Cowardice from the '70s

My love, do you remember

the love of September 11, 1972?

I was with you, elementary

as rudimentary sex, a sallow,

sifting chemical boost.

My love, it wasn’t raining.

And the neighbor’s new b&w

TV insidiously declaring,

a furious decisiveness, but

more infusion than derision.

My love, I was a child.

And now, old as auld lang signs

and symbols scattered in lectures

and conspiracy theories, I too

gave them my blasphemies—

but free now of the danger, or

the necessary boldness, or

knowledgeable bombasts

and socialistic baldness.

I am, thank you, a social silt

with new semiconductor blues.

‘Tis not to say the times

are way, way better. Indeed

I can testify to a dry spell,

or swell in inanities, flash

corporate knots & violences.

In fact things haven’t changed

that much, historicity forgot;

that cities are nuts, provinces

belt us with rot, new or reborn

derisive oafs & impatiences.

Not to say, too, I’ve learned.

On Facebook you will witness

sallow, sifting distillery boosts on

rainy days, where my mockeries

declare not, disclaim very well.

May 16, 2007 - August 30, 2009

Alternative Prosaicness for Jennifer/Stephanie, Pickpocket Prostitute Hit by a Car/Bus; Sure, Okay, An Elegy

This poem I write for the termites’ windows, the diesel fumes’

     sun,

the g.i. roofs, this poem I write for you, Stephanie.

This poem I write not for the light in the living room,

the terrace, the car, this poem I write for you.

Those poems I write for the coffeehouses,

those poems I write not for you, Stephanie.

Those poems may someday be out on sale, yes,

but this’ll always be

                                      for you.

Those poems may someday burn with the Sun,

this will always call cold for you—

from a living room desk to a black hole mess

this will always seek you, make you its guest,

and so I’ll write this one, two, even three,

jot lines down in a lavatory.

And I’m hoping you’d read them.

It’s very necessary.

On a train, in a lobby, in a wedding reception,

these poems’ll be here for your protection.

Bullets can’t kill them, Jennifer.

Black holes can’t blacken them, they’ll

always be here, lick the lipstick on your beer.

These poems aren’t meant to go with my sofa, never!

So sit back and relax in front of no coffee table, and may this

     last forever.

Am I being a sellout, a traitor to my art, Steph,

opting to write now for the common crowd?

But I often “converse in the nest of tailors”

while the bourgeois part of me’s with the interior decorator.

Today, out with the astronomers, astronauts, theorists,

and all those who call themselves political nihilists.

Consume my poem, sing my poem, go ‘head, curse my poem,

‘til your cellphone alarm tells a harmful omen, Steph.

I’m outside or inside a house or a building or transport now,

my poem’ll be there to decorate your bloodied brow.

I don’t believe a poem’s higher than bric-a-bracs.

It’s a snapshot that may turn away, a voice that may crack.

It’s a snapshot that may turn away, a voice that may crack.

May 16, 2007 - August 29, 2009

At Venus’s Funeral (after Botticelli’s Birth of Venus)

Vaguely faced like a vandal at large,

Her ghost remembers now lovelinesses.

Variously crazed as though in a festival,

Her host reconnoiters lonelinesses.

She enters my thoughts, unabashedly,

Half-naked to her bonelessness,

And I accept her unashamedly,

Scuddy under shower carelessness.

“D’you remember the days when you’d undress me?”

“I remember now, but those were nights.”

“Do you miss me at all, do you miss me?”

“I remember always, you and our fights.”

“When will I see you again in the flesh?”

“Perhaps when I die. Don’t expect a blush.”

“Goodbye now, my love, see you later.”

“Perhaps today, in a wrecked elevator.”

Then, she leaves me, unashamedly boneless.

Hold fast to that now, the barefaced carelessness.

Vaguely unfazed like a vandal at large

I reignite her ghost, miss its isolation.

Vainly dazed, well-dressed in a regal funeral,

I fumble her locket, see a scallop’s decorum.

May 16, 2007 - August 28, 2009

Locus Standi within Our Sports and Christian News-Saturated Town Troposphere (or, the Battle for “Good News” as Bejesus . . . High Among Post-J. R. Oppenheimer Generations)

The right to be heard unlike today’s

nerds prejudged on campus by athlet-

icisms and anti-science catechisms is like

a snuffed-out candle in a soundproofed locker

room where the rape of cheerleaders moan, as if

lab silences are not violent enough in apprais-

ing this unsexiness, that boiling malevolence

toward science-hate . . . football players,

Christian youth, etc., prevarications

of this oncoming, sordid truth

—a beaker and tube or steel vacuum

mixing a phantasm, though nobody now

believes in molecular chaos that churn out new

weapons, alloy church beams, your nanotech

helmets, . . . or genetically-modified high-

protein mung beans, among other news,

among many other good/bad news.

May 17, 2007 - August 27, 2009

Leaving Land and Water (or, Resurrection)

You’re gonna love me when I’m gone,

So says the Bible of my man.

You’re gonna drink up, I’m gonna drop

To a germicidal sea where I’ll donkey-saddle up!

Have you seen me this happy,

Did you listen to my last

singing on that weekday, always ‘neath a fire shower?

Helluva palaver, that Sunday and last supper night—

Goodbye, salamanders, I’ll be all right!

Imagining Quick Boaz Hating All Things Foreign (or, Dear Poseidon)

You’re right all of the time and I’m wrong every minute,

That’s what I get for being such an asinus.

You’re fine with your tarama and I’m great at anger only,

I savor a pride as big as Andromeda!

I’ve known you for a fact and I’ve known you to be truth.

Why ask, “what’s she doing with my shoe, your hungry

     Ruth?”

Later, Bethlehem, levirate, the pedantic tome,

Became sanctuary to her widowed periglottis.

And she swung to the legal buggery, done gleaning barley

     with her teeth,

Nothing is sacred, nothing’s sweet.

So, fire away, Ezra, sing too of my blood!

My sword on pure yonic sheath

I’ll fix to be glad!

Carrapato from Tarapoto, I’m a bitch of a father?

You give me a pot, I throw it ‘round, holler?

“I’ll fuck your walls, o Elimelech!

Did you fuck Orpah too at the back of her neck?”

I say no purity now, no sanctity now, o internationalists!

Shake unrepentant infidels, hail Deutoronomists!

Evita’s Morality Judges on My Virgin Girlfriend

It was actually true—unbetrothed to wile,

that simplicity, unconditional monstrosity

of her sermon, first unheard, still unplowed,

but communities are continually at odds now

over the virtue of her existence. And so he

who was without sin cast out to sea to seek

solemnity, severity, at this news of her new

security/corruptibility. Let me stand here

and testify to beauty. To new grandiosities

of grandiloquent eloquence. To impassioned

militarist impotence, the religious’ hatred,

a prejudice I’ll parry off as the potent patty

for the sham burgerology of Our Daily Bread.

To hunger, and lust, behind a wailing creed.

Boredom. Snobbish kingdoms. Lost republics!

But the highest sin—the opinion of publics!

He devoid of evil, cast now the devil out of

the charities, please, the hotels, the civil

servants’ hells. The decade of a capacity to

know has come, thanks to you, and you, or

you, so now go! In peace! For while standing

pleas for calm are in order, peoples’ judges now

richly sit over porridge and peas. Meanwhile,

a poet broadcasts on networks of guilt these:

images that provoke masturbatory mentalities,

sure, but also braggarts’ mirages invoking

freedom from all iniquities, royalties, reports

out of wedlock, Evita’s tomatoes in Switzerland,

that pain in her womb. But all chose to judge

my virgin girlfriend’s wile, a community at odds.

May 16, 2007 - August 25, 2009

Nursemaid to an Adolescent Human Child

God’s human, too, so:

To gargle prevarications for paeans

Is symmetry of gargantuan mere assumptions,

Not a way to follicular fruits for success on Earth.

I was aiming for jocularity

When I heard the church bells, but was advised

Promptly by my nursemaid cousin to hush down

For humanoid focus, no parricide in mind.

And gratitude for my soup kitchen’s greige!

Ingrato, you say, and I say blah blah

Blah, you’re super-unsatisfactory in

Love, e’en by seminary methods.

In the end, there are the shout-outs

At the cyber-park we seldom visit but must

Get to now in a huff. What hosiery

Are you wearing just now, huh,

Demoiselle d’Avignon?

God’s human, too, I keep saying,

He wouldn’t care if I cry a bucket,

Lockets in my jacket, he wouldn’t know

Even what I’m all about, all around me

Stairs and heaven concepts and hell’s

Angels in bikes and skateboards, parents

Abroad, and neither would he believe

I much need his help, believing as

Is his wont, I’m doin’ okay in my bed, but

How could I be when he’s always playing dead,

Or pretending to sleep, one eye open to take a peek?

Allegory of a DUI Accident in America Involving a Man Possibly On His Way to a Mass Shooting (or, Self-Inflictions Your Enemies Love to Watch)

—a not-so-funny piece for Pablo Biglang-awa, who sometimes tells stories about contradictions in the world from behind the camera or the brush, and who prompted me to an old thesaurus form from the 5th century, the Amarakosha

His butt skin was stripped and laid on the table

Like wrapping for bologna—the autopsy experts

Were at the base extremities of their patience,

Still could not reach the tail end of a puzzle

Or the end of the tunnel, see the bottom of it.

Everyone too worn out, dedications to the hilt,

To see the gaping hole, colon to their semicolon.

They punctuated their devil’s tails and banged

Logbooks on table tips, resignation’s fundament,

While that stump of an ass wallowed in the tub—

Soaked in chemicals yet, not drunk enough from

A night of accidents, hemorrhoidal bottoms-ups

Where his gun slit his jeans’ back-pocket flaps,

Wringing seat, posterior dispersed interiorly.

As yet to be reported, one political conflict:

At the substratum was an asshole’s automatic.

On Apocrypha and a Fear of Theonomies

When the crucifix begot a rock song ballyhooed

by infidelities, I submitted an essay to the Pope.

Non-bishops said I was being pedantic, romantic,

silly and hoarse, could I be quiet for new Rome,

not be a tad high for the cloistered crud of Zion?

So, seeing the civilized baptized Noah, classified

mystics into factional disputes, indeed I vowed to

cease avowing pediatric cases in messianic rivers,

promised to promote perceived whorish heresies,

blasphemies at the creek of highways and byways.

When the hologram of Goliath jazzed up a raucous

crowd biased against dwarves & ophthalmologically-

challenged wooden sandal-wearing giants, I sensed

defamation by a nation of faults, gallets, molten-lava

white hearts heated by self-preservation and pride,

snaking toward self-promotion, gliding willy-nilly

into power, to thus be declared brand-new towering

kings of an old Babylon with curmudgeons for pink

infants, lions for gendarmes, w/ hooligans, braggarts,

and card-lovers perfumed to their fangs. So, e’en when

an hour begot a son who declared himself liberator

of mobs of sophisticates at any given Sunday, I still

vowed to not allow crozier crows into my cocoa-

laden house, promised my children this heathen

won’t pay up, blooden their soup, melt trumpets,

goblets, raise crosses’ ramparts, shepherds’ crooks.

On the Barong-Clad Crassness of Populists and Pundits’ Brand of Politeness

Grace, with traces of follow-throughs,

was never allowed to take the lead

apart from subtly accusing our throat

gargles as mere skills, stopped there,

and facing the fora armed with quiet

intolerances and fake camaraderie.

Somewhere along the way a van

dropped, incongruous, astutely

sublime but insidious, happy,

au courant, alive, and superfluous!

And somewhere beyond a stray bullet’s

trip I heard armchair candlesticks mourn

the day with symbolic jouissance, said

hey hey my my, free rock and roll would

never lie to either effervescent apathy or

trepidation: august therapeutic that you

all were to my icy bed of cynicism, I

still cannot perceive the crux of all your

argument, this luxury of fame demanded

by foundation grant charity cases. Be this

as if June, summer of enlightening solstices,

you’re still not ready to bloom in our desert,

can’t be that, cannot be but fat for Rome’s

catacombs of privilege whose names are

just crevasses of Vatican-inspired brevity.

I was lucky to be alive, of course, though

crazy for death, but here I am, fluid as lamb

and mutton casserole, forgiving shiny metal

pots around me; a division of labor, then, your

flavor of sour cream comforted by my roasted

coffee candy. Centaurs of myths, appall them

now, assurances someday you’ll show ‘em how.

Artists’ Open Café

Let us unite, o friends, but first allow me freedom

to interrogate myself, subjugate myself to queries

on mastery, integrity, suavity, and erudition, if

I should be worthy of emulation or envy’s guffaw

at the pedestal. Most of all, whether my virtue be

unremitting, my séances w/ history non-faltering,

my recompense of firm gladness and open arms

(from having lost luxuries) still be there. If I pass,

then be gone, all diffidence, come forth, o guests,

and let us: unite, for similarities, whilst comparing

incredulities and always, forever, erring w/ grace.

Understanding the Purism of Our Time’s Version of Shōwa Japan or Franco’s Spain

So serious, my ass, and stage-struck.

What a Zen conundrum to neuroscience.

Whatever pisses off the bigot is given,

if we are to agree bigotry is bigamy of

wanting all’s eyes on one’s fit-all penis.

So curious have I become of their muck,

the mockery of themselves as Knowledges

personified, only to be nullified as pork

chicharrónes with a clear piggery smell—

I gave them my audience to be all theirs.

They accepted. I walked to the bus stop,

they to the spotlight-struck dais polluted

with applause . . . I’m so bad, it was not

that sad, they only want to puree our raw

passions for some neoliberal work ethe.

To Philip Roth

What now, what now, dull am I in highbrow articulations.

Come now, come now, defend the salacious with some

Inebriation? I too am getting tired of all this rhyming,

So can we detour to a broader picture, cameras on a

Kidnapping, notebooks on the noggin? However, I was

With reporters the other night and, guess what, the rhyme

Did fall on a lime juice & Gin Hold Up care of a flow

With no intention of putting up a friggin’ show in those

Brackish afterhours. But then I sensed subliminal 

Subsumptions, and so proposed a creaturely cheer on an

Asshole’s hobnobbing with art’s eyes while side-glancing

Toward a pretty execution. Until I, too, bellicose while

Ephemeral, there ranted pedantically, argued with the

Stanzas till my poetry clapped, salacious and highbrow.

Response to an Omar Khayyam Sort of Speech

“I’m on a roll & won’t stop, won’t patrol disgrace.

I’m on a streak, one whole week, though creaturely

I too shiver, putatively snorkeling in the coral reef

Of my hallucinatory demise. I’ve got bread roll

In my knapsack, submersed wrecks in a tin can,

Simmering scent, I’ve blogged wet, Klimt kisses

On the pavement of your carrying a cross to one

Sugar land. My baker, my shake-maker, won’t ya

Fetch me now, egregious at a marginal funeral?”

Hahahahahahah, I’m not going to kill yer fun.

Importing Quiet Manly Ceremonies for a Useful Idiot’s Crucifixion

The samovar’s fabulousness has come to town.

Similarly, sweetness. Fake religion. Or hypocrisy.

But I’ve no complaints, am merely stashing deviations

On everyone’s take on the popular—i.e., I take pleasure

In defending the not-so-obvious, those murdering antlers

Of my dear grandmothers’ passion for intelligent gossip,

Its metal untarnished through weeks. I am, married, ergo

Fun-loving, nonchalantly lugubrious in tasting the fruits

Of chemistries on TV. Care for vodka with spy women?

Care for sun, or matutinal moon drops on the erstwhile

Beaches of WWII? Hell, yeah. Hell, yeah. You are so

Right, I am just carousing. But is that not better than

Loudly boasting, nursing a cantankerous glee on our

Night of departures, our silent nature being killing?

Perennial Measure 2

A perennial incredulity, really a vow, to oneself, to a god,

But really more out of habit, expecting none to love all this

Quick, lasting, and non-fasting fracas of vowels and non

     sequiturs.

This is the cramming justification I offer all my ghost fans to

     the brim:

Devour everything from nothing! I exist not here, relentless

     though

I am in this surveying the land with my rebellious sextants;

Listen not, for I’m not here; I’ll read not, I’ll see you there—

I write for the luxury of having done my non-responsibility,

Earning for myself tickets to go home, having saved private

Whining, dining alone, blogging along like a fool, like a

     retired tool

Of an absentee Muse of communication fantasy, keyboard-

     stomping

Like one possessed by the devils of a sea devoid of fishes,

Enjoying the doldrums solely, a man in bikini, sharks’ envy

Whose hungers keep lurking around in the deepest sound of

     hollows.

Can’t Write Long Today

Just something short, for the hell of writing something,

I have unfinished business, something pot-roasting.

No, no, of course I’m lying, though it’s true I’ve some

Dues. Heard today’s crime-syndicate murder news?

Mona Lisa’s Smile on a Plate since an Afternoon Garage Sale

Cerebral, a radical conundrum with the flair of a behemoth,

Is an adjective, not the name of a cock or mere tower in

     progress.

Yet that is just what I’m calling my dinner. Penumbral’s

     pretentious,

Encumbrance nasty, libidinous obvious, solicitous corny.

Cerebral: thick hair in pasta sauce becomes dark grass of

     squid cenacles.

Cerebrum, an herb, suffuses the evening or kelps of an

     afternoon.

Sure, twilights demand light reading, laziness, or sex.

I masturbate my pen and spoon upon seeing kombu-green

     doom.

A Bohemian Author Contemplates His Fame and Fan-Base, Decides to Confess Poverty and a New Haste

Indeterminate was it for ten long years,

Severance pay to my famous ears, but

Did France turn Bastille into a cenacle?

Did fruit the tree of the cynical? Did?

Who among you cannot disperse must

Interrogate yourselves on promiscuity:

This is not to insinuate some blasé ennui,

Just your fecund caresses for women in

A city. Did you tell them already? Ready?

Let’s go! The boats are sunk, all reddish,

Oh out with the porridge, am famished!

After this I’m writing again. Yes, again!

--2009

Photographs of the Corrupt Taking Communion Every Sunday

I watch as a watchman would watch from his tower,

Asleep in the doldrums, astounded by comforts,

Sardines on his plate slated with celery,

Conscience suspended among the laundry

Waiting for a Sunday, wilting for caress,

Some buttress to criminals’ duress.

Who wants rhyme, why hunger for justice

When justices crave only lust? And just as I was

About to confess to you—the mange disappears,

Cellophane morass turn to rum molasses,

Though also well-augured by witnesses to

Future shit, the blithe brothers, “forever and

Ever, all men created equal, today and whenever,

When the train leaves at any given time of arrival.”

So, this cannot wait, I have to protest the crassness.

I cannot be late, I need documenting cameras.

So-so . . .

To, with serendipitous glee,

And fro, with equanimity,

The godheads of the universes allow me

Carefree sanctity in this travel.

Who shot my cameraman,

Who made their own music?

No one could fathom the illness in the time

Of my sashaying amid the walls—

Superbly satisfied with my salary,

The rhyme no one cares to touch,

The rain no one comes to watch.

But, cynically, I burn with the

Bloggers . . . latching on to

A so-so insouciance.

Perennial Measure

cover photo and design by Marcel Antonio

--tribute to Eugenio Montale's Cuttlefish Bones

This is it. An irresistible purge pure as the putrid

smell of parmigiano-reggiano I just have to tell

you about. Otherwise I’d go crazy with laziness,

I won’t know what to do aside from job-wait

in the land of peer-hate and crimes’ journalese.

This is that, a party or poesy joyous among blasé

blogs, flagged at every measure but constantly,

blatantly musical, trumpeting uncontrolled ease

in the city of grey concrete littered with plastic

insensitivities and manic individualism. I hurl

my silent keyboard with impunity, tempted by

exclusions, hungry as yesterday’s hellish pizza,

though nostalgia won’t do us any good. Time

to be looking forward, to put up new standards

in service of the old, for the same ideals burn

in me as the Fascist desire—power/harmony,

but pursued in far greater graceful fashion,

sort of like Milan on a café afternoon, posing

as a dandy, armed only with words, only sly

inconsolable asymmetry from flagged poetry.

---Milan, er, Manila, August 2009