May iniisip ka?
Oo.
Ano?
Ayaw kong sabihin. Baka magkatotoo.
Dahil makulit ka
Kilala kita. Oo, ikaw 'yun: Nagkasalubong na tayo minsan, sa LRT, sa Gotohan, sa kanto ng Aurora at Katipunan. Nagkatinginan tayo. Hindi mo ako kinausap, pero alam ko, nakilala mo rin ako. Kaya ka narito, di ba? Para sabihing, Oo, oo, ikaw nga 'yun. Naaalala kita.
na, mula noong 24 Enero, 2006, ang nakitambay dito
Orca
Thursday, August 26, 2010
We got to the shore before dawn. From the water's surface some hidden thing risked our sight, fascinated, enormous. Few noticed. I sat by the slope of a dune, its cheek firm, cold with weather. The creature sunk and faded, anointed by the gray water. Perhaps it saw me. There are sometimes these moments. Sight, then silence. The coarseness of sand on my palm, the glint of a body, wet and half-lit. The steady throb of two hearts, one heavier than the other. I am not alone, only human.
Juan dela Cruz Confesses to His Neighbor, the Dog Owner
This is how it happened: It was a quarter past six and your dog was sleeping. I killed it. Let's not make a story out of this. Now that I'm a murderer, let me unburden myself of the baggage of symbolism: this frayed hat, this crooked cane. I am Juan dela Cruz, killer of dogs. Years from now only you will remember, and even then you will remember only your grief. Maybe even just part of it. Perhaps it was dusk, you might say, or was it dawn? You will remember the heavy light graying the blood on the pavement. You will remember how you asked me, Why? I tell you, the world is a violent, violent place. Death happens and it happened. I am as human as any murderer can be, and I pray that you will find some comfort in the fact that I would have sobbed as you did, were it you who killed my dog, if I had one. Why? I am a man and I killed your dog. There is no story behind this. There is only the animal urge, the primal moment, and this confession, which saves no one. Not me, not your dog, not you or those like you who hunger for answers, but are met only with that howl, that gurgle, that cruel crescendo, that silence.
2.
I Suppose
There are those who find comfort in repetition. And then there are those like me, who find no comfort in it but go on anyway, trial and error and error and error over and over until my fingers turn to slivers of meat and bone. Somewhere a slingshot held taut but targetless, a stone resigned to aimlessness, homing in on something not quite nameable. Perhaps this is what labor means, the common, endless turning, the emulation of seasons, a tree bearing fruit and a fruit falling to earth and rotting, then becoming a tree again. The world does not get tired even when it should, and there is little comfort in knowing that this is the way it's always been, this is the way it's supposed to be, this is the way it's supposed to be.
3.
Basorexia
Why are you so far away, said she, said the song, said St. Christina the Astonishing as God blew ashes across her face, or was it the wind dragging the smell of burnt meat through her medieval town the way the smell of burnt meat drags through a medieval town. Like a Pentium-age barbecue wafting through a Pentium-age town, only this time there's no beef, no kid bursting bubble-wrap beneath the stairs, no anorexic coed flashing her tits as she would on Mardi gras, another day for some porn to be made. But this isn't a barbecue. This isn't suburban. There isn't your hazel-eyed junkie snorting coke by the shed. This is the Third World with its midgets crooning While My Guitar Gently Weeps, this is your tattooed bagman stepping on dog crap and walking on, this is knife-against-your-rib close quarter combat, compadre. No creme brulee for you, only overripe avocados swimming in cheap, expired condensada. This is the latent energy of four centuries worth of warlocks flailing inside your insanely beating heart. Hear them chanting. Hear their shrill kundimans expiring, their small bodies shivering by the cheek of a mountain. Kundiman is the word for the opposite of if ever, the if still dangling like some persistent tropical fruit. If never. Qualtagh is the word for the first person you meet when you step out your brownstone apartment in some other part of the world, only here it sounds like something someone would kill for, like a few wet bills crouched inside a faux leather wallet, like a rusty coin, like where the fuck are you on my tongue, why are you so far away wherever, what the fuck does it matter, it doesn't. In a church in Ankara the bells toll for a bearded God glaring down a six-year old in short pants. I'm not there. I'm here while ding-dong and the pastor clears his throat. Ding-dong and could I wipe the static from your lips. Ding-dong and Antiscians is the word for people on opposite sides of the equator, their shadows leaning north, leaning south, their fingertips bright, burning, basorexic.
4.
Breakage
June is water, the ruthlessness of monsoons, wild, wild winds. On and on the roads roll on, dust giving way to an imaginary chrome. I walk knowing the few things that last outlast even me. Sometimes I spot the carcass of a bird heavy with rain, a cat licking away grime from feather, feeding. Sometimes a fruit decayed from summer peeking from beneath a soft wound of leaves. Solemnly the world turns on its axis, the clouds yield and return, and over and over again the seasons give way to an almost sudden rust. The weather waits for no one. There must be a reason for this that we must live our lives looking up, thirsting, straining to find out.
Poetry with lilies can’t stop tanks. Neither can poetry with tanks. This much is true. Here is more or less how it happens. You sit at your desk to write a poem about lilies and a clip of 9mm’s is emptied into the chest of a mother in Zamboanga. Her name was Hamira. I sit at my desk to write a poem about tanks and a backhoe in Ampatuan crushes the spines of 57 -- I am trying to find another word for bodies. The task of poetry is to never run out of words. This is more or less how it happens: I find another word for bodies and Hamira remains dead. Her son was with her when she was shot. I didn’t catch his name. I don’t know if he died. Perhaps he placed lilies on his mother’s grave. Perhaps he was buried beside her. One word for lily is enough. There is enough beauty in flowers. I want to find beauty in sufffering. I want to fail.
We believed stories never died. Our songs were our dreams retold. Sometimes we woke up screaming. Our hearts would spill from our throats like jagged-edged pebbles. We thought silence was a virtue. When our children cried we fed them from our hands. Home was that place no one else claimed as their own. We chanted at our bamboo walls. We spilt the blood of goats and prayed only for rain. We hungered only when we slept. When we thirsted we knelt by the river. The water slipped through our fingers like a story, never ending. We believed something came after dying. We died. We fought back.
This is a church and the faithful are singing. Across the aisles their voices leave a trail visible only to those who see without straining. What music is is rising, a yielding to some gravity greater than that which grounds us. The stones know this. If only they had ears they would long as I do. If only they had fists they would know how a hand is defined by its unclenching. By opening. Some day listening will save the world. What music is is five fingers pointed outward. A palm facing skyward. Asking for nothing. Receiving.
Each star a rung, night comes down the spiral staircase of the evening. The breeze passes by so very close as if someone just happened to speak of love. In the courtyard, the trees are absorbed refugees embroidering maps of return on the sky. On the roof, the moon - lovingly, generously - is turning the stars into a dust of sheen. From every corner, dark-green shadows, in ripples, come towards me. At any moment they may break over me, like the waves of pain each time I remember this separation from my lover.
This thought keeps consoling me: though tyrants may command that lamps be smashed in rooms where lovers are destined to meet, they cannot snuff out the moon, so today, nor tomorrow, no tyranny will succeed, no poison of torture make me bitter, if just one evening in prison can be so strangely sweet, if just one moment anywhere on this earth.
English Translation By Agha Shahid Ali
2.
When Autumn Came
This is the way that autumn came to the trees: it stripped them down to the skin, left their ebony bodies naked. It shook out their hearts, the yellow leaves, scattered them over the ground. Anyone could trample them out of shape undisturbed by a single moan of protest.
The birds that herald dreams were exiled from their song, each voice torn out of its throat. They dropped into the dust even before the hunter strung his bow.
Oh, God of May have mercy. Bless these withered bodies with the passion of your resurrection; make their dead veins flow with blood again.
Give some tree the gift of green again. Let one bird sing.
We find out the heart only by dismantling what the heart knows. By redefining the morning, we find a morning that comes just after darkness. We can break through marriage into marriage. By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond affection and wade mouth-deep into love. We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars. But going back toward childhood will not help. The village is not better than Pittsburgh. Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh. Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound of raccoon tongues licking the inside walls of the garbage tub is more than the stir of them in the muck of the garbage. Love is not enough. We die and are put into the earth forever. We should insist while there is still time. We must eat through the wildness of her sweet body already in our bed to reach the body within that body.
2.
Rain
Suddenly this defeat. This rain. The blues gone gray And the browns gone gray And yellow A terrible amber. In the cold streets Your warm body. In whatever room Your warm body. Among all the people Your absence The people who are always Not you.
3.
Failing and Flying
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew. It’s the same when love comes to an end, or the marriage fails and people say they knew it was a mistake, that everybody said it would never work. That she was old enough to know better. But anything worth doing is worth doing badly. Like being there by that summer ocean on the other side of the island while love was fading out of her, the stars burning so extravagantly those nights that anyone could tell you they would never last. Every morning she was asleep in my bed like a visitation, the gentleness in her like antelope standing in the dawn mist. Each afternoon I watched her coming back through the hot stony field after swimming, the sea light behind her and the huge sky on the other side of that. Listened to her while we ate lunch. How can they say the marriage failed? Like the people who came back from Provence (when it was Provence) and said it was pretty but the food was greasy. I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell, but just coming to the end of his triumph
4.
The Forgotten Dialect Of The Heart
How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say, God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according to which nation. French has no word for home, and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people in northern India is dying out because their ancient tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost vocabularies that might express some of what we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would finally explain why the couples on their tombs are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated, they seemed to be business records. But what if they are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light. O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper, as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind's labor. Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script is not laguage but a map. What we feel most has no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds.
5.
And an excerpt from an interview:
"...Much of postmodern poetry has no significance at all. Unless you like puzzles. Unless you can figure out what the thing is about. The point is not to mystify the reader but to trick the reader into feeling something, knowing something. And this whole absurdity about doubting the "I" in poetry I don't understand at all. The "I" is the source of communication of things that matter. At least, that's what I feel. I want to trust the speaker of the poem. It's like biting into gold, to see if it's true metal. Poets work by insight, not by cleverness. If not through inspiration, then through intuition. Not by mechanics or examining the nature of the way someone seeing something encounters something. In much postmodern poetry the eyeball follows a certain little trail and then translates what it sees back into something else, proclaiming then, "Yes that is a dog." What the hell good is that? If you're scientifically inclined, it's wonderful. It's an extraordinary science of cognition, but it's nothing that has anything to do with my life emotionally, and if it's not emotional what does it offer? It can offer beauty, perhaps, if you're interested in that. It's nice, but it's not going to change your life. Telling a story is very nice, but unless the thing, the novel, the short story does something to you as a person, then it's just another artifact....
"I believe we are made by art, art that matters. Not what's ingenious, clever, or hard to read. Not a mystery puzzle. I think if a poem doesn't put emotional pressure on me, I don't feel uncomfortable in the sense of feeling more than I can feel, understanding more than I can understand, loving more than I am able to be in love. Real poetry enables me for that."
taking a break from ermitanyo mode to clear something up
Thursday, April 09, 2009
1.
Basketball buddy and good friend James had something to say about Mar Roxas' TV spot, the one with the pedicabs, and I'd have to admit that I've been hearing much the same thing from friends. So I'm taking a short break from my poetry-obsessed-ermitanyo mode to repost my reply to James' entry-- because I'm thinking that a lot of you might share his sentiments, and that you'd appreciate it if you heard something from me (or Kapi or anyone else from our camp) about this matter.
James had this to say about it:
"So it is with a tinge of disappointment that I now have to bear with his TV ad, Padyakeros. Firstly, because it is way too early for political ads. Secondly, because it is almost a blatant pandering to the poor. There are dignified ways to make a statement, and this is not one of them. It almost insults the intelligence. I say almost only because I want to believe this is a temporary setback."
And here's my comment to his post:
"hey james. i work for mar too-- and yeah we've been getting some flak because of the ad. we could get a beer or something so we (kapi and myself and the rest of the beer-loving cluster of our team) could explain things to you more clearly, but really, man, kami na nga ang nahuli na magkaroon ng ganitong media push. so it's not too early, actually-- some would say that it's a bit late.
"and about the blatant pandering to the poor, well, i'd have to say it's only pandering if the guy didn't really feel that way, if he didn't realy sympathize with them. and who's to say what pandering is, anyway? the ad was really just a more affective way of saying that all the issues and programs that mar has fought for-- cheaper medicines, educational reform, tax relief, transparency and accountability in government-- all of these mean one thing: mar wants to fix the system so that the poor have an equal chance at upward mobility as the rest of us have. i.e., it means that mar cares for the poor. it's not an insult to anyone's intelligence, not if we come to terms with the idea that there is no such thing as "a more intelligent way of looking at things." some people-- the more educated (i.e., those who can afford an education, i.e., the not-so-poor, i.e., us) -- would want bullet points of laws passed, programs of government, etc, while others subscribe to a more affective mode of rationality. meaning-- and i'd have to say this even at the risk of being accused of pandering and insulting the intelligence of the poor-- they really do look at things differently, and in terms of communications, they really do search for different things from candidates-- character and heart more than platforms and level of intellect, actually.
my point is that "may puso" counts as much-- more, actually, in terms of the sheer number of voters who look for it-- as "competent" and "not corrupt." mar has proven his competence. he's just about the straightest arrow in the business. having an ad that shows he has heart wouldn't take anything away from those qualities of his. so maybe it's about time that that "may puso" aspect is played up.
still, beer. nasa cubao lang kami. mogwai sometime?
2.
I've been revising some old poems of mine, and I like how this one turned out:
Cure
“…They throw them on their backs, stick a gag in their months to keep it open, then proceed to fill them with water till they cannot hold more. Then they get on them, and a sudden pressure on the stomach and chest forces the water out again. I guess it must cause excruciating agony.”
- from a statement of an American officer
published in the Springfield Republican, 25 April 1900
In search of secrets, you imagine them
tearing his chest open and finding
only water. On the page his eyes
are a century apart from yours.
You imagine his lungs swollen, pale as if bleached.
They poured and poured until the native
--until when? Until he was cured of his secrets?
They heard nothing but some animal, howling.
Sinunog nila ang parang. Ginapas nila nang tila
--stalks. They cut his brothers down like stalks.
There is so much time to search for words.
So much water in your country.
Dalawang gabi akong hindi nakatulog
nang una akong nakapatay ng kaaway.
Marahil dahil sa tuwa. This is the truth.
His body lying on the page like a puddle
of secrets, the names of his spies
pouring unto the soil, the strength
of his numbers dissolving into his blood.
You imagine yourself cleansed,
as if betrayed by thirst, or maybe
the weightlessness of drowning.
There is nothing more to say.
You are only some animal, howling.
3.
Rushing some deadlines before Sunday-- off to Baguio for the workshop. It promises to be a very interesting week, I can tell you that. Back to ermitanyo mode muna.
Thinking of a child soon to be born, I hunch down among friendly sand grains.... The sand grains love a worried man-- they love whatever lives without force, a young girl who looks out over her life, alone, with no map, no horse, a white dress on. The sand grains love whatever is not rushing blindly forward, the mole blinking at the door of his crumbly mole Vatican, and the salmon far out at sea that senses in its gills the Oregon waters crashing down. Something loves even this planet, abandoned here at the edge of the galaxy, and loves the child who floats inside the Pacific of the womb, near the walls, feeling the breakers roaring.
(from What have I ever lost by dying?: Collected prose poems. Harper Collins Publishers, 1992.)
