Philippine Buses

 

On this Philippine bus, made in Japan, bound for the business-
            district,
I sit with a flock of poetry resting on leaves of a tree called
            a book,
I resting though inserted tightly into a flock of passengers
            breathing, enduring
sweetly inside this, an air-conditioned business-bound bus.

I read poetry, two women and a man near me watching the leaves
fall triumphant by my gaze, through the vibrations of travel,
they who shake their heads at the very puzzle of an already
            simple life.

Why do some people read poems, so difficult are times to be
inserting ourselves into the travails of reading, books can only
            browse
thru the forgotten letters of our ticket habits, why, what's the use?
The art is not basketball, bus passengers are cramped inside
            the rushing
hours of rash competition, the clocks popularly dribbling,
comfortably burdened by the true beliefs that mechanize there.

Shake your heads, then, O witnesses to weird ways of the un-
            Filipino,
the islands' evolutionary rivers shall record the survival of the
            simplest ad copy.
Yet, that cannot be the finish line. A new race shall begin every
            following day
that deceptions of language will force themselves on the unprac-
            tised tongues of our
simplicity, I and others "un-Filipino" squeezed like Asians in
            the rush
traffic of fast opinions driving madly like complaints from car-
            owning masters;
the artlessness of our karaoke nights devoid of lyrics, simply bus
music with not necessarily understandable English, only Americans
buy records for their words, we can buy books for their pictures.

The bus reaches destination, rich competition continues like
            boredom
and the trees of the avenue rustle wordlessly like an exclusive,
            primitive artform.

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 1999, 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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