Tondo

I crossed this city
as much as I had known my feet would touch the finely made asphalt.
Onto pedestrian lane, a screeching noise was approaching me:
a cab with an immaculacy of white.
On this road constructed by men,
Horns and red lights beaming at me:
I lent my ears a listen for a jiffy,
only to find myself getting lost in it.

Then later, a cacophony of sounds,
The strange petroleum that enveloped my nose,
and my toes pointing at Southwestern direction.

This was the place:
One man sits with his legs crossed;

The other smokes Mighty.
A woman with her trolley,
filtered with eye-tail

others would refer as a beckoning masquerade.

Some strangers quelled their thirsts with Red Bull, 

some quaffed gins.

Smoke from charcoal-cooked barbecues; 

a pile of clothes that smelt like lavender;
the people knelt before this Black-Forest-cake-colored building.

And as soon as I arrived, they stared at me like I was in a parade.
I saw them all with my arms hugging myself from my hood―through my stale gray lenses.

Its evening was a daylight.
With my cream shoes, I walk as I

Look for the house that holds my rest.
I dwell with my broken midnight,
I dwell with my bareness that was smothered by rural smoke.

I stepped on a rock only to stumble my feet;

on this ground
it was not a gravel, but pieces of feathers collected to clutch my exhausted body.
I, then, knew why they were born in this city,
in this far-flung area:

For what is foreign is peace.