BINO REALUYO

THE LEANING TENEMENT OF TATAY /
BECAUSE YESTERDAY I JUMPED OUT OF A PLANE

THE LEANING TENEMENT OF TATAY


The tenement units that deposed president Joseph Estrada built for his supporters from San Juan, Metro Manila, are falling apart – Philippine Daily Inquirer, April 2001


Yet this is no Leaning Tower, no Seventh Wonder of the World,
a wonder for your eyes maybe, or for your noses.
How can you not smell the approach of wind,
its spiral push downward, into you. What you cannot see

is the architecture of the missing: the water in faucets
and pipes, the light to bring fireflies to nights, the smiles.
Where is the simplicity of windows and doors, the way out
should we fall, the way in when it rains, cracked roofs for cover?

In our structure of wonder, we wait, then forget.
Inside it, inside us, there are no more rooms to rest the blame,
no time to find anger, and there is plenty of that—anger—
the whole of it so inside the hidden inside.

We don’t think of it or him: he who listened, half-built. Half-tried.
The trying keeps our voices muted, so he doesn’t know he’s our hero
somewhat. No one has even taken us there, even halfway—trying is hard
if it means lending a hand to those who have tried a lifetime of tries.

Soon, our half-built home will come down. Every day, it shakes
as people drive by to look. Still, we hold many things whole: our breaths,
thoughts, prayers, our names. So goes another day, leaning with our feet
on the floor, and another night, half-asleep, half-awake,

should one day we wake up as piles of rubble amid our dreams.

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BECAUSE YESTERDAY I JUMPED OUT OF A PLANE


In what turned out to be a bizarre and even comic drama yesterday, a Philippine Airlines jet with 278 passengers and 13 crew members was hijacked by a man who, armed with a hand grenade and a gun, robbed the passengers and later jumped out of the plane while it was flying over Antipolo. –Philippine Daily Inquirer, May 26, 2000


A dream of flying. At the edge of our world, a wish to grow wings. At the sight of the heavens, envy, pure, permanent. Why do clouds move with such ease and grace? Why do nights reveal stars to fail our wishes? Come look our way. People who ask my mother why I hijacked and parachuted from a plane should stay here a day to see what it’s like. The news crew came, heavy with cameras, paper and questions, because you really ought to know. Never long enough to stay near a sewer and look around. Our lives are shadowed by clotheslines. Our street signs are the drunks at the corner bends, a giant maze littered with desires for love that never came. Our children run around laughing; their cries no longer convince anyone of t heir hunger. Is it so disturbing that I boarded a plane and held it up for a thousand pesos? That wouldn’t buy a day’s meal as we know it? When I opened the door and jumped to my death, I knew on the other side I would learn how to fly. How light I felt then. Yet wingless still. Learning how to float, to become one with the winds and death. Oh, death. Death has many reasons for being—what I could never explain then, I know now. So the next time you look at the skies and find something speeding your way, think of a falling star. Make another wish, your first one perhaps? It could very well be me visiting again. I will listen to you. Whisper in your ears the reasons why you should grow wings on land. The way there are many reasons why death is meant to be.



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