1 or 3 Tropical Cyclones in Your City
“Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame”
— Charles Bukowski
I felt Makati strand me. The woe
and splendor, the splitting travel
of grief. The trains are sleepless,
parked or dead; the tweeting rats burden
another guilty conscience below a glass, skylined
coffin. A hundred insomniac cars hit a thousand
miles per hour growing imperial wounds
traversing this city: always from someone
to somewhere. The crime rate dictates that the old
asphalt must be staring through the present cracks
while the freshly paved have chosen this moment
to close their eyes. To be a naive petal wilting for rain
then swimming in three typhoons through a flooded
week simply because they asked for it.
The loveless smile of billboards imitates
an immense light, bordered and stuck—
which was that way only in the summer,
now, the optimism has been sucked clean
from their scaffolds. By the way, I couldn’t see
a replacement for the headlights—some novel way
of splitting glow into northern sky and if I should ever drive
your heart across the metropolis, I will be spilling
into every shameless district, and blinding, forever
fairview.
In Las Pinas, I heave a half-empty gallon into the house.
In Makati, I haul a cyclone well into its departure.
A perpetual humidity blankets both cities
to be painted clear and tender into a
visible beat of tears: the waking steps of women
and the opposite way of quaking men.
They imbricated lips once during their last meeting
over baked spaghetti and balloons
in the birthless city. Just -day and -night
plus a sobering look from her mother.
Another man’s hesitant teeth and his woman’s
eager tongue. Another rendezvous at the asotea
above streetlight. They kiss under buffoonery.
They plan for nothing much, nothing above their stature,
nothing to step over and shoot at, score, and cheer about
under a swollen, hoopless sky. The boys are slipping
up in their courts while a siren scatters them into hiding.
Ask me about the clouds and I will spite how some feel God’s
weathered voice through their bones: as if it will pass.
I have my mother’s marrow and my sister’s wisdom.
I have my dimming world inside a racing hatchback.
The curfewed Genesis, the Third Day of three cyclones,
the Great Flood which erased my windshield,
the Great Escape of your city through my fingers.
In coming home, I am always leaving you.
Rigel Portales has been writing poetry and creative nonfiction for over five years. His works are based primarily on his Twitter account at @rijwrites and on Wattpad where his titles are regularly read by hundreds. His biggest inspirations for writing are Danez Smith, ghosts, his awesome girlfriend, and his grandmother.