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 *****-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.

in  the   sovereign  of your  sleep,
   you ****. tousle. scream out of bed
   flailing.

         like   fish
  out     of    water,
       the   current of    immediacy.

     i will     write you
a boy    in     his
        fetal     nature:

    bright-*****,   holding  a   crimson  balloon
       in his   small  hand (a  reminder   of
       levitations)
    teeth white    as endless   snow
         the flat-footed lotus
   wading     in
         the     waters      of   senescence

    you will    take    it
   as a holster      cradles      gunmetal
       as      parking lots    fill
       parks    with  senile    men
    waving canes   into    the Sun
        yellow-teeth    and   brittle-*****
  
        you      will    wake
    and       smile   your way   half-painted,
      half-illuminated   like   a dagguerreotype
         in my    mind's   chamber
       your   half-nose,   *******,
           you snoring   beast   in   the jungle
     of   my frailty

         i too falling in sleep
     the red   balloon    let go
           into    the   cirrus.

the horse rummages on the track
and the victory is owned by the ****.
soon sleep will engulf my body
like the oblivious quietude of Aokigahara-jukai.
things and their semblance of utmost care.
light begins to burst
and there is little left to see,
wide-eyed, crunched by the efficacy of aches.
taking all to the very heart of hurt
as gamblers wager,
and coming back with the sound of completeness:
a man is a man in his chronology of defeat -
left torn by madness,
a cornered beast pressed against the woods.

the moon plays its lyre, white-washed,
sound wading in the very source of quiet,
hauled out of the Sun, its mother.
this hound stalks the world
with woebegone legs, a reflection of the entire world fractured
by a singular shot at the end.
i hear the guttural snarl of engine
unwavering in its limitations. say, at first light, all exists to paint darkness quicker
than any obfuscated conclusion -- hiding in
itself, its mood for squalors.
the mud dug deep for bones
pared from the slaughter of midnight,
hiding them to mask my defeat:
everything around me sparkles with
the vigor of frailty, all the same.

the nights are too long, scarce as froth
from an opened mouth left flat,
a dry gin bottle.
i imagine sad armies dissolving in pale moonlight, and crosses thumbed down to the snaking hiss of its nondescript prayer.
gears gnash like teeth in anger
of you in your young clothes, the pace of cars
hurrying back to homes.
i remember the splintered wood burning
the last in the round kiln of the Red Lion.
the upholstery of night is the twilight's
catharsis. the coast of dread widens like
the vernal metamorphosis of a young ******* in Gibraltar,
come in, come in with undecided ******.
you can hear the fall coalesce with the levitation of ember, landing like feet blunt
on the asphalt beside desolate bicycles
    in seedy parks.

the surreal tabulation of analogue repetitions:
death's myriad, in all corners screaming
the countenance rebel, against the floored masses.

times like this, the plenary moon
  tonight wearing many faces,

the white-washed truant at bay
    white-hulled still, the brim of the sky
to a full, on such a bright night leaving a trace
   of say, prongs of fire on the kiln

the skin the soft breeze molests with a chill
flung from pinecone – the blackened spires of the
very heart of flame and the mullioned wood that understands
  what the heat of placeness mints underneath
  our skin – what silence remains a translation when the smoldering
  remains are bitten repeatedly, aureoled in the moment of vital meaning.

we hear its threat, retained in clock-whirs
like a primordial word or the fluting of  light’s bendable
   rondure harnessing a truth we let in.

I fail behind the walled-up lip of laughter
because the weight of passing
is heavy on my back – like a bough dragged
  by rainwater, or sound elected to drown:
the smell of poinsettia assaults,
lifting its slaughter against Kiltepan and Ambuklao,
  past mountains lulled to sleep: the moon sleuthing
  like a well-oiled machine.  what do you hear?

  we are aware of its full absence,
like that of our undulation after a fall,
  or the wild sibilance of breath trying  to  utter something,
  going back home with a song in between teeth,
    without words.