| One day I will go to Lisbon,
it is one of the places where I
would go before I die. [I do not know why.]
I won’t have to die when I come to know why.
I just love anything Portuguese, you know,
like—what is “love-less guy” in Portuguese?
That’s it! Magellan.
British Airways? Ways of air!
Yeah, waste of air.
Or I will visit Milan,
and find out what is so special about it.
Will then have to find out
what is not so special about it.
Maybe that will have to be something special too.
Euro Air. Is there such an airline?
I will have to spend one Christmas
with my loved one
in one of our friends in Michigan.
Talk of caregivers and wheelchairs
and Frosty the Snowman and
God knows what Americans
have for Christmas. They have
everything everyone else
has for Christmas. Don’t they?
Will think again before boarding.
I can visit Ayala Avenue.
How about Pnomh Penh?
Will not have to be an NGO worker
to get to this Asian capital
whose people’s harrowed lives
have never been more familiar
than my countrymen’s.
When can I arrive there by boat?
Ah yes, Bataan.
The Corregidor.
The Death
March. The Gore. The Holocaust
of my own country.
True, true, true.
I just have to.
Just
have to. March!
Pangasinan? Where there once was SARS.
And the jellyfish episode
and other stories of corruption
of the President
who came from there and everyone else that
followed, preceded,
follows, precedes.
You go ahead.
How about Parubcan?
Yes, Imelda Papin’s hometown.
Will find my one-week love affair
in Mampiraw where women
are said to enchant visitors—
like the people in Siquijor
more than enchant anyone.
I’ll take my chances—
And a rickety bus going there.
Nagrebcan, La Union,
What a place!
Will look for the grave of
Manuel Arguilla,
Romanticize, immortalize—explore
the road fields winding like
a scorched snake,
jump down the gorge
where Manong must have went
had he not met Ading;
yes, drink
the water from the well
where he met Ading
till he followed her
to the ends of the world.
Aboard Love Bus here I come.
A, I can start with
Katangyanan, at least
a river away from where I am,
one place immortalized in my mind,
the place where
I was supposed to go fishing
when I was a child
but never went.
Will walk. |
