July 2010/ Brad Bucklin

Bird's Eye reView: poetry from a different perspective

July 2010/ Brad Bucklin

A Drive Through Manila

The dark windows of Manila streets

are covered in clouds of noise.

The women, white masked from recognition,

from the grim dirt and stink,

move along as western as possible in this

third world - where even new buildings

look unkempt and ancient.

There seems to be no paint here,

nothing but the gray,

the dark gray, the soiled gray,

the gray of years, the gray of apathy,

the gray of poverty.

You can slice the air with your hand,

take a piece of it home in a bag.

The soot, the black that builds on skin and in lungs.

Imagine worse then L.A.

L.A. is polite and well kept by comparison,

this is dark and heavy, on walls, on unformed lives;

lives ruled by ritual, designed to make all things bearable.

A worship of heat, and gossip.

Here where children play amid the waste of a nation.

A small boy comes to the car to beg,

perhaps he is 6 or 7.

He does not ask for much,

centimes that are worthless,

his life a small thing.

He is on every corner;

With curtains his eyes have on.

his face a window, his own view of the world,

this is all he knows:

The dark streets, dotted with white masks,

and the gray -

they scream his anonymity.

Brad M. Bucklin received a Bachelors Degree in English and Theatre from Windham College where he studied with John Irving. After moving to Los Angeles at 25, he worked as an actor for a number of years on such shows as "One Day At A Time," "Waverly Wonders," "Facts of Life," "Days of Our Lives" "Picket Fences" and in films that included "World War III," "Wavelength" "No Place to Hide" and more. He is a credited writer for "The Wedding Channel," and his stories have been published in the "Brentwood Bla Bla," "Anemone," "Windham Free Press." His poems have appeared in "Autumn Leaves," "Bijou Poetry Review," and "Short Story.”