Mark Anthony Cayanan: I've Built a House
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
Ben Ben Ben Ben Ben
The narrator who foretold my life says passion is like crime
both welcome the weakening of society because they can profit off of it
A month has passed in the novella and the locals are dying
as though thinking of you could make cholera a sunset backdrop
The barber who trims and darkens my beard says I’ve no fear of the disease
my personality plagiarized from my favorite characters, all magnetically staring out into the void
I think I’m alone because I manage romance
with a girlish evasiveness that’s a front for sexual frigidity
When a man’s already in front of me, too loose, the wanting slips off
my mind scrambles ahead to the ride home and some Tim Tams before bed
I’m being facetious though not entirely incorrect
I pine for life-altering tenderness but prefer it in the abstract
Outside St. Mark’s I feed on impatience like the other pigeons
or like the sweet-medicine death-smell of Venice, I wait in ambush
More than wanting the reward I want to be the reward, the boy
who knows his beauty but not its magnitude, bending over a prie-dieu
I wish to be in a situation where I could say Am an attendant lord
though I’m pretentious, I haven’t gone beyond the required reading
Some plotlines I repurpose for what you think of me end with
in retaliation I write poems about impossible men with hairs on their backs
Sad Ben, sarcastic Ben, Ben who wakes at noon and pees while waiting for his tea to steep
and sighs loudly while he writes and microwaves burritos for brunch
You’re Tadzio plus adult acne and the threat of a paunch and an open invitation to destroy me
though I won’t die for you yet you’re dreamt of the way he is
Your friends keep tagging you in pictures of smoky cafés, your face turned away from the camera
I want to step into their bodies and be the thing you’re looking away at
Ben of the macho sentences, Ben as bracing as a papercut, as permanent
Ben, you’re mainly incontrovertible proof
Mann cultivated a public image of Teutonic reserve
among friends he was prone to nervous trembling and convulsive sobbing
I borrow his biography from the library to discover why my impulses override my tact
when in his diary he draws a parallel between his sweet tooth and covert desires, he gets poetic
Extra fastidious, he writes about his daily walks to the market to ogle shirtless workmen
in his fiction he thinks of himself when he writes about other people
I’m the kind of twink whose body has outweighed the term
I keep pointing this out because it’s one of the few insights I have into myself
All I want is to prove I orchestrate my life with the efficiency of a single mother
yeah, that’s another lie
I’m the videoke singer who licks the corners of their mouth between lyrics
I make every heartache ballad salacious and vaguely offensive and absurd
Quite obvious at this point that I want you to hear me
if not you then I want to exorcise my agony with everyone’s ear pressed against the door
The first time we shared a cigarette, just to connect you said
you preferred brawny men who could suffocate you, I looked at my hands
I congratulate myself for charming you into changing your preferences
never mind your girlfriend
I love you enough to look for confirmation in newspaper microfilms
the year you were born we had our first presidential elections
Erap was the comic relief in the vice-presidential debates, needless to say he won
funny things stupid people say made national news 28 years ago, as they do now
A woman in her 20s was found stuffed inside a suitcase
she wore green basketball shorts, a cord around her neck, and a baby tee
Bakit Ako Mahihiya was showing at Ali Mall, not sure if it’s a remake of the 1976 film
some days your beard’s still scratching against my cheek, Ben
When I was born a man died from a cigarette he flicked at a bunch of balloons
do you know that a bunch of balloons is called a festival
I feel weird whenever your novel refers to a Southeast Asian
had to put it down when the Thai girl on the webcam plays with her nipple
At 16 I offered my married neighbor a blowjob
just because summer took too long and it seemed an important thing
You’ve gone over the age of Keats when he passed on
not enough time has passed for me to leave myself behind, fervently I giggle at your jokes
The past few years I’ve been dating younger men, like you, and I’m embarrassed about it
Korean face masks and my genes make you look older
Before you’re 30 your disheveled pompadour will irreversibly transition into a combover
Aged-out Asian Twink isn’t a porn category, it’s why I don’t upload nudes on Grindr
Wouldn’t you say we’re perfect for each other
we deserve a maisonette in the suburb, we’d take turns vacuuming the carpet
You’d write your books and by 7 I’d set the table
for each other let’s be someone’s dreams, marooned forever outside dailiness
Love makes Aschenbach realize how much he neglected his looks
his intelligence made him assume beauty was an unnecessary capital
Translators differ on Aschenbach’s lipstick shade
Appelbaum and Heim: raspberry, Luke: cherry, Lowe-Porter: strawberry
The point is he gets a horrible makeover, the kind you never see in rom-coms
the point is it gives him enough hope to magnify the obligatory disaster
My role models are either abject homosexuals or doomed women
why don’t you ask yourself what that reveals about you
Walking into a room I pretend my hand isn’t mine and turn on the light
then recoil in dismay at my undisguised face, puzzle that one out
Aschenbach concludes his hope by eating lukewarm strawberries
he continues to stare longingly at the water before the epidemic bests him
Because hope has turned me into a bat inside a cave, I make screeching noises
still essentially alone though the acoustics are much better
The one time I asked about your girlfriend after your fourth lonkero
you said, Sometimes you wake up next to a person and wonder why you’re there
I’ve never experienced the luxury of being so bored you have no choice but to stick it out
this is a hint, Ben
Meanwhile I’m always dishonorable from a distance you won’t bridge
poets can’t soar upward, only commit extravagances, says Mann
And in the end hunger for a new naïveté, the severity of wanting only the feeling itself
for encouragement I curate a Spotify playlist of pathetic ballads
I run errands in Cubao and in my ears everyone shuffles to it as we do fear in this city
I want to keep sighing your name while I’m in the back of a Grab
Today I think about newly elected senators and keep all the doors locked
a man who’s beside himself, says Mann, dreads becoming himself again
You’ve moved to Bulgaria, no longer sober you go drinking with the ballet dancers
are you finally single again, why haven’t you declared your intentions
Just so Tadzio remains untouched by the plague and the worshipper’s fearful awe
Aschenbach considers telling the boy’s mother to flee Venice
In Aschenbach’s dreams his fear is a brutally insistent flute
when a heavenly VO shouts, The foreign god, Mann drops a brick into a beaker of water
A gigantic wooden dick stands in a field, worshipped by satyrs
this dream is an orgy or a buffet or yet another unsubtle contrivance
In my mind Gloucestershire is your neighbors climbing up the roofs of their semi-detached
it’s 2007 and being a teenager with drug issues, you go back down for your bass
But a three-foot flood’s just another August afternoon to us
and by us, naturally I don’t include you
I pretend to be so used to horror I make off-color jokes about it, that’s my aging persona
like Mariah I contort my boxy body into sultry poses
I fold a frozen lake into my luggage before separately we leave, your face in sleep too
out of your lyric curtness I engineer elegiac silences, slightly lurid and regretful
Smooth-skinned boys grabbing onto he-goats, Aschenbach’s dreams are Nick Joaquin dreams
the boys goad the goats, goad being a phallic object
For Joaquin smooth skin isn’t so much an indicator of youth as a given
you already know this, you being you, you having touched me
Our post-coital talk would’ve covered random topics
the Hollywood starlet who honey-trapped the former president and then survived
In the recording you could hear Marcos begging for a blowjob
reason gives way to violence, the headboard bangs against the wall
Dovie Beams wipes the saliva off her underboob, he asks her if she enjoyed it
no matter how white you are there’s only one answer to a dictator
Eventually he tires of her and she wouldn’t have it
she takes the tenderness in his letters and builds a press conference out of it
In her final years she has a golden pool installed in her Beverly Hills home
she dies free of him on the eve of Rizal’s death anniversary
Mann says art is a war, a struggle people can’t keep up for very long
I hope for the rest of my life to be as privileged
Everywhere are cigarette butts wedged between cobblestones
I scuttle past streets that smell of piss and I’m flung to Manila with you, would this city do
In Berlin you’d be the best person to keep drinking dinner with
you know I’m the second funniest me I’d ever be when I’m being passive-aggressive
I worry about the Philippine fishing boat rammed by a Chinese vessel
then get distracted by my hair collecting on the shower grate
I want to fly out to where you are, gallivant, order unpronounceable drinks
nothing but a backpack with underwear, mouthwash, your books as proofs of devotion
But as you know I’m a middle-middle-class citizen of a poor country
between you and me lie a hundred-dollar visa fee and a plane ticket
Spontaneity is a gift of the lucky
I have to retreat back into my low-cost longings
I show Jov a video of you singing Like a Virgin
I cover my mouth when he says, The British have bad teeth, no
Sir Thomas Rich’s School added a swimming pool in 1966
the potted history of your school says it was closed in the ‘80s but reopened in 1995
Adorably chubby at three, you know I could’ve wanted a brother like you then
I could’ve been the perfect sibling, my sisters would swear by it
You got yourself a writing career at 17, fuck higher learning
at first I went straight to envy, now I wonder what it says about your inner life
You showed me your KS5 band covering The Pogues, thank god you outgrew that phase
instead you’re always in a puffer jacket, through my window you can hear These Days
I encourage my self-absorption, I’m silly enough to think it makes me interesting
I make obsequious bows to apologize to the world and my betters
I have to open another website to figure out what potted means
though I’m not dumb I don’t know English
Aschenbach knows his last few days are his last days
the city government disposes of the sick, each one floating away like The Lady of Shalott
Professing love to someone who says it too easily is the second most exciting carnival ride
impertinent to stop a man who’s about to jump into a river, says Wilde
I deal with chronic depression through pathological self-mythologizing
or I sleep a lot, watch the same series until I’ve memorized the slayer’s quips
I don’t ask but I wonder if you’re still somewhat hot
if I press your jacket to my nose are you still your special odor
Wherever you are, come back from the bottle shop, shake the snow off your boots
out of your stories I’ve built a house we wouldn’t want out of
Don’t you like editing your sentences until they’re basically just verbs
I have so many verbs to give and so smash three plates, startle a cat for emphasis
My love is true as a Ponzi scheme and I’m made of defense mechanisms
but let me be the most compelling version of myself with you
Love’s a wheel rolling downhill, a poet says, back when jeepneys were a new invention
she was right, fresh tread marks decorate my cheek
Mann offloads his gay shame onto his characters, makes the kyphotic music lover kill himself
ambition was his antidote to self-disgust
I write long poems about shame, they’re decent-sized flats
if enough people tell me how brave I’ve been I’d at least have use for it
Since I was 14 it’s been my dream to be the person someone masturbates to
I touch myself to you going through the same arc of lust and remorse
I consider being funny but I only bring it out
when my kindness, an offshoot of my need to be universally liked, proves ineffective
What is the cure for shame, my shame indisputable as the mole on my nose
I’m one of my lesser faces, Mann excised his by disfiguring Aschenbach
I check in on him, collapsing on the beach
and having depended on him for guidance, of course I end up thinking, Why not
After years of erotic austerity comes abandon, in Mann as in Freud this means oblivion
punishment unretractable as academic tenure
Before it arrives Mann finally calls Aschenbach delusional
with Apollonian arrogance the author reasserts his moral ascendancy
And the world enters a new politeness, shame discarded like last millennium’s plastics
like the unlicensed gondolier in chapter three, I try accepting disappearance
Ben, though I’m afraid of living as myself I don’t want to be unafraid
Mark Anthony Cayanan is from the Philippines. They obtained an MFA from the University of Wisconsin in Madison and are a PhD candidate at the University of Adelaide. Among their publications are the poetry books Narcissus (Ateneo de Manila UP, 2011) and Except you enthrall me (U of the Philippines P, 2013). Recent work has appeared in Foglifter, The Spectacle, Crab Orchard Review, Dreginald, and Lana Turner. A recipient of fellowships to Civitella Ranieri and Villa Sarkia, they teach literature and creative writing at the Ateneo de Manila University.
