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All Chapters of TUNNELS: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

46 Chapters

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
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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
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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
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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.        
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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 hope than 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?            
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Rains of Iran

(after re-reading a few stanzas from The Ruba'iyat of Omar Khayyam) The cycle which includes our coming and going Little 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
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Labour Day

for my sister, giving birth A double meaning, I guess. When the effort offersmore wind to the process, a grown-up confusiondepreciates. A day of countless promotions, too,suddenly glimmers, as seismic as the lettersof your name in the skin of new day. Numbersreduced into decreed holidays. Once again,these are the borne context on your head, setto cradle the perfect word in a tin house we builtfor freelance work and exclusive reading repast.My dear sister, you lay there waiting for now.My dear sister, you lay there closing your eyes.Don’t you know the sun is knitted for a pumpkinhat, its rays the colourful socks for tiny feetinsecure about the dripping weather in September.Oh, my sister, labour day is all fine with jazz!Before I forget, just what I heard on the news,Kim Jong Un loves to play with missileswith no carrier-propositions. And just so you know,dear sister, like Kim, I’ve watched the episodesof The Boy General, expecting that in e
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#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 self irrealis & #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 oasis                                     of #Dutertism; you & IWednesday #conyos of Ma
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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
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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.          
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