God
Might move the deadline
For our Chinese script
But I'm still mad at him
For keeping me up
At the grand hour of 11

In the evening graphing
Over (and over)
Again business charts that
Have crooked smiles almost
As blank and bleak

As their returns on investment.

And speaking of which,
This extra eighty grand I spent
At this school, ogling at textbooks I could
Never work up the courage to read,
Is finally starting to break my back.

Weakly, I'll tell you
How much I hate school—
How her consonants sound synonymous
To "scoliosis,"
And peel off my shirt and prove it to you

But that would be careless.

And careless is something in me hand-bound
By iron clad futures and
Graying dreams,
Perhaps that of a dead stock broker
Feet dangling off the roof of
The Philippine Stock Exchange,

And even then that's
Straying too far from home:
A cardboard box business
Resting by a
Tuberculosis-riddled sea.