growing up in ParaÒaque, i learned to detach emotionally from my pets
mama stoking a ferocious blaze with intellectuals & poets
rebel salon plotting to end martial law, oust that horny pomaded fucker for love
of country, precious democracy. yayas quiet fidgety brats with magical
stories about dying in dreams, torso splitting housewives, hirsute giants. In
the RPI, People Power is a public trans stop, myth trumps corruption & mangos

translated regionally stand in for breasts, cunts, cocks, souls, green mangos
served with fishy brine are smelly tight holes, firecracker guns stand in for pets
for wily youths, San Lorenzo remains, the only Filipino saint in
Chinatown, Binondo. spawn of revolutionaries become ad models or useless poets
text messaging, enforced, strategic plan for the country’s future, a magical
lie courtesy of fried chicken moguls & reality TV as in fun & romantic love

monitored closely by Kuya BKA Filipino Big Brother. Filipinos, its true, love
to videoke, fuck sexy cousins, win at Scrabble, siesta under the shade of mango
trees, name heirs Ding Dong or Boy (actually), wear fake Hermes & magical
amulets. In Japan, Saudi, Italy, Down Under, Stateside, OFWs are mere pets,
native words dissolve when exposed to air. Better to send remittances, not poems
So shameful to immorally expose the penis in Pilipinas, slander my origins in

a way to appear unfettered, coolly cosmopolitanized , what in
Jesus’s Father’s name, gives with the hope, the boundless love
for my so-called-people, broken china diaspora, for other silly brown poets
retreat to haunted beach resorts, propose bitter melon as the national fruit, not mangos
defend to others that English is a Filipino language & dogs aren’t just pets
but also sinfully scrumptious cocktail snacks, surrender the little magic

token allure of being a reasonable if not oracular savage, magical
colonized me, foolish, if not broke & proud, desperate to appear before myself in
affordable newsprint, limited runs, sub-canonized, desire, gossip poet pets
of Dame Edith sit-and-spin, crave Cadbury Fingers and the love
of mega malls, bleached aureloas & lid doublers. I will no longer write about mangos
rather i will become a magical mango and encourage all filipino poets
to do the same, we, the colonized pets of the Republic of Magical
Islands hereby dedicate all poetry to our endless comedy in
the name of all ghostly grandparents and for the power of mangos, sweet or green.

two brothers survived: Daniel & Lolo Cipriano
no, there were actually 3: Enchong
three brothers in all. but there were more, i learn.
Eulalio and Luisa had a daughter as well
she evaporated into the canals. flee children,
out of the streets. the japanese are coming.

canto toughs, at the basketball court
hard jaw, dog eyes eye me & the Lover’s
videocam. under the grand old house, a man
points at me, says he knows who i am. i know
your Tito, he says. He left long time but
your family name is carved into the church’s

walls. barraquiel. when asked, i explain to my
american friends that i share this surname
with the fattest, best-looking sheep in the basque
region. we’re notorious for our tempers, praised
for our Sunday fiestas, & the cheese made from our
mothers’ milk. despite this, my friends toast me anyway.

down Central, in the time of floods, we’d float on native
canoes up to the school onto higher ground.
note to self: find a way to return this house back into the
family, everyone knows we were scammed. a time will
come when we’ll all need to have somewhere to come back
to. the very few of us left. i ask the old man if he knows,

among my cousins, who will die first? better not to ask such
things, he advises. then with his lips, points to a rooster
with a crimson head & a white chest. he doesn’t know
what i’ve portended long ago, script scored lightly with my
pinky nail on the backs of my sleeping lovers. the old man couldn’t
know that the whole lot, sisters & brothers gather in my dreams.

luisa & eulalio, if they were alive today would probably meet
the soldiers at the bridge. hand in hand, they’d walk slowly,
neither smiling or sad. there, they would point to their children,
one short of a dozen, floating mud flowers in the black still water.
take your pick with the ends of your bayonets but make sure
to leave at least one behind. someone has to tell this story.

cross the city & risk losing a limb
but this our Paris, no? Manila
of cheap everything fake, Manila
will NOT treat us like we’re special
mocks our TV wannabe accents & for dropping
Rabelais, Gide, Aged Gouda, complaining

fallutin’ super duper sosyal, complaining
always “for-a-while”, flies & tykes missing limbs,
WHAT canon? So, sell our souls to Silverberg, Avalon NYC, dropping
names like salted duck eggs from the rooftop gardens of Manila
Plaza. argyle guerilla en este Republica Banana, halo-halo espesyal,
Almodovar & Lorca’s entire career on 1 VCD, “Manila, Ay Manila!

Darleng anywhere else, por dÌo, BUT Manila,
no? Pero how to live in 100% humidity? who wouldn’t complain
about losing one’s mind?” Had we been born gorillas w/special
psychic powers, hot Catholic mystery radiating from our hairy limbs
might I actually fret less about being an American poet in Manila?
Virgie darling, everywhere, bit by bits of me drop

Off memory leper, just as you’d predicted, Cali accent dropping
dead from the sweaty wet and tongue rolling Manila
last syllable whine, every night crying before the Ativan blankets Manila
under its medicated blanket only to wake the next day to complain
of sore arms from vine swinging, flying along this city’s surreal limbs:
Ermita, Makati, Mandaluyon, Baclaran, hop the Jeepney Special

Route, Xpress to where? Sistah-you’ve been-on-ma-mind, lovely special
you to place in your palm, this city I’ve missed for 29 years, dropping
your daily do’s, laptop solitude, Pilates elastic gym limb
routine, text your masseur & dermagician. when i leave Manila
again for my semi-vegetarian 1^st world metropolis, you think I’ll complain
less knowing there’s always more of me to leave behind in Manila?

In April, come visit in SF, we’ll tele-babad to the latest Manila
VCD copyright rip-off blockbuster from a player made especially
to run fakes in our dusters & tsinelas the endless complaining
about bleached leads & what IS the point of this eh-stupid movie?, drop
hints about poets we’ve tricked & the apes we’ve never stopped loving. Manila
gorilla middle-aged debs swinging shit story free from nostalgia’s solid limbs

Virginia, rocks in her pocket complains of not having a moments’ rest from the Manila
Hustle & 3rd Sex Simone wanders Intramuros lamenting her lost limbs. We especially
will be we who drops what needs dropping happily here, here, in our Paris, Manila.

we really know how to hurt, ‘cause we’re boys
right? the romance of being a man, all imagined,
my early 20’s i rallied in the streets raging
endless despair, one burial after the next, unbearable
in the college dorms, were you raging too?
maybe? about becoming a man who wants men?

what is it exactly that we give over to other men?
had we’d suckled at our father’s breasts when we were boys
would we be all the stronger? so fuck me & i’ll fuck you too
right? utopian sex, mesh of soft intention & bodies we’ve long imagined
but there is something else, an animal pawing, almost unbearable
lurking the ancient hollow of night, heaving furred chests, raging

squaring off: fuck you, & fuck you too! raging
feral stink & snarl, limbic fear, that makes as dangerous as men.
& then there’s the sweet, the sweetness unbearable
scabby knees & marbles in manila & new carlisle, boys
learned then to twirl tongues from monsoon & tornadoes, imagined
lover, we become who become 2 aaah god, me too, me too

i’ve been unwanted, a stranger too
shut out, shut down for tantrums & raging
i argued for a long time that joy is constructed, imagined
and that men don’t love, men
fuck & fight & play, we’re boys
hold it all in like tears or cum, unbearable

true. you’ll be a foreigner in manila, unbearable
the injustice, i too, would be a foreigner in new carlisle too
but if we were just to imagine each other as boys
holding hands in a yellow field, monsoons & tornadoes raging
the heavens, inside the swirl of clouds, the sexual bodies of men
surrender, comedy, betrayal, redemption, who could’ve imagined?