Jaywalkers

a poem by Roger B Rueda

Is there concern that you will soon
become extinct
in the streets?
Of course, never.
This idea is rubbish.
Yes, like the streets
strewn with it
every day. Colourful.
Commercial. Those are
very artistic
streets they have there all over.
The flyovers
are home of old beggars,
Dinagyang families,
and glue sniffers.
Never mind them.
They need to jaywalk.
They are rubbish-like,
aren’t they?
It is a happy choice
for them.
Everyone can feel safe going
out alone at night.
Hey, mind!
You, the ex-jaywalkers,
have mutated
from stupid citizens
into obedient urbanites.
Pedestrian crossings are set
on every mind.
The traffic lights need
a radar.
Do your cars have one?
Or at least
Inside your bags?
Poor jaywalkers,
whose happiness
Are you when
you are gone? What have you done?

An Advert

a poem by Roger B Rueda

A baby girl with a dummy to suck and being
carried on his back,
a father does the weekly
shopping for the family
at a local shop.
His son about all of five
pushes a shopping trolley,
putting packets
of cereal, biscuits, crisps,
and chewing gum in it,
the father putting them
back to the bottom shelves.
The boy then pushes his trolley
near the shelf crammed
with boxes of chocolates
and candy bars, the father
stopping him to get them,
the baby girl crying herself
to sleep.
The boy cries his head off,
throwing a fit,
squealing with anger,
going  wild,
shoppers swarming
onto the aisle,
the father calming him
by rocking him back and forth.
At the end of the film,
the camera zooms in to show
Want respect?
Use a sheath printed
onto a T-shirt. Cut! shouts the director.

La Paz, Iloilo City

a poem by Roger B Rueda

A woman, one evening, was pulled
from the street
near a village green
and raped, the rapist,
who’d offered to bring
her home, stabbing her
several times in the chest
and the back, a voice,
in pity, screaming
and crying for help,
most villagers totally deaf
and busy watching
a soap on TV 6 or TV 10.
The next day, the news
that a nursing student
had been killed took
everyone by surprise.

A driver was shot
dead inside his taxi,
his wife, at home,
looking lovingly
at their sleeping child.
His wallet was gone.
It was a shock
to see him looking
like so alive,
he was bleeding heavily.

Smaller local money
lenders were chasing
after men who had snatched
their bags.

A policeman
was found slain,
his soul must have
been nervous
around multiple
stab wounds
to the neck and
upper body.

A passenger lost
her underwear
and her virginal
innocence
at the rubbish dump, pinning
the blame on her saviour,
a maniacal taxi driver who
brought her, after, to her
destination—
and who is at large following an escape.

His Hair Is Pomaded

a poem by Roger B Rueda

And livid; slanted
Over his brows,
It makes
A keyboard.
And I am all ears.
He doesn't rhyme
His a cappella,
Just opens his chop
And lets
Anguish spill out
All over the solid,
Sliding, scuffing,
Submerging
His miseries
Into my totes.
Flogging dearth
For fifty pence piece.
I scour together
A few wooden
Beams
And let them fly
Into his string casing.

Your Needle Knits

a poem by Roger B Rueda

And takes great care
Of the shade,
Sketching graceful bends
Of the span into tacit
Motifs and scruffy
Flourishes.

You scowl and tot up and
Hit it off, plaiting
Woollen vocables
And yielding reproofs
That prickle when stretched
Out across the cradle.

In the Heavenly Silence of Night

a poem by Roger B Rueda

I opened my eyes to the timepiece
And I slouched there,
Breathing the certain,
Sluggish gasp of slumber
For a second, a few,
Until I came up,
At 5.30, to turn off the radio
Alarm before it slashed the still.
Sliding to my reading,
Nescafe in hand, I paused
At the front flap.
An associate had said,
Have a rest—you've had a busy day. 
I had rebuffed it then, but now
I seemed to see eye to eye. 
So I went outside instead.
There was not a shudder in the leaves,
No violence to agitate the stars.
The air was a cosset
That indulged me, fresh silk
Touching my ears.
Cross-legged, I parked myself on a bench.
The mantle I had got
To enfold around myself
I swathed across my lap.
Farther the valley to the east
Rose the pulse,
The slow growth
Of a brandish of resonance
Moving ahead like a deluge
Upon the vicinity:
The ooze first, then the swell,
Then the surge that beat
And then the deliberate recessional.
To be wide awake of my life besides
As a throb making headway
Along a thread,
A vibration felt by every bit,
Wheedling from each
A gauge of dew
To moisturise the lips
And enlarge the eyes
Lest there had been something
To utter or make. A clamour never
Died down only if someone was
Snooping. It became, lastly,
The outcome of a ricochet,
The nuance out
Of which the next
Pulsation rang: a cat’s yowl
Thrilling the space.
Like this, don’t revisit to forty winks.

The Road Not Taken Then

a poem by Roger B Rueda

We have lived on busy and quiet roads, which
from here to there have gone
through some beautiful countryside,
some as ugly as sin, blades of grass
growing up against the edges of the roads
or the grass is just coming into leaf—
Some time ago there were long and bloody
battles and many Filipinos were killed, perhaps as
road kills, we carried the wounded
from the battlefields,  the roads we took decades ago.
Conditions on the roads were often so bad,
and soldiers were on the point of mutinies.
Crowds marched  through the roads carrying
burning effigies of the presidents and flags of the US.
Police arrested several of the demonstrators,
water from their guns was spraying everywhere.
Some were hit in the legs or arms or heads
or bodies by stray bullets. Some buildings
were bombed out.  A lot of civilians were
massacred and buried along  the road.
Whole communities starved to death
during the long drought or flood. People
needed to put a stop to the plunder of rain forests.
Unemployment had fallen again and again.
The land system was crying out for reform.
Terrorists had seized a lot of hostages
and were threatening  to kill  one a day
unless their demands were met. There were
many scams, insurance and fertiliser. The whole
government was riddled with graft, bribery,
and corruption, children learned by observing adults.

Now this is quite unfamiliar road, it’s a bit
confusing.  Eight tourists, held hostage
by the gunman dismissed from his job, died
on the road not taken then.  This is quite a difficult road
for novice trail blazer to run on, it is a rough road,
full of stones and huge holes. The straight road,
perhaps, is nothing but a dirty great blot
on the landscape  though we can drive fast along it.
But it is envisaged by the trail blazer as if we were
in Elysium, so let’s live in a fool's paradise—
Let’s hope we’ll not find ourselves in a slummy back road.