A Poem Forgiving The American Who Called Jesus, Nazareth's Everyman, While Shaking An Impatient Head

 

At the Linden Suites, obviously not named after the Texan
            masses’ Lyndon Johnson,
An elevator about to close was asked to "Hold, please!" Only
            to answer with held
Security swipe cards and exclusive buttons, prodding one to
            civilly ask, "Might there
Be a 4th floor here?" A possible Singaporean had his
            Confucian wisdom (or instincts)
Ready to lend a finger on the 7 button as a kind last word
            before my exit, before
Resuming his ascent, offering knowledge of another elevator
            for the innocent needing
To go to the Function Room on a fourth floor available to the
            fourth estate or to poets
Who want to launch books, painters who want to display their
            renditions of erotic
Functions of human love and Christian worship of
            Magdalenes, virgins, naked angels.
On the 7th heaven, the door opens to a blank wall,
            prompting the Confucian to explain
The corridor hast not forsaken thee, for the elevator would be
            on a corridor behind,
The corridor to the East and not within this West. Thank you,
            thank you, & a fuck you.

Yep. Two obvious Americans were shaking their heads,
            inviting Marxist or mujahedin
Comment, and as their elitist heavenward door closed one
            called "Jeezus!"—Nazareth’s
Masses’ hero—to address the stupidity of the simply dressed,
            or the building’s poverty
Of seeming not to be able to afford proper signs (or otherwise
            more Roman guards), the
Patience of our protesting religion there amply tested by our
            Americanized bigotry
Towards those uneducated by sheer underprivilege about
            things one ought to know while
In Rome: stuff like suites, like Jesus’ sweetness, or daily seeds of
            security terror we need not sow.

Unnecessary, for when one goes back down to that avenue
            named after a beer named after
A saint of an archangel, that stretch that changes its name to
            an audio equipment brand
When it crosses a bigger boulevard named after an American
            governor of the Philippine
Commonwealth, that road that—to the West—changes its
            name to a multinational bank’s

Acronym when it crosses a Doña’s street, yes, when one goes
            back down there, it’s rude
Enough—everything’s a deglamorized erotica of humanity,
            outside art, sans architecture.

 

 

---December 3, 2001, Linden Suites, San Miguel Avenue (or Pioneer Road or ADB Avenue), nearer the corner of Doña Julia Vargas Street than the corner of Shaw Boulevard, Ortigas Center, at the launching of Eros Pinoy: An Anthology of Contemporary Erotica in Philippine Art & Poetry (Anvil Books, 2001)

 

 

 

 

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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