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I, from the et cetera farm
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TUNNELS Escape from time
I flow from this book you gavein the last of the under fifteenminutes. Me over my head,like a shocked readerof those backward zeroesprinted in the purchase receipt:in love with the lola magicover the bridge I couldn’t pull out,play nor call a trick to makesome obese scene consumea page, swallow a space-giving mystery before youcould ever figure it out.Hardly a night passes I drownin the disobedient waters of now,for I punctuate once, twiceand almost repeatedlyso there’ll be enough seekingand hiding between you—who fascinate the futureand the order of falling objects—and the narrative whose plotcontradicts the lust and laxityof everything crepuscular.There’s a kind of time feelingthe same, I don’t know what kind,that greets 5th Avenue Streetwith a stability in waysand means you find incredible,just as long queuesat bus terminalsare certain to re-contain motion,such a line beginningagain and again.
TUNNELS Where is
(after Sara Howe’s Crossing from Guangdong)I don’t see meeting minutesas constantly risking [ik-sahyt-muhnt]but as Ferlinghetti linesspreadeagled in lambentHong Kong districts mourningover our pedestrian livesonce a rice Coney Islandnow a model city too busyw/ parks & painteddreams & melancholiesbikiniedbeliefs long adored for their common language of binaries: easternphilosophy what a lesson to swallow what coconut meat tobut chewit’s not bubble gum for sure my dear joeit’s Peking duck wesuck & spitthen suck again & again like Cantonese in IPA countryswallowing phonemes in all its sweetnessoften you think of Disneylandmore often the state economyshowbiz etceteras commercial spaces newspapered ideascars & telephonesthe quantum case of you & meor mainland king kong TVhowever at my most riverine momentI believein my motherfor saying that crossing bordersfinds you not a fruitin the half-light b
TUNNELS Dynasty
(after Bei Dao’s Black Map)Back in the room, Beijing is the new pairof shoes close to the smell of anise in spring;shoes father wears when he was lostin the black continents of bedtime narrativeshoping the sheets remain fine, unworriedas taxi fares only his childhood can charge.Memory barks no-yuan minutesof the meeting, no semi-charmed heart,no Shanghai of forgotten dream cinema.All I want is to swirl aroundmy father’s personal winterso I can explore the night’s fatherlymadness, its dust echoing sweetness,and come home. In another time I knowI‘ve come home to watch the seasonsnever understanding why several shadesof father stand still on the pavementlooking for maps and lost time. Heshuffles afterward with the shoesI think are ready to fund him farewells.Rare eddies of him left my Beijingcrumble in stochastic reminiscences—no bestial beat pounding on the walls,no searchlight from out the windowlo
TUNNELS The Neighbourhood
And the music from the neighbourhood waxes,collects smoke from yesterday’s conversation.And the tea kettle pot puffs another faithlesstranslation of a strange intervention.Which is like placing the beers with toy gunsand sanitary napkins. Armageddon is comingto you when you least expect it. Heavy,quite the world babies in cribs want to hugwith their tiny T-Rex arms unmindfulof its axis mundi that supports the insectsmarching around a crumb called curiosity,or maybe patrolling one winter nightabove the clouds sprinkled with graffiti art.During overcast days out in the street,dotted with basketball courts, you wouldenjoy black motorcycles muffling the noiseyard after sprouting yard, rocking the entireneighbourhood with the only music that isrelevant to a perambulating landscape:Eunoia. Such emergency won’t breakmy bones. Ashtrayed your intentions in.An aubade in front of the TV set, you wouldsay was written for Dinosaur Jr. to playin your head like skateboard silhouettes.And danc
TUNNELS Directions
I loved directions. “In case of fire, break glass.” So there was a fire. I broke the glass. I salivated for more directions. But there was none. The fire waltzed and continued to rage—Xanadu, lies. The laws of flight and fall perceived rebellion. Its park, so dark. A huge hum of darkness I have never heard, listened to. Nor welcomed with its promising cryogenic address. So I found new ways to make a friend. Then a man came out of the sprawl. Himself confused with the sound of his name, even James Joyce could sprightly not explain, this man made me rethink directions. “In case of fire,” he said, “break me.” He might be the glass that I made, then broke open for athletically good reason. But what do I know about breaking? I just loved directions, and I learned to break them with tremendous speed. It sounded as though I were coursing my own roundabout. So I ran after the fire that followed me. I ran fast without caution, walked without warning. And I lived
TUNNELS To my Aurora Borealis
In life, we are playing with dangerous games: you, the witnessof the visiting vatnajökull now blushing pink in the atom skywith the bright comedy of Lucifer fooling the stars,razorbills, and I, making a cryogenic favour to the moonlessnights, to the mountain echoes following the murmurof tourists caught in the arctic splash of water balloonsand whispering endless cold, happen to see the worldin your eyes—spinning, spinning with the silence of earth.There I seek the image, the northern face, Europa-cheeked,slowly melting away like shreds of memory fillingthe landscapes, carousel hills, the dawn—all these accidentswe call remembrances of love. Speaking of which, the onlything that matters is to spread the ashes of the colouracross the strange horizons charioting above us, realizingthe force of nature to be like hoppíppolla magic. We takeshelter in our celestial dome, where I see you shushthe spectacle and stand still as an image, a celestial sight
TUNNELS Leche Flânerie
How many stations are there from Katipunanto Recto? I’ve lost count. I’ve lost countof the elective units I needed to enroll,the verses submitted for Tulaan sa Tren.Too I’ve lost count of the perfect scoresI received in a videoke lounge for singingThe Cure countless times, colored balloonsstood astound, cobwebbed by the ideathat Morrissey had in a dream a lover.I’ve lost count of the LBC trucksjust passing by, not dropping offletters or any delicious news smellingof campto soup that once made Retiroa streetway of stories for old moviespelted with laughter and soundtracksof which I’ve also lost count; the sightof these sensor machines seemed OKseemed civil like my blue beep cardwith no-swipe tantrum, only magnetichearts beaming through worlds, worlds.
TUNNELS Rain, Sunday night
When cities wear around their necksthe seethe of the cold, traffic slowsto the gutter the clambering freeze,and half a heart this rain touches our skin,mere stains we believe home recollectsmemories, drops of names unclutteringsuspiciously in the melting shadow,over the ice age of our singular breath,surface of things revives in the darkwhat is lost from a deep gorge of sleep,seconds on the side of water, more hopethan hiding, beyond the evening light--there is a rustle of a long sworn word,a lonely song at the night’s heels, oh—but were you there to hear it?
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