20051210
sa poetry
ahahahaha... i found two poems closely related to each other.
please pass the peace to any spirits i might have provoked.
and a third. i chose to include the third here coz... coz... coz... i don't know. i have long hair, too?... nevermind. ehehe. anyways.
enjoy:
---
Sa Poetry
ni Rolando Tinio
Sa poetry, you let things take shape,
Para bang nagpapatulo ng isperma sa tubig.
You start siyempre with memories,
‘Yung medyo malagkit, kahit mais
Na mais: love lost, dead dreams,
Rotten silences, and all
Manner of mourning basta’t murder.
Papatak ‘yan sa papel, ano. Parang pait,
Kakagat ang typewriter keys.
You sit up like the mother of anxieties.
Worried na worried hanggang magsalakip
Ang odds and ends ng inamag mong pag-ibig.
Jigsaw puzzle. Kung minsan, everything fits.
Pero sige ang pasada ng images
Hanggang makuha perfectly ang trick.
At parang amateur magician kang bilib
Sa sleight-of-hand na pinapraktis:
Nagsilid ng hangin sa buslo, dumukot,
By golly, see what you’ve got -
Bouquet of African daisies,
Kabit-kabit na kerchief,
Kung suwerte pa, a couple of pigeons,
Huhulagpos, be-blend sa katernong horizon,
You can’t say na kung saan hahapon.
[ more ]
---
Exhibit C: Sa Poetry Writing Workshop Class
ni Vladimeir Gonzales
"Sa poetry, you let things take shape,"
sabi ni Tinio; "that's bullshit!"
sabi ng propesor
pagkatapos isara ang libro.
What about authorial control daw,
what about the lipunan,
and insight, and katuturan, and all
that kinda deep stuff.
May pulitika daw ang panulat;
if not, you're just simply walang isperma
kasi you don't have balls.
"You know sir, that's just pure shite,"
sabi ng bagot/pa-goth, adik-adik na classmate
who just read Irvine Welsh,
"that's pure existential angst."
Jigsaw puzzle akong nakinig
sa odds and ends ng kanyang pagpapaliwanag.
What about individualism daw,
hyper reality, the postmodern condition?
What about decentered centers,
borderless borders, disconnections from
collective consciousness, what about that?
"Si sir talaga, such an Immanuel Kant,"
bulong ng isa pang classmate
who's halfway reading Sophie's World-
for another class, of course-
at by golly, bigla akong tinawag ng prof!
"What about you, mister, what do you think?"
Sagot ko naman, "well, sir, this is
just, like, like my Humanities elective
so fuck you,
fuck you all, I guess
(I hope I don't get 5.0 for this).
[ more ]
---
How to Lose a Poetry Competition
by Ramil Digal Gulle
Somewhere up a mountain, inside a cheap hotel,
the breath of pine that was green when invisible candy puffs
in each young writer's earlobe-cool Baguio cool-was ignored.
When each poem lay there, legs spread-pinned arms, perverse
cruciform X. Everyone had glass-shard, scalpel, post-mortem
lower lip quiver of craftsmanship's class. Voodoo dissection inter-
stitial orbit of learning's erotic machete curve. Beauty. That's
what they're being taught to accomplish. Truth-telling. Somewhere
they brought out the objective-correlative, eventually. It looked like
an old, foot-long rubber sausage. Young writers all around squeezed,
rubbed and stroked it. One of the old writers took it by one end,
made a grand gesture of a job blowing it, twisted it into a
pretzel of air and let it float, bounce about the workshop hall.
That was the day's form and content. The next day's assignment?
Catch a metaphor, alive if possible.
Not easy because the slippery
things kept changing shape, from cobra to tin can to toothy vagina.
For the first time, I wasn't listening. I wasn't
teaching. I didn't care about craft anymore.
I was thinking of the Baguio woodcarver, sitting on a wicker chair,
who stomped his foot, sending a cloud of red earth flying
about us. He told me: I was a guitarmaker in Cebu. I once made
a special guitar with strings made from my wife's hair. Hair I collected
the seven years we were married, collected because I loved her.
Then I hated my wife, and I made the guitar. He brought the guitar
out and played it for me. The fog was creeping towards our feet, its
whiteness broken by long streaks of red earth, threads of bloody spittle.
And I heard a young woman's voice singing:
Ask him what happened. Ask. Ask him what happened to me.
[ more ] ¶ 12/10/2005 02:46:00 PM
please pass the peace to any spirits i might have provoked.
and a third. i chose to include the third here coz... coz... coz... i don't know. i have long hair, too?... nevermind. ehehe. anyways.
enjoy:
---
Sa Poetry
ni Rolando Tinio
Sa poetry, you let things take shape,
Para bang nagpapatulo ng isperma sa tubig.
You start siyempre with memories,
‘Yung medyo malagkit, kahit mais
Na mais: love lost, dead dreams,
Rotten silences, and all
Manner of mourning basta’t murder.
Papatak ‘yan sa papel, ano. Parang pait,
Kakagat ang typewriter keys.
You sit up like the mother of anxieties.
Worried na worried hanggang magsalakip
Ang odds and ends ng inamag mong pag-ibig.
Jigsaw puzzle. Kung minsan, everything fits.
Pero sige ang pasada ng images
Hanggang makuha perfectly ang trick.
At parang amateur magician kang bilib
Sa sleight-of-hand na pinapraktis:
Nagsilid ng hangin sa buslo, dumukot,
By golly, see what you’ve got -
Bouquet of African daisies,
Kabit-kabit na kerchief,
Kung suwerte pa, a couple of pigeons,
Huhulagpos, be-blend sa katernong horizon,
You can’t say na kung saan hahapon.
[ more ]
---
Exhibit C: Sa Poetry Writing Workshop Class
ni Vladimeir Gonzales
"Sa poetry, you let things take shape,"
sabi ni Tinio; "that's bullshit!"
sabi ng propesor
pagkatapos isara ang libro.
What about authorial control daw,
what about the lipunan,
and insight, and katuturan, and all
that kinda deep stuff.
May pulitika daw ang panulat;
if not, you're just simply walang isperma
kasi you don't have balls.
"You know sir, that's just pure shite,"
sabi ng bagot/pa-goth, adik-adik na classmate
who just read Irvine Welsh,
"that's pure existential angst."
Jigsaw puzzle akong nakinig
sa odds and ends ng kanyang pagpapaliwanag.
What about individualism daw,
hyper reality, the postmodern condition?
What about decentered centers,
borderless borders, disconnections from
collective consciousness, what about that?
"Si sir talaga, such an Immanuel Kant,"
bulong ng isa pang classmate
who's halfway reading Sophie's World-
for another class, of course-
at by golly, bigla akong tinawag ng prof!
"What about you, mister, what do you think?"
Sagot ko naman, "well, sir, this is
just, like, like my Humanities elective
so fuck you,
fuck you all, I guess
(I hope I don't get 5.0 for this).
[ more ]
---
How to Lose a Poetry Competition
by Ramil Digal Gulle
Somewhere up a mountain, inside a cheap hotel,
the breath of pine that was green when invisible candy puffs
in each young writer's earlobe-cool Baguio cool-was ignored.
When each poem lay there, legs spread-pinned arms, perverse
cruciform X. Everyone had glass-shard, scalpel, post-mortem
lower lip quiver of craftsmanship's class. Voodoo dissection inter-
stitial orbit of learning's erotic machete curve. Beauty. That's
what they're being taught to accomplish. Truth-telling. Somewhere
they brought out the objective-correlative, eventually. It looked like
an old, foot-long rubber sausage. Young writers all around squeezed,
rubbed and stroked it. One of the old writers took it by one end,
made a grand gesture of a job blowing it, twisted it into a
pretzel of air and let it float, bounce about the workshop hall.
That was the day's form and content. The next day's assignment?
Catch a metaphor, alive if possible.
Not easy because the slippery
things kept changing shape, from cobra to tin can to toothy vagina.
For the first time, I wasn't listening. I wasn't
teaching. I didn't care about craft anymore.
I was thinking of the Baguio woodcarver, sitting on a wicker chair,
who stomped his foot, sending a cloud of red earth flying
about us. He told me: I was a guitarmaker in Cebu. I once made
a special guitar with strings made from my wife's hair. Hair I collected
the seven years we were married, collected because I loved her.
Then I hated my wife, and I made the guitar. He brought the guitar
out and played it for me. The fog was creeping towards our feet, its
whiteness broken by long streaks of red earth, threads of bloody spittle.
And I heard a young woman's voice singing:
Ask him what happened. Ask. Ask him what happened to me.
[ more ] ¶ 12/10/2005 02:46:00 PM
