To Deadline

Deadline crawls into bed with me just as I'm about to close my eyes.

Deadline jumps on my bed just when I hit the snooze button at 8 in the morning.

Deadline sits at the back of my class, waiting to be called.

Deadline whispers in my ear just as I'm about to write a poem.

Deadline eavesdrops and butts in phone conversations.

Deadline turns the pages of a novel I've been dying to read for weeks.

Deadline fiddles with the maximum volume of my iPod just when I'm humming a happy tune.

Deadline says "tsk, tsk" when I'm feeding my fluff pet.

Deadline pops up in my Friendster and Multiply views.

Deadline follows me to the bathroom when I need to pee.

Deadline logs into my Yahoo messenger smack in the middle of a conversation with my babe. (I ignore Deadline)

Deadline tries to interrupt my much needed hug therapy. (I ignore Deadline)

Deadline lights up my cigarettes for me.

Deadline wriggles into my shirt just as I'm on my way to work.

draft, untitled

i.

the church
is a spiral
of ivy
sinking into
a sepulchural
sleep

an angel weeps
but her tears
frozen by the ages
have long
turned to stone

her eyes are open,
fixed at some far off
point, but i turn to her
still, in a gesture
of sympathy

ii.

it seems i have lived
in more hotel rooms than i can remember
plush as sin, in the arms
of a stranger or fleeing from
unseen pursuit. doors open,
and close, folding into each other,
more and more doors
more rooms to feed upon
a labyrinth: inescapable,
sinking into mahogany
and decadent carpeting
i am hiding behind a desk,
escaping to the bathroomwith You,
You, i cannot name: i must know you
we must have met somewhere,
perhaps in a coffeeshop
conversing about existentialism and art
over our steaming styrofoam cups
why else would i follow you?

Manila is a Love Affair with Chaos

Loneliness, alienation are said to be by products of urbanization. The cold and uninviting city, offering anonymity, transience and isolation among proximity is as individual as it is societal.

Born and bred in Manila, I grew up in fear and fascination of its complexity. Initially sheltered from its less savory aspects, it was only over the years that I came to see a living painting I ceaselessly attempt to capture in words. It is an exciting love affair, it evolves but persists because it makes no demands or promises and expects nothing. It is also unrequited.

Absent the familial ties of a close-knit community, it is chaos constantly struggling to order itself. Manila is irrational, making up its rules and refusing to obey them. In Quiapo they sell black candles and mysterious bottled objects right outside the church. Jeepney drivers with eyes at the back of their head squeeze into crowded lanes, peddlers navigate the labyrinthine traffic and ply all sorts of things – from candy and cigarettes to battery-powered cellphone chargers, not really caring if the stoplight changes from red to green. Some government offices refuse to do business as early as half an hour before closing, and a regular office is abuzz with gossip and a lack of urgency. And malls that hold Sunday Mass – perhaps only in the Philippines. Pedestrians set the laws of the street in large numbers. Just look at Taft Avenue on a busy day (it’s perpetually busy) and you’ll know what I mean.

This is but one aspect of life in the city of cities, Manila. Manila is dirty and crowded, fueled by inefficiency and traffic, typically “Third World”, where transactions are often in the black market and the informal economy cannot die. A greater number are unemployed, live on the streets, scavenge for food, steal or kill to survive.

What is it about the city that inspires fear? Is it the sensationalized bits and pieces they show on television?

This is the city I know, or so I’ve been told. A city that looks on poverty and unrest everyday, but grows in numbers. A city that already used up promises of a rosy future long ago, and still attracts dreamers. Here, we struggle for space, we struggle to breathe, we struggle against struggling. We will ourselves to exist. We live.

The city that holds me in thrall is a beautiful city. Beautiful amid the grit and the squalor, the uncertainty and the dangers. Beautiful because of its anarchy, the perpetual chaos that never quite resolves itself. Beautiful because its eyes are always wide open, holding a disinterested watch. Manila is always, always on the brink of insomnia.

(for transit news magazine)

The Restlessness of Morning

[Written August 2007]

there is a brightly colored ball
nested, wires interlaced -
a screen,
there is a room i slept in:
a mattress, a warm breath
on my cheek
and in the morning,
engines singing
like crickets

there is a familiar
but uneven path
when it rains,
the mud is unsettled
by water,
and there are three stones
that appear,
to hop on
with one foot
like a childish game
of hopscotch

there is an unraveling
of minutes,
unspooled as they are,
and each second is
spelled out,
like a word

Elemental Furies

[Written 16 August 2007]

We have no space for Noah’s Ark
No easy classification of species
Willing themselves to salvation

All this I thought about
When I saw the well-dressed men
And women abandon themselves
To the wrath of God

Climbing out of cars
No better than toy boats,
Sinking uselessly
Mired in mud waters –
Just rewards of our capitalist age

Rich or poor, you will all die
Of boredom or despair
Crawling your way out
Of the Fallen metropolis
While a helicopter looms overhead
And takes aerial shots
For the evening news

Third World Snow

third world snow

the tyranny of the sun
lasted for days,
bleeding the earth
dry
the trees rose up in revolt
arms flailing upward
in desperate prayer
to summon rain and
unleashing a madness
of cotton,
swarming like bees
the frail tufts of white
raining down

angry streaks of cotton,
leaves and dust
spur a frenzy to seek refuge
in concrete enclosures
shielding the eyes, nose and mouth
from the veritable blizzard
eclipsing the familiarity of rain

amid the gaggle of voices
a motorist plunges headlong
into the madness, gleefully shouts

snow! we have snow
in the philippines!

can we have our snow angels now?
our snow men with the crooked nose
and eyes for buttons?
would santa and his reindeer park their
sleigh this christmas?
and can we put nutmeg in apple cider,
sing chestnuts roasting on an open fire?

wanting the white picket fences and the small town quirks
wanting the small town quirks and a roast turkey on thanksgiving
wanting thanksgiving and the mayflower and the pilgrims
wanting the pilgrims and the natives feast like the pictures in the glossy books
wanting the glossy books where the dog’s name is spot and not bantay
wanting the pure-blood pride not the mongrel shame
wanting the blue-collar pride and the american dream
wanting the american dream with that genuwine twang and american slang
wanting the american slang not the call center twang

we can huddle together
for some warmth
pretend we're eskimos
building an igloo
and dream of spring..

the cotton puffs
defiant and white
descend quietly
to the earth,
fallen snow
angels
cradled by
the unseeing
streets

On Remembering

[Written April 2007]

you will remember it differently
than i, you and your discrete units of time,
marked by the traffic of people
that arrive, and stay, and sometimes
stop to talk, or perhaps you remember
geographically, what is fixed
and what moves, where it moves,
what is comfortably still,
or perhaps you remember
in color, the absence of shadow,
the tables and chairs laid out
and remain constant like set pieces
in some theatrical play, day
after day without aging,
and all else is peripheral to you,
or perhaps you remember none of it at all,
while i brush away the images
of chairs and tables and people like annoying cobwebs,
leaving only a few knickknacks of memory,
and you've never noticed how
i try to sound more interesting, and
when i talk to you, i am part
nervousness, and all illusion
of confidence, and if i asked you,
"what color and shade
are my eyes," you would stammer
slightly and make a foolish
guess, but i, i can tell you
that sometimes when your eyes widen
just so, they are a luminosity in the darkness,
and then perhaps you would ask "how can light
penetrate black on black?" but i will tell you
that black has nuances too,
not just the paradox of absence, and
that sometimes when you're terribly excited,
the color is startlingly clear
and transparent like a mirror: these fragments
are important to me. i remember well.

A Former Lover Remembers

[Written April 2007]

he remembers her body well
even though it was mostly obscured
by darkness,
fully clothed in daylight
he would still recognize her
anywhere

the casual hellos they exchange now
do not betray them
the occasional pleasantries
do not hint at secrets
neither do they suggest
at some future opportune time

he realizes that he never saw her
twist in her sleep
most nights were just nights,
sinking in, marked by the riot
of clothing on the floor

after the awkwardness
of consummation
- or perhaps,
the assumption of it,

they dress
and part

The Poet

[Written April 2007]

He scratches out lines
On whatever his hands chance upon:
His weather-beaten, hopelessly outdated laptop,
A page in an abandoned notebook,
A receipt from yesterday’s coffee break,
Or the back of his hand, even
Words scamper away from him otherwise
Skittish and imprecise,
It is a game and of utmost necessity
To hold them down,
And force them to take shape

Minute things trigger the impulse:
Perhaps it is a conversation between strangers
In the jeepney he rode today
Where, fascinated by the idle talk, he randomly tuned in
Like twiddling the radio to capture a stray frequency,
Or running into a scavenger child, whooping and running
As he passes, a straw bag for his treasures
Hitched on a bony shoulder, tapping on the sidewalk with his scavenging stick,
Stooping slightly to snatch up an empty plastic bottle before anyone else does:
It is worth P50 per kilo at the nearest junkyard

The city speaks to him when it does,
When the fading strains of the videoke session next door
Signal that it must be early morning,
And people do have to retire to bed,
If only to have enough strength for the next day’s
Drinking marathon
He listens for the retreating footsteps,
The cheerful farewells and the too-loud ribbing,
The dying whirr of engines as they pass
And settle on some uneven and unpaved sidewalk

At night, sans the sound of crickets
And cooing birds
He lies awake: prophet and lover,
Arrested by the dirt and the grit and the beauty
Of this overcrowded, overpopulated city
Uncompromising and unapologetic as it is
He longs for the lull of forest and sea
But knows they have no place here
Knows they could not cleanse this forsaken place,
Where people have learned to bury their lives
With dignity, with humor and with peace,
The way they mourn their dead.

ON POETRY

[Written March 14, 2007]

if words do not turn
into lies
or ideals, if pain
can be bought and sold
with a few truthful
lines, then -

there is no sound
to destroy
the waking: only
the formless,
yearning
to be named
can summon your pain
and make it yours
and bear your name,
your multitude
of scars

What is the shortest distance between two points?

[Written 16 March 2007]

You might forget
That point A
Travels along the pinpricks
Of shadows
And while a straight line
Will close the gap
Between them,
Point A will evade you
Like a silent wolf
Solitary
And unmoved

Untitled

[Written 4 Mar 2007]

culled from the recesses
of an antiquated refrigerator
i appease my hunger
an obese woman inside
greedily feeling my way
through the mummified
assortments
ravenous, as i pick
and choose
among the dying
and already dead

sometimes an orange,
sometimes an onion
softened and rottened
by the chill
sometimes it’s leftover
chicken, shrunken
and dry sometimes
it’s an expired
milk carton
and the stench
briefly dulls
the senses

all cadavers
i might as well
be dead

Ruminations on Poetry: An Introduction

[Written sometime in March, 2007]

In my attempts to write poetry, i try to master the art of concealing and paradoxically reavealing the unsaid. i strike at the surface but i try to grip what's underneath. these emotions are evasive; to capture them directly (if said, if explained like useless adjectivtes) would result in mediocrity. beneath the surface, they are meant to throb and pulse, even shine through - animating stillness, stilling despair, essaying loneliness, celebrating life. poets like sylvia plath are able to transform the most innocent of objects into instruments of rage, w.h. auden compares unrequited love to the night sky, t.s. eliot writes out the confession of a lonely man's life, fatima lim transforms love into the fragility of a bonsai plant.

it should not be necessary to determine who is intended, who inspired the author to will the poem into existence. every poem is a confession.

perhaps poems are letters not meant to be answered - to bare one's soul, as a matter of life and death, past the point of expecting any reply or reciprocity from the intended. the intended would then merge into, and form part of larger collective experience - real or imagined, to the sender. the sender-author is meant to transcend his/her own limitations, seek liberation from personal cages, turn his/her biography into the biography of the world.

this is the transformative power of poetry - and art - in that the artist who draws his or her own blood sheds it for all to wonder, and perhaps weep...

[i wrote this in 2005]

i write my poetry as weak-kneed confession.

but there is nothing to confess, really.

there is nothing real about what i write and the way i write. i try to strike at parts of myself, the parts that i think i reveal, but i reveal nothing, really.

or more accurately, there is nothing to reveal.

and that's why i can abandon my poetry and take it up again, and abandon it again and again.