The Love Song of J. Alfred Pugak

To Choy sa Remembrances

Let go then, sabi na kasi
While Malate was trying to catch its breath
Like a patient etherised upon a table,

Our table where we engulfed four tables of bottles of beer
And two wine bottles given by the other customers
who must loved watching us lose our collective dignity

Let us go, I texted you,
Instead I retreated muttering,
Spent a dreamless time in a cheap motel in Quezon City
While Cris looked for me in Luneta
Thinking I would be watching the sunrise at the bay.
The sunrise is always on the other side.

Of course, we can always laugh the next day
And follow all the street's tedious arguments.
We knew Eliot's "benevolent question"
But you almost lost your wits
When you went out and returned to the other bar
Finding yourself inside Hobbit's House
As the midgets were getting out of Dante's Eighth Chasm of Hell
Oh, don't text me, "What is it."
You knew you did what you did.

In the VIP rooms, the women come and go
While we imitate Eliot imitating Laforgue
And remembered Pete Lacaba that night
Singing his Filipino translation of the Cole Porter.

For we have known them all, known them all already
Have known Derrida and Derriada,
Lyotard and leotards, Barthes and Bartheks.
I have measured my life in coffee spoons
Must have drank enough coffee in Starbucks
To provide you all with your planners
But have not known love

And indeed there would be time
But no time to talk about yellow fogs.
There will be time;
The shouting emails creeping on us;
The threatening texts;
The begging text from Avie who promised Marquez's
Novella of sorrowful GROs
If only I finish that long-promised article.
And no time for love
So how should I presume?

Sige na nga, in the VIP rooms, the GROs come and go
Talking of Michaelangelo

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, ' Do I care? ' and, ' Do I dare? '
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
Buti pa si Ed who kept his Palmolive tress
Even though that night he and opened exposed their breasts

Shall I say I left you all
In that bar with the sad songs and earthshaking headlines
And watched the GROs in Quezon Avenue leave their nightclubs
Fetched by lonely men leaning out of taxi windows jeepneys
But I slept in my own taxi on the way to the hotel
Holding a plastic bag of vomit
For though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed
Received letters calling for my head on a cold cuts platter
What I did between the leaving and the vomit I can not remember
Maybe That's why they call that fateful bar Remembrances
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
While you did your Chicken Ska Dances
But there will be time, sabi na nga e, there will be time
Time to murder and create, time for deadlines
But no time for love

But I now recall some things that might have happened
Memories that clogged the drunken sieve
As ten thousand brain cells pass us every night of our drinking.
"What was i thinking" is all I can say.
I knew there was groping and embracing
But the woman I can't remember

But I knew what you did that night
With the girl I used to know
Maybe because of her name
Maybe because we were both drunk when it happened
But I kept the magic of "Oh and S"
Not like you who linger like yellow fuck, sorry, fog
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

How hard was it to defend yourself now?
Your answered, "That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it at all. " when you should have answered,
"Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?"

Because after all we just spent the day
Watching how these butt-ends were created.
How many? One-hundred million cigarettes a day!
And there we were laughing as Pigeon lit his first butt-head
For the year. We will grow old
But have not known love.

Someday we will come back to this
And find fault to Pete Lacaba and the other singers then
We would say, "I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me."

Let go then, sabi na kasi
But you lingered and fingered.
So instead you would receive an email
From that girl that came and went
And she would begin, Hello, placid...
No, that's not what she meant,
Not placid but flaccid.

And they would all laugh at us
Their saliva raining as we struggle to wake up
And we drown.