The One about Our Situation

here’s a poem by my good friend Jules Joaquin. it’s about the situation of our country (Philippines) and he used Edgar Allan Poe as the main character.:)

EDGAR ALLAN POE IN RAGS
Jules Joaquin
 
“Everything is going wrong.”
 -Edgar Allan Poe from The Pit and the Pendulum
 
I.
 EDGAR ALLAN POE stood next to the walls
 Of Manila Bay to hustle a few coins with his poetry.
           “Nevermore!” he says,
 And the kindly lady with the fake eyelashes gives him two pesos
     for a stick of Winston lights and a chance to flirt with the daughter
     of the tindera.
 He walks with new slippers he bought from Divisoria
 To escape the smell of fish and the smell of fishy fishermen
 And goes straight to manang and buys a Stork and cigarettes.
            “Good morning.” He says and smiles at manong,
 He doesn’t have teeth anymore and can’t afford pustiso,
 And his bad breath keeps him from getting girls into loving him
            “Oh Virginia!” Poe says with indignation.
 It had seemed such a long time ago when he was in love,
 Maybe too long ago or maybe it never happened—
 Reality was too lucid to tell, and he walks back to Manila Bay
 With a half-finished drag and a salivated Stork
 And now he has to hustle a lot more coins to be able to eat lunch
 
II.
 THE AFTERNOONS were hot in Manila,
 And Edgar Allan in his shorts and his t-shirt saying “Tide Detergent Bar”
 Would retire to the shade of a narra tree and watch the people go by.
 Why had he not worked in a factory?
 Was it the poetry or the apathy,
 Or the dark probinsyano males and the dark city men and women
 Who all smelled like dried sweat and 555 Sardines?
 
 Oh, but they all live better than he!
 
 They could at least afford electricity
 And watch Mariel Rodriguez and Ding Dong Dantes
 Smooching underwater on TV,
 Or maybe watch tragedies unfold on TV Patrol with Noli de Castro,
 It doesn’t matter. All he knew
 Was that he couldn’t pay for these things.
 He dictates a phrase or some form of mantra he learned from Siso the Divine Squatter
      in his mind: “Isang kayod, isang tuka!”
 And he doesn’t even know what it means,
 For in this country, he was illiterate
 And no one gave a shit about his English poetry.
 
 But people spent good money on average quality overpriced clothing,
 On magazines on magazine racks showing Joyce Jimenez
      with no nose after surgery,
 
 On melamine-laced milk bought from the Tsinita lady
       who sold bad repackaged candy
 On a movie starring a buffoonish Zac Efron and a whory
       Vanessa Hudgens which was really shit
 On a Hannah Montana Barbie doll with a miniature plastic
       guitar that she can’t play
 On crappy amateur porn bought from a Bumbay in
      the tiangge section of Greenhills
 On cheap gin and cheap brandy and synthetic cognac
       which is really just cheap brandy
 On a pot-bellied hooker haunting the streets of a desolate
        Quezon Ave. at night
 On siopao bought from Kowloon House West Triangle
        that had already been ravaged by flies
 On a book sharing awful text jokes you would find on the
        Bestseller’s list in National Bookstore (only in the Philippines!)
 But nobody had ever gave a shit about his poetry
 That’s crazy!
 
 III.
 AT NIGHT, Edgar Allan would go bar-hopping—
 To the ones which required no entrance fee at least.
 
 One time, he saw a washed-up old Mike Hanopol
 Singing “No Touch” to a crowd of teenaged alcoholics
 Who would’ve traded him without much thought
 For the croonings of Cueshe or Callalily.
 This crazy old man was another ghost in the history of this country
 And he would never sing to a crowd of adoring female groupies again,
 Those who would throw their panties at him;
 Well, once maybe, but that would be a 50-year old waitress in Kampay bar
 Along Katipunan Extension who would remember him from his old days
 
 But at least he would be remembered,
 Edgar Allan Poe would never have that.

 Tricycle drivers would not even take Edgar anywhere,
 For they thought he was a lunatic drug addict
        with his mottled face and his drowning eyes
 Although they would do shabu every Friday and they
        would hit their children if they would dare cry.
 
 And the policemen were even worse.
 They would at first make fun of Edgar Allan for he was white.
 They would say: “Mestiso ka ah, bakit ka pulubi at bobo?”
 And then they would laugh and would spend the rest of the day
 Scavenging for taxi drivers. The police men were all hustlers too.
 With the right words to these uneducated drivers, they knew they would
         be able to make 500 pesos quick,
 And by midnight, they would then drive their police cars
To the nearest comedy bar in Morato
And slap a cross-dressing, singing gay man’s ass with bottles of
        San Mig Lights in their hands.
 
 At around this time someplace else, Edgar Allan would already
 Try sleeping under a blanket fashioned from cardboard found on a sidewalk
 Would actually sleep on the sidewalk,
 And in the morning, he would find a cockroach stuck up his crotch.
 
IV.
 EDGAR ALLAN POE came to the city for he heard that the bourgeoisie and the elite
        paid good money for art
 That they in their well-educated minds would appreciate his poetry
        more than the people from Bataan, or Batangas or wherever he came from did
 Because these people were not savages.
 He had heard about the painter who had married an affluent beautiful widow
        for she had orgasms when she saw his paintings,
 Had heard about a certain poet who traveled in the circles of the Ayalas,
         the Urdanetas, the Go-Ocos and the Tantocos simply because
       he was brilliant
 What more would he, the master of meter get?
 It simply was too good an opportunity to pass up.
 
 V.
HE LEFT the province at around 9:00 EST drunk on lambanog
 And full of sisig, pinaitan and pork barbecue,
 With a still decent 6000 pesos in his wallet and a folder full
 Of scattered poems—from Annabel Lee to The Bells,
 To Dream Within A Dream to The Raven,
 These were all brilliant works of art which had been overlooked
 When he was still with morons in Bataan or Batangas or wherever,
 And now he would be able to achieve with almost no difficulty
        the fame and the success that he had always wanted
 
 He imagined the elite embracing him with open arms and telling him
        things such as “I understood and I felt the absolute isolation
        that the persona in The Raven felt, and maybe the titular character
        was just a facet of himself”
 Things that were intellectual and succinct and poetic,
“Astig pare!”—none of that shit anymore.

 He arrived in the city at 12:00 EST sobered up already,
 Hungry from the three hour trip with no air-con and with a lady
        constantly talking about Judy Anne Santos to her friend
 With a still decent 5500 pesos in his wallet and still the folder
 Containing what would be considered a magnum opus in the future.
 
 But a city that never sleeps is a city that never dreams,
 And the intellectuals that he had hoped to understand him
 Had snubbed him, for they in all pretentiousness forgot poetry
 And he had been reduced to a two-bit writer
 Looking for a job in the city,
 Now with only 300 pesos in his wallet, no friends nor lovers
            (“Oh Virginia!” he says with indignation)
Reduced also to a two-bit hustler who would hustle for coins
 Using phrases and dramatic performances that involved saying
 
           “Hear the bells, bells, bells, silver bells, what a world of merriment, their melody foretells,”
 
People never caring, never listening only giving money out of fear
         of the mustached lunatic in Manila Bay who thinks he’s a
         poet,
 And then he lost his money, his shoes, his socks, his long-sleeved polo,
         his sarong, his barong, his necktie, his slacks, his leather shoes,
         his suitcase, his watch
 And he pawned the last piece of sentimental knick knacks that he received
         from various beloved people to Tambunting.
 Which would then give money to Tara, the heiress, to buy marijuana
         and screw Chris Tiu someday, when they’re both forgotten
         and screwing would not be scandalous anymore.
 
VI.
EDGAR ALLAN POE DRESSED IN RAGS walks around
         Manila Bay in the morning, unwanted,
And whispers to himself with no lying cynicism,
         with no money, nor food, nor clothes nor dignity
A half-hearted and a dying “Nevermore.”