Fairy Tale
I encountered her in a pop-up book
the first time, once upon a time as child.
I read how her widowed father married
a vain woman with two daughters in vain.
I wept with her as she scrubbed dirty walls,
swept dusty floors… disallowed to attend
the ball, while I turned pages that crackled
and bloomed into 3-D forms like magic.
Or transformed by pulling tabs: from evening
gown to tatters. Shattered, I still read on…
fairy godmother, pumpkin to stagecoach,
the clock striking midnight. Bereft of tears,
I read on and on, as the glass slipper
traveled from one house to the next. No fit!
About to give up, I kept on reading:
And she lived happily ever after.
To Baby Boy Blue
(after Ulysses Duterte, Jr.’s “Will You Live To See It?”)
In these end times I will sing
the rhythm and blues,
this lament my testament,
an apologia from me to you.
I cannot prevent the apocalypse
from happening: the glaciers
melting like ice cubes in a bucket
of the drunken seas; the ozone
riddled with bullet holes; the air
bristling with grit and grief;
the bones of the earth cracked,
like my voice hoarse with singing.
Like you, I am blue in the face!
The blue planet, I cannot undo.
I cannot rewrite the script,
blue-pencil the manuscript.