V for Vendetta*

Vengeance:

                   Violent,

                                 Virulent;

                                               Vigorous,

                                                              Vicious.


*Note: Yup, as inspired by that movie I haven't watched based on that comic book I haven't read -- yet.

*  *  *

Check out My Personal Anthology (12 Poems). 

This blog is sponsored by Limitado

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and S.P.R.A.W.L.-MMA

3rd floor JN Building, 657 EDSA corner Monte De Piedad Street, Barangay Immaculate Concepcion, Cubao, Quezon City

                                             

Missteps

I've been watching you, bird's-eye view, walking

this forsaken street to god-knows-where, walking

this crooked street on which sidewalk (northbound)

I stand with my best impression of a dignified vertical erection.

(As if this depressed neighborhood gives a damn.

Except perhaps for the little children who benefit

from the extra playing time, at dusk, that I "facilitate,"

as to "provide" is too pompous. Those feral creatures,

playing hide and seek, and whoever's it cheats every time:

looks around even before "Ten!")

This street of the slums of the un/semi-employed,

teems with the lumpenproletariat: men naked

from the waist up, sizzling with the sun all day,

playing streetball or downing gin or both.

And at night their little children play hide and seek,

and their adolescents seek and destroy and bleed.

I'm small consolation, a two-month old token project

courtesy of Quezon City Hall, with the assumed function

of making this street safer. Or helping the predators

see and hunt their prey better. Whatever, I stand here

alone with my best impression of a dignified erection.

And I've been watching you, bird's-eye view.

Took a fancy to you who walks with a polo shirt,

formal pants, and shiny black leather shoes.

You're one of the few anomalies in this neighborhood

of shanties: beehive of thin plywood pieces topped 

by corrugated metal roofs topped by tires and rocks

to keep them in place. They keep them in place. 

The two pickpockets, ex-cons whom they can't seem 

to keep in place, who pee on my base when drunk, 

used to tease you every time you pass by, envious. 

The past month you've been returning home at night 

later than usual, and the past week I haven't stared at 

nor shed my incandescent light on you. And last Friday night, 

the two pricks, after pissing on my feet, talked about you 

and your wife, and the police car and ambulance 

that paid your home a visit earlier at dawn. You 

had another, they said, and she had a stormy fit

that the weather bureau failed to detect, much less name.

This Thursday morning, a rare wind blew and swept 

pages of a week-old tabloid to my feet. But I can't read it

from my bird's-eye view; still unbending with my dignified erection 

-- and the maya perched on my head was illiterate.

(Photo by Mike Gubat for InterAksyon.com.)

*  *  *

Check out My Personal Anthology (12 Poems). 

This blog is sponsored by Limitado

phone nos. 09167840522/ 023588753

and S.P.R.A.W.L.-MMA

3rd floor JN Building, 657 EDSA corner Monte De Piedad Street, Barangay Immaculate Concepcion, Cubao, Quezon City

Erring

I (drip form)

Let me, with the subtlest -- almost intangible, mute --
request to cross the line, have my fingertips
stutter step, all over you. Stuttering,
my tongue as are my fingers,
discovering, mounts, valleys,
forests, mouths. If sunlight,
even the most timid of its
rays, pierce, dagger-like,
this room, then perhaps
the gods will find us
quivering, moist,
and disapprove.
Sweet sinning,
but sinning
just the
same.

II (sonnet)

I, with the most subtle, intangible,

Request, shall cross the line, with fingertips

Running stutter steps, all over your skin.

           Stuttering, my tongue as are my fingers,
Discovering mounts, hidden recesses,
Coarse throbbing slopes, rivulets and wet mouths.

           If the sunlight, even the most timid

Of its rays, pierce, dagger-like, this bedroom, 

Then perhaps the gods will find us naked,

Quivering, warm, moist, with one another,

And disapprove and threaten punishment.

          Oh to consume beauty, and be consumed by

Beauty, right or wrong, in heaven or hell!

Sweet sinning, but it's sinning just the same...

*  *  *

Check out My Personal Anthology (12 Poems). 

This blog is sponsored by Limitado

phone nos. 09167840522/ 023588753

and S.P.R.A.W.L.-MMA

3rd floor JN Building, 657 EDSA corner Monte De Piedad Street, Barangay Immaculate Concepcion, Cubao, Quezon City

Modern Dovetailing

More breadcrumbs on my laptop; the keyboard, specifically.
Soon, there'd be ants, crawling out the gully tween S and D --
Just like the last time, when fingers peanut butter-sticky
pounded on the black keys of white letters mercilessly.

Eating while doing something else is
almost a sacrilege in my country.

Now I know why.

*  *  *

Check out My Personal Anthology (12 Poems). 

This blog is sponsored by Limitado

phone nos. 09167840522/ 023588753

and S.P.R.A.W.L.-MMA

3rd floor JN Building, 657 EDSA corner Monte De Piedad Street, Barangay Immaculate Concepcion, Cubao, Quezon City

Floating Coffins

I.

Because there are more atheists in heaven, a religious mob drove

both sinners and saints to the mercy of the sea. Stateless, they drifted

on land allegedly not their own. Landless, they drift on disputed

waters everyone claims to own. (If they can fly, not necessarily

on airplanes, they would, and risk getting shot down for not identifying

themselves properly upon entering an Air Defense Identification Zone.

Stateless, so no passports in their hands or pockets while wings flap

and bleed from their backs.)

Boats, floating detention centers of mothers cramped and cradling their babies 

whom they can't rock to sleep for lack of elbow room.

Boats, wooden vessels as unremarkable as their passengers are unsuspecting

of being deliveries of live meat to expecting brothels.

II. 

And even among their own, dreamers not of mansions and luxury cars but of

meals three times a day were sweet-talked to a ride, sweet-talked for a ride,

sweet-talked and taken for a boat ride -- by their very own.

Boats, among which Mohammad Tayub rode and immediately realized

the shattering of his dreams till his parents eked out the ransom.

Boats, pachinko balls filled with the dead and dying bouncing from one unwelcoming

island to another unwilling to add more suffering to its shores.

(Centuries ago, in other parts, unwilling passengers

thought of the sea as land: blue and quivering but solid enough 

to carry their feet. So they jumped overboard for their last sprint --

downward.)

*  *  *

Check out My Personal Anthology (12 Poems). 

This blog is sponsored by Limitado

phone nos. 09167840522/ 023588753

and S.P.R.A.W.L.-MMA

3rd floor JN Building, 657 EDSA corner Monte De Piedad Street, Barangay Immaculate Concepcion, Cubao, Quezon City

9:00 am

Confused midmorning sky,
sun strains with its reach and sweep:

white clouds immaculate to dirty,
grey clouds light to dark.

Maybe it will rain.

Maybe it won't.

Maybe.

*  *  *

Check out My Personal Anthology (12 Poems). 

This blog is sponsored by Limitado

phone nos. 09167840522/ 023588753

and S.P.R.A.W.L.-MMA

3rd floor JN Building, 657 EDSA corner Monte De Piedad Street, Barangay Immaculate Concepcion, Cubao, Quezon City

Dawnbreaker I & II

Dawnbreaker I

Milo has stopped badgering me about the ball

I've promised to buy him "Next week," week after week.

He's already in bed, asleep.

Nearing midnight, and again the cockroaches crash

against the cage of our prickly hedgehogs; crude tings

of a percussion triangle.

Past midnight, the brain strain, weary and watery eyes,

and runny nose gather saltwater in my mouth. 

Incipient sinusitis.

Reaching morn and laptop's still on, screen still shining 

bright, and the mouse gets comfy and watches with me.

Nocturnal creatures, we.

A little fear of dawn is stirred, fear of staying 

awake till it breaks, another vigil will pass. 

Enervating over nothing.

But I'm hooked; insomnia is now my drug of choice:

I just can't get enough dose of not enough sleep.

(Not even a small drop of doze.)

Dawnbreaker II

Milo has stopped badgering me about the ball

I've promised to buy him "Next week," week after week.

He's already in bed, asleep.

Nearing midnight, and again the cockroaches crash

against the cage of our prickly hedgehogs; crude tings

of a percussion triangle.

Past midnight, the brain strain, weary and watery eyes,

and runny nose gather saltwater in my mouth. 

Incipient sinusitis.

Reaching morn and laptop's still on, screen still shining 

bright, and the mouse gets comfy and watches with me.

Nocturnal creatures, we.

A little fear of dawn is stirred, fear of staying 

awake till it breaks, another vigil will pass. 

Enervating over nothing.

Now I surrender and lay beside my Milo
to sleep, recover my strength for another day:
No absence till the 30th.

Another grinding day at the factory line,
to work for food on the table, and save to buy
my little boy's first basketball.

*  *  *

Check out My Personal Anthology (12 Poems). 

This blog is sponsored by Limitado

phone nos. 09167840522/ 023588753

and S.P.R.A.W.L.-MMA

3rd floor JN Building, 657 EDSA corner Monte De Piedad Street, Barangay Immaculate Concepcion, Cubao, Quezon City

Science, Nursery Rhymes, and a Song of Praise

Unknown fact: The human brain
explodes when it reaches
breaking point, in remembrin'
all it conceives, perceives.

Remember when the chainsaw
jumped off your hands and severed
your head? And your friend Jill shrieked
then came tumbling after?

(You don't? Praise the Lord!)

Or that plunge down the meat grinder?
When all the Boss King's men
and bleating horses couldn't put
you together again?

(You don't? Hallelujah!)

Semi-known fact: the human heart
is in the human brain,
and likewise should be spared
mem'ries of all dismembrin'.

*  *  *

Check out My Personal Anthology (12 Poems). 

This blog is sponsored by Limitado

phone nos. 09167840522/ 023588753

and S.P.R.A.W.L.-MMA

3rd floor JN Building, 657 EDSA corner Monte De Piedad Street, Barangay Immaculate Concepcion, Cubao, Quezon City