neighborhood,
knocking on doors,
pressing on buzzers,
pleading into faces
with their sullen mien:
But he can’t trust
their spiel,
they would be selling
second-hand items
for a bargain,
then sniff rugby
in the yard.
O These times
challenge the bourgeois
heart
for the begotten
of the underclass:
this is vulgar Marx,
reactionary hogwash.
In a flash,
they’ll bare their fangs,
run off with your bag.
Rodents
making like humans?
O how the flood
has unleashed
vicious savages
& tender-hearted folks.
(A crocodile
in the dark
was out for a swim.
But the terrified
will hunt it,
though harmless, innocent.)

2.
A.
Post “Golden Age”

The place
where I once lay almost
dying
is nowhere in sight.
Here now
stands a high-rise
where the rich & famous
cavort over Mediterranean wine
on what was one
burial ground
for anonymous skulls;
where once wild cries
punctured the cavernous sky,
concert bands & toy dogs
ululate & howl.
Has the regime succeeded
in erasing all traces
of conflagration?
I alone remember
this X, this painful site:
witnesses are dead
or dispersed over the land
secretly scheming
like avenging angels
or wailing
like lost orphans.
O A fresh wound in the psyche
that doesn’t let itself dry,
hurting only
when I laugh.

B.

The soldiers
without name tags
but masked
hauled him off
to a safe house
where, of course,
despite the President’s assurance,
he would never
be safe & sound.
They waterboarded him
as in Vietnam,
to squeal on his friends
suspected to be
commies, militants.
They turned his body
into an ashtray,
the while taunting –
Never was he tough
as he screamed like a child.
Yet, he survived it all,
but marvelling how.
God, he presumed
must have averted his Eyes,
then plucked him out
of the ziggurat.
O How long has it been?

C.

The camp,
newly painted
& smug in the glow
of sunlight,
has been relocated,
hidden from public eyes,
as if an invisible sign
has been posted
on a spot to assure
passersby:
We stand by
to protect you from harm.
But the wind
stirs the bucolic silence:
As if foretelling
they’re at it again:
Madame Fuhrer
is alive & kicking.

3.

The words
were epigrammatic,
brutal,
as if the forbidden
has shot out of the dark
& into the light:
I was gangraped.
The soldiers were vicious –
as if they have always been
to women & unarmed men –
& no amount
of heroic lore & image-building
could change the order
of things.
The regime enforced obedience ,
even if reason & freedom
were traded off in the backroom.
Was it a just war?
Was it fair
for a payback to Revolution?
Nothing could shift
the paradigm
that orden y progreso
must reign
if the innocent
are violated…
& murder
is a holy sacrament.

4.

It is happening again –
the battle-scarred
ex-detainee
keeps mumbling to himself.
He sweats feverishly
in an air-conditioned room.
But he’s not strapped to a chair,
free this time
to walk out of his nightmare.
Yet he stays put,
almost frozen,
like a nail.
It’s happening again,
the air heavy with
grim rememberings.
Too, the children
keep tossing in bed:
they cannot calm down
to sleep
alongside his fearful imaginings.

5.
A.

The guy says
he’s done with women.
He can’t believe his ears.
He has heard it before –
a thousand times anyway –
while he watches him stir
the breakfast coffee
at the cafe
as sultry gamines
stare out of laminated pages
of a magazine.
Yes, he’s done with women.
He repeats himself
to convince the wind.
They’re pests,
left him struggling in mid-air
as if he were a vermin.
(O But was it a crime
when he’s so damned insignificant?)
He was prey,
he admits,
to cavalier dreaming,
mistaking the furies
for the vestal virgins.
Now he knows
how sirens trap
stupid sailors
marooned on upturned boats,
who succumb
to their own love’s metaphors.

B.

1.
Looking past him
& into the deep horizon,
she’s oblivious
of him hovering in the wings.
Her future blazes forth
like a lover incandescent.

2.
To stop the clock
he cannot command
the word arcane:
O he who gazes
from the other side
of the track.

3.
O Love is neither
foul nor fair.
The furies sing
in the mind’s labyrinth,
their eyes closed
throats slashed open.

4.
Truth is Cleopatra’s serpent
on love’s breast.
Voices turn louder, intensify
as it strikes to bereaven.

C.

Are you done
with love poems, too?
A fellow drinker baits him.
In the whirr of passion
the head swims,
& you can never be lucid
if only the heart whines.
But he looks spent
with the friendly ribbing
& turns the glass
upside down
as if to move:
Am signing off.
Am already drunk.
O Love is never
a happy carnival ride.
She who once
made his heart leap
is a heavy stone now
that pulls him down.
Who hasn’t, after all,
changed his mind?
Romance novels
never told Everyman
love’s faces
are comically drawn.
Ha-ha!
Was he ever in love?
Aks the warriors of old:
they would only shrug.
There’s time to speak,
time to finally shut up.

6.

He’s old.
Almost a doddering fool.
& the TV host
keeps glancing at the clock
because words
of affliction
under martial rule
were too slow
to fall off his mouth.
Yet, hasn’t he been
through the years
orating before wide-eyed kids
about the old, cruel
regime?
Why was it so difficult
to trace the route back –
monitoring the neighborhood
for strange appearances,
budgetting the measly budget,
disciplining bohemian hearts
who suddenly were swept
into a revolutionary creed? –
When men
were dumped in cogon fields
& women vomitted blood
as their speech…
Do they still haunt him
like dogs of nightmare?
He’s old.
Almost a doddering fool.
Vicious images
still linger
like monsters
in his sleep.

7.

He has made a pile
for metastasizing
exploits in the underground cells.
But that was years ago
when people took gently
to his kind.
But does kindness last?
Does history travel
a straight line?
He’s still at it,
reprising his pain & fears
to elicit tears
from a country desperate
for heroes,
where an excess of knaves
makes possible
the rule of thugs.
In due time,
he’ll be just one of them…
O He never expected
torture can be invested
for the future,
things will turn all right
when once upon a time
he lay dying,
like Faulkner.
Thrown like a rag
into a dumpsite…
O He may yet enter
halls of Congress,
as if riding a white horse
into Paradise.

8.

There’s a woman
who kept rearing
like a white shadow
in his mind.
Where has she gone?
In the labyrinth
of the city
that steered him blind,
he’s bound to lose
her
who once dazzled
his febrile eyes.
Like a rat
in a revolving cage,
he keeps running in circles,
spurred on
by calamitous desire.
What could be a worse
misfortune?
In dark alleys,
hungry vagrants
dumbly pass the night.
But she surely won’t
be lying among those thieves.
She’s a survivalist.
She’s gone past him,
playing with her
new toy & instrument.

9.

There he is again,
mumbling to himself,
this will be the last
with his class
of adolescents
out to man the future
apparat.
Will they live
the stupid status quo
all over again?
Where will pantomime stop,
& truth & justice
be actualized signs?
He has had no share
of academic absolutes…
There must be a period
placed at the end of falsehood!
O how he feigns
a heart attack,
his hands feel
like tearing up
the papers & books
that will start
another lie…
When all leave the room
& out into the sunlight,
will their little learning
mercifully survive?
O, like their elders ,
they will accommodate evil
to survive in style.

10.
A.

How do you
erase memory?
If only it were a disk
one can push a button
& let things
precious or trivial
blank out
like pages
burning into ash.
But always
something lies dormant
in the fire
to smoulder back
in the mind.
Return with a vengeance.
Nothing rots forever
in the dark.
Scavengers there are
to turn the hidden
inside out.

B.

How can generations
perish
deserted of remembrances?
Always,
there are orphans
to rake out relics
from the fire:
an old shirt,
faded photographs,
letters
to jumpstart
the journey
to the holocaust
& salvage threads
to weave
the tapestry
of forbidden history.

C.

Never lose hope,
the mother
counsels herself
to outwit grief.
She has walked
thousands of miles
for a desaperacido
whom masked men
had hauled off
into a van.
O She knew it would
be doubly tough
but has steeled herself
for the logical facts.
If only the ripples
of words
would eddy toward
the criminal mob.
Does she know
what history is?
How it happens
as the world
summersaults?
Her faith is enough
never to lose hope.

11.
Those Young Poets
A.

Those young poets,
the old buzzard sneers,
are drunk with words,
as if showing off
to the world visible
their treasure hoard
of signifying stones.
But only a few
should suffice
to deal with the mystery
of love & life.
& if Word is excess
of emotion,
no need indeed
to regale the unwitting
with unnecessary tears
for spiritual beheading.
Pain & sadness
are beyond signs.
Sure, choices you can
count on your fingers,
but you can cut
the line
to a word,
a maximum of two,
for what could be
essentially true.
But no!
Those young poets
would rather dazzle
with their carnival
of mourning,
& we, who have gone
down the full route,
would even drop out
of the scene
& into a wilderness of silence
where everything begins.

B.

He is fatally wrong.
Or rather off the mark.
It’s not technique
nor prolixity
that damns the young –
the hothouse breed
that dazzles the literati;
they only take pains
to nurse their wounded hearts.
They don’t inhale
the violent air
that whirls around
fallen bodies of protesters
hit by motorcycle men
out to stop
the jail strike.
Nor throw a line
for farmers slain
over contested land.
They wail instead
over a darkness
that metaphysically mystifies.
Yes, it isn’t
the anomie of their craft
that veers them off
the path –
It’s their eyes
they willfully shut down
when parapolice
raid the workers’ camp.
O How they adore
themselves
in their sullen art!

C.

The young poet bristles,
as if he were charged
with a majestic crime.
But poetry, he argues,
is language
“pushed to its limit”
to walk the edge
of what is essential.
It doesn’t have
to be about peasants
or workers
or any rough hand.
We speak for all
who cannot understand
what the crux
of sadness is…
If we rage against
the disenchanting,
it strikes deep
at what afflicts anyone.
Figures in the landscape
are false, even anonymous.
So saying,
he hies off
to a clutch of confreres
across the street,
gracing the affair
where literature
makes possible
grief without tears.
In chatter over cocktails,
they let loose
chirping voices
to overwhelm miasma
of accusing fingers.

12.
Credo

A.

So he finetunes
his wayward emotion:
love these days –
or any day of this age –
comes cheap.
As if to spite
a remembered one.
Goods & bodies
are thrown away
in mercantile
& carnal enterprise.
Permanence,
as in old romance,
is a cruel joke
on lovers
who claim passion
is eternal.
Parents sell their kids,
sons & daughters
tun away parents,
wives & husbands cheat
in one-night stands,
as if the world
has been swept away
in the avalanche
of beasts & angels.
Is everyone half-human?
Who swears by
the infinitude
of trust & love?
Only the first moment counts.
Indifference eventually
drowns, like rain,
the sizzling warmth.
& when freezing cold
creeps in,
will they look at each other
darkly stunned?

B.

But the world
is in constant war
for territory & possession.
Geography & people
seek refuge
behind shifting lines.
Loyalty turns betrayal,
good turns evil,
the globe forever framed
in their dimension
between fascists
& militants.
How can love flourish
in these murderous times?

C.

There must be a way out
of the global fix
but victims
since capital called the shots
forever perish.
Lovers & warriors
must design a world
& keep it open,
as the iron curtain falls
on those who secure
the reign of reason.
Is true love possible?
Can the bull of freedom
be held by the horn?
Always, the future
must reinvent itself
in the hearts of the people.

13.
Breaking News

Margareth Moth,
CNN cameraman,
once asked
why must women
adopt their husband’s name?
She opted
to change hers
after an airplane
she would jump from
in her sporting youth.
She had been
covering the wars
in the Balkans
where anyone can be shot –
even a neutral observer -
because all are presumed
combatants
of either side.
A bullet shattered her jaw,
but she was soon
up & about
covering the conflicted zone.
She, who refused
to ride a rig
drawn by a horse
because it would
burden the lowly
animal,
has recently
entered a hospice
for the terminally ill…
Of course, she is afraid
of death,
like anyone else,
but does not fear it:
after all
“I’ve got everything
out of life.”

14.
A.
Sub Rosa

They lined up
the mangled bodies
like slaughtered animals
at the abattoir
in front of the municipal hall:
to affirm a victory,
show futility
of a struggle
& stop the “reign of terror.”
By, of course,
their own brand of terror.
This ritual is endless.
As if authorities
have lost their heads
why, in finishing a plan,
another plan
must be executed in place.
A variation on a theme
that means the same.
O So damned elementary,
yet the frontmen
have to see through
the circular logic
of a serpent swallowing its tail.
They’re focused,
like a gun sight,
on body count
& the cherished statistics
for whoever
writes the edict.

B.

Sometimes he chuckles
to himself:
he has outlived old comrades,
even abandoned dear ones
who probably have left him
for dead…
Yes, he has managed to pilfer
news
his daughter is now a nurse,
eldest son is off to Dubai,
his youngest has joined the militants…
But he can’t indulge himself
to nurse that tinge
of sadness.
He has been at it,
walking a different path,
since the start.
He hasn’t known any other life:
of times he cracks
if he can still adjust
to the city of neon lights.
He has learned to navigate
under the stars,
read in the luminosity
of fireflies.
To move & endure is all?
Like Einstein’s biker
to stop is to lose balance,
then fall.

15.
Recurrence
A.

Yuri Fidelgoldsh,
Gulag survivor,
is listless –
he has noted
pro-Stalin graffiti
in subways
& felt
chill climb up
his spine.
Persistent when young
he would burn
nights
discussing philosophy
& poetry
with comrades
until they got to Siberia.
The rest is history
twisted into tabula rasa
for children to read
in books & media
how Stalin
defeated the Nazis
& saved Mother Russia.
But what of millions
of intellectuals
& writers
exiled to labor camps?
O Nietzsche’s recurrence
in realpolitik
turns obscene
in the Superman
who is Dictator
gently smiling with his moustache.
A KGB agent
is now president
& Mensheviks are on the saddle
again.

B.

Mohammed al-Hanashi,
31, Yemeni,
“held at Guantanamo Bay
without charge
for seven years”
died in his cell,
allegedly of “suicide.”
But his jail
is monitored by video
& a guard
to prevent such
in any psychiatric ward…
He was designated
representative of detainees,
“who have been tortured,
or abused by whom.”
The US military
investigated itself
& came out with
the verdict:
“he was asphyxiated.”
Technically
he was a desaparecido
under American custody.
Questions are asked,
but no one replies
to Commander Brook de Walt
has not been heard from,
since Naomi Wolf, reporter,
“asked for further information.”

1.
Order of the Day

& the old fogey says –
they’re children
of stolen memory,
their elders
having robbed them
of sorrow of dictatorship
& desaperacidos.
Verily,
a way of survival
for the times:
remembering
is pain.
& letting go
of old murders & new
is the order of the day.
O the young must be spared
of blood on streets,
knock on doors
at midnight,
wailing of sudden orphans…
History
must be exorcised
lest the crimson land
blur their eyes.

2.

But this is arrant nonsense!
Who can paper over
crimes
that left in their wake
the jailed & dying?
But survivors
had sucked out
from memory
the gruesome deed
to spit out
the returning grief!
O Each to each,
for fear & loathing
had buried
their own writ…
As the stockmarket
on imperial assist
& oligarchic lackeys
shrieked like banshees
whenever numbers went up
on the board
– & camps tallied
the captured & decimated –
for the pleasure
of God-dictator
who sold off labor
like Malate whores.

3.

But the years
weren’t all that grim,
forbidding.
They still celebrated
weddings
in cathedrals & motels;
children grew up
with sunburned eyes;
secret dreams
in measured steps
reached the apogee
of fulfillment.
The dictator
couldn’t ban laughter,
even weeping.
Nor rule
how life should prosper
under the stars.
A wax figure
is never sign
of a decree magical.

4.

Just the same,
the oligarchs reigned:
they cavorted
on luxury yatches
while beggars
counted the days
that passed out
of their dirty hands
that couldn’t grip
what they fancifully
wanted to start…
To dream?
To act?
They were trapped
in warren of hutches
pot-bellied officals
bulldozed
to give way to spaces
for high-rise
architecture.
The lower denizens
breathed each other’s
toxic air;
sold blood & cheap sex
to ease
endless hunger.
O they who ate store scraps,
never watchful
of their diet.
Always you can push
the derelicts
closer to the edge!

5.

They wove in & out
of the clogged traffic,
into the police
stopping the nameless drivers
on their tracks
because
they dared impede
the passage of Benzes.
The multitude
could only step on the gas
once the motorcade
left in a swirl
of dust.
Thus, everyone had
turned into a nation
of servants
waiting for the master
at the gates.
They had learned
the art of penitential
prayer…
But did God
listen?
Only the cash register
played sweet music
to the crowd.

6.

When Edsa exploded
crusaders yelled to the heavens
as if the universe
functioned
like what the Scriptures said:
full of arcane surprises,
& nirvanic mirth
seemed endless.
Several mornings later,
drunken rogues
were back on the saddle.
& the yellow army
breathing with rosary
& speeches
was stunned
how much it missed.

7.

Miracles do occur?
Tell it to the marines
who,
under their own Spartan code,
won’t lift a finger.
O The derelicts
of time
must take charge
& steer the ship
toward the lighthouse shore.
But is this
pure fairy tale?
Are all forever
lingering at the door?
Millions have turned
to religion,
hostaged by
the spiritual
Stockholm syndrome.
O It’s not God’s will,
agnostics rue,
but the people’s.
But this is jaded
sloganeering!
The defeated chants
in electronic unison –
suffering is a cycle,
we’re pushed
to another level.

8.

He sits
at the foot of the stairs
for someone
or something
that promised the return.
Is it the summer wind
that ruffles the hair?
Is it the stormy monsoon
that rattles the door?
Yet he is sure as hell
something magical
may yet turn up
to change the rhythm
of his passion.
& he hopes to rise
as if she who has gone
will appear
to ease his heart’s
peregrination.
This is,
at best,
the resolution
of foolish narratives
that end up
like Harry Potter’s.

9.

He is suddenly
an old man now
whose aches & pains
define a waking.
The days are shorter,
the nights grimmer
& he doesn’t see
any door open
to let the sun in.
Will he forever
wait like a dog
chained in the dark,
barking at any sound
that threatens or cajoles?
He doesn’t know
how life started,
how it will end.
Desires, like roses,
wither on the bough
& every moment
is a truncated proposition
to make it
a welcome addition.

10.

& the lover
(the legend in his own mind)
slowly,
forgets the names
never the faces
of those who have
upped & left.
Will there be sorrow?
Will there be sadness?
But he is too old
to remember
what had even stoked
the fires of passion…
Everything passes
like water through
his fingers
& he can’t even sigh
without asking
why.

11.

& to think
old timers –
alarmed at the amnesia
of hip-hops –
would have to concoct
fashion gimmicks
to keep Nick Joaquin
alive.
It was only five years ago
when he wrote his last
on Intramuros
& beyond.
Pop Americana didn’t
escape his eyes,
over small beers
& tertulia.
But the young guards
are giddily stuck
to their Facebook & Playstation.
A word, a line,
a page
they swatted away
like pesky flies.
(O How will these
excruciating lines
end up?)

12.

The war veteran
who lived through
the First World War
slept for a week
after the armistice…
The constant explosion
in his ears
while hunkered down
deep in his fox hole
made him swear
never to talk
about the global conflict
& found solace
in his chess games
every afternoon
with another survivor
who, too, wouldn’t
have any piece
of the story
recalling it.
It’s just as well,
for death & desecration
aren’t worth repeating –
but onlookers
love to reprise everything
in their own
Walter Mitty imagination,
& in deed.

13.

He says,
to remember
is to suffer;
joy is fleeting,
pain stays.
The listener
smiles weakly.
But to repeat
the history
of the grim event
if none forewarns?
He shrugs off
the “wisecrack,”
as if he has
masterfully concluded
the matter.
He is dead set:
he’ll no longer
go through again
the murderous experience.
Let things be,
he screams
in his mind
into her face –
as if he has
settled long ago
already
the inconsolable issue.
But what if
it happens again?
Her persistence
drives him crazy.

14.

He can’t escape it.
Even if evasion
is action, too.
The counter-thrust
rips through his heart,
& he bleeds
all over again.
He’s focused
on one sad fact:
unable always is he
to run from
the rampage
of tomorrows,
ever prey
to the weather of sorrow.
O Things happen
as they do
to him dug in
praying to ward off
the creeping shadow.
When one is alone,
after all,
he is already done for.
He can’t plan
to side step
& hit back.
Sadness,
tsk, tsk,
isn’t a virtue.

15.
The Operator
A.

It still amazes me
how I suckered
millions
for what they thought
were sovereign hopes.
Sure, it wasn’t easy
undoing the high-stake
odds,
but I was impeccably
smart
interpreting the Law.
Hot air
was resistance from below:
gunslingers were slow
to the draw.
I faked a forced move
& they all fell for it.
The masses
were putty in my hands;
a few crossed
the line
but they stood down.
My loyal troops
held guns to their heads
& that’s all
to seal the deal.
Should my foresight
be emulated?
Surely, success
is always academically
studied.

B.

Eventually,
all games must finish.
My body
failed to monitor
the pitiful tumor
& the tedious task
of keeping the masses
under foot.
But pretenders
still sprout
like ethereal mushrooms:
they fall
all over themselves,
trying to steady
the course,
hamming it up
as new liberators,
heavy with
talismanic spoor.
Ha-ha!
I may no longer be around,
stationed in a site
turned wax museum.
But I linger
like a ghost in the heart.
I call the shots
from the other side.
People love
to commit suicide.

C.

Do people ever learn?
They confuse the color
for regime change
in their Cinderella dreams:
O but they’re doomed
to echo the old slogans
of truth & justice,
but nothing really moves
in this country
of repetition.

16.

She’s honcho
of the department now,
but he had never
seen neither hide
nor hair of her
since she took over.
How are things, he quipped.
She said tersely,
my brother-in-law,
Father Cecilio Lucero,
was ambushed in Samar.
He was a human rights
advocate.
Her voice trailing off
as we quickly parted ways
in this chance encounter
between classes.
It is, of course,
old news…
But why does it always
wring his heart
that they’re still at it?
What has
really changed
through the years?
Lu Hsun
resonates in the mind:
we must save
the children!

19.
Footnotes

A.

Will it ever
happen again?
Will Edsa teem
with flowers & marines?
Will there be love
the second time around?
O Nothing
is always the same.
What has passed
can never regain
what today expires
as reprise of events.
Things are always
different.
So seeing you,
I discover
something novel, new
what was missed
in the first encounter.
But will it trigger
the ardor & passion
as in the beginning?
I view you now
a blast of light
but my heart
pumps wildly
as if skipping off
my imaginary.

B.

Yet, the crystal ball
augurs a course
of old disasters:
massacres will occur,
invisible blood will flow,
the fat lady will sing
like a tired troubadour,
peasants & workers
will nimbly play
the game of fools…
O How shall we brace
ourselves
for the onrushing future?

C.

With a smile
on his lips,
as if ignoring the banter
of fellow elders
come to snack
outside Katag,
he cautioned
the young mother & activist:
you must hear this
for posterity.
Onlookers were
congenially taken
by the boisterous order.
Yes, in his speech
before the staff
of Marcos think-tank
when he was conscripted,
he insisted:
he would sign the paper
that he would be constrained
to put to text…
Ex-dissidents
out for jobs
& self-proclaimed nationalists
out for a lifestyle
thereafter quarelled
among themselves.
Who should claim
the honor & the raise
for the latest Dictator’s speech.
& when he contested
Nick Joaquin’s history
& philosophy,
the icon’s loyalists
surreptitiously asked
his name be deleted
from the payroll
which he needed
for his wife’s medication
& children set for school.
He would forever
mark them out,
now high-end celebrities
& media critics
who might end up
as National Artists
with homongous payslips.
You must record
what you heard
this very day –
these are the hidden facts
of artful villains.
The group split
into the cusp of evening,
each sighing
at the pittance
they labor for
in their turtle silence.

1.
My Lai

A.

Lt. William Calley,
a forgotten heel
in the ’60s
for hip-hop kids,
finally apologized
for what he had
denied
to the victims
whom “he herded
into a local irrigation ditch
& killed with automatics…”
at My Lai.
It knelled the beginning
of the end
for a claim of Empire,
where search & destroy
led to the fall of Saigon
& the maddening airlift
at the American Embassy.
Of course,
the dead are dead,
& wouldn’t accept
Calley’s chastised word,
he who enforced unfailingly
the command to shoot
“them Vietcong”
because they don’t have soul.
Is it true remorse
before the Kiwanis Club
to soothe a conscience
that turns him
in his sleep?
Will the wound heal,
even his own?
O Ever, ever
he will clear
the lump in his throat…

B.

O The salvaged in Bulacan,
in cities & hinterland –
almost distributedly
on the scale of My Lai…
Will their torturers
see the light
& admit to their foul acts
after discharge
from the barracks?
Wracked by old age
& diseases
will they regain
the path of innocence
when once upon a time
they were recruited saints?
Will the miracle
of Paul on the road
to Damascus
be another story told?
Will the waiting
be for naught?
If only the riddle
could be resolved
for that human beatitude…
Shall we,
who linger at the gates,
abandon all hopes?

C.

Confession
is therapy –
a priestly job
to suit a newer mould.
But it won’t change
the order of things
without
but only within,
like an overwhelming calm
that comes
with the wind
blasting out
the turbulent waves
into gently stirring
laminar waters.
The horizon lifts –
the world in disarray.
If a hand
shoots out
of the crowd,
or silence greets
the act,
faltering words
may yet fall
on soft ground
& make possible
new loves.
O Let it be!
The negotiated plea
to put to sleep
the dogs
of grim memory.

D.

It was
his young, impulsive years
when blood was quick
to boil over war game fancy.
In old age,
when cobwebs
have been swept
to the side,
he will take note
of the murderous frenzy
that sent him wildly
swinging
at the circle of Asian eyes,
as if he were
a tiger let loose
in the jungle of their minds.
If only
he could bring back time
& he was
once more a child.
But that is over now.
There is no possible return.
He must keep on walking,
without reprieve in sight.

E.

Who must
be damned
for all his trouble
at the martial hearing?
His superior Medina
was acquitted
while he,
loyal to a fault,
must rot in jail
like he were truant
to the military code?
There must be loyalty,
there must be responsibility,
but the buck
stopped where he was,
flummoxed by
crisscrossing lines.
So he must
make amends:
his hands were quick
to pull the trigger…
But it did give him
erotic pleasure
as they tumbled down
without a whimper.
That set him free
from daily fear.

F.

He won’t be forgotten.
His name will forever
stand out,
in bold face yet,
from the text of history.
He didn’t know
the plot of his story
at the very instance
of his fatal act,
for he was all guts & glory.
Now, like a drunk
nursing a hang-over…
But he always remembers
the order.
He was aware, however,
of what he was doing:
But he couldn’t stop firing,
as if he was trapped
like a rat
in a huge Vietnam lab.

G.

When the generals,
with their imposing rank & medals
handed down the sentence
for dishonoring
the institution
he was deaf
to the gravity of the resolution:
he was momentarily
dazed
why he must stand alone
before the higher-ups
who led him into war
without their setting foot
on the fields of burning smoke.
They only viewed the carnage
down the paddies
from the safety of helicopters.
They didn’t do the dirty job:
he did.
O He never felt
so stupidly tragic.

H.

What is in store
for him
who’s out of the service
& in civvies?
People won’t probably care
about the fulsome murder.
He did what he could
to strike at those
who threatened the democratic
cause.
They know he’s a foot soldier
sent overseas to guard
against red interlopers.
How can you
make an omelet
without eggs breaking?

2.
Bodyguard

A.

Loyalty
is a rare virtue
in postmodern times
where certainty
is most unstable,
turbulence the rule.
If nothing lasts,
everything is a missed call.
As the dictum of philosophy
& cosmos
tacticians
know by heart.
Therefore,
he had only one master
to stand by
the secrets of the state
& governance
must go with him
to his grave
for he was,
in his own right,
an impeccable guy.
But his god
was a revered dictator
people talked openly
as a fallen idol
who tried to outwit time
& collective morals.
Will subaltern faith
allow him the heroism
for a holified vice?

B.

In Manila
they just couldn’t
hack it,
this infernal silence
that attends
to this day
the riddle of the sphinx
at the tarmac.
But since his young days
he had pledged
to keep to himself
all that he knew
or heard
at close quarter
lest outsiders
feast on the memory
of him
who made him privy
to his secret will.
So be it.
Nada, nada, nada
could only be pried out
of his lips.
He had turned himself
into his own master.

3.
Station

A.

These days
waking up
after a troubled sleep
where dreams
entangle in knots…
He can’t make out
the logical premise
that attend
the sinthome feast…
Is there a sign
to be unravelled
in the knowing?
Is there a pin
to the unconscious
that filters
signals
to warn him
what to steer clear of,
what to secure?
It is as if
every nanosecond
things turn to stone
& old air
enfolds
what must portend
in the future?
He enters door today,
leaves one tomorrow
which is all
what was before.
He is held back
by ghosts,
until he freezes over,
unable to move.

B.

He remembers
intermittently
strange women
who have left him
behind,
like a useless baggage,
as if time itself
has been squandered
& repeated.
They were passengers
at a somewhere station
who touched his hand,
then hurriedly
boarded the bus
that passed him by,
casting a neither glance.
He tarried
at his terminal seat,
staring desultorily
at his dusty feet.
This is the master code.
But philo majors counter
it’s no longer
the fashion & the mode.

4.
Vanishing

A.

Is there ever
closure to remembering?
Memory
is a door swinging
in the wind
& lightning flashes
to quickly illuminate
the grim terrain.
Your face
limned in the dark
shows itself
in a nanosecond
& I am whipped
into sadness
of all forgetting.
In a flash, too,
you melt
into air
& I grip in my hands
the ghost of everything.

B.

Is this all there is
to faith & passion?
Sages know
truth has been damned
fleeting.
Can you pin down
a bird in flight?
But it will die
in your acid hand
if it falls
from the air.
So riverslow,
so lightmercurial!
You cannot will her
into presence
for absence
is ever permanent.

C.

To endure
is all?
Rilke cautions
poets
who lose heart.
O if only
he came from Sparta,
who wrestled with the wind at
the cold mountain pass.
But he descended
from Troy
who never looked
the gift horse
in the mouth.
O For guile & art
to survive
the slaughter
at the altar!

1.
The Man in White

The long haul
from Boston to Manila
took only a second
in his mind:
a formation
of military guards
was on hand
to quicken
his arrival.
O he finally knew
he was home.
He expected the rude
welcome anyhow,
but not before
the phalanx of microphones
could be set up…
The guy at the Palace
must have been antsy,
spending sleepless nights
when he boarded
his flight.
But a shot from behind
sent him reeling
into the dark.
Earlier,
he had qualms
his heart bypass
left him only
a few years
to confront the guy
& a nation
that had been torn out
of his heart.
He shocked everyone,
all right
including himself
perhaps.

2.
The Assassin: Aug 21
A.

He’s no lover.
For such an audacious
enterprise
he won’t operate alone.
He must have a back-up
for the fateful act.
No one, after all,
is James Bond.
There are shadows lurking
behind
to serve as camouflage:
Sure he’s got the skills
a cut above
the common gunwielder –
that’s SOP
but he cannot have
the range of options
if monitors
don’t deliver.
To pull the trigger
is easy
child’s play.
But to slip out of the scene
undetected,
almost incognito
while thousands of eyes
are glued on his snarl
like a jaguar’s
is no magical tale.
He needs
fall guys
who could take the heat off
this dangerous affair.

B.

When the guy in white
got hit,
he knew he would
make a clean get-away:
witnesses could be terrorized
like dummies
who could be taken for a ride:
They’ve got to thank family
for the killing
to be shut out from memory.
Sure, they’ll rot in jail.
But that’s heroic tack.
They would die anyway
behind lacquered disks
in military barracks.
Future could be taken
cared of:
This is the brotherly promise.
No one could talk
but point to other direction.
Silence is most precious.
The assassin is safe,
secure.
Like the President-dictator.

C.

The court had illusion
logic rules –
& the murder
could be undone
by reason’s permutation.
Yet fools
are made to hit the wall:
there was blood
all right,
but there was no crime.
They couldn’t decide
if the guys in prison garb
had been truly weighed
& judged.
Who knows the conductor
behind the concerto?
O Sentiments prove
more powerful
than the truth of generals.
Who’s lying?
Who’s feeling?
Who stands in the shadow
like a magician
gloating over
the abracadabra flap.

D.

He doesn’t give
the orphans a damn:
he’s a pro
& can’t play
the game of emotions.
He sees only
a slice of the view,
the bigger share
is for wily politicians.
Besides,
it’s mere clerical act:
like factotums
typing clearance papers;
gofers doing the rounds
of bureaucratic gods;
pipe fitters
fixing leaking pipes;
mechanics troubleshooting
clunkers
& Palace courtiers
luring the deaf & blind
into spidery lair…
His job is to deliver
the golden bullet
into the heart
of the miscreant
whom think-tankers
consider monkey wrench
to governance…
He’s also a gardener
clearing the path
of weeds & grass.

E.

Sure, there are assassins
posted like gumshoes
everywhere
in whatever turf –
they are cheap
or come with high price tag
to liquidate petty thugs,
pesky activists,
even kotong cops…
But there are distinctions
in his trade.
He’s in charge
of projects
primed to eliminate
humongous targets.
The stakes are high,
they say.
But this is just
a simple matter:
Have guts,
will pull the trigger.
It is like sex.
He provides
the necessary high
for the silent few
who habitually itch.
He’s a pro.
Almost like a pimp,
giving that kind of service
minus the state glitch.

F.

The country,
you say,
is plunged in turmoil?
That’s not my game.
Am just a small fry
meant to subtly terrify
troublemakers
out to destabilize
those who cross the line.
Who cares
if I stir the hornet’s nest?
Money flows
as in a faucet.
Isn’t that what
high-end executives
secretly wish?
It’s a two-way street:
they need my
surgical service;
I need to upgrade
my career
in the hierarchy
of fancy bullshit.

G.

They’re still asking,
after all these years,
who shot Ninoy?
& Olalia, et cetera…
If the court of wise men
can’t put behind bars
those bigtime mafiosi:
whose fault is it?
They’ve kept the secret
under lid
for so long now
people have turned idiotic.
& they’re guys
so reverentially learned?
Am just a street guy
enamoured
with comic books
& floozies.
Ha-ha!
They can’t find me
even if I were a cookie
in a glass jar!

H.

& so it goes –
there is blood
on the tarmac,
yet I am scot-free, out.
Did they convict
the wrong guys?
I think therefore
I am
worth the price
of admission
to the Hall
of National Artists
for performing
such exquisite expertise.
After all,
thousands
to this day
have failed to unveil
the magical tricks
that left me undetected.
Houdini to a fault,
who unlocked
& survived
the iron vault.
Exemplum no less
of an art & craftsmanship
that tower over all
smug writers & poets!

I.

Who reaps
the fruits
of my destructive move?
Tycoons & generals
owe me a cartload.
This year,
I expect to be outsourced,
my cunning & guts
to keep lily-white
the vestment of integrity
& state craft.
They don’t have to think twice
to proscribe
the canker in the wood:
commies & priests,
do-gooders & ideologues
should never set foot
in Palace Hall.

J.

Briefly,
am just your kid next door.
My needs are simple, small:
a car, a home,
pension for kids & missus
& a life left alone
by intrusive wolves.
Is that too much to ask
of those who strut
in the legislature?
Take me for what I am:
in a complex world
my trade is just
as pernicious
as any sonomagun
raking in millions
in their executive suits
& letting children
die on the road.
I only hit a choice of bums
for Machiavellian reason.
Is there any objection?

K.

Here I am
in a huge glass jar.
Outsiders
keep looking at me
as if I were
like any fish
in a bowl.
I ogle them in return
but I am invisible.
Have never had such fortune
sizing them up
with their eyeglasses on,
as if they could see
what they purport
to be a measure
of my species.
But I am like them,
my imaged mirror,
who turn the world
upside down.
They do me no harm:
in their own pettyfogging
ways,
they are small-time
thieves & murderers
who see
their own sharkness
in my huge glass jar.

3.
B-day: Aug 22

The days
have been long & rough,
& the pathway
one crawls on
is bloodied by Lorca’s moon.
How was it
from the start?
Calm, at times troubled?
Also on bumpy ride
that limps & glides
with pain & joy.
Always, the ways of the gods
are inscrutably mad.
Meanings & non-meanings,
semaphores of order & chaos,
turn like tropic mud.
Will today
be the Passover of good luck?
Chinese horoscope
may yet mercifully pass
for a change
if one crosses one’s fingers
that demons & ghosts
are justly flogged.
May the wine of age
be smooth & cool,
like Vladimir Nabokov’s
sparkling prose.

4.
Fable
A.

In this dark land,
no one talks.
Lips are sealed,
as if stitched up
like falcon’s eyes
trained to heed
the master’s voice.
Where monkeys
speak, hear, see
no evil
in the acid site.
But a murderous ghost
roams
the city & countryside…
& strangers whisper
to each other
about crimes multiplied
but always archived.
The sergeant’s blue book
bears empty pages
& criminals enter & leave
the warden’s premises.
Here, constitution
is written & read,
but the judge pronounces
always the legal verdict:
show proof
or forever hold your peace.

B.
Country of Id

Years ago,
a clutch of acolytes
forayed into the forest,
emboldened like missionaries,
knapsacks on their backs
laden with tools of the faith:
Also papers,
ribbons,
pentel pens
& pamphlets…
Plus smiles on their faces.
Week after week
they merrily communed
with natives
of disease-ridden skin
who laughed back
as if they had witnessed
a carnival of misfits…
It dawned on the priestly crew
to shift paradigm & engage
the language of natures & spirit…
Thereafter some turned guns
for hire,
a few opted for the electoral,
a number joined the ranks
of warriors at camp fire…
Que sera, sera…
Were the innocent horrified?
Whatever Freire texts
about nihilist & dialogic peace,
power ever smokes
at the end of the barrel
in the country of id.

5.
Coda

They pause a bit
in between swigs:
yes, yes,
in a drunken drawl,
it was terrible
the way they did him in.
As if reliving
the passion of Christ
in Gethsemane
& star-crossed hill…
& they will shift
talk as if burned
by the scene
that wasn’t entertaining.
True,
there were guys before
who called attention
to the canker
in the wood,
but he caught
everyone’s eyes
with his maverick style.
It wasn’t a shoot-out
at OK-corral,
they seethe.
It was one against
a wild bunch of bums
& he was unarmed!
But he did set
into motion
the game
most idiots play
these days:
It is I, dearie,
worth your affection
this time…
O If only boozers
weren’t drawn
to the bottle,
sleeping off
an infinite hang-over.

6.
Enigma

When will all
the trouble end?
He sits idly
on the stone bench,
marking up
the notches of years
in his mind
trying to solve
the puzzle of generation.
There is no solution
in sight,
the rules keep changing
like monsoon air,
& he sees the kids
gamboling in the grass
as if oblivious
of the gods
of cosmic chess
who push without tears
the mortal pieces.

7.
History 101

Ambeth Ocampo, in his Inquirer column “Looking Back” is quoted as saying that Teodoro Agoncillo refused to write about Marcos because he lacked “perspective… historical conditions are not fine… historians cannot say I have exhausted all the documents” – for which Ocampo, with a sense of historical scruple, as it were, intimates that “50 years from now there will be another young historian who will declare that Ambeth Ocampo was an idiot – he did not see this or that document, he did not consider this or that perspective.”

O perish the idea that one can pin down Absolute knowledge for ever! No history, after all, can be concluded in an absolutist way. Perspectives [Agoncillo’s generation steers clear of ideology, which is almost synonymous with their subscription to orthodox objectivity] is enveloped itself within the text whose history is contained as an internal general ideology.

For instance, Agoncillo’s perspective is already foregrounded by his preface to his work, having metaphorically confessed that interference by visitors in his sala of a work is contaminating the purity of his vision [see Neferti Tadiar’s Fantasy-Production]. Or Historicizing as a distilled process? A monologue? In a classicist mode, his text is closely delimited by his very own ideology of seeing unfolded through an ilustrado, something he shares tangentially with Nick Joaquin, anyway.

To conjure that he couldn’t write on anything if he didn’t have all the documents is to confess that his history is insufficient, that he should be an all-seeing eye.

But this is authorial conceit.

Besides, truth is a big word. Christians invest in God as the primary mover of History; atheists see otherwise. It is terrifying chaos for Zizek, the 500-year cycle for Spengler. For modernists, nothing could represent certainty, & we could only settle for the provisional. Truth is the latest layer in the peeling of historical onion, as it were. No one has the last word.

Agoncillo was simply hedging. Worse, he cannot lay his cards on the table & say I am not really sure I’ve written anything at all – to put it ironically. To argue that Marcos may still be beyond historical definition is to subliminally insist that Martial Law wasn’t altogether evil. It had its upside, as in everything else & the dead & the tortured only have themselves to blame for not seeing the light of such momentous decision on September 21. Or that Ninoy’s assassin, given the paucity of documentary proofs, may never be known – & his violent passing a tale that borders on fiction.

Or that Olalia’s murder was an empirical anomaly. Are there documents to be declassified for a truth commission?

It is not that historians may be rebuffed for saying something – it is actually this fear of their vanity & pride being pricked by a new authorial angle that has escaped them, for which their self-appointed authority must suffer.

Historians should know, as necromancers from the ancients to scientists of the contemporary show, all truths are subverted in perpetual revolution: after all, Einstein couldn’t sit tight for Hawkings is hovering in sight. We are all contained by the limits of our period.

To hesitate to write about the past decades is to forever commit oneself to damning silence.

After all, when does one know he has all the documents stacked on his writing table?

8.
Caveat

This is the 21st century
of space stations
& lunar probes
where reason posits
the universe
is a given of mathematical
proofs…
But the preacher man
knows in his guts
that suckers are born
every second
& the world is a circus:
he can gather millions
under a billion-peso roof
for him to piously intone
his stellar ambition,
he’s God’s chosen,
fruit of blind faith,
justice, human ruth.
As in the days of Pizarro
who dropped anchor
opportunely
off Peruvian coast
at a time when the prophecy
the Sun-God would come down
from the sky,
& he became the Holy One,
the Incas surrendered
their machetes & women,
their ancient empire
for venereal diseases
& Catholic chant.
Will history repeat itself?
Friars & penitents
to call the shots,
dazzling in rainbow suits,
having abandoned
the wooden cassocks,
for camouflage power
& official boon?

1.
Postmortem
A.

So many questions
about the dead:
to shed a tear
or shrug it off,
the whole infinitude
of mourning…
How to weigh
the fruits of a passage
to the cosmos of light
or infernal region?
No traveler
can tell where she belongs,
how the myths
will affirm
the self-comforting tale
she’s with her lover,
first & last…
O How they wish
for such a fantasy
of a life hereafter,
to assure the orphans
true fellowship prevails…
But Thomases doubt
if death opens a door
to something greater…
They say
the blood of farmers
stains her hands,
the county has never
had a Chinaman
chance
despite the liberative sign…
But she’s as helpless
as a child
to swim against the current
of her oceanic class.
O if only
she didn’t suffer
at the final hours…
We exist,
we die:
what is there
to eulogize
but to bead
like a rosary
our sighs.

B.

“Masses”
in a word
too often used
has turned abstract,
almost oneiric,
unreal:
the gasoline boy
who pumps
the morning gas
simply plugs his ears
on the blah-blah
of the fuel rise.
He doesn’t want
to dig deeper
into the national malaise
that triggers
the monotonous wail.
In his mind
he only prays
for a windfall
of the sweepstakes.
The widow’s
time on earth
had simply expired.
Who’s sentimental?
What matters
more than ever
is the suffocating fumes
that saturate
the air.

2.
Summing up

So many millions
don’t see it his way:
how to judge
the unfolding play
in its history
of passion, will
& bourgeois despair.
Could they be wrong
to have summed all up
in a cockeyed way?
She didn’t bring it on
the democratic flair
but left peasants & workers
in constant disarray:
the scumbags
are still at it;
the assassins
still man street corners;
breathing is always
on perfect hold
like an angelic wrestler’s…
O There must be
an alchemic mix
of anger & gratitude
in equal measure
to mourn justly
someone’s demise
without the wind
snuffing the candle flame,
or turn grief
to stone
& mercifully move on.
Who has found
the existential solution?

Fatalist
3.

There he sits
before his pedlar’s stuff:
he lets time
overtake him
like a plastic bag
wrapped around his head
until he suffocates
& turns to marble bust.
Then, with a deep sigh
he packs up for home
to lug them back
the next morn
& repeat
the age-old malediction.
May the weather
allow him
fortunate sale
but he wouldn’t moan
with grief
anger or tedium:
the seed of discontent
is never his own.
Trained he is
by fate like a dog
to bark & scratch,
but that’s all –
he’s simply letting time
dissolve his misfortune.

4.
Pretty Fool

Her lover
just smacked her down
but she’s used to it.
She could have
a change of heart
& be done
with his heavy hand.
But she’s used to it,
believing her power
is all intact:
he’ll be back
like a prodigal cad,
& she’ll orgasmically squirm
at her calculated patience
like a chess player
in a lover’s game –
who assumes the upper hand
in the daily entangling
of hearts & minds?
She claims
she always wins the setto
when he beats
a path to her cunt
but that is another theme
of winners
at the edge of erasure:
She’s flying up
when
she’s falling down
in an inverted world.

5.
Lecturer

The 7 o’clock class
tempts him
to scream like a mad Steppenwolf
at his idiot fate –
but there’s no need
to beg scoundrels
at the textual mortuary
for favors, anyway.
He’ll hack it up,
inventing in his mind
the thousand ways
to kill
the enemy — & time –
who strut around
like peacocks
in mating mission.
How could fate
play tricks on him?
How would the gods
be full of mischief
as to let him loose
among the dogs?
There is no justice,
cynics leer,
the jigsaw puzzle
has missing pieces
that will not play –
Virtues are mere charade.
The Lord gambles
with players’ fates.
He who thinks
is a troublemaker:
Whine like a pup
or despair over his strut?

6.
Sunday Patriot

He pins
a yellow ribbon
on his shirt,
grinning he’s most moral
in the morning’s
mourning –
but it cuts both ways:
he’s aiming for a change
in a bourgeois state,
or signals the semiotics
of a revolution
like a novel momentum
on the chequered board…
But there he is,
content
to have been enveloped
by a deluge of kinsmen
from shifting classes –
as if revolt,
intimate & public,
could be fused
in one fell swoop
by necro rites
that will tie
yellow ribbons
around a nation.
Should the dead
clear the path to the future?
But it’s the living
who must kindle
the prairie fire
that will burn down
the devils
in a field
of dry eyes.

7.
Scandal

They are
up in arms
against Executive fief
messing up their choices
& procedure:
contaminated
most foul
by a street-smart
who conceives of the masses
as pot of witches’ brew
where demiurges
& celestial heroes
upturn the upper world,
where peasants
in chain
wear talisman
to conquer
patrician fools,
where penitents
are graced by God’s dove
if weary to revolt.
Yes, the national icons
won’t have it
any other way:
medallions
hanging in their necks
like albatrosses
must be saved
from regime’s saltimbanques
who shriek & prance
for their share of spoils…
Yet from the start
the pantheon of idols
has been a tribal site
overseen by their own
centurions,
all in the name of genius,
& sovereign passion.
Fie, fie!
Let the waves of the Bay
behind the Marcos Parthenon
rush in
& drown all claimants
to the throne.
None deserves
the perfidious accolade:
Authentic artists
have never had a need
for reverential plaques.
Alas, alas, alas!

8.
White Zone

In the white zone
the masses
have spoken:
they’ve decided
to forego all opprobrium
& allow tearful sympathy
to shoot up
from the muddled bottom
of sentiments & attrition –
thus hailing
the chief
for all the blessings
& errors
fashioned out
for the promised restoration.
Celebrating action
they’ve set up,
this tradition
of seizing things
as per charitable Christian
doctrine –
forget her sins,
recall her pious reverence.
O the awful direction
this hiphop generation
must cut its way through
the jungle of signs
while in search
of a real revolution.
The fire next time
may be on plain sight
But seers see
with blinded eyes!

9.
Disciples

They are stirring
the cuckoo’s nest:
honor guards
are praised profusely
for standing like automatons,
souping up the procession
with militarist nobility
of a feudal kingdom.
Then they air
their plea
to canonize
her memory
elevate to a saint
like Mother Teresa
of Calcutta
for her austere piety.
History stops
at her demise?
There is no second coming
for a mediatrix
between Catholic Heaven
& subversive Hell?
A patrician
who captained
a rotten ship of fools –
she, who was moneyed
but purveyed
Calvinistic exactitude?
Enough is enough!
Let the dead forever sleep
in their arcadian cove.
Let her venerators
stay off
the metaphysical mode.

10.
Sainthood

How shall
history probe
the Event
as consequential,
worthy of a memoriam
exultantly told.
There will be testimonies
on her virtues,
her spiels & prayers
to constitute
interminable folk lore…
But she’s not perfect,
a daughter confessed,
as if to motion to the crowd
not to go overboard…
They love their mother
who loved in return
as any mother should…
Enough said then
of the Widow
who blazed her own
puritan code.
She’s remembered
for all her worth –
all texts
would impartially record,
shorn of beatitudes.

11.
Crystal Ball
A.

Apres moi
le deluge?
So many charlatans
have said it
to project the future
from the spectacle.
Complete with charts
& numbers
to map out
the modes of action
to secure
any regime’s stronghold.
But who
is saying what?
The morning after
they’ll be thankful
the sun has risen again
in the sky –
& they’re luxuriously alive!
Tomorrow
is just another
day & time.
The rest is litany of lies.

B.

He is adamant
to cross the raging river
in Botolan
that cuts the town
in half.
His family is marooned
on the other side.
He must deliver
his sack of harvest
hanging on his back…
But the current
is too violently strong
for any swimmer
to survive.
In the city,
mourners brave the rain
to join the funeral
cortege,
with dark presentiments
evil spirits
may yet be exorcised.
But he doesn’t think
of that:
it’s hundreds of miles
distant
from his prayer
to traverse the swollen divide
then hike inland.
He had done that before
so many times
to gather the fruits
of his own labor.
[To & fro,
to & fro,
chorus the Furies
while Sisyphus
rolls the stones...]
He just wanted
to be with loved ones
& take stock
of his sorrow.
O Does he have time
for profundity
about a noble’s death?
He only craves
for his little peasant clique.

12.
Necropolitics

She has turned
invisible
but has not become
one with air.
The moon no longer
reflects the sun
but light
reaches
from eons of distance.
Even memory
fails to exist,
but why do
scars throb
like anti-matter?
Everything solid
has melted,
but the signs
blaze the mind.
She is nowhere
but everywhere
All contradictions
of a presence
that is absence
in a death
intimately alive.

13.
13th Poem for a Queen

Always,
history repeats itself,
pundits say.
The Queen of France
threw at the mob
crumbs of cake
& ended up
with her coiffured head
on the chopping block.
At Le Cirque, New York
this won’t happen to GMA
in civilized times.
Spinmasters
could easily minimize
the outrageous media hype:
if the poor eat
only twice a day –
cups of rice,
dried fish & noodles,
why, isn’t that a feast
already for the able?
Revolt is flummery
for those who keep their noses
close to the grindstone.
There is no picture bigger
than one’s own.
Marie Antoinette
born in a wrong century,
was a child of misfortune.

14.
Faith

The priest was shaking his head.
He had just ministered
to a guy who had lost his confidence,
holding himself in low steam.
He’s tempted to slit his wrists,
but too damned scared to commit.
“There were doors everywhere
in that strange country in his dream,
but they all shut down on him.”
He had confessed, like half-the-man
he thought he never was at the beginning.
“He was a born loser,” he had whimpered.
Disgust had surged up within
the man in the cloth
but indifference is strictly forbidden:
He instead had counselled
“Don’t ever lose hope;
things could change for the better.”
But the guy had heard it before:
he walked out of the old church
his shoulders theatrically sagging.
The priest stood like driftwood
in his shoes:
the congregation is thinning out,
believers are slowly deserting,
all talk of certainty & salvation
is scoffed at.
Nothing even moves
to resolve a spiritual stand-off.
In his mind, he’s that man all over again.
But the doubts & futility
he couldn’t entertain
even if he too was privy to the same dream:
Doors closing,
never opening.

A.

After the burial
her absence
becomes more real,
palpable.
& she, the favored one,
won’t be able
to stand
the silence of the room.
Once upon a time
she would hie off
to her sanctum
to hear
her comforting voice,
muss her hair,
rebuke so gently
her mischievous
affair.
But the Matriarch
no longer lives there.
How can she wake up
mornings
without the coffee
tasting bland
or bitter?
If she were only
God
& could command
her back
like she does
her own child.

B.

Time,
she reflects,
can be shattered
into fragments:
a piece of shard
for morning rituals,
another
for social functions,
the rest
for intimate pleasure…
She cannot wish
to glue them together
& vise
her grief.
How she fears
to fail wiggling out
of the punishing grip.

C.

They will seek
solace
in each other’s
company.
They will start
to break the silence,
then slowly
inch toward
merriment.
There will be
sudden gasps
& words that will
slip in
with a vengeance,
but it will all be
fleeting, provisional.
They must however
clear the cobwebs
draping their minds
lest they perish
whimpering
in the dark.
For during evenings,
the beasts
of desolation
return.

D.

Sundays
will be unbearable,
when a fractured
family
becomes whole again
but her absence
will be the telltale sign.
O It must be screened off
by the noise
of children
& the tipsy conversation
of kinsmen.
They must pass around
the plates of feast
lest they all be
ambushed
by incalculable sadness
that may escape
its icy cage.

E.

Somehow
it assaults
her
like a traitorous
enemy:
in moments
when she seeks
the ease of company,
luxury of time
& hearty conversation,
her throat
suddenly catches
& she stops
as if a hand
has settled on her shoulder
to shake her up
like a leaf.
Only then
she lapses
into a helpless
child again.
O Memory
can be vicious
like a lover.

F.

Old truths
revisited:
Time will heal
all this,
soothe
well-meaning
pundits
who also themselves
need
to forget.
But how long
must this take
to escape
the vise
of the infinite?
If only
she were an angel
with calculated
expertise
to slip in & out
of funereal grief.
But she is not.
She will have
to float down
the river Hades,
pretending
she doesn’t breathe.

G.

Hell
is forever.
Heaven
so damned transitory
she wishes
prayers
will last longer
than eternity.
But is it
listening?
Does it care?
Can we just believe
with crossed fingers
everything’s
A-ok?
& things are not
what they say?
Suffer illusion,
intones the sage
to the children
& undream
what the Devil
has foreseen.
There is no exit.
We can only weep.

H.

Life is beautiful.
Even a sad clown
will register this.
It is not so much
that darkness
blinds the eye,
as the sun
shines behind the clouds.
Tell that
to birds that fly
in flocks
but do not collide.
Tell that
to schools of dolphin
who swim
with precision, delight.
The heart
bursts in colorful
rays –
only minutes
rule
eclipse
of solar way.

I.

How can you
grieve
outside your self?
The event was
pure melodrama,
staggering the heart:
Why are you
like a woman
quick to shed tears
at the drop
of a hat?
The heckling
streamed down
like the rain,
but he couldn’t duck
the water spray.
So here he was
wiping his face
lest people find out…
But it was
no laughing matter.
Cory, they said,
was the last brown hope
of the underdogs?
A patrician
to lead the pack?
Of course not,
He counter-argued:
The revolution
has so many roads:
She just opened
a door –
a long, winding story to be told.

J.

The kids
at seven in the morning
were still
drowsy,
almost half-asleep,
valiantly
trying to be academically
attentive:
They could only mutter
the gibberish:
She was roused
by a group text
about the Saturday
tragedy…
SMS from London
purveyed a terrible loss
but she didn’t seem
to feel it.
She couldn’t make out
the buzz for the departed –
she had no inkling
about EDSA;
her parents were
half-hearted.
So she turned on her side
to catch up
on interrupted sleep…
The others merely quipped:
This is just
another death.
It happens every day.
When the teacher
looked out the window,
it was raining
& leaves fell
like green tears.
Is this generation
for all its innocence
worth any lesson
to be preached?

K.

This is to harsh –
an old fogey
shushed him up.
We were also
like that,
indifferent & cold
as if the world
happens
on its own accord
& we amusedly
looked on.
How to change
this point of view?
O he smirked:
Get married in Babylon!
Find out
why markets
chill you to the bone.
Then report
on what has been done
to that old, old song:
Que sera, sera!
But destiny
is also your own!
Pull yourself
by your own bootstraps,
or gamble
your fate
on the revolution?

L.

After
burial,
what shall
they do
with the enemy?
O Allow them
the view
of the casket
for their photo-op,
then clear
the crowd
to have them leave.
No words
to be spoken
or exchanged:
tradition for the dead
must be observed.
& pray not
that Heaven fall
on those
who caused the pain.
Never lift a finger
to summon
servants of God
to utter
the sacral censure:
All it is in due time,
cosmic handiwork.
Outside the cathedral
let mourners
decide the mode of response
to the alien
blood & visitor.

I.
Widow Redux

A.

The passing
was expected
by devotees of the Cross:
she’ll expire
at the appointed hour
of the Fatima,
& grace heaven
exorcised of pain
& human pleasure.
Intimated
such
as they held
the wake,
clasping her invisible
cold hands
with their prayer.
She was
a woman privileged
by temper & class,
but didn’t flaunt
it
like a precious scar.
Her private life
mistaken
for simplicity
of grandiose power –
& Christian tales
would spill over
in the semiotics
of that love.
Sure, she did err
now & then
in governance,
but chuck it
to mentors
who led her to the downward path
of good intentions.
Still all did cry
at her
who wouldn’t burn
altogether
the imperfect map.

B.

There was
an avalanche
of anecdotes…
like the rush
of secret tears
& votive sighs
as they stepped by
the open casket
to honor
the icon
whose demise
was too early
for her late years:
dictators
are still around;
worms
still crawl out
of the woodwork…
She did her best,
adorers say,
to stop the waves
but monsters
have grown twice
their size,
& she alone
couldn’t buck
the tide.
The country yearns
for deliverance –
believers persist
God is saying
all in due time
we shall understand.

C.

How shall the town
in its bereavement
account
for all the sadness
that pours
like heavy rain?
Each to each
own interpretation
of a passing
as light as a feather,
as heavy as a mountain…
When history
spells out the verdict,
once fog clears up,
noise settles down,
she was
simply a woman
who didn’t vainly
cling on to power,
letting the changing
of the guards.
In a country
of multi-headed hydra
that lives off nightmares
in cities & towns,
she was respite
from whip
of ocean surge.

D.

Bob Dylan
sings in his cat’s
meow:
“The times
they’re a-changing…”
So do the people
who watch
from the sides:
generations
unplugged & wild,
ever the young
who rock
in the cusp
of astonishment
& fright.
Why all the things
that erupt
are cinema verite
that rolls on
unendingly…
Will the plot
remain stuck
in formaldehyde,
leave the cynic
prophetic,
boorishly mad?
The few good men
& women of substance
hope
the chimes
may yet tinkle
in the wind
with a new
harmonious sound.

E.

She showed
class
by her own definition
in kneeling
at the pew
for her daily communion
at her favorite
church.
Alone,
or with the common
crowd,
focused on the cross
to surmount
the dread & longing
for the resurrection.
Her security,
like beaded
embrace of the rosary,
had grown on
her presence,
learning to pray
like devotees.
But the Palace
had quickly pulled them
out,
after her resistance
to the rule.
They were strangers
turned family.
In this perilous time
& age,
dignity
is the domain
of the elegantly
chosen.

F.

April
no longer is
the cruelest
month
of the year.
August
of rain & thunderstorm
has pushed it off
short list
of beleaguered hopes.
When she passed on,
almost at break
of dawn,
as if to ascend
to sainthood,
Hawking’s time shrunk,
like a holocaust
had stopped
the world.
Fluorescent
candlesmoke
drown the neighborhood,
novenas
& tears
assault the cosmos:
people
need a door to open
for their refuge.
Putting their trust
in her –
ideological fix
that is religion -
& praying
like children
for her to be around
like mother
to orphans
bereaven.

G.

What is there to do?
How shall the future be?
The mainstream
will like the river
keep on flowing –
crashing through
grass & boulders.
They shall move on
with their lust
& ambition:
visiting churches,
fucking in motels,
drinking beers
until
the sad, sad event
when the Matriarch
closed the door
after her
turns into another
merrymaking.
& tomorrow
shall present itself
again & again
like a moving obstacle
on the road
to be overtaken.
The morning after
may bring forth
the tumultuous season
of rogues & saints.

II.

A.
Library

It is
the family library
on the third floor:
but he rarely
ventures there now –
Of late,
books have triggered
a vague unease
like old friends
who drop by,
then leave.
A line here
on the yellowed page,
dog-eared sections
there
to stress a point
for future debate
that shall eventually
go to waste…
O they stand
like waiting sentinels
never conscripted
for war…
Only a quick glance
he would cast,
then hurry down
the stairs
as if chased
by ghosts of the past.
So much remembering,
so much forgetting
but
they tell nothing
except the years
having piled up
like broken crystals.
But most,
that flush
of strange bewilderment
why lives
flit by
like gust of wind.

B.

& he vainly
rues
the wisdom of ages
worked out by seers
chained
to scholarly archives:
they are on the prowl
for the holy elixir,
& find in their quest
cerebral pleasures
at the adventure.
Then they die
of disease or old age,
buried under tombstones
overrun by grass.
Comforted by a Merlin
they have unlocked
the castle’s door.
But their words
barely command
the invisible troops
of Reason
to change the world:
Out there,
only barbarians
by the gates
race their F-1 cars.

C.

There is weariness
he fails to understand
whenever
he rifles through
the shelves
for a book or a line
of his angle of truth
encountered
once upon a time –
But they’re nowhere
to be found,
as if maliciously hidden.
Or he could
have chanced upon it
for the first
& last time
like a flower that bloomed
at unholy hour?
Must he keep on
listening to the drone
of soothsayers?
Or let them stale
in the circular air?
The children
have junked
all that have been said:
why stand by
the truths
of emptied chairs?

D.

He has to sell
his xeroxed copies
of Derrida,
Nietzsche, Foucault,
Hegel,
slew of ponderous authors
to keep body
& wits together –
pay for the lease,
foot the college bill,
his own upkeep
while writing down
the mishmash
of lies & fallacies
of the ruling tribe:
Is it worth
the penury
for drinking wine
with the Muse?
Bad scholars
stare him down
for lack of
bank account
to bail him out
of the rut…
While they pronounce
half-measures
on the board
as if they had
circumnavigated the mind.

E.

But is knowledge,
according
to the permutations
of old & new philosophies,
worth a penny
in the marketplace
that sees a daily meltdown
of canonical thrones?
The unctuous scholars
in the groove
sign papers
to prop up their posts
while
cashing the envelope.
O They need not challenge
what ill-conceived
& half-baked substance
or method bodes:
only to conduct
themselves
with proper mien
& artful modes
& live happily ever after.
What merit intellect then:
long have they
surrendered the word
to fascist & dictators
for living well
like subterranean rats
is the perfect antidote.

III.
Personal

A.

He thinks
of his mother
long, long gone:
to hardship born,
never having
set foot
in a secondary school.
Reticent to a fault
but would warm up
when talking
about her brood.
Her funeral
was as simple
as her root:
you could count
on your fingers
the well-meaning
visitors…

B.

Cory
was to the gentry born
& a deluge of mourners
marked her departure.
Yet his mother & she
were one & the same
in heart & reason
for their lack
of a mean bone…
Transparent like the air
direction of their passion.
No material gain
could substitute
for that wish
to stay
in the corner,
as it were,
like an unseen guest,
to observe,
to listen
& to pray
for the good & truth.

C.

When his mother
passed on
he was in shock,
inconsolable.
Like a paper boat
adrift in the ocean,
buffeted by the
wind
& lonely albatross.

D.

When Corazon Aquino
died,
at small
wee hours
of the morning
she, whom
he didn’t
know but
in news photographs,
something tugged
at his heart –
& confessedly,
he had to clear
his throat
as secret tears
welled up
in his eyes.