Manila is fray
Tough enough to die,
Brave enough to see ****** against
the billboards
***** on the marketplace
***** men haggling for prices
the corners are squalid -- rats with ambitions of men take their places in
the esteros
a car-horn blares, wanes old moon music.
I sing songs of malversation. Trains all graffiti.
My heart like a jailbird freed somewhere
in the big sur; love assuages nothing,
comes with a cheap price
a freak December night in Roxas blvd.
i sit on marble benches and dream
of artilleries, garlands on snuff-nosed
barrels, nuns grieving dust
in the ground. communal bathrooms
drunk in foolish caricatures,
the tabloids displaying flowerheads --
the democracy in the streets a ****
for kings, no love to lull
me to infantile sleep
tortured are the bulls
matadors hiding behind faces red like
faces of statesmen flushed with
the spirit of bourbon
whereas we are here river-facing
northern tip of its undying source
like wives on balustrades waiting
to catch the fragrance of inamoratas,
light reenters
interstice of chary webs of dull heads hemmed in like canopies in the throat of overthrown ponds, scraps
of metal sold for a night's worth
of gin and Sinatra,
Deep within the grave, the dead laughing
at the dead living. Atop waters,
yachts peering into drowning fish,
in the middle, a jam of buses
belching lassitudes that strangle
the console, the man in all of us
the same, cursing behind the wheel
and everybody else different
dancing at the top of our heads.
Feb 27, 2016
Feb 27, 2016 at 5:04 AM UTC
Manila is fray
Tough enough to die,
Brave enough to see ****** against
the billboards
***** on the marketplace
***** men haggling for prices
the corners are squalid -- rats with ambitions of men take their places in
the esteros
a car-horn blares, wanes old moon music.
I sing songs of malversation. Trains all graffiti.
My heart like a jailbird freed somewhere
in the big sur; love assuages nothing,
comes with a cheap price
a freak December night in Roxas blvd.
i sit on marble benches and dream
of artilleries, garlands on snuff-nosed
barrels, nuns grieving dust
in the ground. communal bathrooms
drunk in foolish caricatures,
the tabloids displaying flowerheads --
the democracy in the streets a ****
for kings, no love to lull
me to infantile sleep
tortured are the bulls
matadors hiding behind faces red like
faces of statesmen flushed with
the spirit of bourbon
whereas we are here river-facing
northern tip of its undying source
like wives on balustrades waiting
to catch the fragrance of inamoratas,
light reenters
interstice of chary webs of dull heads hemmed in like canopies in the throat of overthrown ponds, scraps
of metal sold for a night's worth
of gin and Sinatra,
Deep within the grave, the dead laughing
at the dead living. Atop waters,
yachts peering into drowning fish,
in the middle, a jam of buses
belching lassitudes that strangle
the console, the man in all of us
the same, cursing behind the wheel
and everybody else different
dancing at the top of our heads.
Request permission to use this poem