Still in the Artist’s Hiding Place:

Cesare A.X. Syjuco
“THE CHAMELEON”

*Palanca Award Winner for English Poetry, 1983

Now Available:

SELECTED POEMS from

“A SUDDEN RUSH OF GENIUS”

*National Book Award Winner, 2008

IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE?
IS THERE ANYTHING ALIVE?
Cesare A.X. Syjuco

Is there anybody out there?
Is there anything alive?
Black leather birds are circling
And speckling the sky.,
Miles of concrete curdling
Are stinking up the air.,
The sea swells and rises
But there’s no fish there.,

1.
If there’s anything out there
It’s probably dead.
Probably been dead forever.,

Are there any faces out there?
Is it anyone you know?
And if they call to you in riddles
Are you inclined to go?
Whose dreams are those left out there
Playing in the heads
Of children and their sorceries
Dancing in their beds?

2. If there’s anything out there
It’s probably been killed.
Probably been killed for Herod.,

Are there any sounds out there?
Shit music in the least
The click of mahjong pieces
At one wake of a feast?
And how the shrieking crowds will haunt you
When there’s no one in the streets.,
There are no church spires standing
Except between your feet.,

3.
If there’s anyone out there
It’s probably you.
But you don’t know it.,

(Or you don’t care)


___________

MY RIVAL
Cesare A.X. Syjuco

Splendid even in his cordiality
my rival was handsome
to the point of infraction
speaking always in polemic
trendy undertones
remarkable for its wit and
spiraling nimbly to conclusion
he sought (and I am certain)
to steal her inner eye
by venting out in tongues
from the structural essence of schemata
to the very fibers of his flatulence
and back again— those
were the tactics of this dog
schooled in the use of its nose
leaving me no alternative recourse.,

He vexed me even in my solitude
blowing hot blasts in my ear
shuffling at my incompetence
while all the while
I took it in the gut
like a man
I took it in the gut
you could not ask more of me
and leave me standing on my feet
to honk and hoot like a jackass
but standing on my feet
I could have slain him then
I could but did not
slay him then
slain only a man though how
erectly he did move his bowels
paragon of decorum, I waited
biding my time

(A tarantula in his socks?)
(Razor blades in his coffee?)
(Slime in his staircase?)
(Uranium in his showerhead?)
(A termite in his ear?)
(Or perhaps.,)


___________

MURDER AND THE MANNERED TONGUE
Cesare A.X. Syjuco

What idlings erect the mannered tongue
so that it quivers on its pivot
and reverberates
murder most foul, the slanderous
rhythm that kills by inflection,
a genuflection, prim
and proper as it’s cheap? discard
the verbiage of speech, and in its place
a thousand verses bloom, each resplendent,
each discreetly poisoned at the bud
an aromatic dangerous seduction
this: lilting as bowed strings
silken to the ear, sensuous and black.,
the game is played with / plagued with
diagrams, the magic a sham, the trans-
formation an illusion., cold speech
is murder in any language., is., mur-
der., in., any., language.,


___________


THE RIVER AND THE SNOW
Cesare A.X. Syjuco

[The big lie of our time]
[is that only] [politics]
[is subtlety]

[A river’s flow is bigger than]
[a twitching] [a king’s throne]
[a water’s arm] [And flesh]
[Synthesis of parallels]
[architecture] [plastic]
[pain] [jagged letters]
[waves] [sinking]

[A river has flesh]
[time] [rhyme] [ring]
[dazzlement]
[It unlocks] [masks]
[in mirrored consciousness]
[Without trumpeters and pyrotechnics,]
[secret calendrics] [galloping]
[to re-iterate] [the Lord] [the land]
[His Hand] [His Skull]

[A river has no] [memory]
[laughter] [stirrup-cup and roses]
[days] [mind] [boyhood] [growing]
[It has no library] [edge]
[barks] [minarets]
[notes]

[The river] [has] [no blight]
[no womb] [breaking]
[through marbled] [throats of kinship]

[A river is] [a fire]
[always singing,]
[really moves]
[seems to move]
[not moving]
[ambulance]
[stretched]
[vendible and legless]
[A fatality that slays]
[bishops in their bombs]
[their foreheads with ash]
[After the image,]

[, A river stays] [spread on pages]
[without sight] [will not flow]
[will not flow] [against mud]
[will not hold] [wood] [silver]
[elephants for ceremony]
[fool’s coronet] [noontide]
[manciple’s accounting]
[mousetrap and]
[moor]

[A river has] [memory]
[to finger] [the lively twitch]
[by conversion] [through diversion]
[with scepter] [of tremors]
[or harvest]

[There is]
[darkness]
[with the snow].,

___________


COMMANDER JAMES, CALLING SPACE STATION
Cesare A.X. Syjuco

Commander James
Calling Space Station

Space Station
Calling Commander James

I think I love you I think
I love you Commander James
And I just had to let you know
Space Station
And I just had to let you know
Commander James
Calling Space Station
Calling Commander James

Over

Over

Over.,


___________


GO THE WAY I CAME
Cesare A.X. Syjuco

i’d like to go quite suddenly, i think,
whacked from behind when i least expect
it, face down spread thinly on some
anonymous sidewalk in someone else’s
anonymous hometown, later to be peeled
off the pavement like chewing gum from
underneath the hairy treads of a crumbling
cream passat, and totally, wordlessly,
joyfully oblivious to the hows and the whys
and the wherefores of somehow not going
in the same way that i came.,


____________

DO YOU? DO YOU?
Cesare A.X. Syjuco

Do you rinse your cabbages?
Do you shed your guises?
Do you polish your horns?

Do you preen your feathers?
Do you starch your sheets?
Do you oil your pistons?

Do you wax your whiskers?
Do you shape your hedges?
Do you weigh your bottoms?

Do you shine your pennies?
Do you mouth your slogans?
Do you fire your magnum?

Do you blow your gaskets?
Do you pit your olives?
Do you swallow your seeds?

Do you grind your pelvis?
Do you boil your skins?
Do you mount your mares?

Do you bang your bucks?
Do you pluck your chickies?
Do you finger your locations?

Do you?
Do you?
Do you?

___________


WHY THE BLIND WILL NEVER FIND GOD.,
Cesare A.X. Syjuco

The reason why The Blind will never find God
is because no one tells them where to look.,
Behind the door or in a kitchen cupboard
would be a good place to start.,
But The Blind never look there.,

Never pretend to believe that The Blind are
all-knowing. They will confound, perplex
and confuse you. They will speak out in
tongues when they are really just whistling
in the dark.,

And though The Blind might someday see again,
they will never see God.,


___________


VANISH WITHOUT A TRACE
Cesare A.X. Syjuco

Each year, hundreds of people disappear
on the world’s transport systems.
They leave their belongings, like suicide notes,
on terminal benches, in the aisles, in
overhead luggage racks and under their
seats, seeming quite literally to vanish
without a trace.,

0 x 1 = 0
0 x 2 = 0
0 x 3 = 0
0 x 4 = 0
0 x 5 = 0
0 x 6 = 0
0 x 7 = 0
0 x 8 = 0
0 x 9 = 0
0 x 0 = 0


___________


OUR LADY OF THE THORNS
Cesare A.X. Syjuco

The day Wendell blew off his foot with a pencil in
the radiator was the day I met Our Lady of the Thorns.
She was framed in a barbed bed of teal and vermilion
that grew out of a crack in the schoolyard wall—
looking almost, but not quite, extraterrestrially
pale, dissonant and vaporous.,

”I am the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God”, she said
in a voice like Briar Rose. “And you are the pig-nosed
chubby little schoolboy who comes here every day
to sing to himself.”

Back in school, in Father Jake’s religion class, all
they could talk about was Wendell’s foot.,


___________


CAT / GOT / YOUR / TONGUE
Cesare A.X. Syjuco

cat
got you
cat
got your
tongue
got you
got your
tongue
cat
got
your
tongue


___________


UPTOWN SCARECROWS
Cesare A.X. Syjuco

Da chief got on de uptown bus and sat
in de front row beside 2 nuns. He wuz as
big as a fckn house and he’d bin drinkin.
“He eats naughty children like you”, sed da
li’l ol’ lady dat wuz sittin der behind me. But
it wuz dem 2 nuns dat lukd fckn suspicious ta me.,

Da nun got on de uptown bus and sat
in de front row beside 2 ol’ ladies. She wuz as
big as a fckn house and she’d bin drinkin.
“She eats naughty children like you”, sed da
chief dat wuz sittin der behind me. But
it wuz dem 2 ol’ ladies dat lukd fkcn suspicious ta me.,

Da li’l ol’ lady got on de uptown bus and sat
in the front row behind 2 chiefs. She wuz as
big as a fckn house and she’d bin drinkin.
“She eats naughty children like you”, sed da
nun dat wuz sittin der behind me. But
it wuz dem 2 chiefs dat lukd fkcn suspicious ta me.,

Da bus got on de li’l ol’ lady and sat
in de front row beside 2 nuns. It wuz as
big as a fckn house n it’d bin drinkin.
“It eats naughty children like you”, sed da
chief dat wuz sittin der behind me. But
it wuz dem 2 nuns dat lukd fckn suspicious ta me.,


_____


A RISE ABOVE THE WATER LINE
Cesare A.X. Syjuco

1.
: What is mundane?
: Anything and everything when you’re bleeding
from shrapnel on the bridge of a burning deck.,

: My thoughts exactly!
: You’ve never had a thought in your life.,

2.
: What’s the difference between Mundane and
Inconsequential?
: Mundane means it’s unimportant.
Inconsequential is when it doesn’t matter.,

: Where’s the difference there?
: It’s a mundane question. A reply would be
inconsequential.,

: You’re a jerk, you know that?
: I love you too.,

3.
: Why do people bother with the inconsequential?
: I’m not sure.,

: You mean like life on Mars?
: I mean like life anywhere.,


___________


SHE LOVES ME ☺… NOT ☹

Cesare A.X. Syjuco

She loves me., ☺
She loves me not., ☹

First she loves me., ☺
Then she loves me not., ☹

Says she loves me., ☺
Yet she loves me not., ☹

Hates to love me., ☺
Loves to love me not., ☹

Yes she loves me., ☺
No she loves me not., ☹

Not

Me.,

She loves me ☺ / not ☹


_____


THE WORLD TURNS.,
Cesare A.X. Syjuco

The world turns.,
The sun sets.,
The moon rises.,
The seasons change.,
The rains fall.,
The winds blow.,
The flowers grow.,

The world sets.,
The sun rises.,
The moon changes.,
The seasons fall.,
The rains blow.,
The winds grow.,
The flowers turn.,

The world rises.,
The sun changes.,
The moon falls.,
The seasons blow.,
The rains grow.,
The winds turn.,
The flowers set.,

The world changes.,
The sun falls.,
The moon blows.,
The seasons grow.,
The rains turn.,
The winds set.,
The flowers rise.,

The world falls.,
The sun blows.,
The moon grows.,
The seasons turn.,
The rains set.,
The winds rise.,
The flowers change.,

The world blows.,
The sun grows.,
The moon turns.,
The seasons set.,
The rains rise.,
The winds change.,
The flowers fall.,

The world grows.,
The sun turns.,
The moon sets.,
The seasons rise.,
The rains change.,
The winds fall.,
The flowers blow.,