& kiss it. Make out with the smiling faces of nepo babies,
patron saints of systematic corruption and
unfinished flood control or road-widening projects,
embossed in this plastic bag full of discarded 555 sardines,
nearly expired Lucky Me, 1 pack of Mizmo! hotdog, and half a kilo of NFA rice
and believe that it came from their compassionate pockets
and thank them, yes, say thank you, Congressman,
Mayor; salamat, Friendship, thanks, Nanay!
god bless Sara Duterte!
no one does it like you
even God doesn’t step down here to give out ayudas like these

In the TV, 2022: pink-mouthed Leni Robredo vowing to end
all forms of corruption and gambling, and you held jueteng
in one hand like a gun pointed at the screen,
smokes of 6/58 lotto tickets and Marlboro Red filling
your worn-out apartment in the ruralest
the visual whittling down, looking like your old hookup bar
or your recent makeshift houses near the cemetery
how hard is it to live like an immigrant in your own country?

Christ knows there’s no saving you from it all

On the floor: Tongits cards, your son’s scholarship
requirements, and your employment’s too — tonight
you’ll bow so low to Kapitan that both your knees
coalesce with the pavement; this should do all the speaking;
Hail patronage politics, bless you, Municipal Hall, as
pulchritudinous and grandiose as the Malacañang, guide us,
epiphanieless zealots and stupids who
continuously seek out help from you;
here’s my vote and tax as offering, take it with your
endless families, friends, allies, and cronies,
and if they do not respond, say help me,
say save me from precarious employment and
share with me your institutional power, say every bit
of the self-deprecating syntax,
louder, hungrier should you need to
somewhere, someone says it louder than you

say: I’d give the world to you if I could
just promise me you’d keep me safe and secure

What do you call a Filipino who, in having poverty
in its blood, offers itself to be eaten by capitalism
vampires? A fool? A country’s parasite? No, a mammal
lost in the promise of political abstract and in
full comprehension that submission is also
a power

So let them call you what they want: a bobotante, an uneducated,
polarized martyr, but political salvation, I swear, is
just another form of religion, of manufacturing a living
God out of fear and loneliness in the world

If hope is real, then He’s a congressman handing
out crunchy 500-peso bills and saving men before
they get devoured by their intestines
Don’t you see? the hardest part in hoping
is that it takes time &
simply knowing there is change does nothing
to the mouth that aches for it.