Dexterian Lit

I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus...

2010-11-05T07:46:00.002+08:00

TOMMY (sings):

I saw mommy kissing Santa Claus/ Underneath the mistletoe tonight

They didn't see me creep/ Down the stairs to have a peep

They thought that I was tucked up/ In my bedroom, fast alseep.

And I saw mommy tickle Santa Claus/ Underneath his beard so snowy white.

Oh what a laugh it would have been/ If daddy had only seen/

Mommy kissing Santa Claus to-night...

JOHN (sings):

Yeah I saw my wife kissing Santa Claus/ Underneath the mistletoe tonight/

They didn't see me creep/ from the kitchen to have a peep /

They thought that I was senseless/ In our bedroom fast alseep

Yeah I saw mommy tickle Santa Claus/ Underneath his belt so big and wide...

John turns to the audience and says

"At this point all I see is red."
"The red of his stupid fur-lined suit"
"The red of my wife's lips as they curl round his..."

John points his Steyr AUG at the Santa and Mommy. John empties it.

JOHN (sings, slowly):

...And it's a shame my son had been/ a witness to his mother's sin

and his father shooting Mom tonight

"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife."

John shoots Santa in the face with his Glock for good measure. Tommy runs away screaming.

Tony's Day

2010-06-01T20:18:00.002+08:00

The college is a long walk

under a barren sun,

cold classrooms that you

get to after a long hard run.

Then there is climbing upon

costly carpeted stairs before lunch.

After that, one more long-haired teacher.

After that, I go home.

--------------

Tuvshin (aka Tony) was a student of mine from Mongolia. (Yes, I was teaching Engrish) This poem was written as a sample to show him and his Chinese classmate Peng Ju (aka Michael) that poetry need not climb ridiculous heights in subject matter or use of language.

March 2010

typewriters

2009-01-27T09:20:00.000+08:00

typewriters.

i miss 'em.
i miss how loud they can get
when you whackwhackwhack
at the keys.
they're kind of like...

(shhh!)

i even miss how they jam
when you whack too fast
how the hammers lock up,
lost in the throes of your
(pro) creative activity

(it takes a lot to pry 'em apart)

i like the sprocket-ratchet sound they make
grating teeth, ragged breathing
when i pull on her arm and roll up the next
creamy space to rat-tat-tat-tat-type at.

when you're done banging,
parts of you hurt from so much abuse,
and you know you should feel like an ass
because you didn't quite consider her feelings

but you bask in the afterglow,
maybe take a long drag on your cigarette
contemplating the smells, the fluids you spilled
on so much white, pristine space.

i miss them as much as i miss

(shhhh!)

Being Fair to Stephenie Meyer

2008-12-01T07:11:00.000+08:00

I've spoken out against what I perceive to be the critic's tendency to treat the artistic endeavor as if it were a gladiatorial event. They seem to boo and hiss and jeer from the sidelines while the artist struggles with the lions of snark and put-down until what makes artists artists chokes on all that bile and dies.

I know, I know: the Cadaverous Jaded Critic stereotype is not always true and standards have to be met and kept if we want to make good art.

So.

What I know of Stephenie Meyer and Twilight--accusations of Mary Sue-ism, shoddy research, purple prose, hollow plot--has basically been pre-processed by the Cadaverous Jaded critics and by the Critics Whose Fairness I Respect. While these criticisms foreshadow my future disappointment with Meyer's literary product, I can't quite fault her so much for her process.

The story of how Edward Cullen's and Bella Swan's romance (can I call them Bedward now?) came to be was as legitimate a creative jumping point as any: it came to Meyer in a dream. It niggled, unsatisfied with staying in the back of her head until the story had to be written, however badly or well. It's as valid as Stephen King's birthing of Roland in The Dark Tower series.

Regarding the possible travesty that is Twilight, I've decided that it's time for me to put my money where my mouth is and see it for myself. I can't get all snarky and contemptuous about something I haven't seen unless it is patently horse turd, or produced by people who consistently produce horse turd (A-kon, Gunther, Soulja Boy: I'm looking at you.)

So, if you've bought the Twilight novel, may I look at it? If you've bought the DVD, may I borrow it?

Story Zero

2008-11-23T08:09:00.000+08:00

Writing is a necessary evil. When people are simply too lazy or ineffectual to do something to improve their lives, they whine about it. Sometimes they whine about it in writing. Writing serves the dual purpose of--

bleeding off their restlessness and resentment so they don't kill themselves, rape people or otherwise become inconvenient to the rest of us;
contributing to art and culture (useless pursuits that keep the rich in their belief that they are intrinsically better people) when the writer hits occasional literary gold.

This pretty much keeps the masses pacified and intellectuals entertained so no one gets any funny ideas about upsetting the status quo, which frankly, needs a little tipping over.

Speaking as a cynic, that's the first story. Speaking as a writer, I'm sick to my stomach. Time for my medication.

The Ninth (Or Zeroth) Original Story

Click here to get to the other eight. The gist of that article being, that every Hollywood movie on God's green earth is based off of at least one of them. I submit there is a ninth story, or story meme, that informs the rest of them. I'm loosely calling it the Fall.

In every story is a status quo and then something happens to upset it. Sometimes that something is a villain, like Brainiac trying yet again to put Metropolis in a bottle: Superman must fight him to prevent Metropolitans from being very inconvenienced by the villain's shrink ray. Sometimes it's a natural disaster-- think Titanic. Regardless of what that something is, the characters have to fight it to get their status quo-- or a semblance of it-- back. They've fallen out of safety, contentment, out of Paradise and they have to struggle to return to it.

This is story zero. This is everyone's story.

Sand

2008-10-09T18:43:00.000+08:00

Don’t shake me off your sandals;
Build castles with me
Put out the stubs of your anger,
All your wasted working days, in me.

Build your bonfires, hold your parties
But lay your head and your blanket of troubles
On the grains of my broad back
Hide in me; cry in me; confide in me

Love washes over me,
Causes me to cling to you,
To those parts of you
That leave their mark on me so—
The back of your neck, your soft arms
Your gentle hands, your toes,
the arches and soles of your feet

-----------

This was originally meant for Project Formalin, (I just love appending weird names to my little endeavors, don't I?) a series of videos and related work that I did for the Clavier School of Music. As a matter of course, I have multiple agendas when I make my projects. And a nasty habit of making those agendas obvious to people who know what to look for.

I found the draft in an old sketchbook. I tweaked it just tonight.

A New Take on an Old Tale

2008-08-22T12:16:00.000+08:00

written around 22 December 2005

Love made the World on a Wednesday and found it was good.
In the World, Love planted a garden, bidding all to eat of its fruit.
The Man and the Woman (Love brought them there)
saw that the fruit was lovely and inviting to touch.
The Woman took the fruit and bit into it, giving some to the Man to taste.
He did.

Immediately their eyes were opened and they saw that they were naked.
They sewed fig leaves together to cover their nakedness,
and hid in the trees.

Love walked into the garden and asked of the Man and the Woman: "Where are you?"
The Man stepped out of his hiding place and proclaimed
"I am here, Lady. We were hiding in the garden from the World because we were naked."

Love asked, "Were you hiding from me?" The Man replied "No, Lady.
You who brought us to live here, know already we are naked."

At this, the Woman went out of her hiding place,
drew forth from her heart, a flaming sword.
With it she cut off the arms of the Man as she cursed him.
"You have shamed me. From this day forward, never shall your arms enfold me.
On your belly shall you crawl, and dust shall you eat for as long as you live.
I set enmity between us. When you kiss my feet I will strike at your head."

At this, Love shed her bitter tears.

In the World, the garden, the Man and the Woman stay to this day, until
one moves the other or the world itself is changed.

Soma 3

2008-07-08T15:23:00.000+08:00

the telephone is lying silently
my heart is a clock ticking slowly tonight
and this ticking and my open secret
are ringing in my ears

you’re never alone
when alone together is what i
desperately need us to be

--------------------------
Inspired by song by Anne and Nancy Wilson.

The Worship of Mammon: Misogyny

2008-07-03T19:51:00.000+08:00

She's not a nice friend. But she says that every word out of her mouth is truth I would do well to heed. And grudgingly, I must admit that that is the case regarding much of what she's told me before. She knows me inside and out, knows what makes me tick. She's one of a handful of people on the planet who's seen me truly deeply twisted angry. Others have seen me break but she was there each time I did. Waiting.

She says she loves me, and on some level it's likely true. Even if I've seen the stable of broken men she says she's rescued from their exes. Yes, she keeps a stable. And that's partly why I haven't told her "yes." Her arguments are, of course, powerful enough to merit consideration. She has been with me for every heartbreak, every bad day. She has been an understanding, patient, if silent friend to me. She knows what makes me tick. Knows how tired I am of failing every character test thrown my way by Woman. How utterly sick I am of puzzling them out, of not fitting their mental pictures of Prince Charming. She offers me freedom, the room to be utterly preoccupied with only my projects and plans as long as I nee to do them. Her connections are extensive and while they are not equally available to every man in her stable, there is always a portion of her largesse that is reserved solely for me.

She claims she can match my intensity with her own, that I need not hold myself back from displays of affection. In matters of sex she is open to everything, even the practices that would make me blush. She is willing to go as slow or as fast as or as bizarre as I want. She says she is everything to every one of the men she consorts with. She tells me she will be everything I want for me. And she says this with such deadpan confidence that I find it hard to doubt her.

She is a comely woman, and though she can be as charming and winsome as the rest of them, there is often little warmth in her. She's as beautiful as a well-kept marble crypt is beautiful. Sharp, cold smooth, precise. She makes a great goth girl. Given my preoccupation with things dead and necrotising, that does give some life to my interest in Ginny.

All she asks of me is that I become part of her stable. And that is partly what galls.

She has a stable.

I mislike being part of a communal love nest.

I have told her this. I have told her I'm waiting for someone too. She had chuckled softly at that, eyes flashing with a certainty that frightened and angered me. She understands my reticence, or so she says. "I have time, Dex." she says. She will wait for that last bad day that will finally drive me into her arms.

So how do you write?

2008-06-27T15:34:00.001+08:00

Take something everyone else takes for granted and stand it on its head. Imagine their faces as what these peole expect blows up in them. Find your inner imp and follow where she leads. If she goes too far--off a cliff and into the sea, for example-- you don't have to jump after her.

I will admit, though, that sometimes following her to her watery end is quite rewarding.

14

2008-06-06T12:34:00.000+08:00

It was easy when I was in high school-- throw everything out the window for the sake of repairing the broken interpersonal stuff between you and the people you care for. You had cliches like "hormonal imbalance" and "folly of youth" and "growing pains" on which to lay blame. You were young, and therefore still resilient. If life and your own bonehead decisions threw you a curve ball you could reasonably bounce back and people would still be lenient with you.

It's not so easy today. There are no more cliches. The stakes are higher. And you cannot abandon duty.

Tomorrow I'll be tending to the needs of the Clavier kids, who have not seen their Kuya Dex since he implemented his mad scheme to return to work teaching Koreans English, so that he could earn again, and maybe bring back a semblance of balance into his life. The balance and self assuredness he lost when he lost his ex.

14
I love Tina. Everyone looking in my general direction will see it. She sees it too, but she no doubt has pat answers to that. Amazingly those answers parallel those served up by my other exes. They question the authenticity of my feelings, the purity of my intentions, the worth of my affection and ultimately pass judgment on my character and my intrinsic worth.

I'm crazy. I'm delusional. I'm evil. What I'm experiencing is a male fever dream, not the real, valid commitment that comes with cliches like "mature, authentic love." I'm "too weak" for them.

I hear variations of them so many times, there are days I believe them. I question myself (no surprise there, I always question myself) yet again.

But really, reduce everything they say to their core statement and what's left is that I'm inconvenient.

I'm not important enough to plan anything with, for or around... except when the plan calls for a rapid evacuation from wherever I am.

I've questioned myself long enough to find out that regardless of what my exes may have said, thought or felt in the throes of their fear, their anger, their temporary irrationality, I am important.

And it saddens me that somewhere between, what mistakes I committed and what blunders they made, amidst the babel of voices from our greek choruses of well-meaning friends, who I am has been lost from view. And more than this, that which is most significant has been lost from sight.

I never lost sight of it: all my exes were important enough, beautiful enough, intelligent and creative enough, wise enough--worthy--of the affection I had to give them. Worthy of my gift of self, broken toy that it is.

If you've ever wondered why I find it so hard to let any of them go it is because of that singular fact.

I love Tina. Among them all it is her laughter and the hours of talk, bus rides, her kisses that I miss the most. And if I write shamelessly about her now or in my Mammon stories it is because I miss her terribly and I can only uselessly write and write and write until Godot comes to bring her back.

Tina, I don't want anyone else. And if I can't even see your face then I'm screwed. I really will have nothing left to live for but myself ...and Mammon.

Tobie's Challenge

2008-06-03T01:06:00.000+08:00

2059: The population of the Earth is 4 Billion people worldwide.

Today (2008), the population of the earth is about 6.5 Billion. In 2020, you are the leading scientist in (whatever feild you choose) and the UN has asked you to make a plan that would make sure population growth would be stiffled and earth will only support 4 B people in the next 100 years. You have 1.5 to 2 generations to implement.

What's you plan? How will you control population growth?

Be creative! I asked people in Mangaholix but most answers were: I wouldn't live by them, the world would end by then, natural disaster that would kill everyone. We're Talecrafters. We should be creative!

-----------------------------------

And in the tradition of people with nothing better to do than play with story cards when we sure as heck should be working for a living, (sorry, bad joke) this is my answer--

The New Deal

Well, it turns out the Evangelicals were right after all.

Millions of people disappeared just as most of the world was spiraling into what would have been--pardon the Husseinism-- "the Mother of all Wars." One minute they were there, sharing in the muted global panic or otherwise making the most of their time on the planet. The next minute, they were gone.

You don't have any concept of how much that bites when your girlfriend is raptured away from you in the middle some well-earned nookie.

I went crazy looking for her, churning up all sorts of explanations for my aborted communion and the feelings of fear and loneliness in the weeks that came after. It was a super-weapon. It was an experiment in some newfangled physics gone awry. Alien abduction.

(I did take some comfort in the knowledge that the people most vociferously advocating the Alien Abduction theory were ...dare I say it? Evangelicals Left Behind.)

The world pretty much did the same thing-- go crazy looking for absent friends, lost loved ones and significant others-- after the initial skirmishes, the petit panic that set in when armed units in the field found themselves without commanding officers or communications specialists. Thousands died in those weeks. Needlessly.

It was only after nations started sending representatives to the UN Building again to compare notes that people put together just what might have happened. Many of us didn't quite believe it, of course. And soon enough it didn't matter because many more people would die. Needlessly.

Well, it's 2099 now. Jesus hasn't come back yet. What's left of the world's population is shut up in Supercities-- New York, Vegas, Los Angeles, Guangzhou, Mumbai, Pasay, Sao Paulo. Pockets of humanity connected by tenuous threads of intermittent radio-communication (God bless the guy who invented sattelites-- we still have a couple up there faithfully facilitating communications). It's getting harder and harder to house, feed and clothe everybody in because absolutely no one can get out of the 'Cities and there're only so many ways you can sell Soylent Green to a restive population. I imagine the situation's pretty much the same in the other 'C ities.

The official story is that the Outside World's still hot--radioactive. Besides, the environment's crap anyway. Serves us right for actually using all the nukes.

My problem is that you can't keep humanity hermetically sealed in domed pockets the size of what used to be Israel. People in Pasay are dying to get out and claim some real estate-- never mind that it glows in the dark. There are rumors--Urban Legends of areas recovering from what we did to it. New places from which to start over. The Pasay Quorum of Twelve has been on my ass to send out exploratory expeditions, to establish trade routes with Mumbai.

Idiots. Children.

They don't know what I had to do to make sure we have the crappy real estate we're sitting in now. Why the populations in the 'Cities remain constant. Why I tax people so much. Why most of the budget goes to military R & D instead of making Soylent Green more palatable. Or why I'm still alive when I no longer have the right to be.

I made a deal back in 2024. After that horde of inhuman mosters rose up out of the earth and halved the world's population in a matter of weeks. Why do you think we had to use all the nukes? I spoke to a representative... an emmisary. It promised the horde would leave Pasay and the other 'Cities alone if the horde had the rest of the world to play with. Anyone who left our safe zones would be fair game, and in the early days of Pasay's development, we lost far too many people.

I've discouraged people from leaving for whatever reason over the years. But enough sneak out of Pasay to satisfy the terms of The Deal. Part of those terms involve keeping mum about The Deal to our charges-- the people who live in Pasay and complain about the quality of their food.

If the Quorum would only wait five goddamn years... at least that's what the 'tech boys and Pasay/Mumbai black ops people are telling me. We'll have a working prototype for a weapon that can really hurt these things.

Then we'll all be in a position to negotiate a New Deal.

God helps those who help themselves.

The Worship of Mammon (8)

2008-05-30T19:28:00.000+08:00

"Again, Ginny"

The story thus far:

Our writer has given his soul to Mammon, the god of lucre. Both our writer and Ginny -- feral anthropomorphic embodiment of our writer's own misogyny wrapped in the appearance of his ex-- are surprised when the corpulent, shark-toothed Mammon accepts his gift of self.

As our writer begins his training in the ways of lucre, Ginny realizes that she is, for the first time in months, away from her writer boy toy. It's a situation she might regret...

-------------------------

From the Gospel of Mammon: (latest revision as posted on i-churchwithmammon.org and moneyforsomething.com)

“If you can express it mathematically, if you can quantify it in some way, it will have a negotiable value. It will have a price. That's what transactions and covenants are all about. Perhaps the payment terms will be different, but they're part of the price anyway. Service for Salvation. Bible Studies for Peace of Mind. Accept Me as your personal savior and I'll take away your pain...

"In My flock there is no room for inefficiency. Real men feed My sheep: relentless in their pursuit of Me, they ensure the greatest good for the greatest number.

"I am the Invisible Hand that pushes the free market, and therefore humanity, forward...

"You creatives feel your pretty pains and write or paint or sing. I make a profit. Then, you burn yourselves out like matchsticks and still I make a killing. I'll admit your talents are special. But like every good resource, you're replaceable. As individuals, you're unique. But when did uniqueness ever mean dick in production?

"Your uniqueness can be copied. You can be as die-hard non-conformist as you want. You'll still die poor and unremembered. There are a lot of you living on the planet at any one time. And if one of you dies, there's always another who'll be eager to step in and take your place. If you wait long enough, genius-level creatives get reborn eventually. The next Monroe, the next Sinatra. The next Picasso. The next Van Gogh. The next Buenaluz. The next Lira. Maybe that next creative won't be as intractable. This is God’s honest truth: there’s a sucker born every fifteen minutes who is exactly like you in every way that counts: quantifiable values you can track on a graph.”

* * *

From Misogyny's Journal:

He's rubbing off on me. I'm f_cking waxing eloquent.

And I don't know where he is.

I'm feeding off a seventeen-year-old who hates his controlling mother. If I and his mother play this right he'll become another Ed Gaines. That's right, dear boy, you can't have friends. Mom is all...

Mammon gave my writer a wad of ...what else? money. "Get yourself something special, why don't you?" he said. "Get yourself laid." I guess this is how he keeps them in his kingdom, the creatives and idiot-savants who pass through my domain and into Mammon's. And my writer's one of the good ones. He can look up at the marionette strings that tug at humanity, see relationships between people like a mass of silver threads. F_ck yeah. It's lucky for me that he doesn't know enough to truly use the bonds that keep him tied to everyone else. Use them to free himself and the rest of them.

F_ck. Don't you just love people who need to be needed? When you hurt them enough, they will turn on you like a rabid dog. It's these moments that I live for; these surges of boiling rage that I feed on. My writer's rare because it takes a f_cken lot to bring him to this point.

Where is he?

My writer's rare because despite his anger and his disappointment he refuses to hate. He doesn't understand why other people have to. He says he hates women and on some level he does. I can feed off him. That's proof of it.

Right now my seventeen-year-old is calling a friend who knows someone who knows someone in Cebu. He's saving for a big ass gun. I should be loving what he'll do with it-- shoot whatshername? the girl who laughed in his face when he asked her out? Stephanie. Yesss. And her boyfriend Bill.

I'm getting nourishment but I'm not getting any kick from my staple food.

Where is my writer?

F_ck.

I don't know what to feel about this. All I know is he isn't with me and I worry. I worry. I f_cken worry that my writer will sell himself to some other two-bit deity. He's already half Mammon's. I wouldn't like it too much, being robbed of my pet.

At least if he sells himself to some new female (Unlikely. He's too hung up on Tina) she'll do what they always do-- judge him and find him wanting-- and she'll drive him back into my arms.

From the Writer's Scrapbook

Leo's leaving for Dubai today. We're having a farewell party for him at this karaoke teevee place in the parking building of the Shangri-La Mall. I'm so drunk I'm walking in slow motion. But I'm hyper-aware of everything around me. Colors, smells, touch... I've an escort on my arm and she's been pressing her face to my neck for the last half hour...

The Worship of Mammon (7)

2008-05-20T03:54:00.000+08:00

"Tranche Training"

The story thus far:

Much to the consternation of his new girlfriend Ginny, our writer tries to give his soul to Mammon, the god of lucre. Both our writer and Ginny -- feral anthropomorphic embodiment of our writer's own misogyny wrapped in the appearance of his ex-- are surprised when the corpulent, shark-toothed Mammon accepts his gift of self.

And here, in a thought-form contact center training room located somewhere in the writer's dreams, our writer begins his training in the ways of lucre...

-------------------------

For most people, initiation into the Worship of Mammon would have involved, at least in the beginning, staying a few extra hours at work. This is ostensibly for what benefits a few extra hundred bucks can give to the family. Junior gets his Dockers quicker, ditto the Marks & Spencer gift cheques for the wife, ditto-ditto the Motorola Razr for the little girl. The number of hours would grow as Mammon's acolytes dangled more benefits in front of you. The money would grow too: not by much, but just enough to keep you looking at that greener pasture. Keep you asking for more office time; keep you staying just a little bit longer...

Meanwhile your ties to the people who love you would erode and you would wake up one morning and wonder just how everyone's drifted away from you. But by then you'd have found it soooo easy to forget your troubles at home by dealing with the troubles at the office. It wouldn't matter much to you by then— the family simply can't understand that your time was always better spent on securing a brighter future for your family... never mind that that future involved amassing a bigger house, a bigger lot, six cars and stuff you don't really need.

But I was a creative. Worse, I was a temporally displaced hippie who was generally satisfied with just a roof over my head, art supplies and a woman by my side. My own initiation, therefore, had to be ...different. Something... creative.

Mammon had already helped knock away that one pillar in '05... my wife.

How long had he and Ginny been at this?

That scene at the diner, the fawning women, his blatant disregard for rules—having the staff at Heaven and Eggs ordering Big Macs from the local McDonald's and consuming the same there—the stupid solar eclipse and the women channeling my exes: it was all a sales pitch. Shock-and-awe proof that anyone so blessed by Mammon would be able to write his own ticket.

I was reminded of this one time... my mom had wanted me to write a speech for some police general as she'd been given that assignment by that selfsame official. I was, of course, resentfully obedient.

“Why couldn't he make the damned speech himself?”

I had pulled on my diplomatic face when The General waddled up the staircase: no sense in making enemies. I'd thought then. My mom crowed about my abilities to The General. He looked the speech over—I was only half done—and made pleased sounds. Then he produced a crisp thousand peso bill and put it in my grubby 20-year-old hands... Mammon must have enjoyed that one.

“Every one has his price, M'boy. And fourteen years ago I bought you. But worry not: I am Mammon. All things are possible through me.” A wink, a smile, and again the flash of sharp, triangular serrated teeth.

Ginny was right. Ham. Showoff.

Now that I'd taken the bait bitten into the hook, he had reeled me in and dumped me in one of his safehouses... in the Cyberpark in Alabang. Specifically, one of the posh orange-and-gray training rooms at (of all places) the HSBC compound. A room labeled Portland, I think. Mammon was going all out to get me up to speed on how he got things done. Self-appointed god-wannabes like Dave Koresh, Charlie Manson or Shoko Asahara could have used pointers from this guy. L. Ron Hubbard had been awake during the lecture, obviously: Scientology was alive and well when the Branch Davidians, Manson's extended Helter Skelter family and Asahara's death cult were pretty much ...dead in the water.

Anyway Ginny wasn't with me in the lecture room. She had probably seen this part of the procedure, or she wasn't interested. She had retired to the ground floor cafeteria to feast on... what did she eat when she wasn't consuming my anger and disappointment at women in general? And did it count as food when my disappointment encompassed the rest of the human race? It didn't matter. I wasn't her only project and likely she was off tormenting some poor sap who'd just been given the boot because he was uncool or otherwise inadequate.

Today's subject-- complete with flash animated presentations projected via LCD device on a white screen-- just what mammon thought of creatives like yours truly...

Eline won!

2008-05-16T22:04:00.000+08:00

Her story, Doll Eyes, was an entry for the 2008 Romeo Forbes Children's Storywriting Competition.

Let's grab a quote from these guys:

"We ended up with a very strong set of entries in the final round, but in the end the judges (singer/actress Lea Salonga, Tin-Aw Art Gallery owner Dawn Atienza, and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Head of the Graduate Studies Office of UP's College of Arts and Letters Wendell Capili) were unanimous.

"Congratulations to Ms. Eline Santos and to all the other finalists!"

Read the story, check out the other entries.

Writers Suck

2008-05-04T03:52:00.002+08:00

Because that's all they do.

When warm bodies are needed to stop the tanks, don't count on writers to be there with you. They'll be in their hotel rooms with their laptops and their notepads, writing. When you're busy making money the tried and tested way, yon writer will be busy wasting his time writing stories and filling his blogs: you're still saddled with the rent.

When someone is patently stealing your woman, writer, don't count on yourself showing up at their door and cracking skulls. You'll be at home, writing, adding one more neurosis to the ones you already have.
Cue the sound clip from America's Sweethearts. Hank Azaria's Spanish character turns to a really barely-holding-in-his-psychotic-temper John Cusack and refers to him, derisively, as--

"You puth-thy."

You'll also have the bonus of showing your unwary reader friend that the bedrock upon which he rests his sanity doesn't really exist. And then there'll be two of you f_cking up the world by making everyone uncomfortable with life as they know it. She was right who said it best:

Keep only cheerful friends; the grouches pull you down.

The world doesn't belong to contemplatives, besides. Writers in general never see the fruits of their labor. For every Stephen King and Neil Gaiman there are thousands of frustrated writers married to their own misery and (in my Mammon stories) at least one who is dating his misogyny.

You may be the next Nietzsche, the next Kafka, the next Rizal-- but look what happened to them.

Nietzsche: nuthouse, couple of strokes, death by tuberculosis.
Kafka: nuthouse, tuberculosis, death by starvation
Rizal: exile, death by firing squad

And if you luck out and do a Thoreau ... well, okay, he didn't suck. He lived a full life, though he was felled by tuberculosis at age 44.

The point is very few writers ever live to see their legacy; fewer writers ever get to have one.

What's greatness if you never get to see nor taste it? I'm altruistic enough to care about my fellow man, but I've read all the books and seen all the movies: writers end up with the girl and the happy ending only in the stories they write. And I'm sick of watching everyone else's happy ever afters.

The Worship of Mammon (6)

2008-05-02T00:12:00.000+08:00

The story thus far:

Much to the consternation of his new girlfriend Ginny, our writer tries to give his soul to Mammon, the god of lucre. Both our writer and Ginny -- feral anthropomorphic embodiment of our writer's own misogyny wrapped in the appearance of his ex-- are shocked when the corpulent, shark-toothed Mammon rejects his gift of self.

And here, in a thought-form breakfast diner located somewhere in the writer's dreams, Mammon proceeds to tell our protagonists why ...
----------------

"Yes, I understand that. But why would I want you?"

"Sit down, M'boy." He gestured to the empty seat beside him. "I'll explain." When I didn't sit, he smiled, shrugged, said: "Suit yourself." He returned to his breakfast, eating slowly, this time, giving himself breathing room to talk and chew and swallow.

"If I wanted an agent to spread fear and pain and chaos I don't need your soul. A disciple of Eros! Indeed. You're doing that just fine by simply being who you are. M'boy, you cause more harm loving people the way you do than if you hated them with a passion.

"'He labors under the yoke of great need who loves so greatly.'

“They feel your love and especially your need, and it frightens the living sh!t out of them. They just don’t know what to do with it. Or you. They cannot return it, or at least they cannot see the possibility. And they don’t want to be saddled with the responsibility for the well-being of someone else. Your love, boy, curtails their life-options.

"It's a threat to their freedom—" and he chuckled here, as if he thought the concept was quaint—"if you will. In a society that worships their televisions by faithfully watching their favorite Friends, or the medical staff at Seattle Grace hop into bed with one another, that freedom is all important.

“Meanwhile you flop about the world like a dying fish on a trawler's deck, crying for attention, but none of that's forthcoming. Nobody likes a beggar, M'boy. You approach, they recoil. You give chase and they lash out, hating themselves for being violent to you and hating you for bringing that side of them out. You ask your mutual friends for help and they are torn by their separate loyalties to the two of you. You claw at each other and you damage everyone around you.

He cut me off. “They’re fools, of course—“, Mammon said, abstracted, almost to himself. “You’ve got so much going for you. You’d be such a catch if you weren’t so… what’s the word? Emo—? I dislike ‘emo…’ How about ‘weak?’ Unsuitable? Ahm yes— Oh yes! I’ve got it—

“Inconvenient.” Then he wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin.

"Excuse me?"

"I've been around. Eros and I go back a ways. I've studied him. And I've studied you. Everything your precious 'starbright ladies' tell you can be reduced to this basic statement: They do not want you because you are inconvenient."

He snapped his fingers and the sunlight outside the breakfast diner reddened, diminished. Illumination failed in the diner itself, and a spotlight shone on the pretty waitress with the glasses. Call Mammon a pragmatic shark god, but he was definitely a ham. The William Shatner fan in me just had to give the money-deity some respect.

The waitress stepped up from behind Mammon. She dropped her smile, looked straight at me said, her expression blank, Mylene’s lower contralto ringing hollowly, surreally, from between her lips: “I just want to work. I have so much to do. I have plans. I've moved on. I don't have the time... "

In fine—"I don’t want to be bothered by him.”

The earthy girl had joined her friend. Another spotlight shone on her as she spoke, another voice from my past echoing eerily from her throat. A litany of old responses to the old and plaintive prompts of 'Why? Why are you leaving me?'

There was a muted intake of breath from Ginny. Her eyes were closed. She was licking her lips. I realized that my renewed anger was feeding her. Her hands were shaking as she raised them slowly to her face, her mouth. She was taking deep, ragged breaths.

Mammon broke in on whatever thoughts were forming in my head, then and there.

"Fortunately I am not an Agent of Darkness, young man." A wink. The flash of the triangular teeth, again. "I don't see the world in your neat light-dark, good-evil dichotomies. You'll see, if you try to get to know me that I'm your best and only friend.

"I am Mammon. All things are made possible through me."

"Spare me the recruitment propaganda, Mammon. You're preaching to the choir. I'll ask you again: where do I sign?"

"Well," he said as he stood up. "If you reeeeaally want to work for me, my boy..."

I turned to the fat god, said, "I do."

"Then there's something you have to do for me first..."

The Worship of Mammon (5)

2008-04-29T20:44:00.000+08:00

The story thus far:

Much to the consternation of his new girlfriend Ginny, our writer tries to give his soul to Mammon, the god of lucre. Both our writer and Ginny -- feral anthropomorphic embodiment of our writer's own misogyny wrapped in the appearance of his ex-- are shocked when the corpulent, shark-toothed Mammon rejects his gift of self over a meal of quarter pounders...

"I've tried the past six months to tell her that she's the only thing that matters to me and she's continually thrown that in my face."

---------------------------
Somewhere in the real world I was dead to it. Not so here, in my gardens where it was almost always late afternoon.

My great frustration was that I could never take any of the women I loved to this place, even if my monuments to them loomed large and stately here in the golden sunlight and among the fallen yellow leaves. They never gave me the opportunity. But then maybe it wasn't monuments and gardens they were looking to me for. People often worked in different idioms, expressed love in ways others couldn't completely understand. It doesn't help when your idiom is different from most everyone else's.

No one truly wants to wake up alone in an empty place, no matter how lovely, no matter how stately nor sun-dappled its gardens.

* * *

The sheets were hopelessly snarled in the tangle of our legs. My fake Tina was asleep, and my very real Misogyny was sated, watching me out of one eye. I pushed the thought of it away, last night’s food suddenly gone tasteless now that last night's wine had burned itself out of my system.

“You can’t still be thinking about what that fat fool said.” She held me more tightly to herself, the warmth and the heady smell of her spreading through my skin and filling my nostrils. I remembered our tangled legs, the things we did with the sheets. I pushed that thought away, with slightly more reluctance. I took her hand and kissed her fingers.

“I am.”

I felt Ginny’s arms slacken. I noticed I could slide the somewhat damp sheets off of us now. All thoughts of sex stopped cold, I kissed her anyway, rose gently, stepped out of her embrace.

I was back in the fake diner, slack-jawed, with Ginny and Mammon and his fake cooing women. The pretty one with the glasses was still smiling at us. I wondered, dimly, if there was anything behind the smile.

“Excuse me?” I asked the fat man smelling of sweat and crumpled dollar bills.

"You heard me," said Mammon, with a smugness in his deep voice that mocked, whispered through smiling teeth that it knew something I didn't. That this was yet another running joke and I was the punchline.

"I don't want it. No, thank you kindly." Again the smile. And the mockery. I was being goaded but I walked into it anyway. Because it all came rushing back-- Anna, Socorro, Mylene, Tina, my own bleeding church rejecting me, abandoning me for some inadequacy, some defect, some failing on my part that I intrinsically had, or couldn't see until it was too late to fix.

And I said: "What!?"

"I'm not good enough for the forces of light and now I’m too sissified for the forces of darkness?"

"In a word, yes."

And that was when the dam broke. I slammed my fist into the nearest table and—and you can do this in dreams—tore through the wood. The women jumped. Misogyny looked at me thoughtfully, all wolf now underneath Tina’s skin. Mammon smiled. Irritating, how he was doing that a lot.

"WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!? ARE YOU BLIND, DEAF AND DUMB? LOOK: WARRIOR OF LIGHT GIVING UP, THROWING IN THE TOWEL. TELLING THE WHOLE WORLD THAT HAPPINESS IS A GODDAMN MYTH IF YOU DON'T HAVE A HARD-ON FOR COLD. HARD. F_CKING CASH."

"Gospel truth, M'boy. And calm down.”

He'd had his fun with me. I struggled to pull myself together, took a few ragged breaths.

“You look like a... 'a man gesticulating wildly at some ...obvious truth no one else can see.' Not a good way to ingratiate yourself to your market." He winked again, bared his shark teeth. "They'll think you're crazy." I was not amused that the fat god was quoting my blog.

I looked him in the face. I noticed his eyes were fully dark this time, all pupil. Interesting, if not for the smug malice oozing out of them as he regarded me. Not quite malice... he was weighing me. A stray thought: it would be interesting to paint those eyes.

I asked, “Where do I sign, Mammon? I’m ready to. In blood.”

And he actually harrumphed. "You’ll pardon me if I question your resolve. Not everyone who calls me 'Lord, Lord' can get past reception at My High-Rise Condominium. Or the burly guards at the Pearly Gates of My Palatial Estate. It takes a single-minded commitment that you creative types can’t muster.

"And why would I even want you?

“You still reek of our old friend Eros."

I made a cutting motion with my arms. I was getting angry again.

I said: "I'm selling you my soul, you fat bastard. You think I care about the way it smells? Ever since Tina left I've done nothing but f_ck up. Or make it worse between us. I've tried the past six months to tell her that she's the only thing that matters to me and she's continually thrown that in my face.

"I have absolutely nothing left to live for except you and your goddamned lucre."

The Worship of Mammon (4)

2008-04-27T23:42:00.000+08:00

The story thus far:

Despondent over the collapse of yet another romantic liaison, our writer has decided to sever his ties to his old patron Eros. Much to the consternation of his new girlfriend Ginny-- the anthropomorphic embodiment of his own misogyny-- our writer will instead give his soul to Mammon, the god of lucre.

Both our writer and Ginny are shocked when the corpulent, shark-toothed Mammon rejects his gift of self over a meal of quarter pounders...

-------------------------------------------------------

From the Writer's Scrapbook--

It's always like this. You settle into a routine and you desperately sell the lie that you're happy. After all, there is a social stigma to people who "can't move on." It's as if you're wearing a T-shirt that says "HIV +": people can't shun you fast enough for the most irrational reasons.

You're desperate to buy this bullsh!t, of course, but you can't.

For the most part, it works just enough for you to function. You go to work, you wow your students and bore yourself to tears. Each day passes and each day takes you farther and farther away from her. From who you both used to be.

From a distance you notice the little things-- changes in her routine, the marks of someone "moving on." And you wonder, with a sick twisting in your gut, if someone else is kissing her by now.

Home.

Somehow you make it home after keeping to the shadows on the nights you see her with your old peers, walking down that moonlit street. You can't be seen lest she think you're following her. You can't attempt to reconnect-- her friends form a defensive phalanx that would make the Spartans proud. And to her-- and by extension, them-- you look like Frank Miller's take on the million-man Persian army anyway.

You answer the text message from your grandkid, dutifully going online, just like the tech-savvy doting grandpa-figure you are. You've long since determined that you can never be anything else to the women you care about but analogues of male relatives they wish they had. It's convenient, but you're terribly aware of the irony.

She's not your girlfriend and you don't want to think of her that way; but you're showing her the affection you want so desperately want your ex to reciprocate. You're well-defended against unwanted transference, at the least. But it hurts so badly when you think about just how close Tina is when you're accompanying your grandkid to their common place of work.

The Universe mocks when your writer's brain picks out relationships-- situational, alliterative (in the case of names), allegorical, what have you-- among the disparate elements that make up your current private hell.

Is it any wonder that I finally gave in when Ginny -- irreverent as ever-- got down on one knee, took my hand and asked me if I'd gotten her point? There would be absolutely no one who would want or need me as much as she did.

She's worn so many faces in her quest to add me to her stable of angry men. Socorro's. Mylene's. She likely pulls them from my memories and dreams. The masks are so real sometimes: when I touch her just so and I close my eyes, I sometimes believe she's really Tina.

And that's when the truth of it sinks the hardest-- I'm doing exactly what I was trying to avoid. Living a goddamned lie, loving this image of Tina superimposed on my disappointment and anger at Womanity.

This is where Ginny draws her strength from me. That split second after petite mort when I know her for what she is.

And that's when we play this game again. I call her Tina in my softest voice and I tell her I love her so much.

The Worship of Mammon (3)

2008-04-24T16:57:00.000+08:00

The story thus far:

In silent despair over his repudiation by his old colleague and ex girlfriend, our writer hero has finally given in to Ginny's suit. That she is the embodiment of his own misogyny no longer bothers him. They are dating. He is now sharing her bed.

But all is not as Ginny herself would wish things to be. Though our writer hero gradually severs his ties to his old friend Eros and gives himself over to Ginny, he is also on the brink of handing more of himself to someone much, much darker...

---------------------------------------

The fat man who smelled of sweat and crumpled dollar bills promptly sat down, snapped his fingers, and ordered six quarter-pounders. In this aspect, he looked thoroughly Fil-Chinese. I would have politely pointed out that this —wherever this place was— wasn't a McDonald's but likely a thought-form facsimile of Heaven and Eggs. But the two young ladies who took his order didn't mind. The prettier one with the glasses, she smelled of lilac, stayed. An earthy, dusky scent wafted from the other one as she turned to the doors to run outside and pick up the fat man’s burgers.

More black-clad women with aprons filed out of the kitchen and from behind the till. They greeted the fat man like an old friend. One of them took his hat, another held a lighter (!) to his waiting cigar(!!). He noticed me noticing him, winked in my direction and waved the lighter away and put the tobacco roll into a pocket in his suit.

“Show-off.”

Ginny said it under her breath the way Tina would mutter “Shut up” when I would try to speak to her at the old office. At least Ginny-as-Tina wasn’t running away from me this time. I wouldn’t have to go through selling my soul to Mammon alone. Strangely, gratefully, I touched her dark, tiny fingers and squeezed them gently. Just as strangely, she squeezed back.

The burgers arrived, and he began to scarf them down even as he was ordering from the breakfast menu. The earthy girl who brought them smiled and nodded at me perfunctorily. Lilac girl laid a white cloth on Mammon’s lap and returned to her spot just behind him. He snapped his fingers. The other women stopped cooing over him and returned to their kitchen and their till.

I think Ginny and I must have been staring at our guest for a full two minutes before she decided to break the ice. “Mammon—” Ginny began, but the fat man who smelled of crumpled dollar bills cut her off with a wagging index finger. Despite the messy food, his nails were impeccably clean.

In between the smacking and slurping Mammon said, “I know what he’s selling woman— and I use the term advisedly because the last time I saw you, you were a middle-aged man in a leather thong.”

Ginny raised an eyebrow. She flashed me a look, mouthed the words: “Not true.” I wondered faintly why my fake Tina was extending me this kindness when my real Tina wanted nothing to do with me. Verisimilitude was welcome in the bedchamber, but this was pushing the charade a little too far. Even when they’re not really women, I thought ruefully, I'll never understand them.

I felt rough, callused, hairy pads now, swelling with Ginny's possessiveness. Sharp claws dug into my fingers. A dog scent. Any time now, the mask would drop and there would be blood. But what would be the point? Misguided anger at women and an unhealthy preoccupation with money usually came joined at the hip, if old stereotypes were anything to go by. What was there to fight about?

“I was saying that I know what your young man is selling,” Mammon continued evenly, never taking his eyes off the sandwich in his hand. He regarded it for three long seconds before chewing off a big chunk of it.

The way a shark bites off half a human torso.

the worship of mammon

2008-04-20T01:28:00.000+08:00

"It's not as if we aren't into that already" I reasoned, looking at yet another copy of The New Theology "There are so many temples to him anyway."

From across the table, my date Ginny fixed me with that look she picked up from my grandkid. "You're kidding me," she said. Then it was my turn to raise an eyebrow and shoot her a look over the ramparts of my digest. Still wearing Tina's face, she said "I didn't wait on you so long just so I can lose you to that oily corpulent bastard... Oh, I'm sorry. Tina doesn't swear." Tina's face smiled, a concilatory gesture.

Tina's face, the denim jacket, the smell of her perfume, and finally the smile. The strange date in a sunlit restaurant I've only seen in pictures. This was Ginny being gracious in victory.

I let out a breath, struck my seated lecturer's pose and stumbled on her name: "Eros is a lot like me, Tin-- Ginny." I saw the wolf I was sleeping with peek under the mask my friend was wearing. "He means well, but he's unreliable," I continued. "You can't trust him with fragile things-- deadlines, promises, your heart, for instance, because he'll break them. He'll be sweet and solicitous, but he'll drop them because he's clumsy. Most well meaning people are. You can't let him in, because like me, he'll always find a way to mess things up.

"Sweet guy, Eros. But he takes better care of people who don't give a crap about him than his friends, or himself."

Ginny laughed. A perfect copy of Tina's. It was strange to feel sincerity coming from Ginny. But then I've seen stranger things happen-- like my demons actually giving me decent advice.
"Mammon is just as unreliable, just as likely to shaft you if you don't keep an eye on him, but I've heard tell that at least--" and I chuckle here "he's all business. You know he'll sell you, your family, all your internal organs the first chance he gets. But at least he gives back better than Eros does."

Ginny absently fiddled with her eggs, her fork lifting a white mass here, mashing yellow there. And for a moment I really did think she was Tina. And then she was looking at me intently, neither wolf nor ex-colleague/ex-lover/ex-friend now. It was at this point that my shoulders drooped and the words came out with a little more force than I wanted--

"You bend your back, you break yourself into a million tiny pieces and at the end of the day you'll look like me-- but at least you'll be rich."

A shadow fell on our table from the outside of the breakfast diner. The shadow of a fat man who smelled faintly of sweat and crumpled greenbacks...

On Poetry

2008-04-18T10:05:00.000+08:00

Did anybody ever tell you that I dislike poetry?

I do. I hate it with all my heart. Because people turn to words, to satire, to reams of inutile academic discourse when they cannot act. Poetry, dear friends, is yet another manifestation of this kind of impotence: the writer feels so strongly about something that he cannot act, except to commit something to verse.

Maybe he gets lucky. Maybe the poem affects people who feel the same way but cannot articulate their feelings. Maybe the song becomes a hit and the writer becomes another Morrissey. Or maybe the writing is so potent that it helps kick-start the Civil Rights Movement. More often than not, the writer cannot taste any success beyond the personal "Hey, I got something written!"

Unfortunately, "Hey I got something written!" cannot by itself get you fed, clothed, housed, and (especially) laid. Your needs still drive you, and if you're as much a poet as I am, your automatic response is to write reams upon reams of (say it with me) useless poetry. I could have spent that writing time by actually getting me fed, clothed, housed and, yes, laid (Getting a better paying day job is often a step in that direction).

The awful truth is that nobody really reads, much less appreciates, poetry. Okay, some people do, but often, they're neither numerous nor rich enough to matter. The perception is that poetry is either--

nothing special as any five-year-old can break a long coherent sentence into lines and call it poetry or
it's so specialized that most people who have "jobs" and "real social lives" cannot relate to it.

Besides, it does not make us better people. Bin Laden is a poet. So was Hitler. A sensitive thug with literary leanings is still a thug, albeit a more sophisticated one. If you ask my ex, being a poet only makes people think of you as a smooth-talking snake oil salesman. Or a smooth-talking snake oil peddling thug.

(So before you run off with someone because he is an artiste do try to remember that the insensitive clod who's forgotten how to say "I love you" probably got that way acting --and not writing poetry-- to meet the needs of your belly and those of your kids.)

The point is, poetry sucks. When it isn't trumpeting your triumph to the world after the fact, poetry's like opium. It keeps you distracted writing when you could be taking action instead. When there is a venue for action, when one is empowered to realize his desires, there is much less poetry. I fear that there are quite a few of us who are lock-stepped into being nothing more than poets, forever writing about actions we will likely never take.

Still it's a beautiful activity, and one of the reasons why I write is that I am plugged into a higher power when I write my best poems, even when these are the most useless kind-- the interminable whining about aborted romantic liaisons.

The price I pay for loving poetry is that I hate it with a passion.

I am Engrish Teacha!

2008-04-11T10:43:00.000+08:00

Teaching Englishee velee haard
It does to dlive-us away the baard
Especiary when styoo-dunt says eet best
that "praying sportsu relieves my stless"

You cannot-- cannot-- make to laugh
As teacha, must to do not make them cry
You must leally help your styoo-dunt learn
Even dough you feel like die

(Oh so solly Teacha, "Die-ying";
"Feel like dying")

The onry thingus keep you sane
When listuning Engrish cause you pain
are fact daht styoo-dunts are your fliends
and, daht "soon" is when bad rhyming ends

ESL is a priestly vocation and
you ain't alone in thinking this--
Us ESL teachers need a long vacation.

----------------------------

Poking fun at the job, okay? not my students.

Many of them are dedicated, disciplined professionals who want a better life in places where English is spoken as a language of power and commerce. And I do want to help them, with most of my heart.

Written for Poem a Day.

Poem a Day (7)

2008-04-09T15:50:00.000+08:00

Women

They
march--
stride--
sashay--
rampmodelwalk
fresh off the dollhouse
conveyor belts:
semi-captive Stepford products
of a man's need
for lace, sweet next-door denim,
for black satin underneath the placid face
of a cotton smock
for nipple rings, leather and the lash
for sons, for sex, the photo-op for the joneses sake
so fitted to our molds,
is it a wonder that they cannot always find themselves?

it's a bigger mystery why i am so lost without them

What's a Renga?

2008-04-08T10:01:00.000+08:00

A renga as I know it is essentially a piece of collaborative poetry. What makes it different is the fact that while each writer contributes a line or two to the piece, he doesn't get to see portions of the poem as it's being written. The result is an organic (because it grows, seemingly taking on a life of its own) piece of poetry that surprises in how it all seems to make some sort of sense at the end of the day.

Either that or it's a meandering piece of crap.

Still, it's a fun exercise and a good way to peer into Jungian things like Gestalt and Zeitgeist and Synchronicity.

Here's how ours works. Someone writes the first line. The next person writes a new line but covers the line before his. The poem is passed to the next writer and so on and so forth until it returns to the first writer. He looks over the whole poem (and bursts into fits of laughter or groans of disgust). He writes the final line that ties everything together.

Everyone reads and is assaulted by his contributions to his attempts at collaborative poetry.

Why not try it with a few friends? April is poetry month after all.

Poem a Day (4)

2008-04-07T14:22:00.000+08:00

Stardust and Grains of Sand
(with Eline Santos & Strahd Lacanlale)

I get high
on stardust and grains of sand
gazing on shooting stars falling
like flowers, fading like roses.
Hope for your love dims--
I'd settle for a kiss
on the mango's cheek.
Dawson's creek is
a metaphor for my life.
Looking for sense and reason,
that faded river of truth,
washing the dust of memory
hanging our skeletons to dry
weeping our slow dirty tears
leaving tracks on the sand
washed away by tears of our sorrows
I'm high now.
And I miss you.

----------------

It's another entry for Poem a Day.

This is another renga. This time it was done with the able help of Strahd Lacanlale and Eline Santos. Lest you cast aspersions on the writing talents of my friends-- please know that that awful Dawson's Creek line-- and all the other lines that have to do with getting (naturally) high -- are mine.

Poem a Day (4)

2008-04-04T12:54:00.000+08:00

Soma (1)

Biting into my I-pod
I taste the tang of
Richie Kotzen's lyrics,
the grease and honey of
his guitars help me swallow
the irony

then I look the way I feel
I'm a rock god I'm electric
writhing on the floor,
a worthy Christian speaking in
angelic gibberish

and all I say is
you are the world

Poem a Day (3)

2008-04-03T09:25:00.000+08:00

Waiting, waiting, waiting
Wanting, hoping for you
Miracle Malunggay Loaf!

Love's labor's respite
Is chocolate mousse with secret spice
A recipe for love
Miracle Malunggay Loaf!

A fusion of wheat and kindness
Add a teaspoon of jealous yeast
To make the passion rise
And fingers flow

Miracle Malunggay Loaf!

--------------------------

Made (but not in April) with Eline at a cafe in Taguig which serves, yes, Miracle Malunggay Loaf.

Poem a Day (1)

2008-04-02T15:37:00.000+08:00

There were no monuments
to our passionate months-dead couplet.
you did and didn't want them
and it made sense:
I, tail-end-Cold War-Montague
and you, Friends'-post-Starbucks-Capulet

Was there any other outcome due
When you looked for signs that I was true
and couldn't find them?

They were there, buried in how I burned for you--
--Darling, I still do--
And in how I was slowly burying
the other women too

All of them, dearest, finally,

for you.

Ed Kafka's Simple Guide to Classifying Science Stories

2008-03-12T14:18:00.000+08:00

Hero toting laser pistol, blowing stuff up and rescuing the girl = science fantasy = drek

Hero toting laser pistol and blowing stuff up, the principles of which are properly explained while he rescues the girl = science fiction

Hero toting believable prototype laser pistol which doesn't work half the time because of real-world limitations which are also properly explained= "mundane" science fiction/ "speculative" sci fi

Hero toting believable prototype laser pistol which doesn't work half the time because of real-world limitations but he manages to rescue the girl anyway with regular ballistic weapons, or better yet, with his wits= good "mundane" science fiction; please buy the book

My Grandkid, She Has Doe Eyes

2008-02-27T07:23:00.000+08:00

Extensor Familis Azuris
(I know. The Latin is as bad as it is fake)

My older sister is a piano teacher

my other sister wants to be a nurse.

I got a brother and he edits video

Me, I just wanna drive a hearse

Big sister’s boyfriend’s an inventor;

My son, he’s a freak with his guitar;

My ingenue’s gonna be a drama major

I just wanna be an aging rock star

My grandkid, she’s got doe eyes--

I've never noticed them before

I smilingly imagine all the men who fell

into those wells and hit the granite floor

My baby, she thinks I'm satan,

and it hurts like hell when I draw near

She puts herself a million miles away

wonder just who's being exorcised right here?

Sitting out detention isn't easy

when you're six buildings away

And having to stand outside

when there's no outside to stand in

really brightens up my day

One day soon I won't be satan

or else I'll be trying this elsewhere again

and being thankful for her final gifts--

my grandkid;

and our student, Jen.

Oh Dear

2008-02-24T23:46:00.000+08:00

The ship's run aground and it's sinking
And this in the midst of your constant thinking
You're losing crew and you don't quite see it
Oh wait, the captain's oblivious,
so that makes two of you

They're jumping ship, or you're driving 'em away
And the goons and mooks you're taking in are just
Manning the bilge pumps and eating paste.

It isn't easy when we have to swab the deck
or lean the ship windward and hoist our only sheet
and at the end of the day, we still kiss your naked feet.
I didn't mind-- your feet are lovely. besides,

for the longest time, I haven't gotten to kiss any

But the ship's run aground and it's sinking
(look there's a giant squid)
You're losing crew and you don't see why
Or maybe you finally do.
The captain's oblivious,
the solution is obvious!
and it takes just one of you

Better tell the captain--
he'll know what to do--
wait--
what's left of the crew's

got problems asking that of you?

Oh dear.

The More or Less Manifesto

2008-02-14T07:27:00.000+08:00

ZERO

In honor of love month I'll be posting stuff as I count down to the 14th. It's hokey, it's corny, but you can look at it this way: it's better than nothing when you're somewhat creatively constipated. And if in case you are the mushy type, then maybe this might be what you need.

After All It's Done To You, Why?

The long procession of women whose names have now become horribly interchangeable; the long nights wasted writing poetry or making art when making money would have brought more respect, more favors. The ugly sensation of having to adjust over and over again to a new set of arms, new smells, new colors, over a period of months, your nerve endings perpetually raw and screaming for contact. To be told you are in some fundamental way inadequate and inconvenient. To walk nights in not-space while the world swirled happily around you.

After all this, why indeed? Why do I still believe in it?

Why do I simply refuse to take comfort in the arms of the usual misanthropy and cynicism that is expected of nerds who should not have been given a shot at inconveniencing the rest of us (i.e. existence)?

I've tried to answer this in my long and boring ruminations.

Actually as I write my hands are shaking. I'm in no mood for long boring ruminations so I'll give you the short form.

Beyond the sexual dimension and the expectations that go with it, there is no functional difference between the love between mates and the love between friends. Most human interaction fosters love. Eros works his insidious magic whenever any two human beings come together, to share a task, to share a space, to share a life. He doesn't always succeed but regardless of the tools he uses -- a common goal, a shared schedule, the fact that you're siblings, sex-- he works constantly to bring people together.

I am more sure of this than I am of God. Eros is in fact my one direct non-Biblical (therefore acceptable) proof (I'm sorry I proceed from a position of doubt) that God exists and gives a ding dong diddley about his idiot creations.

All your questions of worth and why cease to matter when love takes root. Love empowers, love ennobles, even when it wounds. As many times as I've seen love fail because of someone's inner weakness, ill fortune, or bonehead decisions, I have also seen it flourish and sustain because people chose to make it work.

This is the reason I still believe in it so badly despite the bullshit it's put me through.

This is who I am, and I know of no other way to be.

Happy Valentine's everyone.

poem fragment from 1998

2007-12-14T23:04:00.000+08:00

there is no shame in speaking truth
when words unadorned serve their purpose here
for some allegories are just not cute
applied as they are to my greatest fear--

am i still significant?
Do you (can you?)
(still)
love me?

Untitled

2007-12-10T10:00:00.000+08:00

I wrote--and lost-- this poem some time after 9/11. Likely a few weeks or so. I really do not know how it turned up on a Turkish website. Bless them, they at least acknowledged that I was the author: my name at the bottom of the page with the ubiquitous (c).

Untitled

Yes you had it coming.
You had something coming.
You connived with Spain
And the fools who sold
My country up the river
So you could play
The colony game
With our minds
With our hearts
With our money

For years we looked up to you
(big white brother)
And you abetted the myth.
You helped set up and keep
A tyrant in power as long as he
Too, would sell his country
Up the mighty Mississippi
And you didn't just stick it to us--
You stuck it to everyone else.
(now "everyone else" owes you more
money than he can ever pay)

Well. Something came.
Something came and it took away
Countless people who had no cause
To know me, hurt me or my country.
Something came and it punished--
no, maimed and killed--
The wrong people.
I am no friend of Uncle Sam.
But you won't find me celebrating
Because some bastard shot
Lady Liberty in the knee.

You had something coming all right.
But not this. God, not this.

Prayer of the Last White Knight

2006-05-01T12:11:00.000+08:00

O Lord your most unworthy son
requests this boon of you:
that if she will not yield,
then let my suit be writ well
in the heart of her whom I love.
Let each line be read with gentle mirth.
Let each deed dared for her sake
be a token of her worth.
Let love exalt even as I am humbled.
Let love be a comfort
when she cannot find her face.
And may my eyes, having caressed
every plane and every pore of it,
never touch that face again.

Waltz

2006-05-01T10:40:00.000+08:00

if this is goodbye
then I'll make it a good one
I'll smile and wish you well
shelving my sadness

it's the last in a series
of well-meaning hurts after all

if it's another pause in
our endless dance
i'll take this chance--
to rest bruised feet
and aching shins

and maybe later I won't
trip over my own feet or
step on your toes or squeeze
your delicate hands too tightly

I've bungled all the steps,
pulled you to me, released you
out of time

this isn't a waltz sometimes--
it's a fight.

but I still want to dance with you

A short, untitled walking poem

2006-03-25T18:15:00.000+08:00

also for Socorro

I'm familiar with pavement
and soft crumbly non-skid asphalt.
The odd pointed stone caught underfoot
and caught up in your shoe

--that's me.

I go where where your tiny feet take me.

Walking Poem

2006-03-25T18:12:00.000+08:00

for Socorro

i am dying by inches,
in small steps on well-worn roads
each night as i waste away
walking.

just walking. i am always
walking. and every step toward
home--every step toward you --
takes me

farther and farther away.

then wheels take me back past my
resolutions, my promise
to myself to walk away
for good

and I am drawn, through hurt
through anger and through sadness
through joy, to you, to begin
the cycle of walking again.

A Stab at Dexterian Lit in Japanese

2006-01-08T10:41:00.000+08:00

慰めさん、私に戻りたい。
心にはまだ家があって、君を待っています。
このごろ冷たい、慰めさんの手は。
なぜ寒くしていますか、あなたの愛の風は。
もどれ、二人の暖かいときに。私の寂しさ、私の幸福。
お戻り下さい　おねがいします。君を愛している人は待っています。

Solace, I want you to return to me.
There is still a home in my heart and it waits for you.
These days your hand is cold．
Why have you made it cold, the wind of your love?
Return，and two are warm．My Loneliness, my Joy．
Please return.　The one who loves you waits.

Two Poems for My Friend

2005-11-24T08:47:00.000+08:00

Solace is perhaps the
One true thing you
Cannot yet give me.
Others can see it-- the hunger
Rising when I am with you,
Residing in the veins.
One can only do so much
to still it.

Someday it will be easy for
One to speak of this game and laugh
Currently what we do is
Often laughably
Reminiscent of couples sport-waltzing on
Rice paper:
One misstep and we lose.

Essay Too

2005-11-12T16:32:00.000+08:00

We held hands.
She was at work
and I was busy being idle
We windowshopped
for fonts she could wear to
the chatrooms
and like any man
besotted by his date
I said
"They all look good on you."

Written with Salt (2)

2005-08-01T14:55:00.000+08:00

On the off-chance that you leave me,
know that I will never take another to my bed.
It does not mean I will not love--
Far, far from it.

She will probably be younger,
all perfume and lace, warm, open
invitations staring up at me
with Go Go Yubari's knowing,
playful predatory gaze.

She will want me, this woman-child.
She will threaten me with with spikes
and chains if I do not satisfy.
(and when I think about it, that's not such a bad idea...)

But I still can't carry her over our threshold
nor ravish her on our bed.
That space next to me will always be yours
Until I break the threshold and burn the bed.
And playful Go Go will have to wait
until the off-chance that I do.

Written with Salt

2005-06-16T09:18:00.000+08:00

My dream, she flew to Italy
on white-silver wings,
leaving behind
our floating pillows,
our hushed morning telephone calls
and the baby fat beneath
the round softness of her face
and shoulders I had wanted
so much
to kiss.

She sends all her dreamers
photographs and there are days
when I wonder if she looks at mine
with her eyes a-twinkle, wondering
how I've been

I'm older, dearest, if you cared to know.
I sometimes miss you and I'm slightly envious--
I had once hoped to take you to Italy
and marry you there.

Gel Poem

2004-06-25T02:03:00.000+08:00

i stare white-blind, (my visor is no help)
into the white-hot heart of the glowing
screen, groping for the words (like a mislaid
lance) with which to win for me some token
of your esteem.

lady, the images dance, and like my
heart, they can not sit still. try as I might
with hands to keep them fast, they slip away,
like loose-held reins tied tight about my will.
i must ask you:

when i am vanquished by time's cruel tourney,
will you deign still to wrap your smile about
my broken shoulder? that much i'll need when
i make that final journey home: one
small piece of you.

----------------------
This appeared in Poetry.com and is protected by American copyright law. If Poetry.com is good for anything, it's at least good for insuring that your work is recognized as yours outside the home country. My other work is protected by "the poor man's copyright."

So You're a Poet

2004-06-10T11:19:00.000+08:00

Dexter Lira - 12 September 2001

And that is all you do?
Bleed ink when some young lovely pricks you?
Scream freedom when you tire of life?
You do not fuck
You do not have a job, or a car, or money
Or do anything else that would otherwise
Justify your sorry existence
Except to indulge in the very shakeable belief
In your power to move the universe with words

Do you honestly believe that the universe gives a damn about your life?
I'm part of the universe. And I don't.
I'm too busy fucking (you should try it, it's fun)
I'm too busy working for a living
I'm too busy driving my car and spending my money
And unlike you, I can justify my existence: I have a life.
I am secure in the knowledge that in this universe
It is I who must move. And I do.

When life stabs ME I leak real blood, copious amounts
Lost to sustain my adulterous anopheles wife
And her wriggling bloodworm kids
When life threatens to flatten me I fight back,
With work, with fists, with lawsuits if I have to.
I do not wait for princess charming to climb my
Makati tower, to rescue me before I jump.
I leave no death poems: I don't need them.
My life has meaning. More than you'll ever know,
Or frame in your sorry verse

Peddle your poems somewhere else.
Pathetic whiny little bastards, the lot of you.

Entries from a Dead Man's Journal Chapters I & II

2004-05-29T16:20:00.000+08:00

One
To you who will find this after I am gone, I wish you peace.

That you hold this volume in your living hands is proof of my final death.

I write this so that someone will know of me, of my life, of what I am. Perhaps I write to gain some of the immortality that is the right of all men wishing to pass on a legacy, a history: a bloodless immortality, so to speak. I am laughing ruefully as I write; can there really be immortality without even the slightest connection to the blood? The living drink of Jesus to give life to the spirit. The dead drink of the living to quicken the flesh. The living mingle blood, begetting children, bequeathing them knowledge, stories, legacies.

I was born at a turning point of our history. Yes, our history. I refuse to place myself completely outside the human ken, despite my obviously altered state.

The colonial government had sentenced three priests to the garrote for treason. I knew nothing of the political implications. I only knew that two of the priests were family friends. One of them had baptized me.

I grew up as normal male children did. I was at times precocious, curious, disobedient, naughty, rebellious, pious, naïve and worldly-wise. I was a young man, a farmer's son, working in a rich man's hacienda, and learning from his wife. He had a daughter; looking on her was my greatest mistake.

Teresa was pale-skinned, dark-haired, graceful and regal. That she was born into a family of local merchants of indigenous blood was considered a miracle; the friar had triumphantly proclaimed it. (I will leave you to ponder on the miraculous nature of her birth.)

I had dreams of finding love and becoming an artisan. Teresa fuelled the fires of both dreams. Those fires consumed me. She was both muse and meal ticket. I was not uncomely, and though she had a line of suitors, she was always kind to me; was it a sin to marry across borders of class for both love and convenience? We were destined for each other. Her suitors' families were only concerned with her money; her suitors for her flesh and her pedigree. I had written her many poems proclaiming my undying love, passed hand from hand to be left at the doors of her rooms, in places in the gardens where she walked, white grace bathed in sunlight. She had received them politely, displaying the requisite shock that was so in vogue with women of that time. But among her friends, she had laughed aloud at them.

As I said, I was naïve.

Teresa left for Europe. When she returned, she was a vampire. No, not the psychic kind that populates your workplaces-- pitiful souls scrabbling for money or a higher social position. Teresa had returned as a vampire: yes, the bloodsucking kind.

You scoff; I don't quite blame you.

But think: I have lived here longer than you, and I have seen the things that retreat from the steady advance of the city.

The first thing Teresa did, upon her return, was to eat all her waiting suitors. She did something to her parents? made them fear her, made them pliant. That is the only reason I could think of that made them look the other way while she fed on her suitors, the farmers and the artisans living on hacienda grounds. And then she fed on me, and made me like her. I will swallow my manly pride and tell you that she did it only for sport: she was bored. I allowed her blood to touch my lips as I died, for even in death I was still in love with her.

The Lord knows I tried to contain her hunger, but she was willful, and would not be swayed. She had laughed and called me weak for feeding on rats, stray dogs and farm animals, rationing human blood like water during a famine. I told her that people she ate had relatives who would inquire after them; we could not feed on all of them. We would be found out, hunted like dogs, subjected to painful shaman-rituals and suffer a second, more permanent death. And what of the supernatural denizens from our own lower pantheons? These would not take kindly to competition.

We were drawing too much attention to ourselves. Already, the hacienda languished under an unnatural pall; the workers-- those she didn't eat-- were furtive, wan, pale. And they were deathly afraid of Teresa and her plaything. (They were afraid of me! I was one of them!)

When she ate the priest in a black parody of the Holy Communion, I knew the end was coming. It would come with torches, with bolos, bamboo stakes, incense, palm leaves and the longed-for, painful kiss of holy water. It would come with a frightened angry mob, a priest at its head.

I did not know that the end would come through me. Even as the hacienda was being razed by self-righteous clerics and ignorant peasants, Teresa was bent on sating her bottomless thirst. We had stolen away from the mansion-- the peasants were fool enough to launch their assault at night-- and secreted ourselves in a hovel in the middle of nowhere, about six villages away. I left her alone to reconnoiter. When I returned she was holding a sleeping child. A girl.

Our flight had... aroused her. She wanted food and she wanted me. She had acquired "merienda" from a neighboring village. There was no doubt that she had fed on the girl's parents. Even as I felt my own blood pooling in my loins, I realized that Teresa was totally bereft of humanity. I took her that night, with a passion born of sorrow, born of anger at the waste, at her utter disregard for life, for even the semblance of human propriety.

And there, on our bed of bamboo slats, I also took her life. It was our custom that we exchanged blood during coitus, each taking a turn at draining the other to near-torpor. I drank when she climaxed, and I did not stop. An hour before dawn, the beast Teresa was dead, for good.

The beast was dead and I had a child in my care.

Two

I was drunk that day with Teresa: her female smell, the feel of her sex, her shoulders, her brown eyes. Her unsated appetites. As I knelt beside her rapidly disintegrating corpse, I was seized by those terrible desires-- for sex, for blood, hunger for actual living meat.

That morning I fought her demons in the arena of my shaking, fevered flesh. In that hour, I pitied Teresa. I had a glimpse of what her interior world was like. I saw also, the lordling of hell that had mastered her, bent her to its evil will. And in my altered vision, I saw it look at me and laugh.

To this day, I remember with a painful clarity what the demon said to me.

"We have your Teresa," it said in a voice like a tomb. "Even now, your strumpet burns as she is flayed by hooked whips of flame. Our minions ravage her with with searing iron. We spread our burning seed upon her face."

"And she calls to you, poet. She pleads for you to save her with your love. And she curses you because you sent her to our waiting arms. She-- ha! She prays for madness to take her. But she will never take comfort in the moist walls of insanity or oblivion-- we have seen to that."

"We have your love-slut, little bloodsucker. And we will gladly join your fate to hers!"

I saw that it was as the demon said. Anger welled within me, and strove with my fear. Crying tears of blood --Teresa's-- I damned it, cursed it in the Name of the Savior. I could do little else.

Dawn was breaking. I knew this too on some level. It saw the encroaching sunlight and laughed again, loud and coarse and baleful.

"We are Pride, We are Lust. We are the Glutton's bottomless Avarice. We are the mortal frailties of your newmade immortal flesh."

It was fading. The vision was fading even as I was recovering from Teresa's blood-fever. Sunlight had begun to touch my eyes, my face, shoulders, arms...

You already have one foot in hell..."

Then it looked straight at the child beside me, lunged and made as if to crush her in its claws. In my fear and loathing, I had forgotten the innocent creature who had lain silent and slumbering beside me. I had saved her from Teresa-- from the demon-- once; I was deathly afraid that I could not save her from it again. But the demon was fading, the vision was fading with the dawn, melting into dream-gossamer.

Then the vision passed and I was alone with the girl-child. I hugged her to me, as much in relief as in my anxious desire to protect her from the evil in my vision. She was awake now, staring past me, paralyzed by fear: she had been that way for a while now.

That hour, I realized three things.

It was morning.

I was still "alive," intact. I was not dust.

And the girl, Rosa, had seen the devil too.

to be concluded...

Testing, Testing: One Two Three

2004-05-28T06:18:00.000+08:00

Since nobody (well-known) other than the Manila Bulletin (okay, and Poetry.com) ever bothered to publish my work, whether fiction or poetry, I've been forced to put up this space. As usual, I'm not likely to be getting rich off this soon, but somebody's got to satisfy the writing gods regardless.

Here's to hoping for the right attention.