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Swamps
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2021-07-12 11:17:18Related chapters
TUNNELS abiotic
wonder plants on the sidelines inhalethe nervous air emitted by neon. new isneon when all the way to the gutter timeis but a blur. and the blur, the slurringprediction of weather vanes slithers throughand across this and that ‘thing’ and ‘non-thing’surface of disaster splitting in half the body.rhizomic moon-body. human or not,the body unthinks, fades in the grass untilit becomes plastic. the beginning, saysthe complacent poet-critic whose lovefor cats has been admirable, like the body,the ‘about us’-telex truth, is impersonal.the moon is a room for. its bright treatmentof the rain wassails with. its people, alldressed in, singing to. since rain seemsplastic & ear-biting to the point of viewof dear trees, the moon predictably likensthe body to the natural habitat of signs,of neon drowning still the. wonder plants.perfumed by poetry or—philosophy.the Ecosystem, the still neon-twinklingthought of. the world: you & me & this
Last Updated : 2021-07-12TUNNELS Listening to U2 with the fat still on your lip—
that pale patience of yours, oh, I could drive myselfcrazy from this observation of condominiums to Maine,old and bony Maine. What’s that song you’re guessing?I guess it’s empty passion no groovier than last night’scigs you’ve beautifully lighted for one more china sparksat the counter of 7-Eleven. You know what happensto fat when fingers stay out of love, out of their silveredstillness? Traffic lights, they turn to the eyes of the lawin tripartite colours. It’s safe and subtle, isn’t it?How clever the fat moves in princely prose, orin scripted smoke splitting between your Kerouaclungs. I suppose you’re a movie star, a gorgeoushard rain, a motorcycle of flowering acquaintances.The kitchen sink never dirtied, you never cooked,peeled, dreamt. But you showed me your world.Ashtrayed the day away. That dear fat on your lip,I loved it and I wrestled with the night pretendingit’s already 2:30 AM; that no creature of the streetswould dare say
Last Updated : 2021-07-12TUNNELS When Manny Pacquiao sprained
the noise jamboree in toda terminals4, our regular Sundayafternoon scared the neighbourhood children for seeing blooddrip from his head, all the force and feeling swam to the floor,parents cried, and street by arcane street the whole townburied the fear in its throat, freezing the clock to stop the hurtof tropical error; that loss was the injured sound of an enginefailing to drive families to church, to a nearby shop after mass.I’ve felt my skin fumble when I heard a song from the speakerof a passing car, a very familiar song I could rememberin the instance of a straight punch combination made possibleby retirement, as winning, according to critics, shouldn’t becompressed on a tiny screen. Whatever that means—the boxer breaks the mirror of the modern man, comes downto realize why the future is unhomed by a heterotopia of hurt.
Last Updated : 2021-07-12TUNNELS I Miss
O your smile carousel of greenGrass tops reach the skyO your smile breezes cleanOf sensanity of I know whyIt’s amazing how lifeGrinds with the teeth of timeIt’s amazing how headRolls and no one knowsHow to turf and fallFlaming words extra timeIn love with youStill and again shootsMy flock misses you
Last Updated : 2021-07-12TUNNELS Shoegaze + Suburbia
Slowly there’s a scene that celebrates itself, holds high office of shame, shoplifts gracefrom grocery stores and tomorrow’s tin can mess.It’s a scene standing in pride, unfazed by the murmuringstrong-styled neighbourhoodbelievedto be energized out of concentrated flowerpots.The suburb sprawl is a basement of employmenthopes, like Monday walks looking for dream popand bizarre poetry recitalsalong the pavement.Looking for friends who musically trepanned themselveswith shadows of 1994? Insecure shoes oftenobscuring the walls, the sonata of chemicals likensheads to garage tires you’ve spared for coolhousehold principles. I bet you look down,look down so hard to catch the open lightunfurling, like a beef falafel surprisingschoolchildren from Bandra, MumbaiI earn a living by re-counting poetic linesand make them smell of cardamom.Carton-shroud livelihood makes a statement.To live comfortably
Last Updated : 2021-07-12TUNNELS Pattaya, after which is stereographic plurality
Based on what I saw today in the reflectionof tall trees on the river, there’s a Barthesian notionof swirling things trying to drink the water,their spreading tension the surface of claw-printsand misty roars in silver. I tried to identify themin their uniform art of consciousness—namely:floating markets, shipbuilders, dreams and deltas,river ports of morrow, fish-spark confessions,a falling tear. All of these worth surrounding theonly mirror held by the invisible hand of water.This mirror in the heart of the river reflecteda figure of the literary life with strange curvedhorns on its head. It was not at first easy to look at.I saw it and admittedly got confused with its mis-understood image. But every time it moved thingsstopped swirling. A moment of silence shone.And slowly there was a sight painted with pleasure,a riverine hospitality from Okkervil to Thailand.
Last Updated : 2021-07-12TUNNELS kilometer Hong Kong
in response to the ongoing anti-extradition bill protestsa day like this, or the train between us won’t stop - this life is too long, dear tourist - & you know this morning I have to pay the rent too – as you insist that demonstrations at Victoria Park crowan ashfall of a feathered controversy - scarred by heavy clouds – as poetry as a lesson in leaving seems like years – & everyday umbrella seems like months of our days, days of our monthsalways like thissure it’s like thisyou know there might be another Worldwide Plaza - buzzing non compos mentis from your postcolonial Central - & that i’ll never know what new noise gently crumbles our married Clock Tower lungs – our karmic hearts in Kowloononce upon a ferry seaalways like thiswe used to seechaos intensify in the streets – waltz of smoke rioting upon youth – alla tumult of fire eating fire – time’s commissioned by risk as rains of pleasin fals
Last Updated : 2021-07-12TUNNELS Afterbloom
Under a tree shade, I satobserving the lines leafedlimning the page, their greenfix crashing into the shoe-dappled patchof sun and earth. Until a leaf—suddenly—falls to the votive callof six o’ clock, no morefootballing and frisbeeingin sight; it’s unaccidentally“Le Manteau de Pascal,” butaccidentally Jorie Graham.
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
