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This poem is what I consider my first "evidently mature" poem after my first published one titled "Snailfishers," came out in Focus Magazine probably in the early 1980s. Neither a copy of the magazine nor the poem I can find now. "Children of the Snarl" was published subsequently, perhaps in Diliman Review (must verify),

after I attended the 1984 University of the Philippines National Writers' Workshop.

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Children of the Snarl

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Streetwise at starfall they come,

Taunting the clumsy behemoths of the rush hour,

The Children of the Snarl, unstartled

At the demented hunger of the highway,

Weaving a dance among eyes and fangs

Of myriad metal, prompted by their own hungers.

 

Merchants of poverty, dodgers of death,

They cheat mad chance in the flash of chrome,

In the glint of the fume-choked sun

Caught on the grime of the windshield glass,

In the storm-sunset on the fender-shine, offering

Flowers, appeasements for our own stale airs.

 

Our vision hurtles forward at morning,

Noon and dusk, borne by wheels tearing at space,

It hurtles between our faces in jeeps

Where we avoid each other’s gaze, somnambulant

Or asleep, with our sorrows and hurryings

Hidden, dressed and made up in haste.

 

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ChildatDoorMarket.jpg

There is no pause in the eyes that pursue

Their own appeasements. They peer at us,

We roll up our windows in vague defense,

Or concede buying a garland for our own icons

And talismans. Or choose a lottery ticket

For our chase of Ultimate Chance.                             

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What link of flowers and lottery tickets

Joins us across the chasms of our classes?

What mindless mirth, hunger of eyes, insane dance

Of peddling small vices and poverty’s sweets

In the traffic our haste conveys us across

Craters in the asphalt, fissures in the concrete?

 

The lights time the rhythms of our chase.

The lurch and the wheel-skid summon their swarm

And us, Children of the Snarl: Slap of slippered

Feet, gnash of wheels worn smooth by pavements

Worn smooth by wheels, fume-storm in the crepuscular

Swelter of crushed petals and burning rubber.

 

And the rain season devours us, the headlights

Blind us: Grit in the metal gutter, leaf-shard and

Insect wing on the windscreen, stale air and perfume

From the aerosol spray. As dust, dirt and debris

And the day’s wrappers sail downstream, in the water

Iridescences of the monsoon in the ditches.

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1986

 

                                                           

Child at door at the LMR Market near Tenement in Taguig City, now demolished to give way to the gentrifying neighborhood of Arca South development.

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