He did not crow
For cooler coals or
Shorter flames.

To him, murderer's row
Was but a lifeline knit
From Virgil's careless brow.

Little did he know
That purgatory's final blow
Was covered in snow.

Thugs
Go to Stanford.

And the construction workers
I've seen
Are more likely to spend
Their downtime playing
Video games
Then smoking the ****.

And I've seen my
Fair share of manic,
Wide-eyed young Filipinos
Like myself,

A little browner,
A little more beautiful,
I'm a little more racist
But

It's not okay.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

I guess what I simply want to say
Is there is a simple joy
To watching fingers
Of all kinds
Mold and shape futures,

Whether it be in the form
Of softened concrete slabs
Or the hard writ
Of word,

Whether it taste
Of exhaust smoke
And leather

Or orange juice
The school
Is the sky

The blue sky and the
Fields and university
Is a gold-ringed
Fist and in this

Respect we all have
Our PhDs.

And as for this sheltered
Unsheltered rooftops
Holed like ozone
World we've all built together
Well,

We try to find words for it
And collapse.

To watch piano keys tune
Is like righting a broken bone:
Process somewhat crude
But still very much a need.

The maestro looms like a wolf,
Making every note weep
Though to the intensity he is aloof,
As if in a dream—

Or perhaps a nightmare;
He hears the shrieks and jumps,
Perhaps exaggerated by the glares
Of looming ghouls—necromancy.

The notes holding as if a pathos
Back to the world of the living.

A young Japanese boy
No older than 4
Fell behind his father,
Stumbling over the escalator leading
To our train.

First kid in a long time
To return my glance
With a wide-eyed grin.

He even stopped for a while,

Much unlike the ****** trains.

i.

the poem has a beginning exactly as you’d expect it:
pa in sweatshirt, ma with purse; the funny thing is
i never used to call them those names:
“pa,”
“ma,”
always found them too cowboy-ish,
too un-me, un-like

us: who held chopsticks before dinner time and shared
stories of how grandpa came over from china.

ii. (at the dinner table)

there is no symbolism here. there has been none
for a while now. this household eats and
eats in quiet. my grandmother is a poet but their
books all burned down

back in ’45 when mao stormed into fujian and
all her uncles could eloquent on was that
“the communists were coming!”
“the communists were coming!”
and instead of poems took with them their
children, and their gold to pawn

and their clothes on their muddy
mortar-stained backs

and the japanese

iii.

my grandfather now comes twice a week to the
hospital for chemotherapy. it is a nice hospital.
good view of the cleanest part of our *****

city. there are lights and white folks now. two things
my dad said did not used to be there. they

used to be spanish. they tilled
our rice fields and spent the money on living rooms
with lots and lots of space to sleep. we on the other hand,
worked. he claims.

your grandfather and his grandfather and i

iv.

awake every sunday morning at precisely 8:30.
made to go down to the temple in kalesas
and told to fetch the office paper for
noontime reading. see we weren’t spoiled: grew

up just next to the pasig river which back in
the 70s did not smell as bad as sin only
sweatshirts

and the sweat we soaked them in we reeled along
steamed fish heads and chopsticks for picking at them with
and bowls of rice we never really ate with spoons.

v. (back at the dinner table)

i listen to my mom and dad
sweat profusely in the evening heat only we can have here
he in his sweatshirt and she
with her golden purse,

preparing to leave - a wedding party awaits -
an jacket draped over his shirt just like grandfather used to do it
in a sense,
but gripping the chopsticks delicately for all us
to see:

“pa,”
“ma,”

v.

it is not cowboys that give us our names.

The flower is
Wrinkled,
Somewhat bleeding,
Odorless,
Bowed stem crippled,
Arthritic,
Greeting me a
Tremulous
"Good evening."

do i want to lie flat in your prison cells? perhaps not.
but i do know that the curse of our words is that
they will one day swap out our air for oxygen,
and we will breathe ink down our throats; gasping
for sound.

it is inevitable. these vestiges of mind matchless to those
who give chase - we who disappear like ghosts - one day
to resurface - our bodies in exchange. we will be beaten
by batons, cut open by silver: a cuff for a tongue. we perish
for our

                      speech.

I.
It was this Jabawockeez dance back in ’09
where all the members had red
tracksuits, and white masks.

They, popping and locking their way through
to the hiphop world title, a rhythm all their own:
a tight mesh of violins and dropped beats.

II.
Your evenings wake up like their dance routine -
all fuzzy, late edges and hard, sideways locks -
you the trapped light from an old photograph.

Your limbs are a tangle of red tracksuits and gloves,
sterile-white boots, but yellow masks: its sounds full
of their bedtime violins, your heavy beat sunrises.

III.
You take these pills to keep the mornings asleep.

reverse engineering:

tomorrow
i will know still your voice,
how your silence splits words
into pieces, as you break me
with your collared sweaters and polka dot
socks: tell me i am floating,
question my Gods, forbid me
from touching your church elders; your parents’
Lord.

today
i will know your laughter, a tad frail:
the voice of an unsteady
deity - your fingers - never stilling a pen,
nor sketching a hand - whittling
my own: your chin trembling as you chide me
for their largeness; i show you their erasures:
your lack of wayward lines; your work
of an artist.

yesterday
i tell you to sing, you tell me not to -
you arm yourself and lock away in your room,
say your poetry terrible,
wrong, un-joyful, cross-averted; they cracks
in all the wrong places like your flimsy
hands, like your hopes massive-disintegrating
like the feebleness in your dust-allergic bodies; your lack

of lungs: brittled long by heavy-handed
words and thin brushes: you with death -
the un-wayward stroke: You
who are sickly, whose quiet breaths reach
where we cannot find

and find the places where
our gods long to be touchable.

river run like a song.
watch the joy
leak from the wells
in your eyes,
and let it spill over like
ink and write
the pages of your story
in the history books
of heaven: oh,

you will be remembered.
you will be remembered.

an amalgamation
of all the blood that
runs through you:
the pasig,
the yangtze,
the pacific,
the sewers of manila,
john the baptist's,
tracing down your cheeks
and down your throat and
slowly you begin to choke:

the saltwater sticks to your
throat. you do nothing
but breathe,
breathe slowly and
try not to choke
but slowly swallow
the birthrights
that remain river
run,

river run
and remember
where you came from.

i remember the cut
on my knee
that God once kissed,
and how it tasted
agonizingly bittersweet:
like the start of time,
the stars exploding
as my wounds closed
up, like fire and rubble
and rock spinning aimlessly
around the great wide galaxy,
and i closed my eyes
and suddenly
i could see stars again
and i could see
You again.

At the end of the sidewalk
Is a ghoulish jig,
Unholy Ghost glaring at those
Who come—
Charlie Parker on the speakers.

He's clad in black with a scornful smile,
Eyes perpetually open
And searching for the youngest Child—
A giveaway:
The unchained dreamer.

Knee skidding the curb, a wince
And he pounces,
Long fingers sweeping
Her off her feet—
A farmer's daughter.

"Hush,"
Is all he says,
Pavement light.

"Hush,"
Is all He says,
Swathed in white.

There is a Seymour in all of us - not more a fragile name but perhaps not less. We are all equally cut, strings loosened past our own internal metronomes, flashing bits of poetry past those who will listen. Or rather, those who must listen - the longer no one does the faster these strings within us snap piece-by-piece. Soon we will become balloons that float away and pop. We, leaving Earth for space. Note that poetry is not just the meter that stirs heat and snaps foot-beats within our tongues - but the needles that ***** them too.

In these poems are buried stick figures and falsified diary entries - excepts of a language wrought from our own souls. Today I wore a baseball mitt scribbled with bright green verse as to not get lost running around the diamonds. We are all, in our own way, misunderstood and that’s where I feel Seymour’s got something over us. The innate, misread poetry of our collective consciousness is pervasive in his entire life. Maybe this is less of an introduction. Less of a poem even, than a eulogy for Seymour Glass - the most delicate man who ever lived.

He threw a stone at the one girl he truly loved, as we drew stick figures.

Sometimes you close your eyes,
Hoping for Nirvana

But then you realize
Kurt Cobain shot himself twice:
Once with ******,
Once with a shotgun.

You figure that if
Buddha can't save you,
Who will?

“And he was one of the bravest men I ever met."

Wands raised, we sing for thee who bows to death,
And greet him well hello with such a smile,
Whose smile bade such farewell we shan't forget,
A teacher - always, now - who loved beguiled:

His potions dangling coloured on the walls,
The marks of darkness shroud by hidden sleeve,
Who glided quiet, blue through hallowed halls,
And stared down pupils green like daybreak’s Eve.

The dawn she, and her forlorn chaser you,
Who sought her out as kin seeks too for kin,
Who found instead her brood, and harshly knew
Her steadfast love kept just by scars within.

Pierced sharp, his wounds knit twice from serpent's pain,
Now wakes to see, and leaves this world no blame.

Is there a name for the gaps
In between your grimy fingers?

For that moment's pause
Before the beginning of a prayer?

Is there a word for the spaces
In between atoms?

For the gaps in image and in mind,
Little lapses in the great cycle called
Something

Bleak, vast, full of budding stars
And pieces of rock,
As big as they are small?

Is there a label for those words
That seem to skip a beat,
Dancing across the tip of your tongue
Faster than you can spit them?

Is there a word for that
Moment where your lungs fold into
Your stomach

As the people around you become amber-
Riddled flies?

Is there a word for Dear Nothing
Who reaches out and puts her arm
Around you,

Whispering everything you need to hear,
Without actually moving her lips?

The sutures of granite stone
Slip seamlessly and stand—

Ignorant of the storms that
Weather its skin—

Gold and diamond visage
Shivering—hollow—
Eyes refusing to glaze over—

Arms clasping the afflicted.

It's 3
Am and I'm
Still
Up writing
Your paper
Explaining why you
Can't seem to stick,
Your commas in the
Right
Places.

It's 3
In the
Morning and
I am staring
At Ollie's
Baseball glove
Green ink scrawled
With poems
Which he reads
When the third innings
Are dull When
***** become too trivial to
Catch.

It's 3
In the
Morning and I
Am sick and
Tired of watching
You make out
With
Every
Girl
You pick up
At this
Phoney
School.

It kills me.

You have no idea
How it
Kills me.

"Peace"
is synonymous with
Beatles music and
an empty desk—
i stare longingly
for no reason
but
that of some
Artificial sentimentality;

Quiet purity.

Lord,

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I can never control,
To accept the things that I can control.

To understand that we come together in fellowship-
And what a fellowship!

To not fear the game but respect it,
To not shoulder its burdens, but share it

To start every set with a prayer,
And honor each player

To be sporting and true-
Always giving the glory to You

Amen.

the cat snores
at midnight, below

call centre agents:
bathed in white lights above
and the security guard’s badge below which gleams
of splendour; reflects the moon
by his chest: waxing
where it rises
and waning as it falls; a truck’s engine
roaring in the distance. my footstep

stirs not the cat

They flex slowly.

Come up tails.

Coin flips floating down the
Riverbanks,
Past the fountain pens
Dripping with fresh
Ink and short-armed knives.

Laughing hard
At their ridiculous leather jackets,
Brandishing bug eyed grins
Above all other
Deadly weapons,
Just as disarming.

Souped up
Vintage cars and hats
And stowed away
Overcoats and canes
Somehow soaked
By the groundwater rain.

Coming up
Aces,

Breaking through the sea
These

Kids,

They'll be alright.

Perhaps you aren’t as faceless
as you think you are:

your skin not green,
your face not plastered
with wide-eared grins,
your house neither yellow nor
full of garish trampolines, trapdoors and springs.

This static,
this stillness,
this is you:

Quiet, loud, alone in your room
screaming in whatever tongue you
speak best at, staring back
at reflections in mirrors
that don’t recognise you.

You smile,
measure the gaps between your
teeth and find that they
are a little bit smaller,
check their slant and find
that they lean a little more
to the left,

feel your skin and find
that the green tinge
comes off with a light scratch
of a nail,

and that beneath the coverings,
you still
are flesh and blood.

And he sleeps
Amongst the fisherman,
And the cab drivers,
And he's with me at midnight
Where the devil's hour draws
Closer to the lone sidewalk
And we are all ghosts
And I'm on the edge
Of a proverbial cliff and he's
There with me.

And he is no longer
Jesus of the Chapel
But of the slum dwellers,
Of the motocycle bikers,
Of the sodomites mentioned in
Howl and thought to
Roam the nights unsatiated.

That God.
The one I'm looking for.
The savior with an armsling
And an extensive knowledge
Of *******,
Every position every crack
Every twist and turn.

That God
Who baptized needles pinned
Freshly to tattoos
And made theologians
Out of tax collectors
And Jesus

Whose nails
Were used to tattoo
The words "King" grisly
On his forehead
And he was chiseled
On a cross,
Not hung.

Spurs on his feet licked
Like lapdogs by tongues
Hungry still for love,
Laying at the foot of the
Memory Jesus,
Crying,
All adulterers and profaners
And cheaters and liars all,

Who laugh
And sneer and snipe
In disbelief at his memory.
Ours.
At his clean, pierced hand
Slowly turning to ash
At the weight of our
Ink, face turning to bulletholes
As the chests decay
Into some kind of
Gang war amalgamation,

Tongues swollen,
Organs numb,
***** pierced with rose thorns
And rubbed with alcohol
And lubricant and
Sharp fingernails.

And we weep
As we are transfigured in return,
Each wound a closing scar.

Five AM.

Dawn is the one remnant of the 1800s left in all of us - the weather. And even that disappears quickly. The pockets of morning stuck between you and me, between this car, and that car, and Dawn's Appalachian highway slipping itself in between the SLEX and the sky take your breath away and slip past consciousnesses like faint dreams. You snap awake. ****** reminder that it's already

Five AM.

Faint strains of rooster crow and traffic whistle keeping you up despite your desire to sleep. This bus ride is meant for sleeping, rather. Your teammates lean on pillowcases shifting hues from black to gray to light pink to faint orange. You stare quietly out the ever shifting window. Somehow your eyes keep track of the streaks of light running alongside it. Somehow you're awake even if it's just

Five AM.

The sky is the one part of our cities that isn't yet covered in *******. Outlines of shantytowns and exhaust smoke belching smokestacks and piggeries and overpriced skyscrapers provide platforms for the sun's pink rays to shine upon but still it rises above it. With it. Through it. Over and around. Sunset mornings that glow with an innocent hue. Some say Apollo preferred the form of a young boy whenever he'd come down to Earth. Makes for easier running, I guess. The roads look wider at

Five AM.

The sky is the one part of our cities that isn't yet covered in *******. The time it takes for one photon of light to hit the surface of the Earth is eight minutes. Light is far. Light is distant and twisted and radiant. Light provides surface for the sky - paints the floors of heaven by which we gaze upon with bleary eyes and pray to. God walking on our ceilings. Humans knocking on our floors. Alarm clocks reminding me it's just

Five AM.

It's just

Five AM.

When the Life gets
Knocked

straight out
of you,

Never forget to
Trace

The knots
Hanging between

Each breath.

fromabove
       itleaves
         youbreath-
less:
suspended

on the
             edges
           of theknown
           world aren't stars        
        cavingoutand
      in
but rather:

tree
tops;

    mountain
val - leys,
         jag-
    ged

cliffs

pegged.
eversoslightly
to the
earth

be-
   low.

    you.

Pentagon fights ban on
VEGETABLES!
Russian rockets. Turkish
vote shapes up as refer-
endum on leader. Deng's
MUSHROOMS!
legacy: corruption of par-
ty elite. ECB chief sug-
gests flexibility on Greece.
FISH!
New York Times 6/4/15.

I heard you tossed sinners to the flame.

I was in disbelief until I smelled my soul roasting on a spit.

I know that purgatory doesn't exist.
Hell far worse than nothingness.

I know that all torture is godless,
Not all pain meant to temper.

As I screamed, you told me to
Look up.

We aren't very different.

Konkretong kahon ang tawag
Ko sa eskwelahan ninyo,
Na puro sikreto,
Silaw—dahil sa napakaputi
Ninyong mga balat, paa,
Malambot, makinis, na halos
Binasbasan
Ng mga kayumangging kerubin—
Ayaw basagin.

Sila, ang taga-tayo ng mga
Gusali ninyo, puro pawis.
Puro naka-long sleeve, ang
Init! Noo nila’y sunog,
Kumikilabot, kumaladkad,
Kilay itim sunggab ng
Araw.

Ngayon,
Nakikita ko sila—puro trabaho,
Balikat bumabagsak dahil sa
Bigat ng mortar, laryo,
Ulo baba-taas-yuko na parang
Kumakadang sa luad,
Tapak kasing bigat ng mga konkretong
Tipak—taga-buhat ng mga
Pintang maputla.