American,Televangelical,Exceptionalism

Each sevennight’s end,

seven seals play around my white

male televangelism

informing dormancies and normalcies

not divine,

play around freely,

in turn the mal-informed court my find.

What is this, my re-electionist

prince asks.

Why not, I reply,

with no panic.

I’m the one sacrosanct,

begrudging favors to darkness

and arts that suck.

Aw, shucks, man. I really appreciate

your light fiddling o’ tunes, . . .

and fiddled on I did my sincerity

and did fall laughing at right moments

swapping saintly fortitude for

wealthy magnanimity.

I’m not now famous for nothing.

Am for Him, and

won’t be sleeping again

till blacks and women learn modesty.

Computer Widow Cooking For a Famed Busy Living Editor Always on Vacation

Computer widow cooking for a famed busy living editor on vacation. Unbagging a notebook at a Baguio home, watching as well her profile while playing alone, watching like a friend. Notebook. ‘Twas in a box in an orange bag with his name, amidst logs and more, aflame in an outburst of bookmarked URLs concerning .com yahoos and houynhhnms. Certainly he, while cooing a trill with a feathered renown, though vexed still by a few Wikipedia entries, part of the game, . . . certainly he sees the social isms that measure his blogs as absolutely of the Philippine terrain. Social isms that aren’t charity from heaven, but sweepstakes on our sensitive napes. And now to his office website for a submission. Other bookmarked URLs, other uploads attached like mental caresses under duress of requisites, eruditions. Other webpages’ upstarts, others’ untitled art, all part and parcel of his vocation’s notations—rotations on that desktop in his grandmother’s antique sewing shop. It’s 11:26 ante meridiem. Time to check out lottery winning nos., get some lunch beyond last night’s stale burgers with her omelet, marmalade, but first, to that website for submissions to underling copy editors. Then, finally, he kisses her with a kiss like a blade, . . . a kiss on a gelid nape.

Amidst the Conflict among Nationalists

A semblance of jurisprudent influx

Informed the caricatures, carried on

A lamentable cannibal in us all.

The first time death arrived on our shore

Care of the marine camouflage,

I was not here. Not there, and have

Always been unbattered, uncoaxed,

Though disenfranchised by severities.

Often I’m carousing, bodily bare.

But I’d not declared myself saintly,

Was not sacrosanctly benign, with

My own Pilates. No! But I was

Far an adjunct to any of you,

Far adroit with fearsome flatteries

Unhindered by diplomacy or influence.

And, often, a joy to the mere super-sundry.

While journalists were arguably true within

Bounds and their own rounds of beer,

I’ve only watched TV momentarily,

Absent with absinthe, which consequently

Abetted rankiness toward the devil

Who inhabited my blue sea.

Seven days a week I’ve watched you

And taunted you and fainted with your . . .

‘Til the daylights conquered my insanity.

Then, lo and behold!—the draft, my cold

Craftiness, no longer arbiter to my drool.

Am here now! Mumbling. And screaming

Inside this conflict among our nationalists.

Priest with Lung Cancer

“Indefinite,” he said. “I would certainly not be pressured, no.

No, not be pressured.” Censured, but ventured on, yes. “Oh

     yes, I still can,” he said.

Oh, no, you don’t. Do you take me for a fool, like that stool

     on

The carpet? “Well, baby me any day but not this minute, not

     with this

Thing hanging on my shoulder and the doctor saying he

     wonders

Whether I can really still do this for 30 more weeks. Light the

     wick, I feel weak. . . .

“Someone told me the day I fly will also be on the pilot’s last

     supper, or

A helicopter will take me to heaven, and I will bring with me

Incandescence, phosphorescence, fossil-fuel incense and

     myrrh.

“Of course this is not the last time I’ll ever sing this song—

     come on,

Then, sing along, we are the champions, aren’t we, my

     friends?

And didn’t I keep showing you the end of the rope, the hope

     of love?”