We May Come Like Water*

Go after a “big fish” yet still live/die with Marcos’
     democracy, 
That’d be like keeping the Philippines in touch with the world
     banks 
Now, as then, and well into the greyest future: no hope, no
     further hope?

There are our “progressive” telecommunications companies
     praying a
Late Hail Mary from a diaspora. But you know the
     plutocracy,
Right? The statesmen-merchants for leaders keeping the
     Philippines

In touch with the aid, and then Vatican? What banks? What
     touch? And
What’s the point of all this fasting for mother Earth? Nah—
     indiscriminate
Logging, mining, labor exploitation, manufacture of poverty,
     now the

Eternal clichés, . . . so let them reign forever, let them end her
     like used-up
Sand mines at a bitch beach. And let us ourselves rot for now,
     go and bleed
Fear. Like, sure, okay, let help stalk the provinces while being
     wary of the

Red-baiting as you hop from station to station, slowly onto a
     platform of
Another perpetual agony that we can again exchange jokes
     over, talking
About the horror of ghost roads, the ultimate political and
     economic joys

We all are familiar with, can relate to, through the Marcoses
     in us and
With us, US, China, forever flaunting telecommunion lines
     direct to
Our religious palaces, part of the rest of their providential
     world—

Mythological America, God-building China, in whom our
     palaces trust
Their profits (dangerous though a superpower might be
     should it lose
Its G8+5 seat). Then, for a long time to come, let’s push our
     women to

Look up to Mammon’s priests circling the scraped skies with
     blade-carrying
Penises, like eagles from a monastery, laugh against Marxist
     productions
Of judgments now on trial, oh crucified like a suspected
     liberation

Theologian, gone after, their/our big fish of neoliberal poetic
     justice as
Juried by erring militarized personnel who shall inherit forests
     and beaches
As their temporary heaven, until we, the resilient, learn to
     gush out:

Like water, flood their “I have the floor”s with an undeniable
     change of climate.

—1999-2007

—*This alludes to martial artist and film icon Bruce Lee’s statements describing the fluidity of his Wing Chun-inspired kung fu style, jeet kune do, and philosophical approach. Wing Chun would usually simply mean extreme subtlety in approach, as in embracing the grace of the Yin to service the Yang strength of attack. Jackie Chan’s “drunken snake style” can be considered another development from this style.