Escape from Planet Sago¹

 

—for Lourd de Veyra

 

Yeah, everyone here seems to think
they can put anything into our restaurant
        food.
Granted: reportage coddles envy, but
a lot of it is good features journalism!

Is it true borax is consumed daily,
tradition as Formaline fish, watercolor
on veggies, ammonia tobacco?
Influential Chinoys² feed each other

monosodium glutamate dimsum and
        dumplings,
is it safe to say then everything here
is tainted? Our partying with drugs,
our politics with porn, our air

with extortable diesel, goodness
by evil, enthusiasms by caffeine,
all the Pinoy³ jazz that bops away
to the accumulative beats of poems?

The first time I met you outside
the Today office, I knew. You’re Art
and Journalism finding a new custom:
of patient waiting by angry young men,

like me and your band’s fans, on
the edge of their seats upon poets’
recordings of events and corruptions,
all dying quietly in a bar wearing Che
        Guevara t-shirts.

 

 

---¹this is the title of a song by the band Radioactive Sago Project, led by the journalist and Beat-inspired poet Lourd Ernest Hanopol de Veyra. Also alluding to the rumor on borax as preservative or flavoring additive in pearl-shake drinks simulating the traditional sago, seaweed gelatin, and sugar syrup drink popular in the Philippines.

---²slang for the Chinese-Filipino ethnic group. This minority group owns majority stakes in the Philippine economy.

---³slang for the Filipino, anything Filipino.

 

 

Copyright © 2004 Vicente-Ignacio Soria de Veyra. All rights reserved. Readers are welcome to view, save, file and print out single copies of this webpage for their personal use. No reproduction, display, performance, multiple copy, transmission, or distribution of the work herein, or any excerpt, adaptation, abridgment or translation of same, may be made without written permission from the author. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this work will be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

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