happy birthday to me

naguba among computer.

someone buy me a life.

disillusioned

 Disillusioned

When I was a kid I watched the Spiderman the Animated Series on television. That cartoon series in which Spiderman’s suit was really of strong red and blue and in which one could feel from Peter Parker’s face the graininess and the dots from the original comic strips. The only episodes I remember though with clear picture were the ones in which he was “infected” with the Venom and turned into Black Spiderman. For a little kid with little asthmatic lungs, I could relate with Spiderman, as there was really tension, a depletion of air in the surrounding, and a struggle inside the character while he battled with the Venom. In order to overcome the Venom, he must also overcome himself. In those episodes, his real enemy was himself. The Venom brought out the hero’s evil id. Evil it may seem; it is still Spiderman. The Venom was only the vehicle for bringing out his other self, probably his true self. For my four-year-old head, those episodes were so dark that if he were through with the Venom, there would be no more Spiderman. There was no point for Stan Lee to invent another enemy. Heroes need enemies and his self was his greatest enemy.

I planned to watch Spiderman 3 on the big silver screen but I already saw it on pirated DVD. During the movie I thought of things that I could use my eighty-five pesos. Maybe buy a new pair of shades or another pirated DVD. In a parallel dimension, with that amount of money, I could have bought a ticket, cramped my ass inside a dark, cold cinema and watched a movie that does not worth a crap. That movie would probably be Spiderman 3.

Instead of the Venom making Spiderman (Toby Maguire) uncomfortable, it was Mary Jane (Kristen Dunst) who was bitching herself into his life. There should be the “inner struggle”, no outside factors. Also, I was bored with the Peter Parker alter ego switch, which was the corky and flamboyant Parker. It worked on Spiderman 2 but not in this instalment. In the movie trailer, I was lead to expect that the Black Spiderman would turn out as an emo-shit. With emo kids with their emo hairdos and emo music everywhere, the movie could have at least speak for a generation. But it was just melodrama. Like a chick flick. Peter and Goblin a.k.a. Harry Osborn (James Franco) were perfect for each other.

The other characters were non-existent. Sandman was supposed to be Evil. I do not like villains who induce pity just because they got evil for doing something humanitarian for their sick children; that it was not really their intention to do bad things in the first place. If they wanted me to sympathize for them, let me see them wallow in their ugly mutated face like Doc Oc or in their insecurities like the older Goblin or for simple cold revenge like Harry Osborn. And who was that another photographer? What did he do?

By the way, it is not necessary to kill a character just because he has repented from his old ways that it is pointless keeping him alive because his only purpose of being is to be bad. Hollywood is so predictable with their villains, if they turn good they get sack. Filipino moviegoers say how some Filipino movies are but catalogues of cliché scenes from other movies. The barfing of a female character after a night with the leading man, the omnipresence of pancit and juice in family scenes, police showing up after the mess is through and movie titles that turn up in a conversation. People of the Philippines, watch Spiderman and see America do their catalogue of Hollywood clichés.

I was disappointed because after Spiderman 2 in which Spiderman showed his sincerity in helping people, with his Jesus Christ position saving the runaway train, I thought he would really be… the saviour. With that hero equals Jesus passé, when there was Neo, Superman, and the boys of Sparta in 300, only Spiderman in the second instalment nailed it. There was also a scene of Descent when he passed out after stopping the train and the saved citizens carried him above them inside, unmindful of his identity. “He’s too young,” someone said while looking down at his face when they laid them down the floor. “He doesn’t look older than my son,” one man said. But in the third instalment, where was Christ?

***

After Jayla’s birthday party, we went to Gerome’s house in Buhangin to have after-party. There were seven of us: Gerome, Carlsberg, Burt, Donita, Goofy, Bogart and me. They planned to have a get-together a month ago, a reunion for all of us they say, but I did not come. It was almost eleven in the evening and there were no more stores open that sell packed ice. One of my many images of hell is a dark lively bar offering bottomless beer except that they are warm like piss and with no ice. My other image of hell is watching Japanese animé series the original version, uncut and no pixels but without subtitles. We finally solved the problem by having Gerome climb Everest. He came back down with the Philippine flag. We believed he used the pole as ice pick.

We had not opened a bottle yet but I was already imagining things. Drinks in the middle of the night are tricky. I could not figure out if I was already drunk or that sleep was just creeping behind my eyes. In order not to fall into Dream Island I nominated myself as the “gunner” and won by landside. Actually, I won by default.

The talk of the night, as always, was about our past relationships. We heard the stories many times, but with our foggy sights and foggier piss-filled bladder, we just needed another final confirmation and clearance on what really happened when who was still with who back high school. I spat at Carlsberg while I blamed him for me taking sides with Cracker. When they were starting I was somewhere in the midst of their relationship, taking some pride that I did a part in bringing these two twisted blokes together. Carlsberg would tell me almost everything that a friend needed to hear. But when they broke up because of Cracker toying with another guy in Visayas, I was left ignorant of the situation. I could not blame Carlsberg for being a man and in silent anguish about the situation. The only words that got to me were from Cracker. Who knows what sugared version she told me. Cracker is also a friend but when I asked certain questions, I wanted it answered by both sides. That I hated about Carlsberg; he never talked. He said he told me. I could not remember. He pointed out the time when he cried on my shoulder. I could not still remember. There was an incident like that but it happened when they were still together, two years before their break up. But I tell you, when he cried that night, I never felt a heartbeat that fast and strong on my skin. If that heartbeat would belong to me and it was jumping all over my skin, time to see a doctor and start drinking herb tea. Carlsberg must have really loved Cracker.

There were so many same drunken talks, jumping from one person to another. We scrutinized each other with the same drunken inquiries. But the one that scared the sanity out of me was when Gerome asked me why some men are not contented with just one woman. Why do they always look for someone else and keep the relationship with their girls? I nearly chocked and puked at the same time. I have not been in a serious relationship or with a woman perhaps. What do I know?

Gerome was known to have ways of cooing a girl. Being a pretty boy, he easily swayed into girls’ hearts. Only to realize, to the horror of the girls, that he had supposedly used them as subjects for little boys’ betting game for love and lust. He said that there were feelings and seriousness for the girls, that he does not really took part in in any wage to have the girls say yes. I believed him. I do. I believed him when I saw how serious he is with his present girlfriend. He introduced Lav to us, brought her a few times in our priceless get-togethers and he prided her but not in a way other guys would pride their girlfriends like trophies. Why – he did not win Lav in any contest. I only told Gerome that the way he asked me that question is a hint he is not happy with Lav. “Maybe you just envy other guys. Maybe you just need to be less loyal to her.” He said he does love Lav and he does not want other else. I believed him. I do. 

I also believed in the stars, our memories and the music that had become the background score of our life. We were listening to some songs in Gerome’s iPod attached to speakers until The Killers began singing their “won’t you feel my bones, on your bones?” I said that song is so gay just to spite the guys. They love the band. I said what kind of man would sing about his bone feeling on someone else’s bone? I also said “Mr. Brightside” is also gay. “It’s about a man’s jealousy!” they cried altogether. Yeah, but the way the man sings, is it the kind of jealousy a man would have for a girl? The first line was subtle but too giving. “Coming out of my cage” could mean “Coming out of my closet”. And there was also the issue of having a “boyfriend that looks like a girlfriend”. Right then and there, my little boys’ source of machismo was attacked. But I love these boys. I also love The Killers. They are not gay. Just some of their songs.

Goofy and Donita were so gay beyond my definition of gay. They did not touch even a single drop of sweat from the bottles. I could not blame them for distancing themselves away from alcohol. I have seen them drunk like mad little men that it was fun to expect what they would do next. They roll to the ground, puke everywhere, kiss total strangers, shout like hell and cry like the little boys that they are. Of course, I can not take it. I can not have people who steal the show for me. So we let them be but not before they search us food in the middle of night.

They returned with chips and more alcohol. What I got was a small pack of Ding Dong that would never open like hell. I used my teeth to open the piece of shit. Remember when we were young, we would grit our teeth on these packs of tidbits snacks and the kids in front of us would also grit their teeth watching us, just waiting for us to give them their share, for their moral support. It made even more difficult to open my little pack last night because Burt was exactly doing the same thing those little blokes would do. I could not control my laughter. He gritted watching me grit on the pack. Burt was glowing red.

After several packs of tidbit snacks, more bottles of beer and another two of toothpaste-flavored lambanog had run out that I needed a leak. I went to the dark corner of Gerome’s garden and pissed like a mad firefighter. When I looked up the sky to look for orange clouds that bring floods in the middle of summer heat, I swear, I saw the stars spelled my name. It was beautiful that I felt my left shoe burning in warmth and wetness. The stars quickly disappeared. I washed away the piss from the shoe with melted ice.

When I returned everyone was down. Goofy had drunk several shots of lambanog and puked like hell and now asleep. Gerome went inside their house and did not return. Carlsberg and Bogart shared an iron bench, their arms locked in tight grasp. Burt was on the table also asleep while Donita, in his weary eyes, searched for any song in the iPod that was not from The Killers. I said that if they would not wake up and finish the last few shots, “I’m going home!” They did not budge and gave me only a belch and a fart. I gathered my things and left them in the middle of the night. It was already four in the morning.

Some things were just so unreal that only kids would believe them. We were once kids and we believed. Only when we grew up, we grew up from believing. Spiderman was a joke. Even my friendship with these guys was a joke. When they plan for a reunion, I ditch them. Now they asked me to stay for the night. For the bringing back of something lost in our childhood. But not before the night was through, they slept on me and I left them.

Spiderman, The Killers, Cracker and Lav, the stars and the memories may have disappointed us now and then. When we meet them again, maybe shredded from image of what we had when we first knew them, their essence is still there. Maybe I should have returned to Gerome’s place when I still had the energy. I fell asleep sitting on the curb, waiting for a ride home. I counted the days before my birthday comes. I had already made a promise to them that before the summer ends, they could come to our house, stay and drink the night until it bleeds. There would be no leaving after the party because I would be staying; it is going to be held on our house for God’s sake. And we would listen to The Killers all night.

5/22/2007 3:26:16 AM

Voices in My Pillows

Voices in My Pillows

I can’t sleep. Jessica Zafra’s voice is still in my head.

Tw7sted reminded me of my very lesson in Jean Claire Dy in Creative Writing 101 that you should always try finding your own voice. Zafra also mentioned that in her article somewhere in the book. I figured out that this voice they were saying is not something that you try to speak inside your head, instead it is something inside your head whom you listen to. It is scary because for the past two years I have written for online-based news and on weblogs, the voice that dictates what I write comes from the image of Zafra. I’ve been reading Zafra now for four years and no other voice comes louder in my ears than hers. She is so noisy.

I have finished reading Catcher in the Rye and lent it to Bogart. Holden has a voice of an older brother. It was lovely. But the book was somewhat disappointing because I expected the final chapter to be a long whistle blow. The book was full of canon blasts and colorful fireworks that the end sounded only like a brief whoot, like a fart. The book was good all the same, though. It “killed me” when Phoebe put Holden’s hunting hat on him. I finished reading the book without fulfilling my prophecy of self-delusion about me becoming a Holden. It was the other way around: Holden became me.

While reading the book, my sister kept bugging me to let her bring the book with her to Ateneo where she worked her scholar-volunteer hours. She insisted even when I was still not through. She mentioned that she wrote the way J. D. Salinger does (she writes in her blog and plans to submit her works to her school paper) indirectly saying she was Holden.

I don’t know if I’m right, correct me if I’m wrong, but the kind of literary technique Salinger employed is called stream of consciousness. It reveals the character’s feelings, thoughts and actions and somewhat spontaneous to the character’s feel of the world. The speaker becomes the star in a work even if the story is about something else. I first saw this style on Bob Ong, then Zafra and many other more. It is the reason why I am not enthralled with how Catcher in the Rye is written. The best writer to ever put this style on work for me was the Irish-American autobiographer Frank McCourt. My sister also claims that her writing is similar to those of Ong and McCourt. She is not a Zafra, I believe. Zafra is too noisy for her.

Whatever the name of that style is, it is so appealing. It is easy to fall in love with the stitch of thoughts that some readers claim it is their own thoughts, it is speaking their mind and that it is their voice. Sometimes they claim that the author is stealing their identities.

It is really scary when other people’s voices leap out from their heads and penetrate on mine, especially when the voice I hear is from a self-confessed cynical mutant like Zafra. Much worse, the voice is taking my sleep. I keep Tw7sted under my pillow after I read it at night.

When I finish reading Tw7sted, I will cover the book with newspaper and write on it “KEEP OUT!” I will keep it in a carton box, under a bed, in a bodega, in a castle, somewhere out in the space.

5/18/2007 3:24:52 AM

Louse

Louse

Last night I went to see Bogart for first time this May. We rarely ever see each other nowadays and it was only our second time being together for the whole summer season. We like to think that we click like hell but we are two different minds that can’t occupy the same conversation at the same time. It is best for us to only see each other occasionally.Since my sunglasses broke while at the beach, I received a hundred and fifty pesos to buy myself a new pair. The heat in this country is unbearable but the glare is unspeakable. I went out of the house the moment the sun receded into the horizon. There was enough daylight for me not be called a creature of the night.

It was already dark when I reached Bogart’s house in Boulevard, much darker when we went out into the night. We walked the length of Roxas, talking and assessing her life and her relationship with her boyfriend I haven’t met. She told me that the guy confessed to her that he kissed another girl while he was in a game of dare. She said she thought of the worst. He would have never told her that incident if something more suspicious had happened. She added that while in a period of resentment, they never contacted each other. One night, she decided to send him messages for guilt trip. “If we don’t love other people blah blah we might as well spare them from hurting them.”

“That was a lousy,” I told her.

We talked all the way to Gaisano Mall and went into the same store we go to since high school days: National Bookstore. There, I saw new copies of Tw7sted by Jessica Zafra on the shelf, as pink and as alive as ever. I first saw the copies on October two years ago. I had the money then but I decided to postpone a week to see if I still wanted the book. When I returned, there were no more pink Zafras. I waited for another batch of stocks to come but there where none.

A month later after the first apparition, I saw Titiana parading her own copy of Tw7sted. I managed to borrow the book, only to return it immediately the next day. She never brought the book back to school after that and flew out of Davao the following months to study in Manila. She returned to Davao this summer and before I could borrow her copy again, she flew back to Manila. I barely got the time to read half of the Tw7sted articles in that one night she lent it to me, much more to memorize all of them by heart.

I was such a fanatic of Zafra. When I decided to become a writer, I wanted to be like her. I even went to the point of liking her by constantly writing her e-mails and comments on her blog. I told her that she’s the only person I look up to that even with my airy disposition I am humbled by her works and I am willing to be called her ardent follower. She never replied to any of my mails, and rejected all my comments on her blog. I silently criticize Bogart for being pathetic and look what I am. I make actions that I regret the moment I made them. Just weeks ago, I sent a text message to Benjamin, someone I’m in a bad term with for a long time. When he replied the next day afternoon, I was wasted. The only time that I may ever drink for the whole summer and I spoiled it by ruining the chance of getting along with him by sending him an embarrassing message. He never replied.

All of those things went into my mind when I saw Tw7sted back on the shelf. Unhesitant, I bought the first copy that landed into my hand. Before the mall closed, Bogart and I decided to call it a night and separated ways. People at home were looking for the sunglasses. I showed them the book. I remember that the book has images of Zafra’s spectacles.

Tw7sted cost a hundred and forty-five pesos. Five pesos less the year it came out. When I checked the pages for printing defects, it was seven pages less. Thursday, May 17, 2007 4:07 AM

Frida

Frida 

“Look if I loved you, it was for your hair.
Now that you are bald, I don’t love you anymore.”
- Frida Kahlo, 1940

You cut your hair with scissors,
a pair of iron beaks on your hand
and you scatter your
locks across the floor, where the
strands resemble the lines of
your name and the musical notes
among the lines on the board.
You’re hair was your beauty,
Now we’re both empty.

You take off your dress and slip on
a man’s, combing your
cropped hair to the back of your
ears to crease your face
where you still wear those
eyebrows straight.
Did you hear a voice call
when the scissors squeak
to lose your scalp off?

You go bald while you sit,
waiting for the imprints
in your fingernails to fade.
Looking at you, do you
still remember how
the wind glides through?

You may have loved the woman with lovely hair
but we both know it wasn’t merely for your hair.

Ghost Writer

Ghost  Writer

You look out through the window:
a glass, a sea, a mirror
reflecting coffee smokes
out from a cup
and a vision of a man with
hardened face and with much
hardened stare.

This is the window
where they change your name.

You write another stroke on the white,
a story where they change your name:
a line, a life, a poem.
What is your first word?
Will it end with a simple dot
or another loopy question mark?
Is that a coffee stain you will
leave behind, or tear marks
for the blue lines?

Sipping the air for the last cup,
a world, a sea, as deep as your stare
onto the piece of paper lined with
creases and cigarette burns,
counting loops and slashes
where spaces should be plated.
Holes emancipate you
through your face on the window
that served as your prison,
your face is filled
with singing pricks.
It sings.

For this is the face
where they can’t touch your name.

Monteverde

Monteverde 

Down the street of Monteverde,
little girls poke on
little boys who poke on
grounds on
search for worms, or spiders,
or whatever bug of the world
the earth has to offer.

These little kids sleep
during midday summer heat
and wake up in late afternoon
streak with their powdered necks,
running out from their houses
to Magsaysay Park where
the trees are powdered with salt
from the breeze of Davao Gulf.

They grow on worms,
and sun and whatever
dust of the world
the street has to offer
and chase their
little lives from
their little cribs out
to the Sta. Ana Wharf,
waiting for whatever cargo
of the sea the water has to offer.

These little kids knock on windows
of passing vehicles,
pull shirts and call names,
offering their little packets
of white powder
to whomever
man of the world
who treads their holy playground.

Down the street of Monteverde,
these little kids turn a corner
with their little lives go out
with them on the corner,
and they return to their little homes
with their little faces powdered
with gunshots and wounds.

Down the street of Monteverde,
their playground becomes their graveyard
and the worms of the world feast
on their little bones.

bottle

Bottle Body

It stands on the edge of the table.
Its sweat, a bead, a tear,
trickles from its lips
along the lines of its breast,
and drips down to the wooden
cracks on the floorboard
forming a stain, a blot, a spot
where other sweats from
other bottles wet.

It stands on the edge of the table.
A woman, a goddess, a mother deity,
a staple of modern-day dietry,
posing its ancient beauty
for the world to see.
Its caramel fizz freezes the nose.
Its soda bubbles burns the bones.

It is cold, it is cool, it is a color tone
that fills up man’s sweat
he lost to a woman’s scent.
It stands on the edge of the table,
erected, mounted, and very tangible.
Its lips glistening with
its sweat, a bead, a seed,
longing to be grabbed on its
head to quench an
animal thirst.

Its stands on the edge of the table,
sexless for its being sexy.
 

Boob Tube Talks (edited)

Boob Tube Talks

The boy in black-and-white Mickey Mouse cap
sits on the lap of modern-day luxury
drooling over his potato chips and the sounds of MTV
while waiting for the Pussycat Dolls to rip their
cloths off and stretch their legs into infinity.

The boob tube spits images in living colors twenty-
four hours a day from the depths of outer space
as it glares and blares and stares back to the boy,
hypnotizing with its blinking digital clock,
counting seconds backward to the beginning of time.

Forty years ago, the Beatles invades the land of white
America and the rest of the black tongue-tied globe,
wearing nothing but bob cuts and the British insignia for blitzkrieg,
flooding the world with their music like an “endless rain into a paper cup”
while singing their immortality like constellations across the universe.

Fast beats swirl in ranging patterns, old and new
like hormones on carousels, on Japanese Ferris wheels
plunging to the recesses of the boy’s ears
where his drums lay rotten gold, down and dusted,
smelling old and wasted from the spoils of a long-forgotten note,
fifty years dead before his birth and twelve
years living on his short existence on this planet Earth.

An old taste lingers between his teeth as his
tongue reaches another depth and he figures out
what lost essence did the potato chips has disguised and
the stench of modern-day musicality has washed away.

The boy wipes off the drool that now smears white dry
on his cheek as he wishes to have been born on the Sixties,
where in Manila, they spit the Beatles out of their brown country.

The boy turns off the TV and checks what’s new on his MP3.

pretty phony

Thursday, April 26, 2007

 

Pretty Phony in a Real Summer Country

 

There’s just nothing to do here in our house during summer so I just do things whatever comes my way. I play computer games, watch television and read books like The Catcher in the Rye.

I wasn’t expecting it but when I reached the moment that I would finally read “the catcher in the rye” being mentioned in the book, it was a quick sharp jolt of electricity going from my head through my fingers and onto the page where I was actually reading the words “the catcher in the rye.” It was like watching a moment in a Nora Aunor or Rez Cortez or whoever-superstar film when she finally says the movie title, only everything is in a series of déjà vu. It sounded something like “inagaw mong lahat sa akin ka” sort of drama and there goes a slap or a gunshot or a tear-on-one-cheek or a wine splashing on a pretty villain’s face. I was on this part where Holden Caulfield was talking to his sister, Phoebe, about a poem with a line “If a body catch a body comin’ through the rye.” Holden was thinking the whole time it goes that way but Phoebe pointed out it was “If a body meet a body comin’ through the rye.” So another story was told where it has to force its reader to know why it was titled that way.

I won’t mention anymore of what a good badass writer J.D. Salinger was because his character Holden was a testament of Salinger’s greatness in itself. I won’t also be a freak giving analysis on what made Catcher in the Rye a killer. Holden himself was a killer and he’s enough to make generations idolizing for the dead. He was the reason why John Lennon, John F. Kennedy and Kurt Cobain died.

When I was reading the book I was worried because, at first, I didn’t find Holden striking. Maybe I’ve read too many books about junkies or watched too many Japanese cartoons that nothing strikes me good anymore. I was holding this idea on my head that he was just another adolescent boy character that has nothing better to do with his god-blessed young life but badmouth the world. In my idea, he was a stereotype. But I kept on forgetting that before Robin Padilla, Mark Herras and Chin Chan came, there was Holden, the archetype bad boy we either pinch in cuteness or strangle in too much cuteness. What I’m saying is that it was hard for Holden to melt into sublimity because I had already an idea on what he was going to be in the book. But as the pages and moments passes, it wasn’t hard to get the feel of Holden anymore. I was digging in the idea that his character is very catchable.

Holden made me feel depress as hell, though, like the way it depressed the hell in him when phony stuffs came crossing his way. What was more depressing was that the moment I felt his contempt for the world in my blood and actually liking him for doing that to me, faces of people I know who said that they were like Holden came flashing in front of my vision. These people, mostly had just finished reading the book, go around thinking everything was phony. I’m only halfway the book, and I’m very affected on how the world becomes a real phony place. I’m afraid because after reading the book, I may go around saying that I’m somewhat a Holden and go disliking things because I think they are phony and be a snob and just shut up about it, keeping these observations of phony stuffs to myself, thinking more that I am greater than anybody else because others only see the world as it is, while we Holdens see the world phony. If Holden is a real person, I won’t go near him. And if I were Holden, I would start disliking myself now, especially during this hot season.

There’s really nothing to do here in our house during summer so I really do things whatever comes my way. I play computer games, watch television and read books like The Catcher in the Rye. Need not to say the obvious, I’m just bumming around.

I read the book mostly around one o’clock in the morning until the sun blazes in around seven o’clock. I like staying up during the night because it’s cold and there’s no sun barging in and heating up our house. Plus, there are no people disturbing me when I’m bumming myself to death. I sleep around eight or nine in the morning and wake up just in time for the afternoon Japanese animé shows. If it’s still too hot in the afternoon, I will stab a slab of ice from the freezer and smothers it all over my neck while an electric fan blows wind to my face. Pretty bohemian, huh? (I wonder if I’m being conscious about the climate for the first time and beginning to notice that summer in this country is really hot or I’ve seen too much of Al Gore and his global warming documentary that I’m considering this summer as the hottest in thousands years since the last ice age.) Other than that, I just sit in front of the TV or lie on my back reading the book most of the time.

Few days ago, while watching a television show and while contemplating about alcohol, tobacco and guns after reading an Encarta article about this agency in America that deals with them, news about a Korean-American boy blares on the TV. Reports say he was on a shooting rampage killing thirty two students and teachers in Virginia Tech. I thought of the documentary by Michael Moore and the movie Elephant that tackled the subject of the Columbine Massacre: two White-American boys, in a rampage, shooting people around their campus, leaving everybody dead and killing themselves in the end. America is such a nice place to live in. There are no people tightening their asses, they don’t keep things to themselves and they don’t think what a great phony place a world we live in. If they don’t like somebody there, they shoot them.

I am not so affected by this kind of news, though. Everything that comes out of TV or books, even scenarios that are most likely to happen in our living room, comes out phony. I won’t say that I am an emotionless organism equally numb and stoic as a stone. It’s just that things like these don’t strike me anymore. Maybe it’s just America because anything can happen at anytime in that god-blessed country. Or maybe this just is Philippines where in no terrorism, calamity or massacre story scares the hell out of anyone. Unless it’s a story happening right in front of his or her face and he or she is the main character.

This is a summer country where, also, maybe due to the heat, nothing shocks anyone anymore. Especially the real. But I wonder what things should have not been phonies when those shooting kids were growing up in god-blessed America.

what?

3/30/2007 11:39:13 AM

To His Coy Seatmate

(After Cecille Laverne dela Cruz)

|                                            |

|                                            |

|                                            |

|                                            |

|                                            |

A                                            B

Two parallel lines, fated never to meet in a two dimensional plane.

 

If you place line A

to compliment line B,

you’ll end up with a telephone pole.

Santa Claus flies to all children,

from North to South, good and bad to give

candies and charcoals – all around the magnetic pole.

If you’ll allow me,

let me talk you into a vision

where the world melts like a chocolate

and everyday will become Christmas day. Things

will fly that every concept is nothing but good and good.

I’ll even let you come to play in Santa’s factory.

Come, then.

I’ll talk my tongue onto your pole.