While you cover your profile pictures with transparent flags
ranting how terrorism should stop
retweeting and reposting those gory pictures of the victims
keeping up with the latest news
and trying to flow with the trend
like if this was the new ice bucket challenge
but with blood water.

In all honesty,
Do you really pity the victims?
Do you really feel the sorrow?
Were your families even part?
Were your friends even part?
Were you a part?

Or are you doing it for the sake of Likes?

Only truly
if you hate terrorism,
act like as you really do
because you look stupid,
hating what social media tells you to hate.

And only truly
if you hate terrorism,
You would do something more than a click from social media.

If terrorists terrorize to change the world into their own,
what are we doing to change ours?

I.

Sickly, dark-skinned Joseph
Bustos was in a suit,
picked his phone from his
Pocket and asked us to take
Him a selfie as he motioned
To the statue of an eerily staring,
Possibly demonic Ronald
McDonald languidly swaying
On a faux-park bench. Collective

Laughter - "Are you serious,
"Man?" We said, having all heard
Full well stories of
****** painted clown statues
Moving its creaky bones
At the crack of dawn only
To devour our soul. "Are
"You serious,
"Bustos?" we genuinely taunted -
"Well I'll have a mirror," he told us
"So don't worry." I never

Quite got what that meant.

II.

The laughter and tales of
Business school and
Med school continued full on
Into the late (school) night,
Dense tails of superglued
Frog brains, Chinese economics,
Girl problems in the
Philippine stock exchange drowning
The macabre absurdity
Of the take out
Terror, Ronald

Staring blankly into the crevasse of
The night, and we absurd,
Blanketing in laughter scarred and scared
Wanting to approach
The chained playground but shivering
At the slightest hints
Of movement - which of

Course

Came. And Jack
Yeung (The largest, yellowest
Of us all, perhaps smartest too,
Studying in Hong Kong)
Leapt, at which we laughed,
And made jokes about how
The cockroaches
Matched the color of
Our country's skin, made it
Crawl not just because
Of its stick thin haunches,
But its brownness,
Seediness, inconcealable

III.

To which we laughed - yellowed
Out, almost as pale
As the sticky ice
Cream cups that adorned our
Table, pale not though,

From lineage but rather
The collective rosiness of our
Disillusioned, ice
Cream-fed cheeks, and the fear
Of darkness, and eerie
Whitefaced Ronald, and
Brown cockroaches and

Spirits that could move
Frozen marble faces. Bustos
Gestured quietly
To his cellphone,
Gazed downward and muttered
Something about
Fraternities and connections.

IV.

Behind our mutterings,
The Movement: children,

Coffee-stained and tattered rag
Shorts slit open like grass stained
Skirts, holding their bony
Hands and kissing Ronald's
Hollowed cheeks like he was
An ancient god. "Stop,"
I imagine us warning them,
"Evil spirits, dark and deep
"As night itself, haunt his body.
"Stay away - we've studied
"His countenance plenty."

They would only laugh though,
And continue to stroke
His paint-chipped cheek,
Brown - not
Ghost-thinned cockroach,
But rather rich
Like brewing coffee and
Fertile

Soil.

Onward, soldier.
Onward.

That’s what they all
tell me, but
let me
slow down for a moment.
There’s a little something I gotta
say,

Thank you.

To that swing set in Greenhills Music Studio
San Juan City,
without you,
I’d never have learned that sometimes
it’s the other way around—
feet in the sky and head on the ground.

Mrs. Arambulo, the swing set’s owner,
who made sure I was well versed in
sonatinas and arpeggio scales
before I found out they’d already made
a piano that didn’t need tuning, and

Ma, who’d test my memory by
asking me if I
could recite
whole paragraphs at age four,
she’s why I remember things like
the smell of pilmeni,
the color of our first house’s carpet,
and nine page spoken word poetry,

to everyone behind that old kids’ show, Bayani,
watching it in my
second grade HEKASI class
would bring me to tears each time — no kidding,
you all paved the way for my homeland’s history
to make its home in my heart,

my English teachers from
sixth all the way to eleventh grade,
who all believed and still believe in the words I put down on paper
and spew out on dark stages armed with imagery and the Spirit,
you made me fall deeper in love with the way words can be waves
or flames,

Dad, who taught me
to climb mountains, to read books,
to let myself run free among the nations
but to always remember to leave a part of my heart at home,

to the four little boys I met in Hong Kong,
if we meet again, I owe you a better explanation to your question,
“Why do you dance?”
thank you for asking me that, and I’m sorry for my cowardly answer back then
but I’m braver now, and
I promise it’s for more than just fun or exercise,
it’s for this God I hope you get to know,

and to every Philippine history teacher I’ve ever had,
keep teaching like that,
we need more young ones who’d be willing
to die for their homeland,
you taught me that there is so much more to this country
than its own people tell me, so
burn on.
and make sure they catch fire.

Onward, soldier.
Onward.*

I’m not sure where I’m headed,
but I’d rather be uncertain of the road ahead
than forget
where
I started.
I’ve told you mine, now

tell them yours.

I.
gravity
helps me realize
where exactly
you are.

and newton,
well newton
for all his
hang ups on
the temptations of
eve,

i guess got
it right
first:

what separates me
and you
and the rest of the world
is not
hope or magic

but rather
the pendulum swings of
chance

(arbitrary force)

the oscillations maybe
of a rickety train platform
on which our
footprints
converge, diverge,
and resonate

like naturalized frequencies.

II.
frankly,

i

don't want to talk
about the physics of it all.

i just want to sit
alone,
on the steps of this train
station,

and gently soak in the
clickety clacks
of these intersecting lines.

i

just want to
watch
as their doors open
and close,

and feel the rhythms
of their machinated dance,
and

sort the footsteps
that sift out
according to shape, color,

distance.

III.
as we speak,
i have already begun
to count
how many
stops

still separate

you.

and i.