The Other Continent

The sound. It is painful here.

The gray world turns ice to ice.

Rain from the sky fall hard as stones

and cluster over the ocean,

silvering with cold white.

The wind is never light -

its density pounds the land.

It eternally howls

about the zero

the negative

the never was

the naught.


The wind demands a mountain

to stop it from its path.

Not this emptiness

more vast than itself

Endlessly spreading

in the absence of desire.


September 20, 2005.  This one's older than this blog.

Courting

The wrinkle around your eye is quite unreadable -
how it forms without a twitch on your face, confounds.
Is it the temperature? 34 degrees hot
slapped on your cheeks by a disturbed wind?
Did an ant crawl unnoticeable on your skin?
Is it something I said? Which word
in a parade of adjectives meant to woo
comes off insincere?
The table is like an endless sea between us.
I lost the sail that directs my trail of thoughts.
How drops of seconds feel like oceans of years
while you sit like a moon on a divan of clouds
throwing off beams of hints that may be as glum as no
or radiant as an affirming reciprocation.

RANT: Something I have always noticed...

Some artefacts veiled with dust
on a decade-old cabinet:
a bowl of goldfish
full of stones and air;
lamp clocks with hands
rendered still;
shell with a palmful of dead
batteries, hair clips;
pictures of babies
now grown, suffering
distances and absence;
and a face mirror where
the cheeks of a man turned
dangerously edged, stares back
puzzled with his position.

Cris Hugo

Some unfortunate news you read
on a small column in a tabloid :
three columns in width, ten lines of phrases
impressed together, tells
the final story of his mortality.
You want to be more familiar of him,
sketch his face as it stares back
from the page: want to understand
how his eyes smile like an old friend's;
want to know this stranger more
scribbling his mouth, what dreams it could tell;
want to hear with his hand-drawn ears
what he heard, how the bullet spinned
and splayed him on the pavement.
You'd switch ink from time to time,
black to red, red to black, wondering why
a world promises then quickly takes
a hopeful glow to guide us in the dark.
Your hands become heavier,  the strokes thicker,
the lines of his profile more chaotic
and confused, you forgot when you started
and why you can never stop.

Everett Ruess

                                     - Where I go, I leave no trace.



I followed the narrative to Escalante
where the Earth shimmered brighter colors
and stones have stories, none of which told where
you last left clues of your final presence.
Now we go about acquiesce to the toil,
the rhythm of days, rest of our lives pushing
cities further upwards to the sky,
something marvelous you didn't envision
because the wilderness, a constant Muse,
has always been most beautiful, sui generis.
Now I wonder the fragments of bones
that can have your name, the spot of canyon
where I can make pilgrimage - mysteries
not even the old wind can answer
even if he frequents himself  here
in the other hemisphere.

Afunakwa

i.


Nights I can't sleep, I let you
disturb me, one more time
in the room, haunt me
in my sleepless disposition,
let your formless self whisper
a lullabye in the dark
some old folklore:
a father sojourning further
the edge of the island;
an orphan crying his name.
I wonder that name,
which syllable lilted
to comfort the little boy
or some child I keep
hidden in my heart.


ii.

Your music rose ambient
like flood in every corner
had me grasping to put
a face to your voice
which the decades hid
like a mystery unsolved,
nothing visual to cling on
but an aging record
whose hiss before the end
becomes more profound
because it precedes the silence
that is more silent
than the hush of your sound.

Mosquito

If you must bother his night, make haste -
hands can be indecisive.  They murder in vile.
Sopor is a luxury he wants uninterrupted
coming off from grinding days wide awake.
He knows there are more of your scuttlebutt kind
buzzing from the corners, crowding the dark.
Be careful tempting an unpresuming colossus
from whose blood you thrive.

Fly

Fly crawls over the page
of a planner full of schedules,
desolate of plans. Nothing comes
out of it.  Nothing (let me name it
air, and it sits still) rests smugly
and stares back nonchalant.

Fly misses feeding on the ink
of names and numbers scribbled hastily.
Boxes of supplements clamor
departure from their cabinets.
Bank accounts require more zeroes
to follow a prime.
Air sits still, probably smiles.

Fly remains, pressing its legs on paper.
I follow my trail of thought into the dark.
Sometimes a page tells a story
so clear by remaining blank,
or a phone tells more information
keeping calm.

changed title, 01/16/2012.  

PANTOUM: Easter Bunny

Something to read to my niece and nephew when Easter Sunday comes :-)




There in her kitchen, painting eggs
in every colors of the rainbow,
the Easter Bunny would dab her brush
on the hard and white but fragile shell.

In every colors of the rainbow
she'd paint some triangles, circles, and squares
on the hard and white but fragile shell.
The colors burst in wonderful shapes.

She'd paint some triangles, circles, and squares -
patterns of stripes and curls and swirls.
The colors burst in  wonderful shapes:
blue diamonds for boys; pink hearts for girls.

Patterns of stripes and curls and swirls;
little figures of animals, shapes of clouds;
blue diamonds for boys; pink hearts for girls;
oh what magic she does with lots of love!

Little figures of animals, shapes of clouds,
the Easter Bunny would dab her brush.
Oh what magic she does with lots of love
there in her kitchen, painting eggs.

Breather

Outside, we arranged ourselves
by the brand of cigarettes we loved
to play with our mouths, pushed
the thin smoke with our breaths,
watched them as they silkily rose
and vanished in congested city air -
hints of translucent white
we will never remember.

In between breaths, chatters -
how the call went, how slow
in the head the caller was, who's
going out with whom, who's not
out of the closet, how many
deductions we got from the last
monitoring, how come you hit
your conversion and i can't -
filled the certain spaces
we stood on like wafts
of mutterings and mumblings
ascending with volatile
indecisive patterns.

At the ground, I realized
time when we crushed the little
embers that burned with our chatter,
the sinless asphalt an unwary victim
of soles that twisted and murdered
some little fire that gamely lit
from the opposite edge,  unaware
of how little time it had
between our conversations.

PANTOUM: The Nativity

Too late for Christmas, hehehe
made some edits. 01/06/12, 3:15 pm



Over a stable, humble and small,
A choir of angels sang with the stars.
The little baby slept quiet as night
as shepherds and kings gathered from afar.

A choir of angels sang with the stars.
A mother welcomed the gathering crowd.
As shepherds and kings gathered from afar
The father hushed the giddy throng.

A mother welcomed a gathering crowd
under the light of the bright North Star.
The father hushed the giddy throng
while the wind whistled a happier song.

Under the light of the bright North Star
A little baby slept quiet as night
while the wind whistled a happier song
over a stable, humble and small.

Dead End

Here, I can relate to the blue
cushions of my cubicle, my blue mug,
blue purse scant of coins - that color
cool as mourning, resting on thick plywood
like some unwanted hue.

Out there, I would not understand blue
but a hot spread of sky,
thick iridescence of happiness -
infinite blanket of morning
covering the city.

So this is the event horizon of my future
staring at the throb of an electric eye,
leaving fingerprints or what can betray me
on the black keys, dusts of time swirling
from the beams of an old structure, collapsing
from within, and white is light from the ceiling
flickering in uncertainty.

Happy New Year

The air, quite cold, quite crisp, whispers around the old pillars that pushes upwards the dilapidated roof at the front of my mother's home.  Bursts of fireworks wash the night sky, their numbers more scant than last year's and the year before.  What didn't decrease in number are the loud popping sounds from rebintador and sinturon ni hudas. Beside me my nephew and niece complain how little the amount of fireworks we will be lighting to welcome 2012.  In a house filled with grown ups, we forgot there were kids.  

My brothers opted to welcome the new year in dreamland.  4 hours ago they gulped the bad memories this old year has brought with beer.  It's funny how the line of houses in our street are somber, their front lawns enveloped in the dark.   Years ago they had the habit of competing whose house had the best fireworks.  Now they're just -- well, sleeping.

Midnight strikes, and the whole sky is ablaze. Some of them come out to watch flowers of light exploding in the black, point at which one burned brighter, or which one bloomed with more color.  The blossoms of fire that sprout from faraway houses, a mall or two, is indeed a spectacle to watch for free. Are these the same people I knew for years?

Then the tipping point, when all those swirls and fantastic display will slowly die down. The seconds of burning, of release, will eventually cease.  Everyone comes back into their houses with the memory the sky has shared unselfishly.

And then I see the futility of why I'm trying to make sense out of this.  My neighborhood has changed, no point for me to rationalize what I missed. I bring the laptop inside the house, to the family who wasn't here last Christmas.  I tell myself a new year has come, and they are here.

They are here, and all will be well.

Poetry Exercise: Free Association

I don't know if I am doing this correctly, but I read somewhere that one of the exercises in learning how to write poetry is what they call "Free Association"  (please feel free to correct me as I'm not really sure what I'm talking about here).  I think the objective is to select some words or phrases and try to make a poem out of them.  I did one yesterday and  listed words I read from an article:

dust
cobwebs
white walls and floors
cabinets painted white
broom
gray clouds
return

I came up with this work --


Cleaning House


On your return I carefully swept
some yesterdays that you were gone 
out of the door, out
where the cobwebs of gray clouds spread on the sky
and sunlight caught like flies and dusts.
The broom scoured meticulously
the white walls and floors,
and the feather duster brushed as best as it can
the corners of cabinets painted white
to shoo away that insect solitude
crawling on all eights.

Shoot me some of your thoughts.  :-)

Happy Happy Holidays

There were so many "firsts" for me this Christmas:  first time I saw a champagne of fireworks burst out from the outlines of Rockwell Makati's skyscrapers; first time I wrapped sighs around presents for people who are islands and islands away;  first time I missed children mutilating Christmas carols; first time I tread glumly lit streets and marveled at windows of houses where the laughter of families shone out along with the blinking Christmas lights; first time I saw a mom cradling a kid with encephalitis waiting for Christmas eve in an overpass, her hands extended for alms to people who are rushing home; first time the city and I spent Christmas, and how it hummed its warmth to me while I silently answered with an inner hysteria.

Christmas is really about family, about getting together, isn't it?  Too bad I decided to celebrate it all by myself.  Me and my shadow didn't get along quite well.

RANT: How Come Donald Sutherland Has Never Won An Oscar?

Video above is a scene from the film Little Murders

Canadian actor Donald Sutherland has been around the industry for, I think, half a century.  He has made significant acting contributions to films such as The Dirty Dozen (1967), MASH (1970), Klute (1971), The Day of the Locust (1975), Fellini's Casanova (1976), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), the Academy Award winning Ordinary People (1980), JFK (1991), Six Degrees of Separation (1993), and Pride and Prejudice (2005). 

In some of the films listed above he has been overlooked for Oscar nominations, and I wonder why. Just the scene above should merit the Oscar trophy.

After the fire

PHOTO taken from the Philippine Daily Inquirer, September 2, 2010. Caption reads "A GIRL looks at the charred remains of her house, one of at least 50 which were razed when a fire hit Agham Road in Quezon City."  Photo taken by Raffy Lerma.  

     As I was reading an issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer dated September 2, 2010, a photo from the Metro section caught my attention.  The photo had a girl standing under what was left of the door frame.  She stared further to the horizon,  subdued and forlorn.  In front of her was the carcass of what looked like the wooden beams of a room, or probably another house.  Remains of burnt slippers scattered along with some clothes and ashes.  I doubt she will be able to hug the stuff toy that looked as if it was tipped over in surrender.  I wondered what it was in the horizon that she was staring at.   Whatever it was, she will have to carry it along with her dreams.

    This picture reminded me of a poem I wrote two years ago. The inspiration happened in Malibay, September 12.  We attended a christening, and the day was deplete of sunlight.  Thick smoke rose at least 10 blocks away.  I did not ponder at the disaster because the day was reserved for celebrating a child's entry into Christianity.  It was only when we passed by the neighborhood four hours later when I was able to survey the extent of the fire.  Pails were left on the streets.  Neighbors tried to console themselves about certain things they might be able to scour.  Firefighters complained how hard it was to negotiate their fire engines through the cramped streets. A mother and her daughter sat at the sidewalk.  They stared further to the horizon, the same way the little girl on the picture did.

   I added lots of liberties in the poem, trying to make a picture of a scene that might have happened while the fire razed and that no camera was able to take.


Malibay, September 12


The day a lit cigar consumed their house
the sky was purple and heavy with clouds.
The pails were flying. The water was wasted.
The fire engine was two miles away and stuck in traffic.
Her mother held on to some salvaged photos.
Her father was drinking somewhere with the neighbors.
She tried to burst what the others cannot hold back
as their memories danced away with the embers.
And finally, someone began to pray
and wished everything would still be well.
The wind grew colder, and the thunder threatened,
but that day the rain did not fell.

CHANT: Poems about the Typhoon

Typhoon Juan (international code name Megi) flattened the northern parts of Luzon with sustained winds of up to 260 km/h (if I remember the reports well) or probably 230 km/h (as per information from wikipedia.org as of October 24, 2010).  We felt its presence here in Manila with the sudden darkness that enveloped the entire city, and the strong rain that flooded the street in front of our apartment.  Prior to its arrival and during its stay it made me write two poems.  Enjoy!


TYPHOON

We thought it would never come:

the dark clouds,
the rumble of an orange
world turning purple,
the slaps of light flashing
over the wet roofs and streets.

It opened its allegro
with drizzles, light gusts,
and the birds
sketching circles with their wings
slicing the serene
with piercing solos.

It compelled the birds to exit
towards the line of light
at the south and let
the symphony rise
muscular
from the orchestra of clouds.

It took the cicadas by surprise -
their choruses hovered
sudden from the trees,
the notes stuck
from the restless palms of leaves.

How it armed its way
through the city
with the unpredictable
drumbeats of rain.
How it bullied the tranquil
trebles of a sunset.
How it put us
 in our proper places -
spaces of surrender
echoing the sound
of our breaths
waiting for the music to end.



JUAN

In the higher floors you pull the horizon
closer to your heart
and watch the movement of the restless panorama - 
how the storm whirls the tails of clouds
to touch skyscrapers' scalps.

Sometimes its raindrops are the size of your fingers.
Sometimes its beastly wind tries to pull
the rusted roofs from their houses. 
Sometimes it howls, temperamental monster that it is,
you pray the grumbling walls won't fall.

Sometimes you pierce the air a sharp whistle -
a needle-pointed sound might calm it down.

But it swirls on, and you look farther
in the further gray and tributaries of lightning
hoping you were where the sky is so silent
and the world hums.

NOTE: I changed the title of the first poem, from "Symphony" to "Typhoon".  I think the new title is more appropriate.
Revised Juan, 5/9/2012. 

The Former National Bird

The Maya bird: an oriole, a finch, or a sparrow?
Above picture: a tree sparrow. (source: wikipilipinas.org)

The bird that perched on the sill

chirped a few notes with the creek

sang with the hum of the sun

and flew with the whistle of wind.

That bird, tiny and brown

as dried leaves feathering the huts

had a name so familiar

so common as grass,

I kept forgetting what it was.

PANT: How a vending machine tells you to get your drink from the water cooler

A vending machine discharges a can of soda from its square anus as long as you feed it four pieces of 5 peso coins, or a used 20 peso bill.  It has two mouths to devour the money, and an eye the size of a grown man's finger flashing digits that tell you if it's satisfied with the amount you have fed it or if it wants more because the numbers don't add up.  If fed well it immediately excretes the fecal metal.  Your hands embrace the chill and the sweat of the tin can shit, where you pull the tab off its aluminum scalp and drink more of the shit.

Like humans, a vending machine can also experience stress. When it does, it becomes constipated.  When it becomes constipated, you have a problem.

Sometimes we bully the vending machine to give us our shit.  If giving it a shake our human strength can muster doesn't work, kicking it at the side might force it to crap. Sometimes we wish we could claw the damn soda crap from inside through the dispensing slot. 

If the vending machine and the universe has conspired against our desire for a carbonated gulp and belch, we surrender our names and the amount of money we lost to the security guard's ledger, filled with the scribbles of other disappointed individuals.  You can almost see their disappointment from the weight of the strokes of their cursives on thin paper.

Finally, you get your drink from the water cooler, and you experience a certain enlightment about water: how it is so much better, just by being its own usual water.