I
You click Publish
and your life slides neat on the page as TV snow
hisses at 2 am, the black & white armada
of hard-to-startle eyebrows plastered all over, asking So?
You wait for the comments to come, wish
it were manna not hail.
II
I only want to be your friend. But what does that mean really?
What does it entail? To what end?
Am I
must-click?
must-see?
must-fuck?
must have gotten ugly
when you couldn’t place
a face anymore
in your pages and pages of people, each wanting
a must-have friend too.
III
Sweet babel lodges in the sand dunes of your elbows
steeped in refrigerator poetry and vacuumed cliché.
The nice guy fishes out his hard pole, strokes it
a hundred times, fast, faster, fascinating—
you are comrades already and he’s coming—aaahhhh!
And you haven’t even broken the ice yet.
He won’t budge, won’t smile, an armored vehicle.
But he’s in his underwear, charging through
the dot slash dash rain on the playground
littered with other armored vehicles too, all of you bent on fun.
He was too fast. And too far. Last
logged in: within 3 months, says your profile.
I kept checking you out anyway,
drawn to a clock’s lock-jawed face forever insisting on One
minute before 2.
So many people to know in this world.
9.1 million:
the number of digits in the longest prime number
ever discovered, nine years in the making,
joint powers of 700 computers; you just have
to applaud that kind of healthy pursuit.
You ran away again, trailing numbers
full of zeroes.
IV
The mob clicks
Publish
and lives melodramatically stampede
on the page luminous as a prehistoric fire in a cave littered
with megaphones, shiny and red and disposable. “Today, I rode
the MRT, felt so alone, late for work, just bought a new CD,
here’s a photo of my feet.” You simply have to blog
about this & that
happening, make sure your life is documented,
or else it never happened. What was your schoolbag like
in third grade? (No one seems to Relish)
I could Google but it’s better
you remembered yourself.
You tried singing in the shower,
mildews breakdancing in adagio,
but you didn’t feel heard.
One particulate in this smoggy world, soaring, drifting,
attempting connection with everyone else, escaping together
into careless, carefree thin air.
Back then, in classrooms with terror teachers, all we had
were paper airplanes
scrawled with cuneiforms
that already tell a whole incunabula in a heartbeat.
V
Your mom lost you
in the land of Mu
again. There, you slew
a Yeti slash wallflower.
Slash! Down came
your double-edged sword
of compliments.
Then, quickly
you changed
costume.
The TV snow hisses blue.
We might as well sign off too now, honey. I remember now:
My bag’s color was dark conflict. Somewhere in Morayta, an
image with mixed emotions is being downloaded. 0 x 0 pixel.
There is no resolution.
Neoli Marcos, 27, born and raised in the Philippines, is supposedly a film major at the University of the Philippines. He prefers writing though, whether they be underpaid keyword articles for the Internet or short fiction with dark themes. Visit his website at http://recipesfordistraction.blogspot.com.
You click Publish
and your life slides neat on the page as TV snow
hisses at 2 am, the black & white armada
of hard-to-startle eyebrows plastered all over, asking So?
You wait for the comments to come, wish
it were manna not hail.
II
I only want to be your friend. But what does that mean really?
What does it entail? To what end?
Am I
must-click?
must-see?
must-fuck?
must have gotten ugly
when you couldn’t place
a face anymore
in your pages and pages of people, each wanting
a must-have friend too.
III
Sweet babel lodges in the sand dunes of your elbows
steeped in refrigerator poetry and vacuumed cliché.
The nice guy fishes out his hard pole, strokes it
a hundred times, fast, faster, fascinating—
you are comrades already and he’s coming—aaahhhh!
And you haven’t even broken the ice yet.
He won’t budge, won’t smile, an armored vehicle.
But he’s in his underwear, charging through
the dot slash dash rain on the playground
littered with other armored vehicles too, all of you bent on fun.
He was too fast. And too far. Last
logged in: within 3 months, says your profile.
I kept checking you out anyway,
drawn to a clock’s lock-jawed face forever insisting on One
minute before 2.
So many people to know in this world.
9.1 million:
the number of digits in the longest prime number
ever discovered, nine years in the making,
joint powers of 700 computers; you just have
to applaud that kind of healthy pursuit.
You ran away again, trailing numbers
full of zeroes.
IV
The mob clicks
Publish
and lives melodramatically stampede
on the page luminous as a prehistoric fire in a cave littered
with megaphones, shiny and red and disposable. “Today, I rode
the MRT, felt so alone, late for work, just bought a new CD,
here’s a photo of my feet.” You simply have to blog
about this & that
happening, make sure your life is documented,
or else it never happened. What was your schoolbag like
in third grade? (No one seems to Relish)
I could Google but it’s better
you remembered yourself.
You tried singing in the shower,
mildews breakdancing in adagio,
but you didn’t feel heard.
One particulate in this smoggy world, soaring, drifting,
attempting connection with everyone else, escaping together
into careless, carefree thin air.
Back then, in classrooms with terror teachers, all we had
were paper airplanes
scrawled with cuneiforms
that already tell a whole incunabula in a heartbeat.
V
Your mom lost you
in the land of Mu
again. There, you slew
a Yeti slash wallflower.
Slash! Down came
your double-edged sword
of compliments.
Then, quickly
you changed
costume.
The TV snow hisses blue.
We might as well sign off too now, honey. I remember now:
My bag’s color was dark conflict. Somewhere in Morayta, an
image with mixed emotions is being downloaded. 0 x 0 pixel.
There is no resolution.
Neoli Marcos, 27, born and raised in the Philippines, is supposedly a film major at the University of the Philippines. He prefers writing though, whether they be underpaid keyword articles for the Internet or short fiction with dark themes. Visit his website at http://recipesfordistraction.blogspot.com.
