Seven Poems
by Papa Osmubal
THIS GODDAMN SOCIETY: COCKROACHES
Sometimes it is hard to confront and refute Karog:
he saw me spraying the cockroaches last night
Grinning and shaking his head, he picked his slipper
and started mercilessly bashing the cockroaches.
I would not always agree with Karog
but he always proved his contention true.
With all the cockroaches lying lifeless on the floor,
he went back to his seat and sipped his coffee.
“My coffee,” he bragged, “is more
effective than that spray of yours.”
Grinning and shaking his head, he took another sip of
his coffee.
Kenette, what else are you waiting for?
The sun has come and gone,
the rain invades our roof and rooms,
and you are still looking at the distance
sipping and savoring your San Miguel beer.
Don’t tell me stories of fireflies tonight
because I need time for the afternoon paper:
I need to spice life with lies and fiction at times.
Kennette, come out of your walled world
and feel the sea and its winds entering our abode.
Born in 1530, Ivan was only three when he inherited the Russian
throne following his father's death. At the age of seven, tragedy
struck again when his mother was poisoned by nobles at court.—
www.bbc.co.uk, April 19, 2006.
He called one of the court advisers
and showed him a rose: the rose looked wilder
than his young unlabored palms.
It was red, so the kid, 9 years old
at the time, said, it is red like blood.
The court adviser grinned, shook his head,
wiped his mustache and beard with his palm,
and told the boy to forget about it,
because red wine, he said, is redder
than a red rose, than blood,
than anything that is red.
The court adviser was drunk
because every court adviser’s job
was to drink and to insult the young ruler.
The young Ivan looked into the court adviser’s
eyes
and young Ivan’s eyes were red as sunset.
And Ivan started and ended his empire like every sunset.
The hall is full of faces
many of them familiar
most of them sleepy.
A man talks about something he knows
that he thinks we do not know.
He is totally into it: the mike
is like a natural part of his body,
a surgeon is needed to sever it from him.
A guy next to me turns,
he smiles, he lazily shakes his head;
then, he closes his eyes to sleep or to daydream.
AT A MACAO FISHERMAN’S WHARF THEME PARK
The Macau Fisherman's Wharf is the first theme park in Macau,
a special administrative region of the People's Republic of China
. It is located in the Macau Peninsula , near the Hong Kong-Macau
Ferry Pier. The construction took 5 years, before it was opened on
December 31st, 2005— Wikipedia.com
This is simply everyone’s dream come true:
it is seeing the world in just a little more than an
hour,
less than a hundred dollars for rides and foods.
It is the world and its past compressed in such a small
space:
Portugal and its bygone glory, Europe and its streets,
Middle East and its glorious ruins, Tibet and its temples.
One may wonder why Tibetan temples here are too noisy,
the monks smile and wave at people.
In merely a few minutes one can take a detailed glimpse
of old Cathay and its most glorious Dynasties.
Marco Polo would go bananas
knowing he spent long uncertain years for this
and had no tour guides talking to him
in a language he understood.
The ‘Roman Streets’ is also a place of great
interest:
here one can see short brown Roman soldiers
from the Philippines , Thailand , and Myanmar
greeting people in their distorted Cantonese.
Sally, do not marry that Johnny.
Please don’t.
Sally, you should know
whiskey is his water
and he has explanation for everything,
even for the death of a butterfly.
Sally, you should know
he does not wear necktie
because he does not know
how to wear one.
Do not just listen to him
when he says you are a flower.
Sally, do not bloom before him.
Just do not look into his eyes.
Sally, just do not look into eyes:
they might drown you.
He readies his lunch
of water, sighs, and bread
as though he is having a feast.
He seems content and proud
of his only possessions—
his shadow and his soiled clothes.