White Noise

The kitten, the one plucked
mewling from a box downtown,
the spider fighter, the dark
destroyer, looks at me with
knowing grey eyes as if to say,
"you can't do this. You don't
know shit."

Winds howl outside but inside
silence can not erase the
taunting hum of the computer,
its screen a blank snowy hillside.
Isn't this dramatic, you say.
Well, I'd answer, it depends.
Do you write?

Scouring the floors yields no
answer, lyrics on the radio
laugh at your ego, and
yogastic posing only
twists your body into knots
that approximate your mind.

Fingers tap out the same line
in slightly different ways,
stuck playing endless variations
of an unliked theme. The line
is a kettle whistle, piercing
the blessedness of the page.
Because you love writing, you
erase it

and the sea of white is your
home. Adrift and only
vaguely aware of land, you
strike out for any idea, any
shadow on the horizon.

Darkness descends,
clock ticks are pin pricks,
and time ambles towards
two a.m. as you write the
same sentence, again.

The Unmentionables at the Fish Market

Anger undrenched by an ocean
of distance, you call
to bitch about baranguay
captains and the cousins
who complained, "grandmother's
coffin is the wrong size."
Then in the next breath,
"fire ants will bite your
daughter's feet as she climbs",
and I wonder: just who
allows her to climb the mango
trees?

These are calls that
only my purlieu can soothe,
these tides (and cigs) that
hypnotize a mountain goat
such as I. I drive redlined,
punch a hole in the wind,
reach the shore and stay all day,
buy ice milk from
toothless street vendors, and
wonder how the taste on the
spoon was so pale - how it got
to be this way.

My ribs poke at my tee shirt,
my thoughts jab at my mind
as another call comes from
old Luzon, ire rising from
a far horizon as two people,
wizened raisins, sway on
gravel in a parking lot
to the music of Teresa Teng,
a national idol, dead of
asthma, at 33, far from home.
They move not as lovers but
as one. Cheap netting covers
the man's head, his forehead
and scalp blank with age, a perfect
place for the midnight blue and
white sun of the Kuomintang.

It is a moment, privy to me,
its grace descending like a fog.
The woman in his arms becomes
youthful, small steps go from mincing
to girlish and I wonder if he has
ever had to leave her.

My guidebook does not list the
this fish market; its smells
considered unmentionable,
yet it fascinates to watch
the fishing skiffs bob in the waters,
trying to reach safe
harbor before the sun does.

Folk song notes float through
the air like twilight. The singer
is fourteen, singing "I Am A Rock"
in syllable-timed English.
My pocket yields a coin; coin
clinks in the can; my loneliness
absolved. When my clothes
reek of smoke and gutted
fish, when the early
evening wind
snaps kitestrings,
when the dancers have
shut their stall and
the sky darkens with all
the colors of longing
then I go, leaving the
stench of seafood
behind for the quiet
of empty rooms
and bare feet on
cold hard tiles.

When To Be Quiet

Human beings can

forget solace often comes

from their mere presence.

The Desert is Great for Peyote in April, 1994

Good men are hard to find:

unobtrusive, shadowed by

the hard men who are good,

the ones far easier to spot.

Damming their emotional

spigot, transcending by

societal decree: how can

you get your rocks off anymore?

Living is so rule-governed, so

scripted, so my-guardian-did-this-so-

I-will-too-ed; writing acts as

fire patrol that clears way this dead wood.

In moments of pure folly,

the voice in my head whispers that

"even the burns are controlled, on

the page."

In writing to release,

resolving to relive flesh

wounds (and absolve the makers)

I realize I've cut my own, jived,

and said things about clothing and

owning that were, at best, untruths:

just the kind of things that get men laid.

CarHouseDreamsFears and, for now, Drugs.

Venomous whispers all,

a spider, seeped in societal ill,

sold on TV, I want these things

only as barter -

an evening of words for a night

of hard fucking.

I offer no recompense - for you do it too -

nor is quarter expected from you

and yours. The schism in me is the

schism in you. Let's unite these

divergencies, strap desire to our

hearts and loins, call it Will,

and walk - not as

Saturday night hooligans, not as

renegades (for all is one), not as people

wuthout places,

(for the all the world is a playground of

magic), certainly not as united,

but as visceral incarnations of

our selves.

Cracks spread like pox,

the world undulates,

and Apollo blazes across a

sultry sky, perfect for

tonight my chingadera -

Round Two.

Finally, the Truth is Revealed

Nothing deflates the

ego, nothing harkens truth like

a kick to the groin.

Pondering Being While Sitting in a Bathtub

You do it - again.

You do it - again. Can you

change . . . can anyone change?

Weather Report

Soft snowflakes blanket,

their flutter no less forceful

than hard darts of rain.

An Unexpected Bonus at the Cell Phone Shop

Won't that just tint your

windows? Or pay for a whale

tail? Look out girliez . . .

A Persimmon's Idea of Far

Among persimmons

shining sickly sweet forever,

my father walks, far,



far from seedlings and

Persephone, in autumn,

the underworld so near.



Far from the life he

has grown for himself, far from

being chased by



butcher-knife mother-

drunks, no longer crouched in

closets or Vietnam



fatigues, and now, just

when he can see, glaucomic

fog takes the edges



only midnight white

looms, dead ahead - just when he

shakes long shadows loose.



Orange orbs blaze like hair

but taste fades as light beckons,

orbs swish in the wind,



dangle for Hereafter,

staring hungrily, waiting

for the bitter seeds.



Unfair it is: seeds

have sprouted, grown roots and wings,

transcended time and



camo mail missions,

dropped messages, avoided anti-

aircraft fire, the ground



gunners unaware

his enlisting for this

rescued him from



kitchen pitchers of

vodka lemonade, the ones

Mother drank when his



father drove silver

buses that staggered like

Mother, home alone.



Can a persimmon

know each cackle betrays the

glee of survival?



As sibilant gusts

hush the trees, rock the seeds, cup

them, so matronly,



does my father (orange

to hard-wood, overripened)

know that he can see?



Does fruit know before

the fall that it's wait is short,

that the time is near,



though it's come so far?

Why We Blight

Who's afraid of the

iron lung? ricketts? po-li-o?

spent maladies long



adapted to, outran,

then - mutation! - to bird flu

and masked persons



on city buses,

afraid to cough, forgetting

about polio,




knowing that what took

grandfather, felled dead in

the paddy for want



of medicine, could

only touch them viscerally

via cathode ray tube



yet panic passed

like a baton as people

sniffed the air for



fear that would release

the hollowness embodied

by ricketts, the sight



of people hooked

to breathing machines and, that

devil, polio.

Passed

Can anyone stand

erect and bear the awesome

weight of memory?

Yard Man Blues

I'm in the field, standing between a
post-scripted past and a paralyzed
future. Shucked like corn, tricked,
hoodwinked - brought back to an island,
letter-by-letter, thirty four letters over
fifteen years, to an island that is no
longer mine. Sons cry for me, house-
niggers boss me, but me? I'm
free. Free to watch the show-all American
abortions and race train wrecks. Free to
love my girl, free to drink warm beer, free
to be colonized, free to care for no better.
I have my place - and, within that, within
good graces and valor and obediance, that
place is home. I am native, nipa-hutted,
and no non-native's gonna colonize
this head of mine. When I go, it'll be
in the sun, whiteness thrown off like
a soiled tee, warm beer in my hand, on
my island. I am the horseman in the
swamp and, eventually, the hill people,
the people who gate, will see that I
ain't blind - and sure ain't dumb.

Worldwide Genocide

Gray clots in the sky

watch as disregard / fear pool,

floodwater in wait.

Life Vow

Papyrus of the blood,

a paper encapsulates eight years

of learning limits, body-glitter-

shelved, and tobacco

by the carton. The tax just a

weak deterent; testicles,

sagging evil; every puff,

reflection. Spirit drained by

small moments, road forks,

denials, distractions, disease, and

drive-thru living: in short, America.

Monogamy, the serpent, a territorial

beast, tolled the bell as heaven fell; the

knell a reminder of how you

came in: small, dew-skinned, and

so full of wonder, skin inky in darkness

and whitened in light. At the teat of

life, before paper, the original blood

rivulets through veins, too aware of

life to be captured on a document.

Remember this and have all.

She Who Poured Her Heart Into Mason Jars

She poured her heart into Mason Jars,

old schema in new thick cylinders

presenting apple apricot views into imaginary worlds,

every brew a fossilized life.

Ribbons, moth-like, clung to the fridge

and bruised fruit made useful,

gelatinous, malleable,

willed into existence, spread on toast.

Each prize proclaimed an ache,

every golden font a lie that

stuck to lineoleum like color itself-

her alchemy wore out that floor.

As moonbeams brought demons,

idle hands became confectioners:

snapped heart strings stewed,

sugared, set, then jarred so that only

an autopsy could detect

the root of blackberry bitterness,

knew just what browned those

apple preserves.

Strawberry that moaned of first love

deigned the cupboards, mango

abortions; marmelade hopes,

until the flavors ran together,

indistinguishable now in old age,

as relentless as the slams of cabinet doors

and ushered her spirit into Mason Jars.