In a fever dream the morning sky morphs into black water.

*

In Manila an aunt races upstairs, downstairs to stock up
on provisions, worrying about her tenants below
who assured her they’re accustomed to a bit
of flooding.  Knee-high, chest-high
during monsoon seasons.  In Bicol
a cousin rushes home to an empty
bed, a flashlight, canned meats. 
In Davao Helene’s father tends to his
roosters in the mountains.  In Quezon City
Laurel hunkers down in her expat apartment,
failing to tape-up her windows, regretting nothing.

*

And in dream-fever I hear the howling
of Tacloban, its crumbling cement, splintering
wood.  Then I’m lost in the dark of Samar, invisible Leyte.

*

High winds thundering like horsemen carry the ocean to shores.

*

Landfall in six places: first contact: dawn
Guiuan, Eastern Samar pounded by 195 mph
blitzkrieg of wind and water, the typhoon roiled
into Leyte, Cebu, gusting at 235 mph, no safeguard
for Bantayan Island, made whirlpool of Iloilo, biblical
in Concepcion, from the heavens 27 inches of rain pelted
ill-prepared areas, deluged, waves surged 20 feet of prison
walls around Palawan, then crashed, sweeping away everything.

*

Super Typhoon Haiyan snaked through 370 miles of the Visayan Islands.
In its wake:   flattened landscapes   skeletal structures   aftermath debris 
toppled decapitated idols    sopped soil, sorrow, shit   tires, chicken wires   
blame like a barometer   reporters   crusted hair dryers   boats, landlocked 
dogs, scavenging   incompetence   an arm peeking through wet cardboard   
a drowned cow lodged between slingshot branches   bayanihan   orphans
TV crews   salt residues   flood of rescue aid   ruin   the dead, the dead. 

*

I’m a Filipino hyphenated in the western
hemisphere, encased in red bricks
six floors up, wintering.

The television is my eye. 
Anderson Cooper is my eye. 

I watch apocalyptic reels like disaster
films without the glamour, suspension
of disbelief.  The rage, palm trees bending
into breaking, collapsed houses.  Volume down
I still hear sirens like global warning.  Surges, power
outages, structural damages, political failures, casualties…

Social media is my eye. 
Marissa Aroy is my eye.

I see how they shiver, sifting through
the wreckage.  I recognize those
faces.  They stir inside me.

To nature we’re feed, fodder. 

My imagination is my weak
eye.  My childhood memory
is farsighted.  I see
the Visayan Sea.

*

Our Father who art nowhere
Hollowed be our popsicle-stick houses
Thy Kingdom come, we will be done
On earth and disappearing heaven
Give us this day our daily rations
And forgive the hurricane for its trespasses
As we forgive those politicians who trespass against us
And lead us not into watery temptation
But deliver us to mercy.  Amen.

*

Nagbabawas talaga nang mga tao, my mother said,
He is getting rid of His people, according to our domestic
demographist on all occasions of immeasurable disasters.

She meant God, of course, the God who ripped open
the roof of His church to witness fear, helplessness,
and devotion huddled inside.

*

In a dream, roofs from houses hover
before me like spaceships, alien invasion.

*

In grade school the typhoon was like the rampaging
Kraken, hungry for beauty.

*

Mother Mary full of spit.
Mud shall inherit the earth.

*

They were scattered like beached porpoises,
bloated, then rupturing and peeling.  The stench began
to permeate days after, so eventually they were collected,
strange harvest lined-up on roadsides encased in plastics.

Body bags like sacks of wet peanuts,
                       crude petroleum capsules,
                       pods of rotting vegetables,
                       luggage of carabao skin.
The body bags were cocoons of insects,
                                discarded garbage
                                poor men’s coffins
                                victims of a crime scene.

*

Lines for food and clean water wrapped around for hours.
Crowds at the airport for airlifts to safer grounds.
Masses at evacuation centers, a misnomer.

They weathered the fiercest storm in recorded history.
For that they shelter their hunger, pain
and trauma in makeshift shacks. 

After the water receded, resilience.

Bahala Na, a Filipino mantra, Whatever Happens.
Blind prayer is lucid faith. 

Somewhere nearby a guitar is being strummed,
an accompanying voice humming. 

A basketball court is erected and young men
are playing shirtless in the mid-November heat.

And the stories are told, they keep spinning:
of those taken by the sea; the lost, reunited and remained;
of grown children who managed to send rice to their famished parents.
How the mayor of Tacloban punched a hole in his roof to escape
the rising water.  Aren’t these the stuff of fables or parables?

Bahala Na: to be alive is to be a survivor.

Did you hear about the woman
who, staring down the storm, gave
birth and named her child Yolanda?