Share
Rain, Sunday night
Related chapters
TUNNELS Rains of Iran
(after re-reading a few stanzas from The Ruba'iyat of Omar Khayyam)The cycle which includes our coming and goingLittle did I know then that the Khayyam boyswill soon become Khayyam men, out in the fieldssearching for that sticky tongue of fire ephemerallymaking strong the sky sitting on the horns of a bull.Has no discernible beginning nor end;Let the one hundred and one nights singto the prophesies and muses. Let the chaos of the nightsweeten sin with a patchouli-embracing smellno dandier than a whispering ruba’i.Nobody has got this matter straight—Life... oh it’s the magical mystery kind!In the desert I could die loving the sand, the voicethat touches the voiceless in every particleof dust, composed and collected, like the Eternal Painter.Where we come from and where we got to The Master of Fate wraps myths with the moon's squeakyhush, and sound to sound the rains of Iran showerus wit
TUNNELS Labour Day
for my sister, giving birthA double meaning, I guess. When the effort offersmore wind to the process, a grown-up confusiondepreciates. A day of countless promotions, too,suddenly glimmers, as seismic as the lettersof your name in the skin of new day. Numbersreduced into decreed holidays. Once again,these are the borne context on your head, setto cradle the perfect word in a tin house we builtfor freelance work and exclusive reading repast.My dear sister, you lay there waiting for now.My dear sister, you lay there closing your eyes.Don’t you know the sun is knitted for a pumpkinhat, its rays the colourful socks for tiny feetinsecure about the dripping weather in September.Oh, my sister, labour day is all fine with jazz!Before I forget, just what I heard on the news,Kim Jong Un loves to play with missileswith no carrier-propositions. And just so you know,dear sister, like Kim, I’ve watched the episodesof The Boy General, expecting that in e
TUNNELS #taglish
never an expletive(in mint condition): nagsasawa ka na ba?6from the mouth of decadence, the idea of fish balls& tall tales in the streets. from research-groomed Rizalian dream, a #LunetaPark for your religionof sweet air. from media to selfirrealis& #Imeldific, a bruise in history-making. from the R-establishmentonce called a “(r)ehab,” the “first bonga light,” “systems spidering,” at the edge (a slant rhyme for ‘age’)of thirty-three a dirty ice cream is an oasisof #Dutertism; you & IWednesday #conyos of Ma
TUNNELS Little things
A couple of weeks back everyonewas chanting ¡Habemus Papam! in the garden,on chimney tops, on the floor of the plaza smittenby bird beaks, but not in the libraries of philanderingcodeheads and newly circumcised trapeze swingers.On that special day no one wanted to hear somethinglike a “freelance boner.” I’m sure you too didn’t throwan ear for words like papal shit or quantum Christology.You know, I’d like to brush your hair when things gougly, as in when a tsunami hits the seawall and there’sno one to fix your hair out of fear. I will celebrateyour eyes’ uncalculated blink as it might changethe season from tinder-parched mornings to being 84and still writing you poems. You know, I’d liketo see you cry, laugh at people off to work, becauseyou’re edged to clear the skies of jinx and throat-cloggedpretensions. The paddling mallards, oh, I want to countthem out for you and give you my monthly salarylest I fail to do the maths. I want to carry you
TUNNELS Call Center Angels
Ting. The train left Guadalupe Station8 collecting more of Garoy’s ilk, work-tired and sleepy, the Garonoids. Then back to the strange lady stare-kissing the sun, back to Garoy’s scratching his gluteus maximus. Tang.The Garonoids behind them seemed like an on-off light bulb in their stressed shell-light. As the train stopped, they were switched on as if awareness were to penetrate their system. And when motion pedalled, their inner sky of sleep once again shut. Garoy yawned repeatedly, and the lady with the now amber-lit eyes averted her gaze, now toward the approaching station. “We’re heading to Boni Station and you’re still scratching your—“He quizzed, “What?”“Your gladiatorial tang tings.”“Ting Tangs?”And there’s a risk of Neil Gailman and Amanda Palmer confusing the morning’s blood pressure.
TUNNELS The Rapid Room
(after Requiem for a Dream)Feel the pain, the spiked effect of the year fastens like fantasy to the rapid room of human skin. Watch the junior tomato sun swiftly spinning forward the neon kitchen countertops, making big the dream to dance with cauliflowers while the text message remains unread, un-sniffing the curry powder from the freshest Woodstock of our lungs. See neon-painted plastic cups drift across the misshapen reality already inspiring the right chopper to celebrate the saturnalia of sharp objects, the happy flying Greek alphabets of such a beginning. It’s obvious to us two people, we never learn. Neither of us could understand, yet, the cost of all this may welcome another pain, another grotesque feeling, and then beyond the door into the abyss, we see us. In this rapid room we live. Our skin desires, dissolves. You believe in my troubled arithmetic. So we wrap our arms around each other, feeling the new pain every day, with calm paper boats sailing around this roo
TUNNELS tɹaɪsɪkəl
Short distance routes for the love of the people’s plaza. In the land of guavas and legato-linked pabasas. Far gone since you left this town and its parish kisses traded for maple leaves.The green tufted Garcia garden behind the churchyard - not even the interstate 3AM tapsi can match. Seattle. Toronto. Burkina Faso. Look, we don’t have the places solet’s not talk about getting lost. Let’s talk about our national tɹaɪsɪkəl racing in our blood’s activity. It’s normal, you know. Like the Friday tiangge stalls floweringlike freckles in June, someone’s bleeding for what weare (not). Drop. So we have the future in the barangay basketball league. The way we spell “future” makes it easy for us to spell traysikel. Not tricycle. It’s traysikel, Bayani. For they’ve grown digital too, ask Uncle Pepe.
TUNNELS The Poet Who Wrote Adam Snow
for John AshberyThe literary life is never easy, you saw it firstin the convex mirror, its spreading tensionthe surface of claw-prints in silver. I then triedto learn how to read humour and surprisedisguised as a shadow pretending to havenever seen alchemy winnow through thistlesdown the dark alleys of your city parks. I,the wanderer learning how to drift pastshoe factories and never pay attentionto the still-chiming ways of lookingat a lamppost, would like to say, You arethe art of consciousness, the consciousnessof art! Uniform of the swirling things,you are: desk, papers, dried leaves, moneybills, memos, pills, tears, the image. Allsurround me like a magma of memoriesshutting down the last sex of wine from ash.
Latest chapter
- TUNNELS Footnotes
- TUNNELS Intro to end
- TUNNELS a story about a bruise in light of Lacan’s le sinthome; or, because love rolls in the fifth eye of our homelessness
- TUNNELS The Poet Who Wrote Adam Snow
- TUNNELS tɹaɪsɪkəl
- TUNNELS The Rapid Room
- TUNNELS Call Center Angels
- TUNNELS Little things
- TUNNELS #taglish
