Snap Back

Or so I thought I was falling. Failing and ailing. There will always be that single, if not the last, nerve that will send you to restart. Not shutdown.

The world can sometimes give you a minuscule space to move around.

Box-office

Despite the murderous heat, a long, long queue of people wanting, needing.

A small bag of rice for the day to see life's next attraction.

El Terible

I have a stalker in the office.

Joy.

Please Crowd Please

Crusades of superlatives.

"Pare, hindi siya suma. It was that paper that made him cum laude. Terible, pare!"

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The in-betweens.

After every song, there was an applause. Mid-air of two hands meeting, I think of you. Why. How. Now, what.

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For the first time, my beer really tasted intensely bitter. First time. It did not surrender to my needling need to forget, forgo.

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The music was commonplace. The guitars, the bass were very, very familiar.

I was dressed in shit. I was posing like shit. I don't want to please anyone. Please.

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Homebound.

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Before shutting my eyes, I was forced to do the math.

The only valuable remainder was Mikey. Cute and geek.

Concatenation. Deflection. Preoccupation.

1. The Battle of the Fields is still on. To rice or not to rice.

2. Motorcyle-riders' deaths prove the fast ones never win.

3. Hooray for the idiots who tried to save the world from global warming! Now, can we have free freon-fucking conditioning?!

4. Thou shall wear decent clothes in school. Even if it is summer. I'm tired of hags and grouches and their fabricated grin.

5. Can someone suggest Gabby Concepcion, instead of inducing hostilities between TV stations, consider profiteering from artificial insemination for women who foolishly dote him.

6. It's beach-ing time. Scary.

7. I so heart neon in this heat.

8. GMA should blame the lag messages of SMS network to "skip" the Palau President from terrorist-testing procedures.

9. Let me admit one thing, I don't know anything.

10. I can't wait. Take me to. Let's go... Quiapo, baby!

Blank Verse

I'd rather not write today. Patience must be served to the public.

How to Remember

"Press one for the admission's office"

There goes your oppositions. As nails scratch on the blackboard. You give me this unrelenting shiver. Spinal. Encompassing. I could not speak. You said I could remember. Eventually. Even without you, I will.

"Press two for the registrar's office"

My memory thrives on a habit. Memorize to remember: an actor behind a script to deliver, practiced speech to declaim, banal prayer for each rosary bead.

"Press three for the accounting office"

That is not what my memory wants. You said words can have no meaning without memory. Dictionaries will fail us. That is not what I need. You said. I need to remember what is lost. Forgotten. Retrieve the unwanted, picture all the shame, revive the suffering. We remember the savior nailed on the cross. Heroes shot in the park. Celebrate those. Consecrate our shattered hearts.

"Or stay on the line for assistance"

The Fool's Revenge

I promise I will be there. You have to wait. Walk around if it takes more than an hour. Or two. More than your street of patience. But not so much. Do not appear like a panting dog, salivating. Or like a dunce on tenterhooks.

You should know better. I adore you.

It is probably obsession. Like eating chocolates when you know there is always the expanding space for fat. It is never infatuation. I do not fall for those temporary tricks. All substituting. Always. I am habituated by your words. I know they are not the same. The every day is not the same. That is why I am affixed to it. The poison changes its flavor.

Bear the heat. I will not take long. You can ignore it. Like a fruitless tree that provides shade. Like unhammered nails in a coffin. Like this day that fools will never forget.