rich

smooth flavored nice things, lost in all absence of sensory connection.
Just one slide of a celluloid-based picture can make all that up.
Cigarettes that resemble hand soap for taste.
Everything may resemble soap.
or something pretentiously profound like that.
nice marketing.
anyway.
Cigarettes were hard to make fly.
But thanks to our dear people who flashed ads and funky jingle music,
we are all attune to it.
in the same way christmas is now all about carols.

-

the truth is in we are in some kind of spiral.
the apostrophe on this keyboard is absolutely malfunctional.
and the light coke on my left is jingling from my gestures.
and what of?
nothing.
just making silly thoughts fly.
and see which one sticks.
like how you decide which one is dirty underwear when the floors of your room is one big laundry bag.
give me something to munch on and i will start blabbering to you about the sweetness of food eating.
or something.

it is nice to not be able to connect instantaneously.
like i am deceived in the disconnection that exists for everyone.

can i write a song somehow.

and how much do i want it?

well, there are thoughts and there are actions.

and it is true. i desire a lot of things and wait for its release.

am i too steady?

maybe not. i contemplate with rage in my heart and attack with a calm mind and stomach.

no irascibility can exist in this world so hungry for consistency.

it is as if people expect to be the same people all the time.

like if i start writing this way i am supposed to finish through in the same manner.
but what if i say fuck you?
go fuck your cat or dog or if you have neither fuck a rat sleeping in one of your dirty cupboards?
or whatever?
what if individuality becomes a norm?
who becomes the rebel?
the one who makes an organization muzzled with conformity?
that would be interesting.
and then everyone once again will explode inwardly.
point a gun at everyone and then threaten everyone to move and become part of the norm.
and we will succumb.
because deep in our core, we tire easily.
and we listen to music to give us a re-taste of some experience.

we like everything. and we cannot admit it. because people pressure us to form misconceptions.
we cannot evade prejudice for ourselves because it is what we are taught and given.
there is no real idea of free thought.
and yet we struggle.
the irony is,
the struggle for free thought is an inward eating irony.
the oroboros is either good or bad.
if your tail sounds tastes funnny you munch much slower.
i am writing because i want to breathe.
we want to exhale.
we want to respirate with something.
and make up words. invent them.
and feel no shame for whatever we express.
fuck ourselves for thinking we have to stick to a form.
because the truth is, we do not have to keep trying.
or not.
or maybe yes..

Black and White

The stroll in the park gave me a quiet peace he never feels anywhere else. Besides, I enjoys the Sunday people. Everyone has a story. This one, the father, he has 3 kids and where's the mother again? He probably has trouble playing the role of an earner and a prima donna. I couldn't help but give myself a slight snicker. Another one of those couples. Have they been together for long? Or are they just two people who met in some coffee shop a week ago? Or two strangers who bumped into each other in the shopping mall?

Colorful. Everything else is colorful. Except my life. I always hope these colorful sundays would make things better. I'm downing the cheesy stuff now. Partying Friday and Saturday nights just leaves my soul hanging in the morning. The booze and the drugs make me depressed while I take my morning coffee the next day. I'm a toxic fun-loving motherfucker. And I'm bored.

Black and white. I hate living in fucking monochrome. Every meal i take is like dog chow. Although i don't know how dog chow tastes like. At first I enjoyed working as a trainer in this hectic corporate world. I met a lot of women and I had a great time. Now I just don't care. Something's missing. I never knew what it was before, and now I'm having trouble finding it.

I walk back to my car with my head still swiveling. I've had half a pack of Reds today. But who cares. These are my lungs. I turn the keys and the engine comes to life. Maybe I'll drop by the gym and pump some negativity out. Maybe that would help. Or maybe I'd just another episode of Simpsons at home. Fuck, just drive you boring bastard.

Sundays are good for driving for one obvious reason. The streets are so nice. It's like for the rest of the week the whole place is reeking with automotive asthma and for this one special day we have of a breath of fresh driving. This is sports cars were invented.

Let's put this two-liter monster to action, shall we? In less than a minute I'm in full gear against Marcos Hi-way. My meter says 140 Kph and techno music is pumping in my audio system. Clean noise is what i call it.

For a long while i swiveled and swerved. Why not another smoke? I picked up my pack and fumbled for the lighter. Where the fuck is it? why do i have to lose my lighter whenever i need it? Fuck this curse. Hell, I'll use the car warming thingy here. I heat it up and place the flaming circle up against the lip of my smoke, i hear the tiny crackling while i swig on the filter, i puff and...

"What the...!"

BANG!

I hit the brakes a fraction of a second two late before i saw the red Honda CBR. Everything transpired in slow motion. I could see a sport bike spinning on the road away from me and a man rolling beside it: in full biker gear. My eyes wide open like some mystical experience penetrating my veins. Only in this case the sensation feels so morbid.

The hood of the car started to hiss and people are running towards the front of my car. Looking to see if the biker is doing okay. Nobody looked to my direction.

"Tumawag kayo ng ambulansya!" A man in a green t-shirt and crew cut screamed. While a lady with a bag of sunday shopping loot frantically dialed on her celphone.

"Wala bang Pulis o MMDA dito?" Asked another one.

I paused their for a long time. I never had an accident before. Not even minor ones that involved mere scratches. Don't smoke and drive. Now there has to be a slogan like that. The tobacco companies are gonna' be in trouble for this.

I opened the door to my left and heard the beeping of the car when the keys are still engaged. I stood and walked like a tipsy man towards the the motionless biker. The beeping ensued like a deafening alarm. I couldn't walk back and remove the keys right now.

The biker was sprawled on the floor while the onlookers buzzed. Some glanced at me sideways, as if I'm some murderer.

Sirens. Their approaching. I felt an urge to scramble. To where? How calm should I get? My heart is thumping. Boom. As if the techno music from my car left echoes somewhere in my brain.

"Tabi!" a paramedic wearing a rugged kit went weaving through the onlookers. He removed the helmet and paused for a while.

The onlookers paused their buzzing,too.

I know this guy, too. He was standing atop that Big 2008-Model Pick up truck during the campaign period of who's this mayor? Ah, fuck, Mayor Ilagan. Yeah, he was giving these freebies to the crowd while smiling a big one.

And now he's lying on the floor all botched up and banged. I feel so sharp, as if I'm experiencing everything with absurd richness- in slow motion, of course.

"Anong nangyari dito?" Said a man in uniform, with matching background audio: the murmurs of onlookers, the beep of the car door, the techno music, and the growling of the motorcycle.

Everyone looked at me. The whole world fell dark and a huge spotlight shone on me from the top.

"Kotse mo yan?" He said, looking towards me. He had a notepad in his right hand and a cheap ballpen on the left. Normally I would proudly say yes. Looking at my black Audi TT. It's fucking fast car. And a fucking gorgeous one, too. It would take an hour long documentary to describe its wonder. Now a fucking an hour to tell of my carelessness.

"Huy, sir, kotse mo ba yan?" The officer continued asking. "Layo nga muna kayo dito!" He said to the onlookers.

"Opo, sir, aking yang oto." I said, like a meek creature that is not me.

In my peripheral they started loading the biker into the stretcher. The murmuring ensued.

"Nabangga mo ung anak ng mayor sir," He said with absolute and blatant obviousness. We both looked at the car and its deformed bumber.

"Boss, aksidente ung nangyari, nakagreen yung ilaw ng stoplight tapos biglang lumitaw yung motor." The events coming to my head in clear view. In my absent-mindedness I realize I was still holding the Marlboro in my hand. But I hadn't puffed it ever since everything.

Everything plunged to reality again. I'm in trouble. I'm in deep fucking trouble.

I called my lawyer, Atty. Castigador, and then gave my statement on what happened.

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

I took chug of light beer and bathed in the haze of my plasma T.V.

"Vincent, the son's mayor, is still in a coma after 1 week. The doctors claim that he is stable and with adequate care and treatment he will recover in due time. Several surgeries were performed due to internal bleeding and several broken bones."

The picture of the guy flashes on screen with his graduation pic, smiling like a proud and suave spoiled kid. In the next seen they flash the high-profile parents, the father in a suit and the mother in a dress adorned with pearls. Eyes red with crying and sleeplessness.

"Our son is in grave condition because of the carelessness of one man."

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

OOOOOMPH!

"Ano, kaya mo pa?!" Screamed one man at me as he kicked my rib with his steel-toed boots. "Putang-ina, kilalanin mo yung binabangga mo ha?" And delivers another one of his Muay-Thai kicks into my side. The pain crashing towards to the brain really fast.

The other four laugh as they had their turn barraging me. The other one just used his fists.

BANG. BANG. THUD. THUD. CRACK!

Blow after blow. I feel like a punching bag on the floor. Or like preserved beef being tenderized.

"Ang yabang mo ha? Akala mo makakalusot ka?"

I smell the reek of liquor smothering the evening air. The steam of my blood stings my nose. I feel the soil and some of it gets into my mouth.

They went at it for what seemed like an eternity. I lay there and the blood from my face seemed black in the evening sky. Each blow gives a flash of color to my eyes. Mostly I get red.

"THUD!" goes the steel bat against my back. Then against my legs, then my knees...

Then I feel myself going limp. I'm no longer a person. I, Sancho Dela Paz, or Sanch to my buddies, am now a vegetable.

I feel nothing anymore. Then I feel the men carrying me in each hand and foot into the trunk of an SUV. They tied me up and then closed the trunk. As a soon as the trunk thunked, the engine started and sped away.

Next think i felt was thud of the soil and the grass brushing against everything. The only thing I wore was my underwear and my bruises. I'm tired. I'm fucking exhausted. I'm a fucking vegetable. Even vegetables goes to sleep. Because they get tired...

I woke up in my bed with my Anne holding a glass of water.

"I'm glad you came back." I said, struggling a smile through the caked blood on my lips and cheeks. The air felt a bit dense and everything was in slight sepia tones.

"I'm here for you now, I'm sorry I broke up with you two months ago. But all I did was think of you. Wait, enough of the mushy stuff, drink this." She answered, smiling and holding three pills in her hand.

"Buksan niyo to!" Said a voice outside the door. Then there were banging. Violent banging. I hear rifle butts hitting the wood. The doorknob frantically turning clockwise, then counter-clockwise, rapidly.

Then silence.

Anne hugged me and cried with fear. I could not move.

A gunshot hit the doorknob and somebody kicked it open. Those same five guys. I remember them. Especially the bald one. This time they were carrying heavy arms.

One of them drew my crying girlfriend out of the room. She was screaming but I could not make out the words.

The bald one cocked the rifle and pointed at my chest.

Then he pulled the trigger. Three bullets flew and hit my chest like mighty blows of a tiny fist. I rattle from the impact. I see my girlfriend running back to the room screaming. The 5 guys laughing and leaving the room.

I see her crying. Then I hear her screaming…

"SAAAAAAANCH!! SANNCCCH!!!! SAANCHO DELA PAZ!!! Sancho!!" I hear her from my darkening vision. Then my slowing heartbeat.

"Sancho, Sancho, gising ka na ba? Can you hear us now Sancho?" I opened my eyes and this time I'm in a hospital bed.

My eyes were blurry and it screamed with pain from the flourescent lights.

"Sancho Dela Paz? That's your name right?" Said the nurse to me. "That's what we saw on your driver's license.

I nodded weakly, every muscle wept with weakness.

"Buti nakita ka ng jeepney driver sa may Highway. Umiihi lang daw siya nung may nakita siyang katawan sa may mga Talahiban. Dinala ka niya dito"

"Nasaan siya?" Managing two words out of my aching face. My jaws all broken and bruised.

"Umalis na siya sir. Takot yata na baka siya magbayad ng pang-hospital"

----------TBC-----------------

zs

shifts

I am simply lost and this is where I am. Not that everything I do has lost meaning. It's just that, so little in my life makes sense now. This log exists. For what reason, I don't know. But I look to this and realize my shifting states of existence. And that many of the things I do simply rotate around the fact that a lot things I do, I do simply because I am compelled to win. As if some absurd game that has no real rules but to beat the numbers and finish first.

Despite what I do, I miss something. I also come up a little short. This strikes me as odd because as far as I have gone beyond myself. I simply cannot exceed what I set.

This is another shift of my change of my mind. It is just that, in this moment of epiphany that I call now. I can push myself further. That although my axis of focus has converged into a discernable path, I still lose sight of what has to be done.

Let me not be lost by all the lyrical nonsense that surrounds us. Let me Discover my own strength.

Purge all the nonsense.

And let my life have meaning again.

matter of time

I've had my head vigorously shaken too many times during the past few days. But i think I'm liking it. This bothers me to a certain extent.

This is technical support. It's a bit ironic, because I've always thought there is a conflict between the onslaught of technology and the lyrical realities I face. I might be mistaken though.

I've been taking calls for nearly three weeks now. I always say I'm having fun. There's a certain level of self-deception that transforms itself to reality.

What am I up to? nothing. I'm just transforming pixels in my screen into nonsensical rants about my unpleasant life and my job as a tech support rep.

Stop. I'm just swimming to and fro in a murky current. Oh, I think I had it in exclamation while back. SO this is what happens when a man sits down to write with so many distractions. Fragments of thought and language that make no coherent connection but otherwise related because there is only one mind thinking it.

I'm just gathering bits and pieces of myself now. But for someone reason, I feel some overpowering fuel come over me. I love this feeling: of being in control, of being a master of my destiny. I pray that What I have now won't be taken a way, I need this for now. My books offer a great remedy to my frailties, by the way. Somehow, because of the wealth of human company that working offers me, I miss the realm of my lyrical self. I want to retreat and be part of it again.

Maybe I should write poetry again, that would be cool again, I think. I walk around an I hear myself saying something or thinking something up, wishing I had a pen or something to write with, but then, there's nothing. So the inspiration fades away after an instant, sunk in the mud of my brain matter.

So, there. I should write more. I says.

sunday blues

I was reading the Sunday paper this morning over some coffee and a tuna sandwich. I usually don't read the papers. Either I'm too lazy to read the way the news is written or maybe I'm just so sick and tired of all the shit marring our already forsaken earth.

But there I was, out of some mental clarity the morning has given me. Besides the coffee I made tasted so good I had to devour something for my mind too. The tuna sandwich wasn't bad, either.

So there was this affair up in the middle east, Lebanon, Israel, Bush, France, and the UN. Spinning around in the frenzy of their own element, war and charade-ish diplomacy. Oh, what's new? President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the election hubub, comelec bullshit. More Lebanon. More politicians bitching around. Some going boohoo, some saying so much vehemently they might as well say fuck several times to demonstrate their point.

So that's why I am repelled by the news, it amplifies my bitterness towards the world I live in. It dawned on me that the only I reason the news is that I looked like some classy mature male taking enough time to be updated on current events. And the smell and sound of the newspaper has something pleasing to it.

Oh, I am not an absolute cynic. It's just that there's too much shit that you won't even notice there's water and porcelain in the toilet. Everything is just so covered with filth.

But there are journalist who write things that pique my interest.

Like, tomorrow it's going to be Ninoy Aquino day. I usually don't pay attention to holidays. Besides, during the time the EDSA affair took place I was still sucking my thumb and wetting my bed.

But something Max Soliven did catch my attention. Ninoy, he says, is one of the last romantics. Nice way of putting it, isn't it? He won a battle by dying. Now that's romanticism at its height. Great man he is. Isn't it the case that if a romantic dies, romanticism is ignited? But the case isn't really so, our age is now the age of reason, we say. Technology, information, and money is the real deal this time. Something about this paragraph is utterly cliche, but hey, this is my fkn blog so what the hell, right? It's just that the dread felt by the last romanticist of the nineteenth century are now becoming a harsh reality.

Let us embrace the nihilism. If we seek so much to turn our life into a lyrical masterpiece, then we put ourselves in the line of fire.

Or embrace the little force left of the Dionysian left in our world.

I for my part, am going to put on my dancehall riddims and just slide. It's a sunday. Let the nihilism cease for this one day. Let me submerge...

opus, labora

I have to write before I dry up again. There has to be a break to my life-pattern. Wherein, when I start to experience some action, I stop writing. I tend to break off my other pursuits, and then suddenly find myself in a pool of lukewarmness. And that, as we all know, is sucky. Right?

SO here I am, a week into my work at Dell. Dell Philippines. Hell, you wouldn't imagine how over-eager I am to work there. I constantly have restrain myself lest I start looking like some overeager retarded first-grader. This is my liberation. I have gained freedom from this oppresive prison cell that I call my room.

How was it? Well, for one thing I discovered that my mind has been sufficiently warped after four months in captivity. I feel like my social skills have been crippled in a considerable extent. I think I lost the need to walk around being oh-so Mr. Friendly. Well, I won't be surprised if someone sees me as an egoistic and cocky asshole with an impressive sense of style. (shameless)

I have this feeling that I feed off other people's energies. That sounds wrong. But I guess I didn't mean it like I'm some parasitic mutant freak. I just feel surrounded by a strange energy when around humans, especially in a group. Or in an intense conversation. That explains my constant lethargy when at home, holed up in my room.

Work also serves as useful distraction from my self-destructive mind activities. It's unbelievable what a mind like mine can brew up in an idle state. It moves from profound to perverse to senseless to fantastic to useless to creative and finally to a drifting state that can be described by picturing a murky pool of stagnant water.

I have to say this. I feel powerful. I feel no shame in bragging about the size of my ego. It's just my ego, right? What's the big frkn deal. But anyway, I feel that this is another unique opportunity to be good, to perform and whatever else I am good at. I always consider it my personal mission to be the good in everything I do, which is of course no unique. I feel a terrible shame when I suck at what I do. I especially recognize the things that I am incapable of and I proceed with caution when getting into anything.

What now? Just an end to senselessness. Oh, I have discovered my weakness, again. It's just that I tend to forget. This particular weakness is a mark of people in our bloodline, so I'd best keep my distance. OR maybe I should play it cool, I dunno. For, now, distance is my best option. There's so much IO

post-bumming

Bummin is officialy over for me. Which is a good thing. wait. It's a great thing!

I'm one who always walks around carrying fire in his chest. It's such a burden to stay at home in a state of constant inactivity. It's as if that fire that should be razing the world is in here, dying down, warming silently like ambers waiting to be extinguished.

A week into the training and I feel so intoxicated, but exactly intoxicated by the things they constantly stuff into our heads. What's great about being at work is the simple fact that I'm working. Work. And, I'm finally earning some cash. Moolah. YEah.

My ego has suffered too much in my state of impotent bummishness. These thoughts came to me this weekend, as there is no work. I feel myself in a constant state of lethargy. I found myself sleeping all day. Sometimes I wonder if this is how it really is. But then, maybe it is.

I remember a line from a book I read lately - Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, "The highest moral purpose of man is to exist."

To slink bank in a constant state of drifting in life would be such a shame to such a moral principle. I feel glad that I am, again, in a place where I can make choices and do something for myself.