Explanation Why some So-Called Literary Giants Have Become Extinct

          One guess is that they’re all at the party.

 

          If they are some place else

 

          they are either cutting their ingrown toenails

 

          or drawing from clothes hangers a variety of neckties

 

          and examining each to see how their singular necks

 

          will get that particular look

 

          on the pages of People magazine.

 

          Sometimes you meet them in train stations and bus terminals

 

          or at some corners of the National Archives

 

          and get to exchange a word or two

 

          about the latest arrivals at Solidaridad

 

          and you are startled by the similarities of their noses:

 

          they are sporting what is called a nose for news,

 

          which is the point of all that rushing here and there.

 

          On Sundays they go to the beaches to clean their noses,

 

          rinse off their executive faces

 

          a week’s supply of industrial mold, mercantile slime

 

          and legal debris

 

          and examine ever so gently the belly buttons

 

          of their bedfellows,

 

          to make sure they are in their proper places

 

          and have not been tampered with by some plastic surgeon

 

          just come from his training abroad.

 

          It must be the times, you hazard another guess.

 

          Well, a reported two-degree tilt at the earth’s axis

 

           has made all weather cocks collectors’ items.

 

          Where once cogon and makahiya thrived

 

          now flourish cabbages, cauliflowers and concubines.

 

          Rivers have gone dry and all the eels, turtles and

 

          watersnakes that lived there before

 

          now attend meetings of boards of directors,

 

          ride in rust-proof sports coupes

 

          and live in suburban dwellings

 

          decorated with paper moons and plastic tarantulas.

 

          It must be the new environment that cramps their style

 

          And slowly chokes them to death.

 

          They look like nomads in a vast desert

 

          And they are saying the air-conditioner isn’t working.

 

          It’s a pity there’s no repairman in the house.

 

 

 - Reprinted from FOCUS Philippines

 

(E. M. at his satiric best!)