It was the year of the monkey.
Crocodiles lolled in the river by
the palace while the croaks of frogs
crooned for a new society that soon
will dance fidgety at dusk as if
flailing at the Bakunawa, the moon-
devouring dragon. The universe

would nestle soon on a crown's tip, on
the head of the island's fairest maiden
as glorious as the astronauts on a moon-
walk. But before this was one high noon
on the 14th of August when mother's mouth
invoked a crater of silence. She heaved,
breathless, beyond a timid howl

for help until the burst
of her uterus bore my voice: angel-roar
fragile as wind-whipped feather; the slap
of her blood-blessed hand on my butt
weaving the sound of a wingflap. And so,
Michael the archangel became my name-
sake, my myth, my sick joke.

Without a sword, nothing but
the hell-bent swish of my words, all I have
are flights of fancy, the wind-ruffled fur
of my pride as I paw with a penpoint
the carrion of his downtrodden, fire-
drowned foe whose burnt skin
is slightly my own. Gold-

dentured the simian smile of my goodwill,
and faithful are the serpents trailing
the footprints of saints on my altar.
In my heart, a jungle. My mind bobs
in a pool of boiling water, in the fire-
fall of my cleansing. The Ganges river
flows cold in my veins, murky brown

as it mirrors the heaven's blue.
Against the din of warcries, tabloid tales
Of woe and my woodland reverie
are mother's prayer like a bonfire in the forest
and this hymn of my being. Hear then
in the gust of dust this zodiac song,
this chant calling forth the monsoon:

cloudward rhapsody from an August noon.