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Escape from time
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2021-07-12 11:17:19Related chapters
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
Last Updated : 2021-07-12TUNNELS 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
Last Updated : 2021-07-12TUNNELS 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
Last Updated : 2021-07-12TUNNELS 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
Last Updated : 2021-07-12TUNNELS 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
Last Updated : 2021-07-12TUNNELS 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.
Last Updated : 2021-07-12TUNNELS 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?
Last Updated : 2021-07-12TUNNELS 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
Last Updated : 2021-07-12
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TUNNELS Footnotes
1A tourist destination in the province of Pampanga where air bases were built during the Americla colonial rule in the Philippines 2It is a volcano located on the island of Flores in Indonesia. 3Wild ducks in the native lexis of the people in Candaba, Pampanga in the Philippines. 4 A common place or town terminal where Philippine tricycles (or trikes) are used as service vehicles 5 A creature in Philippine mythology said to come out at night to suck the blood of victims from their shadows 6 A trite Filipino expression meaning “Are you sick of things?” 7 A Taglish or Tagalog English expression for “Let’s go!” 8An always crowded station on the Metro Rail Transit (MRT) in Manila, Philippines 9 All three towns of the province of Pampanga in Central Luzon in the Philippines
TUNNELS Intro to end
You see this humdrum townBacolor or Apalit or Macabebe9seeking colors & flood tide arias on the impulseof a rainy Saturday afternoonbeforethe machinery of undergarment civility because a harness will only be made for onefar away from the closetripraps & minuetsageing windows sigh in the airI have no plans & precedents—when in this charming confirmationyour handsome decision loungeson the very idea I suppose was your ideaof the blue histories of weather reportin a coma,wishfully contactingRogelio de la Rosa (makananu tana?),his name typed up slowly, fur is flying—lightness!—but you got everything nowround your mythic little fingerslife at the alterations shopoh what a terrible mess I’ve madeof this ending,ending of a poem.&
TUNNELS a story about a bruise in light of Lacan’s le sinthome; or, because love rolls in the fifth eye of our homelessness
I feel terribly whole tonight because of the nightrain& the proud No Fireworks sign out there on the street.I feel terribly dangerous I could let my right hand arm-wrestle the left hand of the clock before midnightsmokes up an illusion of the forgotten ledbetters &faux romantics. I could smash bricks w/ my silence& then screw & shout ‘till my bones crow to ask:do you remember your neighbor’s rabbit that fellin love w/ the rooster because it’s the Year of the Rabbit?what about rain trees, purple prose, the scattered zines& rhizomes? don’t they all speak of the symbolic symptom?feel free to say it out loud. panda-eyed, freezing cold,I know. I know the feeling, the stroke of the bokusekibrush, the memory on the wall like graffitied genitaliafrom the ceiling to the floor. I speak my mind free.i speak it free like when you spill secrets in a publicphone box, insisting that writers send ideas to priso
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.
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 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 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 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 #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
