I.
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by Internet memes, historical revisionist Youtube clips, dragging themselves through the darkest, amnesiac streets of remembering, Marcos apologist hipsters and bloggers burning to ashes the miserable memories of Martial Law,
who bared their image-driven brains to froth for the good-looking grandson who was London-educated but undeniably unknowledgeable about undervoting,
who Facebook-floated across virtual Wi-Fi waters and stayed on top Twitter trends, contemplating the alleged cheating in the vice-presidential race in order to pave and force the way of the unapologetic son to Malacañang,
who unwittingly sent their souls to Hell for promoting the banality of evil and saw Mephistophelian angels promising the hero’s burial and ascension of the wax-and-plastic-and-formaldehyde-long-rotten patriarch, but didn’t see the irony,
who passed through illumined universities yet spent more time in status-symbol coffee shops, discussing fashion styles and sheers, crop tops and jogger pants, ending up inadequately informed or misinformed or uninformed about the naked and obscene terrors of the autocratic rule and the detritus thereof,
who with Edifice Complex glorified the so-called “Golden Era” of Philippine history, as if the San Juanico Bridge and a number of power plants, most of which were unused and abandoned, could justify the mass murders, military abuses, illegal detentions, indiscriminate firings, forced disappearances, rapes, and other horrible human rights violations perpetrated by the repugnant, remorseless regime,
who shaved their pubic beards and fondled their genitals without any idea that at some point of history some people’s penises and testicles and vaginas and clitorises had been torturously titillated and sadistically satisfied by electrocution and unnecessary, unhygienic, unorthodox vasectomy and tubal ligation and some other related homicidal surgeries and so on,
who had a definition of history that was neither Hegelian nor Foucauldian, but the name of past lovers, first kiss, last heartbreak, the time it took to move on, and Google Chrome’s Ctrl+H,
who without a sense of satire argued in comment sections, citing the venerable MOCHA USON BLOG, using the logic and rhetoric of “E di wow!” and “So shut up ka na lang!” ultimately bringing Aristotle to facepalming.
II.
Oh what techno-sphinx of cyber-cement and aluminum-bytes bashed open their skulls, ate their brains, and inspired an Instagram-imagined community of little Eichmanns indulging in bite-sized information and bandwagon?
Moloch! The son is not to be blamed for the sins of the father, unless the son lets the ghost of the father shape him—and he does!
Take him, Moloch, instead of the souls of these lost children screaming and howling and ranting in the incomprehensible prison of their social media accounts!
III.
Carl Solo-mo! I’m with you in Misery
Where you’re madder than I am
Oh land of the morning, child of the sun returning, with fervor burning, wear thy underwear and free us.
I’m with you in Misery
In my dreams I try to walk with you from a journey on the highway of oblivion in tears to the door of my reminiscing cottage, but still you just want to do the mannequin challenge and sing pen-pineapple-apple-pen…