That wild, wild Christmas ride, swerving from the road to Manila,
anchored by the flagging Catholic inscriptions that crisscross
the reflective metal like carols sung to oneself in traffic . . .

Sepulchral breezes waft from the anxious jungle
to bob each pygmy Pegasus corralled on puzzled chrome fenders,
to rock each horse like some rococo Rudolph.
Driven by a bold-faced tsuper, member of the Bon Vivant Brotherhood,
the jeepney jerks forward on the clever expenditures of souped-up horsepower.

Behind his back, his passengers grip their knees
on their tiny bit of bench and stare at the signs and slogans,
the holy pictures tacked up,
the rosary beads that swing crazily at the corners.

Six million souls squat before this careful micro-altar of Mary,
its cardboard garlanded with dried and artificial flowers
that glow with electric blue, and yellow,
and shiver in the diesel winds,
and die on the overlook of downturned eyes.

What gifts are brought in this sleigh festooned
with antennae and mud flaps! Left-turning lovers, cremated sky,
and frozen jeeprox, to fill the running stockings of voided hearts
like ashes and switches lain in a shallow well.

And this Charon, this tSuperman,
who gathers and delivers in his spitefully-ornamented chariot
with manic abandon as a matter of recourse,
who will taxi him out of irony and back to the seven thousand
honest islands of palm that wait along alternate routes?

Will he ever lose his sense of direction,
be blown from Manila on gales of mix-mix,
past the synthetic holy-trees of bristling bamboo,
into the jungle, to a pulsing, verdant merry Christmas?