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Jedd Ong Nov 2014
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.
Jedd Ong May 2015
I.

Somewhere in a mailroom in China
is my acceptance letter to
Brown University,

fluttering in the
sticky, smog-filled wind like an
unspoken birthright,

vacuum sealed in some shoddy warehouse,
slap-banged next to my father's
porcelain wares and flasks – and my grandfather's,
and his father's. "Son,"

my father tells me,
"you've got a lot of the old man in you.
"I am grateful."

I then retch
in the dingy comfort
of our hotel room bath
before proceeding to lunch.

Dad's Chinese counterparts
congratulate me on
being able to tell them what I
want to do when I grow up.

"Wo yao dang yi ge shangren – zhu fu."
“I want to become a businessman – get rich.”

II.

"Wo xuyao xiezuo."  
“I must write.”

TS Eliot once asked me,
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"

I do not know yet,
but I think I have found fragments
of an answer lodged in
hotel bathrooms,
a Tianhe-bound overpass
on the way to Beijing Street,
heirloom warehouses,
And two Canton fairs.

"To get rich is glorious,"
Deng Xiaoping once said.

But I glance at
My father and mother,
And theirs,

And wonder if all their life, they have but
knocked on the doors of their fate -
chased dreams not
tobacco stewed or gold-ground
by the teeth of an Other.

As to answer your question, T.S Eliot:
Maybe, if just to find where I truly belong.
Well it's kind of a sequel. First poem here: http://hellopoetry.com/poem/944876/from-brown-to-binondo/, though I'm not quite sure of the relationship. You tell me.
Reggine Sumiyama Sep 2018
Here I scatter the ashes of our Wednesdays
and throw dirt on our names because we fell into a stupor of unsaid goodbyes and insincere apologies.

I take my time trying to unclench my fist,
after all, release is only sweet when you feel suffocated.

I always made sure to adjust my grasp to your comfort,
present my entirety as if you owned more than a half of what I used to be.
I remember you in things that have no heartbeat, but a pulse of regret and anger that devours it, and to think you swore you would keep me alive.

In Binondo, you taught me how to eat street foods, walk in the crowded places, sit still on taxi rides,
and feel beautiful even when you kept your eyes off me.
You believed in slow motion, and the magic of lugaw at 12AM,
I watched you in a fascinated haze.
Too unsure of the light.

In Fairview, I told you that I cry during movies and laughed at the way you spun me around in the theater. Hand on my waist for good measure. I showed you claw machines and photobooths,
at least remember me.
I held your hand the first time, bled on
a piece of paper you read on the way to Quiapo, and all the long rides have made me feel empty ever since.

In Ilocos, I gave you a warm kisses on your cheeks when you took me
to church the first time, head spun just at the right angle for when
I walk down the aisle in a dress with you waiting at the end of it,
not knowing that in 4 years, I’d come back at someone
else’s wedding, begging on my knees at silent altars to keep you
even with my faith hanging from my fingertips. You still left.

In Intramuros, I see you in every nook and crevice,
in the holes, in the walls with Lechon Kawali, in quiet places we
claimed are for ourselves. In street vendors, ATM machines,
and pedestrian lanes too dangerous to walk on. Nowadays,
I shut my eyes in the backseat, afraid to see a shadow of who
I thought you were whenever I am near.

In Pasay there are people to see and places to walk
through to cover the tracks of almost lovers, a pair of shoes
to buy, impatience on my throat, and kisses on cheek as a cure
for my silence and satiation for the hunger below your navel.

In EDSA, we locked more than just lips, ate street Palitaw,
knocked three times on wooden doors, even lit candles to be sure,
that we would keep each other for good. Someone must have
knocked harder, the wind must have swept our fire out,
and we were fools to think promises were as simple as padlocks
that rust and break in the rain. How I never told you that I pictured
us in a million other bus rides that night. The road could never
have been shorter than the infinite one you promised.

In Pandacan, you wanted a life with me  
with nights in bed, the sickening kind of happiness harrowing
the peace we always knew we had. You held me close
and by the early hours of the morning you swore you’d meet me
again when the clock strikes twelve on a different year. I think
you left your love for me in that two-bedroom suite, and
wouldn’t it be wise if I left mine right next to yours, folded
and hung before the stain of resentment covered it whole?

In between the hurt and madness, memories of us
unfolding without grace on the table, I loved you.

You knew what you were doing when you let go of me to hold
onto someone else that was never as sure as I was of you,
and I wake up in sweat at 3AM thinking I never really knew.

Now we are in places we’ve never been, and I dry
swallow the hurt that swells even when I no longer touch it.
There are spaces I no longer need to be filled because I got used to being hollow
even when I was next to you
and now that I don’t have to be there anymore
it makes it easier to forget you ever happened, and I will tiptoe my way out of these places until I no longer feel you everywhere.
Jedd Ong Mar 2015
Dad
Muelle de Binondo Street,
Barangay San Nicolas,
Old Manila.

My dad's fate
Will always be muddled
With nostalgia:

The mid-afternoon
Traffic of fruit vendors,

The toothless strains
Of my grandfather's voice,
Bouncing off
The warehouse walls
Like folding cardboard,

The ceramic gallops of horse-
Drawn kalesas taking him
From school to
My grandfather's offices,
Every day and back,

Up and down
The cardboard box river
To Tondo. There, he hurriedly
Buys ten
Asado buns
From a stall across the
Street from their
School - a voracious
Schoolboy
Forever late for class, forever

Putting on basketball jerseys
Too wide for him,
Basketball shorts too
Short; body
Always too gangly,
Too long-limbed, wide eyed
And fleet footed
For his dreams to catch.

He once could dunk.

He is still a baby boomer -
Scared of firecrackers,
Weird penchant
For popped collar shirts,
Pointed shoes, and
Sequins - he, was an avid

Lover of stars - his old
Dust-strewn bed posts
Giving way, I imagine,
To iron bars caging
The luminous starry night,
Floating high above
The sewage
And the freight trucks
That weigh him so.

They sang to him.

In the tune of
My mother's voice -
The only album
He ever possessed.

Song set from
His favorite band.

"Apo Hiking Society."

His favorite word,
Was "leap."

A disciple
Of MJ, Dr. J,
And Magic,
Samboy, and Jawo,

Icarus on hardwood
And leaping
From the free throw line.

"Son," he once told me,
"You gotta leap
"If you wanna live."

He was always afraid of heights.

It wasn't until 41 that
We made him ride a roller-coaster,
That he had even seen a roller-coaster.

"You gotta leap
"If you wanna live."

I think my favorite
Memory of my dad
Is still him wringing my fingers
At Space Mountain with
Eyes so tightly shut
That we forgot
Our fears,
And screamed instead:

So.

This,
Is how the stars look like
When unbolted
By folding cardboard,
And iron bars.
Louise Jul 2019
As I breathe the taint Manila air in,
I knew I was about to fall in love again.
Oh how I craved for the smoke belching out of the jeepneys, how badly did I want that signature smog to have me begging for fresh, precious air?

Ah, nothing would beat the musky, filthy smell from the streets and the constant fear of being pickpocketed that no feeling in the world would ever compare. The last time I felt my heart beat like a wild beast was when I was walking alone down Raon to fetch my first few vinyl records.

Commuting is a breeze. Except that breeze is in the apple of the eye of the storm that I would gladly, willingly look straight into. Quiapo is but an irony; the only place in the world where you would feel safe and protected by the church and the very same place you would feel fear of being mugged or robbed or both.

But the food, dear god, is incomparable. The blood enemy of my melancholy. I find peace in Binondo, a haven that makes me forget all the political dysphoria going on with our good old neighbor and ***** lover, China. Let's take a breather and bask on our shared heritage and cuisine instead, shall we?

Manila. Her chaos, her charm, her history and the dreams she holds for me...
these are what I will always come back here and battle death for.
Diyan Sa May Mga Nilad #1: Lagusnilad;
Lagusnilad Series #1

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