The Workshop

Fetish

The colors will not welcome me.
Again, I am detached
from the blue charms of childhood
and the yellow idols of adulthood.
Red: who loves it? too hot for the pure,
too much for the combination.
An obscenity -- the sunrise and the sunset
prefer the following hour, the distant memory.

The dead welcome me. Through cloud, through
cloud -- I can hear them. Can't you?
How did you grow up to lose your toys,
to dye your hair and shed your voice?
(If the grown can grow anymore
than fat and numb) All it should take
to reach them is a step or two, a step
or two towards you, my love, my distant memory.

Fetish

The colors will not welcome me.
Again, I am detached
from the blue light of childhood
and the yellow light of manhood.
Red: who loves it? too hot for the pure,
too much for the combination.
An obscenity -- the sunrise and the sunset
prefer the following hour, the distant memory.

The dead welcome me. Through cloud, through
cloud -- I can hear them. Can't you?
How did you grow up to lose your toys,
to dye your hair and shed your voice?
(If the grown can grow anymore
than fat and numb) All it should take
to reach them is a step or two, a step
or two towards you, my love, my distant memory.

Bitter Parody

The child who hated love shall now live on
despised by what he'll love the most when grown!
the beast declared. What do I love the most?
the sipping of the tea? the champagne toast?
Perhaps to look upon your stone, to read
the signs I carved beside your date: my heart,
your hand, the midge upon my shoulder, and
the drop of oil that pours out from your hair
onto my sweetened lap. Sometimes, I dig
in hopes the rot of ages have not yet,
not yet! touched your pale skin --
declared you martyr praying for my sin
upon the lap of God, making him grin.
But then the caretaker of the park denies
me lover's rights -- and Gothic ties.

How I love
to look upon your stone, to read the signs
I carved beside the date: that heart of mine,
that hand of yours, that delicate
midge upon my shoulder, and the oils
that poured from your perfumy hair
onto my sweetened lap. Sometimes, I dig
in hopes the rot of ages have not yet,
not yet! touched your pale skin,
declared you martyr praying for my sin
upon the lap of God -- making him grin.
But then the caretaker of the park denies
me lover's rights, and Gothic ties.

The Wheel

The wheel will not relent. I shout,
I am no heretic! I am no heretic!
but with their choosing ears the priests are set.
In this pagan court with a Christian tune,
is he who will not commit worth all the spite?
Why, my Lord, did you make me a slave?
As with my brothers, I should rather be
some hired hand, some still unequal soul
who found his due not in the master's whip
nor in the errant bowl of stew, but in the piece
of silver with a woman's head engraved,
with a woman's breast -- now I see.
I am no witch! I am no witch! she shouts,
but with their chisel eyes the priests are set.

Needs

That I should grow to love a singer
so distant -- hate a maid
so near. What an irony,
the unfocused eye!
What a truth --
 
Last edited:
The Dead


The dead feast on my flesh,
and I had bared it for them.


Once it was summer. Once, swings and whispers
brought enjoyment. But the cellar
opened, the notepad widened, and some ill-fated
woman in an ancient Greek dress
creeped in. Murderess! The basket fell,
a pomegranate rolled, and the text
was filled with themes --
Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve.

(Always with the em dashes!
And that love of punctuation....)

Writing should not be a toil. Days pass
and he's made nothing. He begins to fear
the red-haired woman with a Fury's eyes
would scold him for his lateness. Like a poem,
she should ask: "What kept you? What kept you?"
and, in bitter prose, he should deflate
to simple truth: "My Virtue failed."

So his mind changes subjects. In the beginning,
God created the heavens and the earth: as his spirit
hovered over the face of the waters, he said,
"Let there be light", and there was light --
and all writing came from that great light
like scars, brands on experience.

(Always with the em dashes!
And that love of punctuation....)

He scatters lamps across the ocean, in the hope
that she should follow. Should she follow?
Should she cross into his foggy land
and sacrifice her world of thought for flesh?
dye her hair, powder her skin, and wear
nails for bracelets, strips of leather
for a shirt? But all his wood is burned!
his hill has melted to a muddy flood,
his tomb, collapsed to reveal
flesh-and-bone-and-cloth-consuming scarabs.

Moments pass. All his decisions, indecisions --
he considers them experiments. Ever the optimist,
he predicts that in another life....

(What a splendid skill! not to spill
a single drop of blood, not to evoke
the memory of speech, of prophecy.)
 
Last edited:
Departure


Away in a manger
from morning, here the only Light
gives up no light at all -- away from home
or from Egypt, like fly paper the censor's laws
stick us to daddy's limbo -- away even
from time, above the bright Stars are stopped
over some cloud-covered corner far east --

God's got quite the flair
for contrast.


Baguio Botanical



Not the twinning with Ontario,
not the chinked Chow Mein gazeebo,
not imported willows, not the daisies,
not the resinous pines, not the old peace garden
foolish tourists defile, not the sample tunnel,
the idol-shops, the clear steel gates,
the myriad faces strutting by
catch my eye -- all leisure's false
where so much business lies. Yet crow,
cool upon the Chrysler tree, caws
casual-loud for that rare touch
of woman feather on the beak.


Traffic on Kennon Road


wind wind wind --
there's nothing here to
feel or see
than the wind through leaves or the winding
of the road round rocks and falls,

and with that future accident, we're stuck
to some cold lip-drying limbo
until that fly-trap city appears,
our hallowed destination.
 
Last edited:
Metempsychosis

All is cloaked in golden light. A memory
flutters by -- some jealous angel opened up
my eye -- then fills a thumbelina-cup
with tears. A decade or two, a decade or two

is born upon the thought -- a hundred
yes-I-wills and yes-I-dos
and even glimmers of me and you,
of early autumn dew -- fast hardened

by the thousand years of wounds
that my every inch of skin has kept,
this stretched out soul had stepped,
long before my youth, beyond birth.

Yet into what? A million is a night
to what the saints and Sons-of-God have coursed,
and prophecy, damned art, remains a door
to some dead heaven. How can we two fight?
 
Last edited:
Foursome edits:

Up Mountains


1. Daragang Magayon: Prologue

Magayon grew up to be
a beautiful woman.

Men loved her. Men
fought for her. Ulap
fought Linog, Pagtuga
for her. He won.
She ran to him.

An arrow followed. Ulap
embraced her, drew
the same point through
his heart. Together,
they fell.

Pagtuga burned.
Linog shook the earth.
A mountain grew,
black as the night,
obscured by white cloud.

2. Maria Cacao: After Typhoon Sendong

Cacao lumber scattered
along the surface -- woman
naked springing out
of muddy water -- white
elder love invades.

Without music, the shadow
of her breast crosses
her navel, her boat
stirs her river
to the sea, and her voice

rings out: come,
send me your poor,
your sick, your suffering
children and old men,
let me lighten your burden.

Her mountain, shape
of heaven -- what a burden.

3. Maria Makiling: Ecological Study in Los Banos

If I were not this coarse a man,
always switching between
good Christian and vile Pagan
with every change of company,
would you have appeared to me,

hot white lady of the mountain,
when I shut off my headlamp
and scrambled down slopes invaded
by American mahogany? But there is
a second error of my nature

insurmountable: I can never be
as humble as your farmer. Even you
couldn't guess at the strange speech
of the pale white man who pitched
his tent so close to your hut,

at the intellectual's lingua franca
as vital to me as my sex.

4. Maria Sinukuan: The White Man's Burden

Surrender now, for God is with us:
his bird, the eagle, is our light.
The black feathered boa that constricts
your throat with ticklish grip, that thins
heaven's air -- the glassy knife

that slides across the skin, that severs
your precious sex -- the lying Jew
and honest Christian purified
by a little cracker, cup of wine --
God shall turn them all to swine!

just as he shaved surrender's head
with summer rain and snow-like ash,
transformed her figs fat on the twigs
into slabs of spotted white,
then entered her dark cave

not with a torch
but with a snuffing breeze.


Babal

for Kim


1. Mother Earth

-- Babylon stole her architects
from Egypt, her engineers from Greece, her doctors
and priests from Israel: that is why our tongues
are tied with Şibboleths. Truly, meat

is the sweetest sin, and Plato,
Plotinus, Valentinus, lied to us. They promised us
angels for wives, mortal gods for husbands, yet all we got
were grave old men, anxious Jocastas.

2. Grave Old Men

-- my mother
and father plagued me
when they raised me.
Or rather blessed:

the knowledge of old age
confused youth's understanding.
Yet have I grown enough to shave
this hircine curse's shape

into a Spanish beard? Galleons sail
on Pacific currents concretized
across Katipunan Avenue
between my Philippines and your Mexico.

3. Mexico

-- what a Şibboleth! Our old school's shattered stones
are now the home to snake-like trumpet vines, just as your English
is no longer the same as mine, and your Bible grows
overshorn, incomplete. Truly, meat

is the sweetest sin, so that when Lucifer
confused his craving for a love, he was cast down
to diabetic hell. The King and Queen of Corinth
were far from old when they raised me,

Teiresias the sex-changing cataract no man
but child: Plato did speak truth
when he said fleshly woman is a child.
Dare I subscribe? You know how tragedy works:

I am become an Indio Abelard,
grafted to cursed flesh, to shattered stone,
and you remain afloat, a child of God,
a blinding angel, mute and genderless.

4. Hermaphrodite

-- what a devilish love! It was no storm
but flesh-dissolving bile that broke
the Tower of Babel, that spread
(like pâté) men across the earth.


World War 3


0. Another Stranger Song

Did Leonard Cohen weep when he heard
what happened here -- what happened there --

the man's so Zen
I don't think he went to heaven.
I don't think he needed God
when he cried out Hallelujah
on nine/eleven --
he cried out of posterity.

It's the Chelsea Hotel he missed
when the bell tolled for him, when he sank
deep into Abraham's bosom --

2. Reply to a Postcard

How could you
walking dead on red saliva dew
still smell blue
when that cold breath
you call a taut string death
snaps at Jew
and laughs?
Neck and neck,
some greater horror waits for me,
I'm sure. Shot in the head, at least you
had a Fanni and her fanny too
to comfort you -- while I,
I'm far too young.

1. Duino Castle

He grasped and let go, chose and achieved, but you,
you grasped and gave, held on and stole
some minute portion of the glory for yourself,
not caring about the Other. Distant, all you did
was fear, or weep, or wave with cleverness --
all we did. But hearing again God's call
and wrestling with his angel, now I see: there are the men
who do the deeds, and then there are the men
who tell them. Like you, I shan't sing fact
when the heroes are revealed, when these ravening rivers
of moral men and clowns are drowned in gas:
distant, I will paint the picture of another Samson
tearing down the pillars of Satan's tomb
then show it as truth to the rising dead.

3. Woodstock in Taguig

Tell me when it's time to march --
I will not march.
Show me what you're fighting for --
I will not march.
Give me your thoughts, give me your feelings --
I'll understand, and will not march.
Feel me with hope, teach me with love --
all the more, I will not march.
Threaten me with the doom of an age --
I will not march.

Witness this: on the road to Yasgur's farm,
Capitol Hill, Malacañang,
a black thing lies --
for what is stardust,
billion-year-old carbon,
but some ugly lump of coal?
 
Last edited:
The fruit...


The fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil

is sweet and golden,
sometimes shaped like a moon,
sometimes shaped like one's little finger.

As it ripens, it grows marred
by black spots, until it is as dark
as the night, or the earth, or perhaps the mysteries

that warn us not to unpeel -- such as the little-known fact
that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
is not a real tree.
 
Last edited:
Fetish (A Variation)


My family loves shells of me.
My God, he's grown quiet.
My church is shit.

My friends, they all live down river,
and storms took their boats.
My love --

she had red hair once. I don't know why
she dyed it, started wearing make up,
started using contacts.

She didn't leave me.
Still, I've forgotten
how her neck tastes,

how her pinch
feels like a midge
landing.
 
Last edited:
Notorious

Notorious for nervousness,
thank God I live out east!
or else some outlaw should arrive
and shoot me like a beast.


Vagrant

The dust of streets that blackens
fingers, faces, are but festered wounds
slit open by misery.


La Vita Nuova

The first rule of courtly love:
when you can, get a pre-nup.
The second rule of courtly love:
the lady is always secondary
to your audience.
The third (and final) rule of courtly love:
justice shall prevail,
particularly the operatic kind.
 
Last edited:
Pirithous and the Hidden Muse


Pirithous: The Trapped Hero

All is cloaked in golden light. A memory
flutters by -- some jealous angel opened up
my eye -- then fills a thumbelina cup
with tears. A decade or two, a decade or two

is born upon the thought -- a hundred
yes-I-wills and yes-I-dos
and even glimmers of me and you,
of early winter dew -- fast hardened

by the thousand years of wounds
that my every inch of skin has kept,
this stretched out soul had stepped
long before my birth, beyond youth.

Yet into what? A million is a night
to what the saints and sons-of-God have coursed,
and prophecy, damned art, remains a door
to some dead heaven. How can we two fight?

The Hidden Muse: Vita Nova

Hell can be traversed. Neon demons:
have no fear of them. Prisms may divide
but the space of air that lies beyond
unites again, and the golden light

that oozes out of my torch smells sweeter
than any touch of flowers. My all-surpassing beauty
shall prevail, the Lethe's soul-erasing waters
shall be drained, and the addled monkey

who burned the New Year's chicken shall be flayed.
Below the Holy Virgin's face, what has God made
that should compare with me? So what if death,
with oceanic fingers, wets

your pit of sand? Hell can be traversed:
my blue-eyed strong-browed face shall serve
as loving guide, and my perfume
shall be your purgatory.

Pirithous and the Hidden Muse


Pirithous: The Trapped Hero

All is cloaked in golden light. A memory
flutters by -- some jealous angel opened up
my eye -- then fills a thumbelina cup
with tears. A decade or two, a decade or two

is born upon the thought -- a hundred
yes-I-wills and yes-I-dos
and even glimmers of me and you,
of early winter dew -- fast hardened

by the thousand years of wounds
that my every inch of skin has kept,
this stretched out soul had stepped,
long before my youth, beyond birth.

Yet into what? A million is a night
to what the saints and sons-of-God have coursed,
and prophecy, damned art, remains a door
to some dead heaven. How can we two fight?

The Hidden Muse: Fanny's Fanny

Hell can be traversed. Neon demons,
I have no fear of them. Prisms may divide
but the space beyond unites once more
and sweeter than honey is the light

oozing out of my torch. We have lost
many, many more we have forgotten,
but let me make the river clear: her beauty,
all-surpassing, shall prevail. What has God made

below the Holy Virgin's face
that should compare? So what if the ape
forgot the cock in the oven -- so what if death
swept across the sand? Hell can be traversed,

and her face, her blue-eyed strong-browed face.
can be raped without touching. For spilling
her bottle of blood perfume, I'll burn
only in purgatory -- and la vita nuova awaits.
 
Last edited:
2017: A New Year (Another Variation)

Flaccid even with the fly,
he blames an allergy
or two, the green goo oozing
out and in, out and in.

March hare, do not blame the wind:
your love feels it too. Gray
stabs through both your youthful skins
while the moon grows paler.

The addled monkey forgot
the cock in the oven.
How many we have lost --
how many more, forgotten.

Yet spring has remained faithful.
The wind blooms your love's dress,
caresses calm your skin,
then steals all memory away.
 
Last edited:
Christian madness
convinces the Jews
not to convert.
 
Last edited:
Dark Field


I have been converted -- now, I believe
in no God. The metaphysical is madness,
the material is truth, and all religions
are one in their stupidity. Spirit:
who needs it? Light is a wheel
only when bent by gravity -- otherwise,
it is a wave, a vector, a line,
and the dutiful scientist gives
no answers.

Condensed, light splits
through the annular ring, sculpts
a cone of shadow, then passes
through the specimen, produces
a bright image in a dark field. Resolution
is improved, at cost of color. Solomon
must be proud.


Circles


Abandon all hope, ye who enter here...

Hell is the happiest place on
earth, and God restricts his
servants because he knows
that to taste of hell is to taste of a bliss
his dead heaven cannot provide. For
God is a jealous God, and he will not
have some named emanation steal
his thunder. But someone already
has, and the thief's name is
Alessandro Volta, whose
discoveries on electromagnetism
led to the creation of the telephone,
the grid, the connected computer -- the
pornographic network. First there was Dante,
and long before them Aeneas: always
some citizen or future citizen of the boot or
phallus shaped country enters hell, returns
with a boon. Now I'd like to think Fellini
or perhaps Pasolini. Why would our Senate
propose to ban pornography, when they
are the Malebranche who suck most
its sap? When they are the three-headed
hounds who lick its bones?


Glück and the Dybbuk


Is Glück a Jewish name?
She speaks of silent gods --

I always thought Glück was a Jewish name.
Later, I learned it was Germanic, guessing
that it could still be Jewish, it is the
mother-Jewess makes the Jew. The German-father
could remain a Christian, even Pagan -- do Jews
think Christian Pagans, instead of Heretics?
Doubtless, both
would think me Heretic -- but the Jew
should love me more: circumcised, my heresy
is more orthodox.
 
Last edited:
La Vita Nuova (in no way a good one)


If it is in these rites of passage that I
should find my new life, my new love
--that gold-lit, red-haired, blue-drowned scene--
if it is in graduation, or marriage, or setting out
to some deluded vision of Arcadia,
then let this young life, this virgin soul, decay
via syphilis, via aids, via any sickness of pleasure.
Let my heroic figure be surpassed
by some small-breasted figure more potent,
or some quirk-eyed intelligence more even,
such that I should delight in seeing the world grow smaller,
the humans grow more evil, while my former subjects
should witness not the overthrowing of a king
but the careful hand of destiny.
Then let love consume all --
yes, yes, la vita nuova awaits.


Summer's End (another sour draft)


"I lost my puppy!" said the man
who, on all fours, stopped-searched stopped-searched,
sniffed and licked, lifted up a leg, pointed
with his hand -- even wagged
a (pony)tail. "I lost my puppy!" said the man,
the taking-up-his-masters, the married-
to-his-mortgage, the soon-to-have-a-child --
"Daddy, where'd you bury him?"
 
Sal(i)vation


God's taste in dramatic irony dictates
that though the world shall be destroyed by fire,
first floods of water formed by melting ice
should drown the coast and river valley towns.
And if those liberal citizens complain,
those baby-hatin', free-lovemakin' fags,
then all the more should hosts of angels laugh
while country voters roast Christ's paradise.
 
Nymphetomania


There's few years separating these two lovers,
five and fourteen and a hundred blend together
as easily as blood and water. But look no more
than twelve years later, and all the youth
he once loved in her's gone: the rosebush wilted

at the unnerving mixture, got switched
with a self-destroying hunger. How he dreams now
of days when girls were younger -- how he is choked
by that raised chin, by those tremendous eyes,
by the pale fingers he hopes to crack "I crave you".
 
Last edited:
Warrioress

It's the binding of the breast
and the bleeding of the womb...

Smiths should never shape
the plate to a woman's chest
lest fell blows glance toward the chin --
and what stub of cloth
could withstand the red moon, the wet inferno?

But don't forget the cup
pennyroyal -- more than battle,
a virgin mother's necessary loss.
It terrifies and amazes,
terrifies -- and amazes...

eventually, amazes.

It's the binding of the breast
and the bleeding of the womb...

That smiths should never shape
the plate to a woman's chest
lest blows glance toward the chin --
and what stub of cloth could withstand
the red moon, the wet inferno?

But don't forget the cup
pennyroyal -- much more than battle,
a virgin mother's necessary loss.
It terrifies and amazes,
terrifies -- and amazes...

eventually, amazes.

It's the binding of the breast
and the bleeding of the womb
that's the hardest for a woman of the moon.
If smiths had any sense, they'd never shape
the plate according to a woman's chest,
or else fell blows would glance toward the chin;
and if the day were wet, the stub of cloth
should slip instead of stick within the ring
and never was a red day dry as flame.

Oh! and don't forget
there's the pennyroyal cup --
warrioress, more than battle,
a virgin mother's necessary loss,
it terrifies and amazes,
it terrifies -- and amazes...
eventually, it amazes.

1
There's the binding of the breast
and the loosing of the prune
that's the hardest for a woman with our ties,
for a woman in the mail,
for a woman of the moon,
for a woman with her spear, her sword, her lies.

If smiths had any sense, they'd never shape
the plate according to a woman's chest,
or else fell blows would fly toward the chin;
and if the day is wet, the stub of cloth
should slip instead of stick within the ring,
and never was the red day dry as flame.

Oh! and don't forget
there's the pennyroyal cup --
warrioress, more than battle,
it terrifies and amazes,
it terrifies -- and amazes....
eventually, it amazes.

2
apple of my father's eye -- a fly, a fly, came flying by
my eye, greening like the wood, like the dread
prune beneath my thigh (crimson eye), like the juice
upon my hand, like the holy ring
and holly bough upon my moly sing -- and my leather
hand reached out, touched my thigh and sang

holy holy holy is the eye, and the fly, and the chain
that crosses bits to digits, carries forth
the song my mother sang me one dread night, before my flight,
before my crimson cloak came caught its color, and my thigh
peeled the pomme de terre, peeled his balls,
peeled it for a babe a prune a thigh --

not a dancer but a warrioress
should impale the mother country blind!
not the daughter of her father's eye
nor the crimson mata of the dawn
should allow the Spanish Hermes sup,
should produce a prune beneath the thigh
 
I've actually been quite busy, but I'll have to ask for permission as to whether or not I could post the stuff I've recently written. I'm writing to join a certain organization, and I'm not sure how they treat works submitted for membership. Rather, works submitted for the tasks given by individual members -- there's also works one submits for workshop, which once edited should eventually be put in a little magazine. And for that second work, all of the pieces I took from this very workshop. I'll wait until I've done something with what critiques they offer me on workshop day before I post that new edition. For now, I'll repost Nymphetomania's original edition, plus a new edition of "A Round for Dublin".

A Round for Dublin


When ancient cities were small
and most modern cities, not cities at all,
you were the smallest: a model

by which our country should grow
out of this putrid mess of snow
that is Pinatubo's discharge. Know

that you're well and truly loved, e'en
by those who'd rather have seen
all those damn Nationalists hanged on a tree,

at least with Ni Houlihan having proved
not only that she could win on the road
but also produce U2.
 
Nymphetomania

The scene: a reincarnated Millais looks at his past pictures, dreams of his past muse....

Sophie_Gray.jpg


There's few years separating these two lovers,
five and fourteen and a hundred blend together
as easy as blood and water. But look no more
than twenty-three years later, when all the youth
he once loved in her's gone: the rosebush wilted

at the unnerving mixture, got switched
with a self-destroying hunger. Now he dreams
of days when girls were younger -- he's choked
by that raised chin, by those tremendous eyes,
by the pale fingers he hopes will crack "I crave you".

Sophy_Caird_1880.jpg
 
Last edited:
chimichanga, bloodmoon, and the beat: portrait of a high school crush


[chimichanga]

so i guess my friend got deal with body image but i think in my
limited experience i never met a gal who didn't think hey what other
people think there was this time
when i made an offhand joke about my crushes body and she shushed me
though she wasn't the kind of person who would shush such a joke
especially from a guy like me especially since
she didn't look especially wrong to me i mean i'm plump and she said
it before while we were waiting in the garden she was lying her head
against my tum tum i'm plump
but i guess she really did say i'm plump and i just kept enjoying her
prodding my tum tum

[bloodmoon]

been more sensitive been more dialectical way felt each other never
clarified i mean my later was just outside the open field opened up
the sky the metal flagpole rose
school home services came along and on either side like two great
mountain ranges still unmined urban and delight were our classhalls
deep beneath than even the canteen
in turn above a flat blue plain a purgatory where she should take up
the mantle of a girl a glowing hair a glistening brow a shining blue
eyes and not appear before me red

but to quote a later and more conscious in a very fashion focus on
the hairs growing on her lip,
............................../and no i say no i will no
of course she would have said to me how she should not she was too
anxious was too shy and should i say sweet darling you and i should
be one body sound and mind

[the beat]

brokenus, on opposite ends of the big hotel's banquesting hall, and
minute cracks on the paraqueet floor, where the gymdressed dancers
stepped
gooselike on opposite toes, where we gents panicked in the
shouldileads or pullupaseats, where with opposite eyes your lies
unraveled
not with a salivacious bang but with a simmer, sittindone red-dressed
red-eyed you, black lines streamindone face paint blue, werebloomsead
subverted,
little slippers pandering to many askers, we two ununited at a looss
for words

and i wish i had you until so, but your other asked you thinup so,
and the night is young and the pic sinks low, as the promenade beat
tenders low
and thriller plays: wolf howls and prowls and the kids all eighties
looks take up the midnight dance, run dead then rising moonlight
white
then unifying black, i'm creeping up behind you i say and you laugh,
i have forty eyes and fangs i say and you laugh, night creatures
calling,
and the possession of laughter and laughtersend the dead turn to the
masquerade
 
The International

There’s a song waiting to be written
about that time I went to Moscow for two weeks. Now there’s a song
that would make you laugh, that would make you cry,
that would anger and inspire
all at the same time – it would be filled
with psychological insights, as I am wont to uncover,
with mythological references, as I am wont to insert,
and with scatological jokes, as I am wont to create,
provoking the moralist and exciting the intellectual
in equal, escalating fashion.
..................................................It shall be composed
in common time, in C-major, in proper sonata or ballad form,
all to make it easy to remember, even anthemic.
Yes, it shall be the anthem of a nation,
at least of a nation’s generation,
describing our feelings of alienation
from idealization and globalization,
from industrialization and Westernization,
all in perfect prosody, using simple rhyming words.

It shall comment first on the places that I visited,
the summer forests of Zvenigorod Oblast,
the mysterious beauty of Savvino-Storozhevsky,
the urban sprawl of Moscow City proper,
the Old World authority of the Tretyakov Gallery,
the Oriental gaudiness of St. Basil’s Cathedral,
the false aspersions of the Kremlin-under-renovation,
the commanding gaze of Pushkin’s statue in Tverskoy,
the world’s busiest McDonald’s – then on the people,
how different they are from us Filipinos,
how much taller, how much stronger, how much whiter,
the women how much more graceful, how much more sensual,
and, overall, how much less hospitable, how their strangers
always refuse to communicate with anyone who knows only English –
and finally, on the politics.
...............................................Yes, it shall be relevant!
It shall say things, provide food for thought, spark
discussions – like Kefir, it shall leave a bad taste in the mouth
then make the inexperienced diner’s tummy rumble,
rushing him to the toilet – ultimately, cleansing him of impurities
and replenishing his intestinal flora. Flora! Putangina –

There’s a song waiting to be written
about the time this young illustrado
got enlightened by his European visit
one hundred and thirty-five years too late,
not even to a nation wholly European,
not nearly as brilliant as any illustrado,
and completely irrelevant to anyone but himself.