Dinuguan.

What happened in the Philippines.

I have returned
Although I must,
To this glittering bowl of dust
I had to,

In this so similar form
The jackals recognize my shade
In the dark, they watch and stalk,
My moon to daylight sun

The seasons of my change.
The pupae without
Awaiting for grand mals
Or some winged departure
Of my light

Expecting me to fall...

But seasons stir with lightfoot
Pages turned,
Between the numbers in all that
Man's made
Hands knocking hours
Ticking seconds
Minutes crawling
Under every door

Like a shadow unnoticed underfoot
Moments walk on wires
As life watches from below
Or is it vice versa?
The Circe du foils
The urchins that we drown to be
Voila! Not much ventured
In the rings and side shows
We spectacles
Of flesh
Fallen and fearing
The feelings

Of just before
Steps
(Beyond)
If catlike careful some nimble beast

I must be
To return from the place
That once birthed and attempted
Murder the unlearned me
I am too
American in the humidity
The parasitic biting
The heat

I'm a stranger in strange islands
Beautiful mystique
Of superstitious super strength
The beliefs become aswang legends
Come true life
The slaughtered pig as sacrifice

I vomited and s**t out
My inner being
Waters of life projected out
The length of tongue and the depth
Of insides
Gushing out
Even through my tears
And delirium...
Possessed as tho' a lever had been pulled
To reverse what flowed in
The nutrients
The rehydration of excretions
Sucker punched to spew

And thru the pain I knew
The swine and its smug snorting laughter
And the old ones in the villages
Living among their own dead
In the trees and sands and sea
Their jealousy of City boy me
The threat I must be
Fearful of what I might rape
Tho I dare not and have not
Done
Unto
As they have now done to he
I have karmic grace
To make them mine,

But what and why would I want
Such long gone then and agains
Or rage against
In revenge?
At my beautiful motherland
The face of my race
The home of my blood

I keep my silence as their defeat
Render them
As a breeze through palm trees and hiss of sea
Rumors of the weather
Food poisoning