revival

new work, new digs. this for a neighbor one flight down. and he looks happy, as in easy to smile happy, as in not about to bitch anytime happy.
he showed us his new pad yesterday. and boy was he beaming. who would not be?
the new apartment, well, studio for the finicky, is in one of those storied pre-war hotels turned residential complexes right smack in money soaked east side.
all these and a (gasp!) courteous white-not ethnic-doorman downstairs for less than fifteen hundred. no wonder the bastard is all teeth, surgically abraded white teeth.
must have done something good in my previous life. must have done something good. all he keeps on muttering. since when does this agnostic ever clung to the validity of the karmic cycle, anyway?
then he cabbed us to this fusion thai bistro in lower east. like he was saying, hey, i've got this great apartment now and i have no problem at all slumming, at times.
he ordered one of those red curry dishes, pronouncing its thai name quite successfully. mellifluously, in fact. and the wine he ordered for the group, a frail pacific northwest pinot, was just right. inspired, another friend exclaimed. the boy could not make any mistakes.
what is it in moving that animates people, that ushers mortals back to their demigod status? I don't think it has something to do with hope, what most of us call optimism.
then over dessert of mango float, he kept on regaling us with his floor plans. that ledge, near the radiator, that's where my plasma tv goes. oh, and I guess, a japanese rice paper screen divider would be perfect, don't you think so? he looked at me straight. I nodded and quaffed what's left of my wine.
I wanted to suggest he also get one of those tatamis to complete his neo-japanese ryokan theme but I could feel a burp coming up. I suppressed it just in time and what seemed a genuinely pleasant surprise, I became aware of my breath - tasted it in fact - metallic and faintly acidic.
I kept on breathing, like I always did, but this time consciously, animatedly.
and I looked at this happy man in front of me, gesticulating like a touched man in a pentecostal revival. and I feel what's touching him. this awareness, this sentience of a previously unrecognized preoccupation, now floating up, bubbling forth and drawn out by some mysterious surprise, some inscrutable dawning.

i am here

and so the first month of the new year is almost over. and all I've got to show for it is i, woozy from work, befuddled and hoping to sleep it all off, in this half-empty bus.
with my mails-all bill payments-adding extra insulation in my jacket pocket, I, surefooted, got off at the post office stop. as soon as the bus managed to plow through the frozen snow, puffing black soot behind, i saw pristine snow heaps left unshoveled and blocking completely the post office doors.
from across the street, a boy of twelve or thirteen with the clearest of skin, stared at me, his forehead never furrowing. with my hairy ear muffs on, yet, I could almost hear him say duh. I crossed over to his side and waited for the crosstown bus going back. could not bring myself to ask him whether it was really sunday.
and so I am here (or must be around here somewhere). a mixed up x on a map of my putative beingness that I have the slightest idea to read and never drew up in the first place. my life so far, a fog embraced bus, takes me to places not yet open and not yet (are they ever gonna be?) ready for me.

stories

roadside bomb kills five in iraq. flash flood drowns dozens again in california after heavy rain.

upstairs, my mexican neighbors get their fiesta groove back just as the weather gets milder, milder by five degrees up.

my newspaper wilts from the blare of mariachis and corridos thud-thudding over my ceiling.

rio de dolor, oh-oh-oh, adios mi rio de dolor, oh-oh-oh-oh.

I trek upstairs hoping to convince them to pipe down their music. my raps on their door get drowned out by the disquieting norteno ballad, the raucous laughter and clamor of the chatter of the winter party people.

back at my apartment, I realize the tv was on all the time. a woman, rail thin and really pale, keeps hounding with questions- about what, I don't know-this contrite looking man wearing a clergy man's collar .

after I pour myself a bowl of cereal, I find out I ran out of milk. I hear faintly the clang of silver and china from above as I munch on my cereals, hoping they were mushy and soggy.

I begin to read what's on the cereal box and the last thing i remember is being on a boat-a caribbean cruise or just for an afternoon paddle in a park lake, i could not recall.

when I wake up, the music upstairs is all gone and all I could hear are two voices, drunk but never slurring, droning from above.

I pick up my newspaper again but all I can think of is wishing I should have learned spanish by now, enough to understand what the two guys are probably talking about.

about the certainty of tomorrow's work? things they would be writing to their families back home in dusty chiapas, in equatorial tegucigalpa, perhaps?

will they regale them with stories of roads here fenced with dirty week old snow or of rivers choking and groaning with ice? or will they, like pimply smitten school boys, eagerly tell their mothers of who they met in wintry gatherings they've been to?

I put away my newspaper and turn off the tv feeling inadequate from just hanging around sockless in my overly heated apartment and not in the thick of things warmer and necessary, something more essential, like the babbling of those two inebriated men upstairs.

dog it out

like they would never end

i hated my childhood saturdays and sundays. on saturday mid noons, mama whisked me to the only protestant church in our very catholic island for the choir practice. these lasted like they would never end. until evenings.
and on sunday mornings, I had to wake up two hours earlier than my usual seven o'clock rising up time because there was our sunday family devotion at dawn which was a tad longer than our daily ones.
under the eke of the drying kerosene lamp over the kitchen table, mama would ask me to read from my large letter edition bible, passages from psalms (I never remember her asking me to read anything from the next chapter neighbor, proverbs.) she then required me to say anything about what I just read aloud.
this was not the hard part. I always got away by saying that the best way to praise god was to present ourselves, our bodies as living sacrifices to him, holy and acceptable, in reference to an impossbile pauline admonition.
and mama would smile her smile. my mama was this inveterate pauline epistles fanatic.

sweet coconut wine

the hardest part of my childhood sunday rituals was the walk from our house to another house which our local protestant congregation had rented out and converted into a worship center. this ordeal was most hard since we had mang talyo as our neighbor.
mang talyo was the biggest dealer of coconut cider in our island. i can still recall the sweetness of the fresh coconut sap delivered to mang taling's joint when the sun was still half awake.
the young coconut wine would arrive inside huge bamboo pole containers, shaken, agitated and have become more sweet smelling along the way. the sides of the bamboo pole containers, mossed and lichened, glistened like wet organ pipes under the young sun.
and every sunday morning, mang talyo never failed to bum around, bareshirted, in his front yard garage, his belly sticking out, his shorts barely hemming in his heavy behind, the cleavage between his fleshy buttocks bursting out of the back of his shorts, his testicles firmly gripped by the crotch of his undersized shorts.
then he would ogle us, already sweating in our well pressed sunday's best, as we come out of our house. then he would smile at us with his grin, a toothpick sticking out of his gap toothed mouth, and stubble sticking out his pockmarked chin.
i remember the feeling of wanting to rush toward him and gouge his eyes off and hand them to sheik for him to eat so he could no longer smile at mama.

regal, strong, testosterone heavy

sheik was this trembling but inquisitive, dirty ash loam puppy, reeking sweetly of coconut cider who strayed into our patch of sweet potato in the old unpainted house.
mang talyo immediately disowned sheik when we asked him whether he was missing any puppy. he had more than a thousand puppies in their house yet strangely enough, I could never remember hearing some yelping and barking from their house.
without asking me, mama christened this puppy sheik. sheik. I remember the tickle of the rush of air from the roof of my mouth through my two large incisors as I started calling him his name. sheik. sheik
at that time, mama was into this thick book with a back cover picture of an undeniably caucasian guy absurdly wearing at the same time a western suit and an arabian male headgear.
from the start, mama wanted sheik to be sheik-regal, strong and testosterone heavy. she never approved of him neutered even if the local vet promised her that sheik would magically grew ten times bigger after his would be castration.
sheik immediately lorded the new house we moved in, humiliating every other four legged creature that dared trespass the house, his testes proudly dangling between his hind legs. but not on sundays, never on sundays.

dogging it out

just as we would step out of the house, trying as quickly as we could to escape mang talyo's stares, sheik would just whimper and limp after us.
then three houses away, two bigger and meaner dogs would start to gang up on sheik. and he would hide behind my knee socked and my mama's stockinged legs, his balls rushing up toward the safety of his butt and belly. and these bigger dogs would growl and bare their teeth at sheik, snapping at our legs as we got caught between their long standing feud.
almost always, before we could reach the bus terminal, sheik would be completely crushed and would rather get back to our house, his tail safely tucked between his hind legs, than brave it out with us until the sanctuary of our wooden church.
unfortunately, I had to dog it all the way to our church, past about a million houses more, past the looming and lichened many centuries old stone catholic church where mang talyo and other guys like him went on sundays to worship and probably not to smile at each other they way he smiled at mama.
and all throughout this walk, throughout all the sweltering sunday mornings of my childhood, I remember my mother clasping our bibles in her arms tightly, the way the mosses cling to the coconut wine containers, never talking to me as we tiptoed our way over the rim, the slippery rim of this town of mean dogs and smiling men, toward our little church.

bonfire

today, when it felt like ten below, the local news failed to carry an incident trivial enough in the scheme of things new york. this happened in front of my building this morning in a neighborhood which I always believe to be a hotbed of things newsworthy.
out of whim, perhaps, the meek croatian shopkeeper across the street decided to start a bonfire with scrap boxes and some rolls of plastic sheets on top of the still frozen snow pilings along the curbside.
as the boxes and plastic were transformed into a slick tongue of flame, some of the mexican migrant workers who usually wait around the corner for some contractors to hire them for odd jobs gathered around the outdoor fire. drinking their café from soppy paper mugs and munching on some limp churros, the mexicans began singing (or was it chanting?) some ancient votive songs around the street fire.
but just before they could solemnize their chant with a round of applause or some backslapping, perhaps, the firemen came. as quickly as they gathered around the fire, the mexicans darted towards the alleys and back roads when they heard the wailing of the fire truck's siren.
using only their rubber boots, the team of four firemen started to stamp out the fire while their captain quizzed the storekeeper inside his deli. as the croat pleaded dramatically with the hulking white fireman, obsequiously clasping his hands in his chest at times, the storekeeper's black cat, which was just content in glaring at the visitor initially, started to claw at the fireman's yellow boots.
at first, the burly officer just ignored the tabby but finally he could not take it any more. his cheeks visibly ruddy, he dashed out of the deli just in time when the fire was all subdued by his team outside.
just as quickly as they came, the firemen left in a whiz. the white fireman beside the driver managed to spit at the embers before they sped away.
as the croat storekeeper went back to his deli to attend to the long line of breakfast crowd, his proud cat stood guard outside his store, its eyes, undimmed and flaming as ever.

breakfast in a cold diner

this was when the el
trains along EDSA started
running.
i don't recall where we
planned to go-
Crossing? no, Ayala.
(whatever)
all I remember is you,
your eager thighs
bristling under your
jeans, loose, scratchy,
everytime you lean into
me.
this whenever the yet
unbroken trains
dip and lurch along the tracks.
this was today, this morning,
while waiting for my toast
and eggs in a cold diner.
I stifled a smirk
(no bitterness here)
when trying to remember,
to realize, how timeworn,
how old hat, what really
happened between
us-
you met someone else?
no, I grew tired of you?
(whatever)
what stunned me was the
tenacity of the memory
of your body against mine,
still hearty, substantial still
to my existence now
like a greasy breakfast
to that house painter in fraying
flannels, flecked cargos
all alone by the counter
chilling for some down
time, recharging,
before slogging it back
to the flatness of surfaces.

peckish

about ten or elevenish this morning, I woke up to the lush idea of me enjoying a succulent belgian waffle with a double order of extra larded bacon on the side while ruminating on this great conundrum-to finally get that gym membership now or maybe next month.
just as I was about to call the diner run by those highly evolved mexicans, (you should see how this aztec cook takes only to memory multiple orders correctly all the time. not a written order slip in sight, top that.) I realized I only had three dollars in singles and some quarters in my still bulging wallet.
no way was I going to get out of this thermal-blanketed bed, head for a helter-skelter scorching shower, then dress up in mad layers, and finally slog in the still unmelted snow just to trek to the nearest cash machine.
so I scavenged among my two-week old unwashed denims hung, like aging prosciutos, behind two of my closet doors. but all I scrounged from them were more cold quarters and some uncomforting pennies. this exercise made me even ravenous.
I knew I had nothing in my fridge, except for stale soda and some condiments that need not be refrigerated at all, so I did not even bother to go there. I went back to my wallet and started shucking it fiercely.
there were three fare cards, all of them I was certain were already spent. and most of the stuff that made my wallet pouch were unpaid credit card receipts. two from this garden variety sushi place in east village, another from this fancy bistro in meat packing district that served edible but non-transcendent steaks. i did not bother looking at the other stuff. cranky, I just dumped all of these paper detritus with that of my other decomposing trash.
then dressed only in my thick turkish bathrobe and a flimsy pair of socks, I trudged towards the backdoor of my building where the humungous communal garbage bin stews. just as I shut the lid back of the slimy trash bin, I realized I forgot to bring my keys.
I do not remember how many hours, or minutes, I was left shivering out there in the cold before my building's super hauled me back in (?oye, muchacho, que paso?).
all I remember was looking horror stricken at my socked feet slowly being rimed with january frost and me, still peckish, shooing like mad all the house sparrows scavenging for food in the dullness of the snow.

waiting for the BX12 bus the morning after the blizzard

I joy in being forgetful
on mornings like today's

when I can be bound to believe
again that my world can foreswear

its penchant for ill will.
and with a column of cloud,

like a fine filigreed quill,
it signs its covenant with me

with flourish on an honest horizon.

holdout

and so it goes
that even in wintertime
things in this place
just seem to conspire
against me
-- the radiators--shrieking eerie arias--flush me out in the cold
-- the windchill nips and gnaws at my tropical conscience
-- and the snow easily i.d's me out, that one brown holdout against the blinding white of this order

woman gives birth to a giant catfish

jesus, sometimes, I just don’t know anymore what’s going on.
barely three minutes into our pan-pacific conversation and mama’s voice starts to crackle over the phone, the way voices of tired novenaria women hired to pray all nine days of a funeral wake back in our island would start to grate on the fourth or fifth night.

oh, last week, a woman in Cebu gave birth to a giant catfish. I tell her I saw it on my satellite tv beaming lurid news from back home. and then I assure her it wasn't a fish but an immature fetus. a catfish, imagine that.

then she rambles on about our neighbor whose son just got back from japan. you can not believe this. ricky now has breasts. a former basketball teammate of mine, ricky went to japan and worked as what civil servants in manila label as a professional cultural entertainer.

an incoming call beeps and I know it is him. I tell ma to hold on and quickly switch line to promise him we are still on tonight for that pedro almodovar movie and that I will get back to him as soon as ma gets dizzy from talking her head out. I realize I was talking to him in whispers.

so who was that? your girlfriend? I ask her if she received the $500 I sent her last month. yes, thank you, she say matter-of-factly. you are not getting younger, you know that. when are you getting married?

I tell her it's hard to know people here in the states. so, get this girl's number. she lives in washington. isn't that close to new york? call her.

I tell her I need to go now because I have to do overtime work at the hospital. you never do double time, but anyway, go.

I just wish that before I go, she then goes into a very calculated pause, one I am very familiar already and have learned to ignore, I can see you settled in and it's nice for an old woman around here to have pictures in her purse of her american born grandson, you know.

I tell her I have to go. you promise me you will marry? I tell her again I have got to go. she say okay, okay.

as I speed dial his number immediately after mama hangs up, I twiddle the slick phone cord in my free hand and keep on hearing mama's voice like that of a fishwife hollering catfish, catfish.

grand concourse

at the bus stop in front of a ghetto fabulous jewelry store along grand concourse, an itinerant preacher sporting a rapper's north face parka screamed, the apostle paul said we are troubled on every side but not distracted.

his heavy gold crucifix pendant, like a lacquered driftwood at sea, rose and fell in his heaving chest as he bellowed and yawped. we are perplexed but not in despair.

I plugged in my ipod earpieces and shuffled the songs. and mary j. blige came caterwauling no more pain, no more pain. no drama. no more drama in my life. no one's gonna make me hurt again.

in between mary's clipped breaths, I can still hear the preacher. persecuted but not forsaken; cast down but not destroyed.

our local catholic parish church, mount carmel, according to my friend who just lost a forgettable boyfriend, is a favorite among mexican and honduran single immigrants. they believe that if a devout lonely soltero would have the humility to light nine red candles there on 9 consecutive fridays, a lover will magically puff into his life.

a quarter into the hour has passed and no sign yet for the BX12 bus. only unregistered cabbies came zipping by like frenzied gnats at twilight.

the preacher started distributing tracts and as he handed me one that had a crude drawing of a crown of bloodied thorns, his gold and silver bracelets on both his thick wrists jingled reminding me of childhood stories of restless ghosts yanking their chains along as they revisit their cherished earthly haunts.

reluctantly, I promised my friend to help him craft a letter to his ex. I asked him what for? closure, he said, and he didn't look insincere.

how in the world can I help him write a closure letter? I came not of this culture that privileges terminality. what an alien concept this is back in the island where I grew up. back in the island where time and tide are germinated from the same unceasing whirlpool.

I remember my mommy 2. she was a close friend of my mom and beside being dumbfounded at her puny feet, the size of my palms, I always remember her for being wont to saying non sequitur stuff like we never close doors. it's bad feng shui to close doors.

the preacher was now trying to make us in the bus stop think that he was already inebriated with the spirit. first, he jiggied into a sort of indian rain dance and then launched into what he approximated was a decent speaking-in-tongues act.

as he spouted gibberish, the neon light from the gaudy jewelry store flickered in his face, painting him to be some kind of a creature more at peace by the lake of ever burning sulphur.

when finally the bus came, the driver just shooed everybody inside. the farebox got jammed and it was a free ride for all.

as our bus crawled away from the waiting shed, the preacher scooped up all his stuff and dumped it all in his beat up attache case. I can read distinctly the decal on his bag proclaiming only jesus can save. then reverently, the preacher went inside the jewelry store.

frederick douglas boulevard

from a laundromat in the corner of frederick douglas boulevard and 138th street, an old black woman with the stoop like my grandmother limped with a shoddy cane towards our bus.
a korean-looking woman wearing a flashy pair of gold rimmed eyeglasses scampered after her. she brandished a piece of paper at the old woman and appeared to be screaming at her, as well. (an unpaid bill?)
the old woman, wearing only a flimsy pea coat, never looked back at the asian lady and limped even faster toward our bus waiting for the go light.
a group of japanese tourists led by a snappy, young, black woman, wrapped up in a floor length brown rabbit fur coat and waving a glaring neon green umbrella, stopped in their tracks and gawked at the commotion.
the korean (or was it chinese?) lady could not stand the heat and retreated back to her laundromat.
the old lady finally got to where our bus was just in time for the go sign to go off.
our driver, a heavy set latino guy with a severe buzz cut, was about to step on the gas when the old lady banged her cane against the glass door. the driver made some wild gestures at the old lady and, at regular intervals, pointed at the traffic lights in front of us.
the old lady would have none of it and continued to tap her cane wildly against the glass door. an old toothless white guy sitting at the handicap seat finally screamed at the driver to let the old woman in.
after doing more of the same wild gestures, the driver relented and opened the bus door for the old lady.
without waiting for the bus to kneel, the old lady climbed into the bus and then strode toward the middle of the bus without whipping out her fare card.
then the stop sign was on again.
miffed, the driver whipped out his microphone and called the attention of the old lady. oblivious to the announcement overhead, the old lady continued to fidget with her ill fitting hairpiece.
the schoolgirl, in a short plaid skirt and thin hosiery who sat behind the old lady, leaned forward and relayed to the old lady what the driver yelled overhead.
the old lady exclaimed "oh, I am sorry," loud enough for me, who was half-dozing at the end pew, to hear.
clutching her fraying beaded purse, she then got up and limped towards the fare box beside the peeved driver.
as she opened her purse, the driver stepped on the accelerator headlong forcing the old lady to let go of her pocketbook.
the purse landed in the middle of the bus and out came from it a few quarters and pennies and a whole lot (dozens? perhaps, more.) of keys in a startling assortment of shapes and sizes. everybody's attention was keyed in to the puddle of keys on the bus floor.
as the old lady started to kneel to gather the washed out contents of her purse, the edentulous white guy, the inappropriately dressed schoolgirl and I, now fully awake to this excitement, started to pitch in in gathering the keys.
the driver had no recourse but to stop the bus so as not to endanger the old lady and the other key gatherers.
as I got up, after gleaning about five keys from the sticky bus floor, I could see through the front window the empire state building looming on the horizon like some strange keyhole to a place, a secret happy place, that no one in the bus has a key to, especially this strange old lady awash with myriads of keys.

my time

this is my time
of the year.
that time when
rusty trash bins
sprout wilting
but still green
christmas trees.
this is my time
of the year.
that time when
red and gold
tinsel balls
are made stuffing
for shinier and
plumper black bags.
bags that get to be
treated to a cheerful
dusting of non-toxic,
non out-of-the-can
frosting along
the hectic streets.
this is my time
of the year.
that time when
the grating cooing
of that puerto rican
couple across
the hallway sounds
half as tinny, as
say, two weeks ago.
this is my time
of the year.
that time when
I don't expect
that hard
for you to call.
this is my time
of the year.
that time when your
call (that if you
do, at all.) rings
just like
everyone else.

pedestrian lane

I am aware that you
are about to charge
across the street.
I am aware that soon
I will be bound to be
with you at the bus stop.
I am aware that we
would have to engage
in small talk as we
await our bus.
I am also aware that i
would have to
smile, at least once
in a while, as we talk.

and the walk sign
went off and off
you come closer
and closer.
you in your red jacket,
searing the greys
and whites of the
pedestrian lane.

I am aware that you
marches towards me,
a nearly well man.
I am aware that the
blinding sun behind
you withers again
the long lifeless
limbs of the trees.
I am aware as you beam
that your gaping
mouth, like a festering
wound, threaten to
contaminate me again.

1756 southern boulevard

middle of january
and speckles
of salt
pickle raw
the slimy sidewalks.
the heels of my snow
shucking boots
-a numb pestle-
mash these curbside
pearls
to a dirty
white paste.

I walk,
and walk until
the view
of your building
simmers out
of the fog.

1756 southern boulevard.
right across
the lot where
that anti-castro
cuban used to
station
his deli
on wheels.
a moving van
for hire
now curdles
in the near empty
lot.

waiting for my bus,
the air rank
suspiciously
of the guy's
cafecito cubano.
the one you always
asked me to buy
(with three sugars)
while I, wan,
unseasoned,
await for you
to emerge
full flavored
from your building.

then startling me,
the air brakes
of my bus went off,
like an overeager
safety valve
of a roiling
pressure cooker.

I think it was you,
wound burrito tight
in a tan down jacket,
huffing out
of your building,
trying to catch
my bus.
(should
have been
our bus.)

but you were
too late.
the bus doors
just slid shut
and like steam
hissing out from
an opened
boiling pot,
clouded
my vision
of you.

tuk-ko, tuk-ko, tuk-ko

strange houses. a blinding yellow bungalow, a bamboo hut that could whistle, a concrete box smelling like a half-shut clothes drawer stuffed with fungused moth balls.

my mother dragged me into them. mostly when she could still dupe me into wearing gabardine shorts to school while the rest of my boy-classmates were already strutting around in their faded glory and bang-bang denims.

this was the first house we moved into. it was a clapboard bungalow bathed in strange yellow. it was not painted at all but even the cracks in the planks were soaked in that strange yellow, that yellow of a morning urine. it was under two pubescent kamachile trees.

mang talyo, our neighbor across had two souped up vehicles. one was red, the other one redder, both lounging in his front yard. we had my blue trike to laze in ours.

this house faced west and when the monsoon rains sneaked upon our town, the V-cut panels in the awnings of the house welcomed sheets of rain to our parlor.

there hardly were any reasons to be affectionate toward this house. during the sweltering months, thick and hairy caterpillars inched into our living quarters. they introduced our family to the stench of the calamine lotion. but it's not these that I remember vividly of this moving. it's the first friend that I admitted, though reluctantly, into my conscious personal story.

first morning, a new house, a room now all my own. I now had to sleep alone. I was gullible enough to believe my mother's latest bed time story that I now was big boy.

he must had been rooted in the same spot throughout the night watching me sleep. there were no incursions in the field of plum morning dew drops mushrooming on the exposed side of the window pane of my new room. his entire length was completely static.

as I gawked as his paler side, his underside, his tongue was unceasingly pounding against his throat. then as I stirred in my bed, he just moved on almost grudgingly, leaving minute flower prints on the dew-drop field and quickly disappeared from the frame of the window.

this was civil, our first meeting. not the next time.

second night, wasted and limp from the rigor of the house transfer.

he was above my bed, his scaly paws magically stuck to the ceiling. but his head, his length, his corpulent tail threatened to fall on me. with only the meagerness of the kerosene lamp aiding my eyes, I saw his hide hideously populated with acne eruptions, pus filled, more ogrish than the papules I had on my face and belly when I had chicken pox.

I spasmed as I imagine him hurtling down on me, his complexion rubbing against mine. his was not unlike that of the ceiling impregnated with mysterious blisters by rainstorms that ravaged our new house. his eyes rolled as in delight over my fright and seemed to drop out from their sockets independent of his head and body. every time he breathed, the white stripes of his body grazed into the greying areas like an overdrawn concertina.

and when he announced his presence with his characteristic call, I shrieked and ran out of the room and was back into the much missed nighttime company of my mother.

my mother dismissed me. a gecko was no more than another of those maligned creatures, as harmless as the ordinary house lizard. in fact, suerte (her word) the house that has one. (I later learned that to have a gecko in a house means a centipede and scorpion free existence.) but no reason, scientific or plain gut, quiets a wildly stirred child.

what if it would fall on me? could I easily remove it from my skin? I saw how it mocked gravity, how much more my terrorized terrain? mama conceded it would be a trifle hard, but a glass of strong vinegar would do the trick. most likely (her word). how reassuring.

but there's that thing devilish of him, his call, I persisted in my arguments. what a silly notion, mama shushed me. it's only a loud wish from a solitary lover for another of its kind so they could start a family of their own and live in silence.

i quited down only after we fetched downstairs a big glass of vinegar which mama placed conspicuously upon the wobbly headboard of her bed. the strong aroma of the vinegar shielded us like an impenetrable mosquito net against a throng of malevolent gnats and other night creatures.

and finally the arrangement of my sleeping alone in the other room was shelved for the night and probably for forever. I then huddled against my mother. her enormous girth prevented my wrapping fully my no-longer-small-but-not-so-big-yet trembling hands around her.

then as we drifted to sleep, mama's snores, so loud yet so plaintive to me, as if longing for someone other than myself to share this bed with her, drowned the gecko's diabolical yet hypnotic and soporific calls. tuk-ko,tuk-ko,tuk-ko.

chinatown

when you grabbed my arm, my limper left arm, and led me to this shady alley in Chinatown, I never believed you when you promised "there's a quaint dimsum place over here."

then you started laughing your laugh,(the one you were trying to do away with; like that of that geek from that movie.) when you saw me starting to cry. the stench from the trash stung my eyes like a stray schezuan pepper sauce. I believed you though when you squinted your eyes (in solidarity?) and told me "we don't need to be anywhere else. I just want to be with you. all the time."

yesterday, chris (remember him? that one with the wolfish appetite?)asked me for suggestions for a "respectable" (I assumed he meant great) downtown chinese, preferably southern, bistro. chris and bolo (you knew him. you hated his guts. remember, he busted your ass in our spinning class.) were to celebrate their 5th year together. already.

I came this close to calling you and ask you if you knew one, for real. and for a moment there, as I was rifling through my well thumbed address book, I just forgot your name. (harry, no that was that squat italian guy. no, giulio was the one. couldn't be sammy, too happy, too sunny.)

come to think of it. we never ate that night. we just stood there at the mouth of that alley until that drizzle fizzled. you are my ill lighted, narrow alley of memory. there are just times when things, stuff, just grab me back there. then, i just go. back. again. even if it's too dank, too dark there. and there's nothing in it for me but burning tears.

summer movie

you just stood there, arms akimbo,
while the flicker of the movie
washed upon us like a sudden
sleet over an unsuspecting forest

I remember your goaded silence.
robin williams-a startling altruist-
was ready to drown everything
I dreaded you were about to flood me.

then you offered me your bare arms.
(in what? in apologies? in sympathy?)
and off you poofed, a spooked specter,
leaving me ashen like a silent film star.

today, as a coy winter storm
gathers steam in hushes of mute flakes,
my bus-an iron sadist-
roistered by that dumb park.

the screen poles stand there still.
two ghosts ignoring each other's snow shadows.
the bare arms of the trees grazing them
whisper of a washed out movie ending.

a tale

once upon
a time
in a land
where
callow men
romped among
breast shaped
clouds,
there lived
a peregrine
prince,
who spent
his days
gadding around
marshmallow
storm clouds
and garish
rainbow ends.
then one day,
he met
a princess
who got him
to promise
flying her
to a winged
life of endless
ball.
but on his way
to pick her up,
his boots,
heavy
and cloggy,
got entangled
in a twisted
mass of dreams
stringier than
a virgin
mother's milk.
and all through
the rest
of her days,
the princess
eked out
a pauper's life,
crooning dirges
to every
other man,
commoner,
royal,
who dared
to promise
rocketing her up
again
toward
the dusty stars.

 

a dream

our bus skids
over the wet pavement
the way a hurried dream
skitters over a light sleep.
"last stop,"
the driver squalls.
no recourse but stop
willing myself
to turn into a pebble
so I can just sprawl
by the seething roadside
and feel the beat
of life in my gut.


 

gripe

it's the puritan afternoons,
the strict early evenings
of wintertime that get me.
how they compel philanderers
to rush home early to their wives.
the transient pieties of these men
hustle me of my paltry place in trains.
and then, those tight bus stops.
what dispensation does winter confer to lovers,
that allow them, without remorse,
to throw sickly single men
out in the snow to wait for buses
while they worship each other,
warm and ardent,
under runty waiting sheds?
I suppose, what I find blasphemous
with winter evenings
is being led into this stark procession,
toward that bus pew, severe, cold.
then on to that ride home,
that long and grinding ride home,
alone and without redemption.

 

and it's too late, baby, it's too late

when the train lurches toward the 86th stop, he tells me how his mother is loving it so much here in the east coast. he does not need to tell me that.

I saw his mother just days after she flown in. she invited me to the welcome party her family in jersey city was throwing her. this was a month ago.

at the party, her mother fussed over my not eating too much. she reminded me how I used to love the pork stew that she whipped up when I used to come to their house in manila. this was when his father went out on business trips to the province. his mother was the only one in his family who knew that he and I were going out. and for a catholic mother back in parochial manila to accept this relationship, that was just huge. miraculously huge.

her mother talked about a lot of things that she knew I was not into. but then (and she knew she had to) she had to get into why he was not there at the party. she told me, the way one would say that it is monday or sunday today, that he had to go to a very important sales trip, on a sunday, with his boss.

my watch assures me I still have three minutes before I am officially tardy. but the digital clock at the middle car screams I am already late by a minute. I ask him what time his classes end later in the evening. he tells me he's going to be okay.

I then think of a white guy, tight in a hugo boss suit, driving up in a fashionable hybrid car to his college in east village later at night.

I try to halt my train of thought: me, in green surgical scrubs, slogging it out at the trauma hospital I work in, just six blocks away from his school. of him and his flaming boss going out for some fancy dinner in gaytown chelsea after his classes. of me eating alone my ba-on of day old noodles and burnt bacon during my midnight break.

at the stop, two burly white men board the car we are in. the one looking spent in an ill-constructed blue office suit stands directly in front of me. I lean to my right and ask him how he juggles his time between his studies, his mba, I speak louder, and his work. he shouts back, the way school kids holler in trains, that he's managing. quite well, this is how he puts it.

then he modulates back to his usual timid voice to tell me he and his boss are about to seal this deal with a japanese buyer for this neat-his word--backwater lot in jamaica, queens. he tells me the japanese investor is planning to develop it to an upscale retirement complex for mostly asian couples.

I watch the two elderly white ladies beside him whisper something to each other. both decide to look at me, unflinchingly, incredulously. I avoid their stares and glance, instead, at the korean-looking woman busy poring over the classifieds of a yellowing chinese tabloid.

as our train weaves, blindly it seems, through the labyrinthine subway tracks, I feel like wanting to ask him if his japanese client is aware of the racket the planes make in the area from the nearby JFK international airport. I seem suddenly bold enough to want to ask him, into his face, whether his client has any idea that he and his lover-boss are plainly hoodwinking him.

but then, my glasses just start to frost. maybe from my quickening breaths, I don't know. all I know is that after I remove them, I realize I can't ask him those questions. not now, anyway. not when the stop nearest my hospital nears fast.

and then, I realize, too, that the newspaper the korean-looking woman is reading isn't a chinese paper after all. it's just an old edition of one of the local tabloids

I think he smiles in relief as I tell him goodbye, but I am not so certain. I can not tell exactly because a white guy completely blocks my view of him.

 

new year noodles

1. idly, the lone waitress slinks out of the counter after I seat myself at a table for four. she does not offer me the menu. checking her hair in the mirrored wall, she announces "we don't have specials today." "it's okay," I seek her black eyes, "I just want something warm."


2. I order something with fish and vegetables. she brings back a bowl of thick but pale white noodles. sloppily, she pushes the steaming bowl towards me. the fat noodles squirm like catfish trapped in the shallow end of a draining rice paddy.

3. growing up, mama never missed serving something sweet and stringy during new year's day dinner. sweet, to bode for a tearless year and stringy for our hoped-for long lives. earlier, I made a trip to the uppity patisserie uptown then dropped by the neighborhood bakery two blocks down. no sweets shops open in this town in the first day of the year. I dread the thought of a long life rife with grief.

4. there are only two shrimps in my soup. I decide to eat them last. fan-tailed, the two of them sit coiled and contented in the deep end of the bowl. their pink tails remind me not to procrastinate anymore and order online that thick comforter-blanket.

5. by the door mirror, I see the waitress beams after she realizes the tip I left her. my slight jacket and the meager soup inside me pale against the bite of the new year's morning frost. I almost decide to go back to the restaurant just to see the waitress' smile again.

 

then the water came (a dirge for the tsunami victims)

then the water came
and gate-crashed the day's fiesta.
gorged, it left quickly.