Sunday, August 30, 2009

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

Saturday, August 29, 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

Friday, August 28, 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

Thursday, August 27, 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

Wednesday, August 26, 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!

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

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

Monday, August 24, 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?

Sunday, August 23, 2009

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.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

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.

Friday, August 21, 2009

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.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

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.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

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.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

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.

Monday, August 17, 2009

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?

Sunday, August 16, 2009

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.

Saturday, August 15, 2009

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?

Friday, August 14, 2009

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

Thursday, August 13, 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.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

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