there is principle, there is mad luck on the streets
but then again, i have neither one.
i assume the idleness of poles underneath the roof of a cafe in Poblacion
and wonder where all my poems go,
the value they impose -- only there's implosion and not so much sense
so i go out to seek tenderly in the night,
a cheap moon trapped underneath the bottle of a pilsner
as i hear one of the patrons call out
my solitude like a ******* on all fours;
one afternoon pursues a following.
i have wasted my time writing and stopping
to watch stray hounds pant and
**** on the hot asphalt of Plaridel.
the papers retch at tyrannies.
hands for mechanisms configured to
a heady bias of probabilities.
the house next to me is being
overhauled and i imagine the incredulity
of things not their own meanings.
a pair of old Chuck Taylors on the bedspread, a decrepit bed for making love
or passing time or wasting the night away.
somewhere, someone is reading my poems and weeping at the cadence.
most do not notice -- it was the caprice of things not mine to commandeer.
the sound of stone masons hammering
boulders double the melancholia.
the deliberate sieving of sand and stone
felt like sandpaper air.
the matutinal sky split into dire condition
much like mine: becoming and unbecoming.
all the ******* are out in the streets
with ladies wuthering in high strides.
all the priests are in their rendezvous,
killing buddha heads.
the police have silenced the sirens
and behind pairs of old navy blue slacks
and mobiles covered with dust,
the captives scream mercy.
all the ATMs drone the pither of metal mouths.
a widow in Bocaue holding a picture
of the departed.
i look up and see my face in the sky:
if only i could **** the man and be the man,
fill his shoes with flesh, his movements my emulation, his enigmas my clarity, his day old denims my best dress.
more than beer and cigarettes have done me in and more to myself much no less
than a cat hit by a speeding bicycle
somewhere in Padre Faura.
madness hurries like a lover and hands me
a picture of the moon.
i've got something and that's good enough
as the police leave the grime of times
and evict drunks off the streets of Malolos,
as the priests step into the showers, naked
and bloodied just like the ordinary man,
as the cat that was hit
by a bicycle
goes back to the dark
licking the salt off the wound,
bone fractured, still alive on the hot roof.
