J.R. said the man in the helmet said, “Goodbye, my friend,” before shooting his father in the chest. His body sank, but the man shot him twice more, in the head and cheeks. The children said the three men were laughing as they left.*
-Daniel Berehulak, They Are Slaughtering Us Like Animals, New York Times

Manila, goodnight.
The world is watching you slowly die.
Tattered truths & losing sense of life
captivate your battered night. Mud hurls blood
streets batted with horror & blabbed
anonymous spirits ghostlier than ever.

(Even ghostlier than your Martial Law days)

Manila, tranquilize yourself.

Your rest will be disturbed by scourged souls, thunderous cracks of guns,
bullets hitting flesh, motorcycle tandem arrests,
people’s holy shouts shunning shibboleth sounding death.

Hear them not. Sleep well.

Maggots festering wound. Manila,
on your knees, worms stich your broken nerves
healing gunshot wounds with peace.

Your night will be a train of madness
shattered by lies through morbid holes in skulls
& confessions in cardboard signs.

(Justice today is served cold, so cold)

& everything from that day on is simply to be known
as a cold just.

Truth decays. Life smolders, vanishing.

Your nights will be unthreaded from memories
for no one dares to look back to twisted arms clenched
by plastic strips, head bowing to ground (instead of ground
bowing to head), ground kissing the body naked swarmed
either by grease or blood, the body breaking gossips
among gossipers & gossamer among spiders.

Weep not, dead men tell no fiction.
Their bodies are the shocking truth, forsaken
shocking headlines hissing morning papers
peppered with mint or lies.

Manila, goodnight for your night will be remembered
through vigilant myths & nothing more.

Often cold bodies, freezing voices from limbo,
can’t speak nor bothered the living.

Again, Manila, in your arms, dead men tell no tales.

The killing spree of fragmented morality,
mortality, fatality, vanity, sanity, insanity, apathy.

Manila, do not move. You are now sedated with fear,
stronger than cooked methamphetamine of crooked realities,
no less than a drug making your anxious, bothered
in the darker & dimmer night
in dimmer  & darker disaster.

Manila, walk with your graffiti walls.
Your gutters will be banks of blood. Daylight traffic
will erase your night’s unwelcoming sphere. Last night
persists as tiny figment of imaginings photographed
& again, nothing more.

Everything will pass like hyacinths of Pasig River.

Everything will pass like one’s eternal passing.

Everything will pass like a chilling December wind.

Everything will pass either a typhoon or a butterfly fluttering.

Manila, goodnight. I am afraid they will ****** you
in your sleep. I am afraid that everything will just pass
like your breath losing hold of your lungs then your heart.

I am afraid that your death, my dear Manila,
will just be a neighbourhood rumour passing
& everything turns into a fiasco of a madman who believes
that he is a messiah, was he a messiah or never he will be a messiah.

Manila goodnight, I will watch you in your sleep. Your sleep
will be a thousand fold peace. No more of your sons or daughters
will be killed at least not in my memory.

Manila, here comes the night. Sleep,
sleep holy in the hidden lair of my mind. Your
catacomb will be wreathed by flowers & tears.
Incense will be fragrant burning bones. Your life,
your tired life will be a gentle ebbing of time
like your Bay’s sunset beauty, like your lively street people
like your once known heritage, your life
in the busy daybreak of your kindred sons.

Goodnight, my dear Manila.

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

The sea was not a mask. No more was she.
The song and water were not medleyed sound
Even if what she sang was what she heard,
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
It may be that in all her phrases stirred
The grinding water and the gasping wind;
But it was she and not the sea we heard.

For she was the maker of the song she sang.
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.
Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew
It was the spirit that we sought and knew
That we should ask this often as she sang.
If it was only the dark voice of the sea
That rose, or even colored by many waves;
If it was only the outer voice of sky
And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,
However clear, it would have been deep air,
The heaving speech of air, a summer sound
Repeated in a summer without end
And sound alone. But it was more than that,
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres
Of sky and sea.

                   It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour its solitude.
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker's rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

I knocked on the door lightly. I obviously got no answer… I don’t know what I was expecting. I opened the door and squeezed in, shutting it just as quickly and quietly as I had opened it.

The room felt duller than usual… I couldn’t tell if it was because of the weather, the boring colors, or the aura of a patient waiting to die.

He was looking out the window. The weather was cold, and the skyline had been invisible, thanks to fog. It was rainy. People ran through the storm to their cars below us. The windows had been covered in rain, and all you could here was the steady beat of the heart monitor and the rain pouring outside. It smelled like hand sanitizer and lies. A shiver crawled down my spine just being in here for 5 seconds… I wonder what it has done to him for 5 months.

I hadn’t seen him for years. I wasn’t exactly ready for this confrontation, but it had to happen. I knew that. If I ever wanted to move on in my life, I had to see him again.

His brown hair was messy and fell over his eyes. The light from outside had a soft gray glow reflecting onto his pale face, making him look ghostlier than ever. His skinny, underweight arms were resting on his stomach, and his green eyes had a dark tint on the skin under them.

Seeing him like this just made it more obvious why he was here in the first place. He didn’t sleep, he didn’t eat, he didn’t drink… he made himself sick. His bony fingers tapped on his hand anxiously. He turned to face me. His face looked dreary, and he looked sad in general. I gulped and widened my eyes, not ready for his icy stare when he looked like this.

He sighed and I relaxed my face, calmed down as soon as he wasn’t staring at me.

“Why are you here?” he asked me.

I knocked on the door lightly. I obviously got no answer… I don’t know what I was expecting. I opened the door and squeezed in, shutting it just as quickly and quietly as I had opened it.
The room felt duller than usual… I couldn’t tell if it was because of the weather, the boring colors, or the aura of a patient waiting to die.
He was looking out the window. The weather was cold, and the skyline had been invisible, thanks to fog. It was rainy. People ran through the storm to their cars below us. The windows had been covered in rain, and all you could here was the steady beat of the heart monitor and the rain pouring outside. It smelled like hand sanitizer and lies. A shiver crawled down my spine just being in here for 5 seconds… I wonder what it has done to him for 5 months.
I hadn’t seen him for years. I wasn’t exactly ready for this confrontation, but it had to happen. I knew that. If I ever wanted to move on in my life, I had to see him again.
His brown hair was messy and fell over his eyes. The light from outside had a soft gray glow reflecting onto his pale face, making him look ghostlier than ever. His skinny, underweight arms were resting on his stomach, and his green eyes had a dark tint on the skin under them.
Seeing him like this just made it more obvious why he was here in the first place. He didn’t sleep, he didn’t eat, he didn’t drink… he made himself sick. His bony fingers tapped on his hand anxiously. He turned to face me. His face looked dreary, and he looked sad in general. I gulped and widened my eyes, not ready for his icy stare when he looked like this.
He sighed and I relaxed my face, calmed down as soon as he wasn’t staring at me.
“Why are you here?” he asked me.