Dr. Cirilo F. Bautista,
The author of
The Trilogy of Saint Lazarus
Selected Poems
Dead Weight: In Memoriam
(Ferdinand E. Marcos, 11 September 1917—28 September 1989)
Excerpt from Telex Moon (Part Three)
The Trilogy of Saint Lazarus
Excerpt from Sunlight on Broken Stones
The Trilogy of Saint Lazarus
A Man Falls To His Death
1 Blood is nothing. Space is all. Is.
2 A simple diagram illustrates this:
3 where A is the tenth floor of steel and
glass (He was on
4 the noon shift forging the dream to a
reality fine mean
5 could slumber in, or whores, in antechamber,
touch their bone)
6 and B the level earth (Above the clogged
engine
7 a shadow traced the lines on his foot, while
shoot
8 his brain with firelights the money did).
Put
9 down an imaginary circle around the
vertical.
10 Compute the square of guilt against an integral
11 his age built when he was young: wrong,
12 axiomatic: the sum stands thus: Along
13 the curve X (none noticed the leap; what they saw
14 was the red imprint) by which we know
15 the nothing particualr, the momentum
16 carried him to the point beyond the dictum—
17 Hic primus geometros—for a body physical, a
18 Mass, emits energy equal to zero, the stay
19 Necessary to arrive at a base, as in Berger’s
20 Formula for optics. Here we remember
21 the fallacy of inclusive force if we extend
22 A to the absolute (He was, a day ago, threatened
23 With dismissal for displeasing a superior)
24 and call it the Cause: heat, hunger, air—
25 these were just contingent. To recapitulate:
26 Berger’s law does not apply here, as the late
27 Projections of X show, space being non-mathematic;
28 from A to B the descent exhibits a quick
29 increase in force, though the exact ellipsis we know
not.
30 (The Blank and Blank Co., Inc., regrets to announce
that. . . .)