Firebrand of Christmas Past

saw jv, firebrand of christmas past, in gma7 debate. what were they debating about? ahhh... issues immortal. unresolved. alive. cyclical. repetitive.
.
issues: "IS" -- ever present. in historical present-tense. won't go away. stuck with this country. stuck on you and me.

"issues" is gloriagate, the economy, juetenggate, poverty, colgate, corruption, tollgate, trapo politics, gate5, gate6.... ad infinitum. gate7...ad nauseam. *yawn*. sleepy. *hikab*

if Lean wuz around, would he be in gma debate? ahhh... would have loved to watch the lanky tibak spill out his doonesbury tunes on cam. pero antok na nga ako eh.

tomorrow morning, i have to face and solve a more pressing issue: my drainage sucks!

Tagalog Songs Last Heard Over the Internet, '99

a collection of poems (anthology, if I may), that forms part of the author's entry to the 1999 Palanca (English Poetry category). Most poems published in this blog  first saw print on cigarette foils and undelivered leaflets in the '80's -- I was freeverse-ing then, at no cost, so to speak. 


i.
Between Us Stands an Ampersand

between us is "&"... a shameless noun, a motionless verb, a hopeless adjective -- unreliable connective; impossible infinitive.

.
tight too definite yet undefined as where infinity is, this bold character that prides itself with elegant poise somehow stares at some point toward ignominy. wavering though to a duality of set definition, it forces loose affiliation of entities lost and found, or of particulars maybe something, maybe nothing.

.

this ampersand of anybody's poetry, this character of anyone's temperament packs a principle of assured uncertainty, a paradox that sneaks into empty spaces of forged connection.

.

i never gifted me with an ampersand or even toyed with one; 'twas only when a rush of pulsating lyrics that caught the accident of my fingerprints did i peek through a crack in an absent caret of a poetess32 (or was it a bygone tilde of 32 poets?) -- then saw this ampersand from without like the "S" of a Krypton man slowly taking flight to the long end of my line.

.

this ampersand not mine i could lend to no one. a character on its own freedom to stay or courage to abandon, will leave entities alone unconnected, then in its place perhaps shall the lowly ellipsis takes shape.

.

but what to do with this connection linked by a stray ampersand -- the answer i lost in verses of her then&now. we shall never find it in whitespaces of our phrases; we'll never be able to form it out of consolations poetry rewards to our starved souls.

.

hence, if only to remind us the unpredictability of this ideograph, let the law of the ellipsis silently creep into our unguarded space and let loose a staccato of dots rendering our connection to open end.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

.

ii.

Secrets of a Laundryman

.

before my washing machine was

this Euterpe of my all-purpose lyrics,

supposed drycleaner for my soul,

from whose handwash sure rises

a mountain of suds

cleansing me of my angst,

cleansing me of sins albeit

for a moment fleeting,

albeit for nothing.

.

so often they are muses

these little secrets of laundrymen.

.

what my washing machine reveals

now are secrets of whirling waters:

coffee-stained overalls that stood

the rigors of minimumwage weeks,

and yes, underwears unsoiled

by the touch of any of Mnemosyne's daughters

-- muses and little secrets of unclothed men.

.

waltzing with my washing machine

i dip my socks in whirling waters

and learn the fractals behind the swirls

of dirts in the absence of an all-purpose

muse of detergents,

then down the drain i let flow

these little secrets of Mnemosyne's tenth.

<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

.

iii.

Open End

.

only us can end this mass production of repetitions.

captives as we are in this circle of supply and debunk

must we chain ourselves to the last of our nouns?

polemics is luxury to us observant of the failed economics

of defiant connectives.

only us can stop this monotony of "we".

.

sige pa... versify me.

<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>

.

iv.

Kundiman

open-ended rhythm pulsating to the beat of pain,

how am i to spin tales for a quiet refrain.

dry tune sweeps across my nursery door,

only you could quench my thirst for metaphors.

easily losing myself to the rhythm of my lines,

i look back and lose sight of the roots of our rhymes.

halfway maybe to where i'd write,

yet halfway still from where i cried.

.

i wrestle with the myth of my own redemption

i see no justice to a disquieting reason.

shattering notes drumbeat to a shuttering season,

the cold seeps through i yell for attention.

halfway maybe from where i lied,

yet halfway still to where i'd die.

.

child of a wild mind, child of my freedom,

i'll keep you shackled in the dark

of my closeted heart.

child of the wild, child of my sunrise,

lady of the moon, woman of mine eyes.

am halfway maybe to who you are

and a highway farther from who i am.

Voice of the Anti-Nowhere League

.
Whispered Verses on Screaming Walls

ilang libong ulit na kitang pinaslang sa aking gunita
paulitulit ka pa ring nabubuhay sa aking mga tula.

the birthday i first counted my years
my infantile fingers flashed not the many
spaghetti paper plates mother said she kept for me,
but the few times i saw his gnawing presence
gripped by the sunday times sundays he lurched
on his narra sofa that always narrowed down on me.

fiesta photographs in baptismal album
reveal no bouncing baby no overweight black&white baby
mother swore she dazzledanced to the santo of my day.

ilang ulit ka ng pinaslang ng aking mga tula
muli't muli'y bumabangon ka sa gulanit kong gunita.

confusion i could not define
why i raged against fatso falsities
tagged on me when i was not.
yet mother insisted i was but wasn't me.

and it was i who was quick to fight
for sunday times sunday comicstrips
on mondays that he is gone,
such that the phantom becomes me becomes
tarzan becomes me becomes nancy
becomes the little child fatso
that really wasn't me.

maraming ulit ko nang tinula
ang kamatayan mong sa alaala 
ay sa malamig kong luha kinatha.
narito ka pa narito ka pa.

i learned to picturepuzzle
what he was when he was not
home on his narra sofa.
i learned to wordpuzzle
what his tongue would lash out
while my brains would squirm out
every little pain everylittlepain
from his weekendbelt and sundaywhippings.

i lie on my face on his narra sofa
praying by sweat and tears and
spits and screams that
fridays shouldn't have nights
saturdays mustn't come
sundays should be mine alone
with my sunday times sunday cartoon.

kinatha kita nang paulitulit
sa kamatayan ng luma kong tula
bakit kailangan mong magbalik
sa mga butil ng luha kong nanlalamig.

scarred innocence i thought
drugged verses of my youth had effaced,
the midnightsongs he threw out of my unlit
potsmokefilled rock&roll room.
he possessed me but not my hurts.
my memory his property.
my verses he dismissed.
he never felt my pains.

the morning i walked away with a knapsack of dreams
i raged my youth against days&nights of uncertainties.
my clenched fists were never his.
he will hear no songs behind the lyrics.


<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Rebel Nowhere


Pasig east could only be your birthplace.
mahjonged slums cradle of cathecist gangs
rock and drugs, theatre of lumpen wars
working class dreams in marijuana themes.


Nextdoor issues echo in hi-fi stereos.
Dyed hairs, skin heads, manicured nails
canned-goods midnight raids of corner stores
asphalted jams blare hymns of juvenile rhymes


no words underscored, no sketches scrawled,
little secrets graffitied on toilet walls


announce certainty of drugged destiny.
Persistence of a whitewashed past
a graveyard of dreams hence arise.
Night time stalks, a zombie writes.

Buting On My Mind

.i. Portologo
Putting up an email group for our grade school class brings nostalgic streaks traveling down my old village, as digging up memories of old Buting outside the elementary school fence leads me away from Pupu, Babylin and Lani, the late Tipos Gunay and cousin Jun Ipe (they who taught me the abc's of smoking), and Bitoy Adriano, Boy Lequin and Jun Bakla, my nearest neighbors, my first playmates outside home.

Ironically, I entered first grade (with Lito Lagsob) not in Buting, but in the kabayanan of Pasig, in an all-boys catholic school popularly known as the "kumbento".

Was I to become a priest? I asked my grannie Inang Beatriz once in my pre-school years. She with the toothless grin, said yes, laughing. And it came to pass that my first day in school was kind of stressful, if not traumatic: I saluted my teacher, Miss Tuazon, when my name was called: Present!

The same stress, I figure, that gripped me everytime Inang Beatriz dragged me to her afternoon escapades with Ka Kontsing and Nana Liria and other grannies and manangs in Buting -- they made up a happy bunch of catholic mandarasal (prayer group), replete with their scapulars, medals and icons, and their ever-present pamaypay -- who would tirelessly recite the Litany in Latin, the Lord's Prayer and Hail Mary's in Tagalog, in choral blend of voices, sighs and sobs. That prayerful bunch who fondly and teasingly called me: Portologo.

And who was Portologo? It'd be past my teen years when I learned Portologo was a character in a Filipino komiks (or was it Liwayway?), and based on the verbal teasings of the mandarasals, this I could only wildly guess: Maybe Portologo was a creation of Francisco V. Coching, a pre-war komiks novelist/ illustrator and once a longtime Buting resident.

I could only imagine how this komiks character appeared in old storyboards: he was either a chubby toddler with tummy protruding out of his slightly raised striped t-shirt, nose a-running, tongue a-wagging, with dyolens in hand; or, he could have been a Kenkoy-like probinsyano, with loose trousers and long sleeve shirt, oversized shoes, and a mustache to boot.

Whatever! "Portologo" was fiction. Then I was a toddler. I was "Bugoy" to some, specifically to Nanang Tomasa, who said she picked up the monicker likening me to a would-be  gradeschool classmate, Bogie Ison, who, as a child was said to be equally chubby as this totoy.

But then, yes, I was also Portologo.

ii. Two Deaths
i.
Weakened by my own fears,
I heard the morning hysterics
of a girl bereaved,
outscreaming the banner news of the day:

Mother is dead.

My thoughts devoid of tears,
echoed against the mosquitero walls
humming lullabyes of one sunrise:
I, awake, cradled past in the bliss
of a dead womb, watched mysteries of orphaned
dawns unravel slowly to a twilight birth
of a frightened youth
creeping away to a dark
somewhere.

ii.
Unread in his eulogy for the dead
were prayers to bury his own guilt;
his eyes, evasive of glossy reflection
from a casket shooting at his face,
lost focus on one untriumphant difference
between his truth and a dead man's dreams.

He, curling up nouns, piecing up memories
only he can recall
now recites stories he should have written before,
unconsciously yet he begs for critiques
his audience prepares to write:
as gossip news,
as editorial pieces,
maybe as verses.

Maybe like this.

But none was ever transcribed,
no words in black duplicated voiceprints
of the rites of grief;
the curtains fell even before the clock ticked
to the mourning show
of strange characters lost in shuffled cards
and dripping beers.

In my father's wake, rituals got interred first.


iii. Knights of the Urbanized Ube

We were tambays on that spot we called Balisawsaw in Santos street . Facing the highly fenced Buting elementary school, we would idle away the latemorning hours with cigarrette smoke and ringing laughters while waiting for lunch. We would see our mothers picking up veggies from the big table at ka Luding's store, as we try to snoop at the big tsismis of the day from their whispered conversations. Day in and day out, we were the tambay ng balisawsaw.

Facing the school is actually facing the huge mango tree claimed by Ka Laloy, then a 70-ish retiree, father to the kapitan, lolo to Jun Tanangco. The late ka Laloy: published poet.

Ka Laloy's poems, also printed on whitewashed tin plates, published and hanged upon trees that adorned his yard -- a publication that extended to the Balisawaw tambayan. Some poetic lines I could now barely recall: "... huwag mong apihin at sugat-sugatan/ ang naritong mangga na mahal sa buhay."

The poet indeed bared his soul. Unfortunately, not only his poems encroached on our tambayan, his ube cassava plant did, too.

As Ka Laloy tirelessly nurtured it day in and day out, the cassava for sure have taken roots deep into the soil, as it was figuratively rooted deep into the old poet's soul. But the ruthless balisawsaw tambays were oblivious to any gardening endeavor, nor did they care if those nailed poems did mirror the old man's poetic suffering. What we knew then was: the withering leaves of the ube cassava announced a bulging meryenda a la halaya underneath!

Tambays then turned into black knights, raiders of a garden plot, when pitched darkness concealed even the September moon. It was quick. Dried leaves were left barely hanging on the vine, the burglars' prints thus erased.

It was a katuwaang-barkada so perfect that the old poet-gardener continued to nurture that small plot that encroached on the balisawsaw tambayan, day in and day out.

Until....

Intermission

.
Only now I learned that intermission is a gap
that fills nothing in a one-act play,
an empty space in time

forefeited to actors in rehearse of roles,

as if space is a stage and scenes are deadwoven
in time. The curtain has to wait, yes,
but why a dreary wait for an image

of white?

Picture us actors in a play continuum,
a lovers' one act, mounted on a stage of cliches
-- and ask ourselves:

do we need gaps?

Distance deduced to intermission is space
unbearable, where time is void and moments
are short breaths in futile attempts

to stop a lonely bleeding
and bloody longing.

Now, I am fast learning the act of dying.

Wednesday. Dawn

"i prayed for metaphors.  god stuck a poetess in my heart.  i bleed."

So goes the last of my awkward prose posted in late 2003.

Am not sure if I have stopped bleeding, but a dull pain persists everytime I key in words and characters that threaten to make one more awkward line. And I'm still angry.

But is it not what the poetess(?) claimed that I thrive on? Anger?

I've kept my silence since. But my mind is angry as my heart is pained. I must keep writing though to find the lost Characters and wandering Bytes the wily Weatherman threw to the cyber wind. Where they landed am not sure.

Blogging might help me retrieve them back.
.
Ah... my first attempt.