It should’ve been Bagan –
she always loved Bagan,
Myanmar.

look, woman.
I am a dog outside your home,
overwrought and disarmed,
hunting for bones.

inverse moon over Pasig
tonight and I am on
my 4th bottle of beer already,

barking without teeth.
raged behind the typewriter
with nothing but a visibly

veiled waiting
this stance so
obscure,
so absurd
like the abrupt life
of candle-flame.

I was the lover
and you cared for flame:
now the fire is dead
and there is nothing left
for the sea to lambast,
erased by the shores of feel.

symphonies out on the streets
like leprous children scrunched deep in
the mire of the streets for alms.

it is now my 5th bottle
and I **** on the stone-gnome
in my mother’s lawn
and she will know of the reek
of this pungent disbelief – scorn me for
my heavy drinking

but what is a man to do
when he
is as destroyed
as

the morning

outside?