Like a Stranger, April

I write to a friend whom I will never see in person, someone I’ve only met online. We are words and images flickering on a monitor, transmitting thoughts. It is an odd feeling knowing someone this way. Strangers who, in another time, would have walked past each other perhaps on a busy street or in the caverns of an airport. More likely we would never have met at all, submitting to the reality of living on either side of the world, sunrise and sunset forever chasing each other.

I tell this friend I am going back home. Home where my umbilical cord was cut. Where my feet first touched soil warm with the struggle of sun and rain, on land close to the band of heat that whips the planet. This friend has only known life in four seasons. Looking up to the heavens at night gives us some comfort – we become equally small and bound by the earth’s pull, beckoned by stars.

I tell my friend my worries. Time having pushed all family and friends to trajectories away from mine, we will be more like strangers than we dare admit. It will be like rebuilding a house on another plot of land – the same rooms perhaps, but not the same views out the door and windows. No, that’s not quite right. It will be more like a tent than a house. Sharing a temporary space, forced in a squeeze of time. We will be taking fragments from the past and try to make them fit some picture neither of us will fully recognize.

All will be over in less than three weeks. And I will step into a plane that will take me back to being a stranger to everyone. Again.

It is the reverse of homesickness.

-o-

A photograph that reminded me of a photograph

This is a first draft and I may have to delete this post should Mimo Khair think it does not do justice to her own photograph. Here is a LINK TO Mimo’s Photoblog.

A Photograph that Reminded Me of a Photograph
for Mimo Khair

A friend showed me her photograph of the children who took her
away from the entrance to the Valley of the Nobles, the ancient
tombs cut from stone. In place of silence and eternity, she surrendered
to the call of giggles and handmade dolls. Small, dusty hands
clasped hers. Off she was led to their houses amid a made up chant
of her name, as if a long lost playmate had returned home.

Yellows and reds and wide smiles in that photograph
echoed a desert trip in India with my family. We expected
camels and vast stretches of nothing but sky and sand.
Not the laughter of children in bright floral saris, their hysterical
screams that made our twins withdraw. We should have
stayed a while longer in that village until their voices
settled. Instead we kept to schedule, caught
the paid-for camel ride into the sunset.

Without permission I stole their laughter,
stored it in my cellphone camera. Those children
who only wanted to play with our children
before we disappeared from them forever.

-o-

 

 

A very good friend from an online poetry critique group suggested I try shorter lines with this. So here. Please tell me what you think.

-o-

A Photograph that Reminded Me of a Photograph
for Mimo Khair

A friend showed me her photograph
of the children who took her away
from the entrance to the Valley of the Nobles,
the ancient tombs cut from stone. In place of silence
and eternity, she surrendered to the call
of giggles and handmade dolls.

Small, dusty hands clasped hers. Off she was led
to their houses amid a made up chant
of her name, as if a long lost playmate
had returned home.

Yellows and reds and wide smiles
in that photograph echoed a desert trip in India
with my family. We expected camels
and vast stretches of nothing but sky and sand.

Not the laughter of children in bright floral saris,
their hysterical screams that made our twins
withdraw. We should have stayed a while longer
in that village until their voices settled.

Instead we kept to schedule, caught
the paid-for camel ride into the sunset.
Without permission I stole their laughter,
stored it in my cellphone camera.

Those children who only wanted
to play with our children
before we disappeared
from them forever.

-o-

 

The Duck Dance

One of my daughters, when she was around three, used to perform on cue something we ended up calling “The Duck Dance.” She would bend her knees a little, lean forward, pull her hands to her chest, lift her elbows slightly, then wiggle her bum. It made us all laugh. The lightness that laughter and pure joy bring is what comes over me when I find out a work of mine had been given some space somewhere.

March has so far been a good month. After winning the Goodreads.com Poetry Competition with “People Like You,” I received the good news that a number of poems had been featured in the South African website LitNet.co.za. One poem, “Someone’s Head” is on their main page while four others are in the “Poetry Blog” section. After months of waiting I can now say I’ve got a foot in the South African poetry scene. Now I suppose I have to muscle my way through the door somehow. hahahahha. Perhaps doing “The Duck Dance” in front of an unexpecting audience at a local poetry reading will be too daring. I’ll wait until I’ve earned some kind of name for that.

Here is the link to the Goodreads.com Poetry Competition.

Here is the main link for “Someone’s Head” as featured on LitNet’s main webpage.

The LitNet Poetry Blog links:

Stranded

Being Drawn

Cape Town Suburb Sunday Afternoon Remix

Main Road Paranoia

My poems from Alien to Any Skin are finding their way in more places. I’m glad for a wider readership. At least in theory.   

Sea Fireflies of Mindoro

Sea Fireflies of Mindoro
for Veronica

That was the last time
We laughed like children.
Water warm as the tropical air,

It was impossible
To grow cold and wish to leave
That darkening, calm beach.

We took moments to see
The water held
No mere reflection
Of the silent bursting of stars.

Points of light gathered
Round our limbs.
Wave a hand and they grew more
Luminous. We were surrounded.

Stilled. Galaxies
Unfurled with the gentlest
Sway and curl
Of our fingertips.

Beating lights traced our skin
That would never again be this
Close to constellations,
This warm.

-o-

Veronica is a very good friend whom I’ve known for many years. We call her Barok – the name of a character from a comic book back home – or Veroche (yes, it sounds like that other word for a type of bug) which the late Fr. James O’Brien did not approve of (perhaps jokingly? I’ll never know). She has worked with various tribes and sectors of Philppine society that do not often grace the headlines.

This poem tries to recapture a time when we were young. We were among a group of friends who shared the legacy of Fr. O’B’s Tulong-Dunong Scholarship Program. We had graduated from various universities by that time, and decided to go on a group holiday. I can’t remember how many we were who went on this particular trip to Mindoro’s coast, those beaches that are hopefully still as enchanting, though not entirely free of danger: tsunami, earthquake, poisonous sea snakes, to name a few.

It is Barok’s birthday today. Maligayang Kaarawan, mabuting kaibigan!

This poem was first published in UNDER THE STORM: An Anthology of  Contemporary Philippine Poetry (Manila 2011). I hope to see this in a new collection tentatively called The Sound Before Water.

END IMPUNITY

 

 

English translation attempt. Original Filipino follows – for those who are interested in seeing the random rhymes that got lost in translation.

November 23: No One Can Bury Shadows
remembering those slain in Maguindanao and other places

1
The door is a gaping mouth,
the afternoon’s final gasp
before it goes dark.

Those footsteps
that left this morning
will never again
come knocking. In their place
news of violence
drags the weight
of darkness encroaching.

2
Is it a miracle, a blessing, or a ghastly
burden to escape
the piercing of bullets?

How heavy the echoes of silence
in pursuit of the last
drop of lead?

Pretending to be dead
in order to live.

3
What kind of joy
was set free
by those who pulled the trigger?

Whose voice unleashed
the dogs?

4
Dear President,
I presume you feel
loss such as this?

Your clan bears the stain
of those who usher darkness.

5
Tomorrow, as we turn
the day’s paper,
new names will darken
the pages, our fingers.

-o-

Nobyembre 23: Walang Makapaglilibing sa mga Anino
paggunita sa mga pinaslang sa Maguindanao at iba pang bayan

1
Bukang bibig ang pintuan,
nasa bingit ang huling hininga
ng hapon bago dumilim.

Hindi na kailanman papalapit
ang mga hakbang na pumalayo
kaninang umaga. Sa halip
kaladkad ng marahas na balita
ang mabigat at papalaganap
na karimlan.

2
Himala, biyaya, o malagim
na pasanin kaya ang makaligtas
sa pagtagos ng mga bala?

Gaano kabigat ang alingawngaw ng katahimikan
kasunod ng pagbagsak sa lupa
ng huling tingga?

Pagkukunwaring bangkay
upang mabuhay.

3
Anong uri ng ligaya
ang pinalaya ng mga pumisil
sa gatilyo?

Kaninong tinig ang nagpakawala
sa mga aso?

4
Kagalang-galang na Pangulo,
inaasahan kong dama mo
ang mga ganitong pagyao.

Maging ang iyong angkan
may bahid
ng tagahatid ng karimlan.

5
Bukas, pagbuklat ng pahayagan
iba na namang mga pangalan
ang magpapadilim
sa mga pahina, sa ating mga daliri.

-o-

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Maguindanao_massacre

Please tell me if the translation works? Or if the poem itself works? The date has been declared International Day to End Impunity – after this massacre.

A Question of Blood and Asphalt

There’s a question that’s been bothering me for a few years now. I’ve asked friends about it, and so far I’ve only gotten “Why?” and “Don’t throw this question out there on the internet, people will think you’re crazy.”

A few years ago I saw a number of accidents on the highway on the way home. They were spaced about a week or so apart. Each time it was the car in front of me or just a few meters ahead that was involved. So I saw but barely heard the impact.

Years later I still know exactly where one particular accident took place, where the person was struck by a speeding car, where his body lay for a few minutes under the midday sun, the way his lips were moving but there was no sound.

My question goes sideways from this terrible series of accidents.

What chemical reaction takes place when blood spreads on asphalt and the noon day sun strikes at its harshest?

I’ve had this poem in draft mode for many years and I can never finish it.

-o-

To Be Haunted
version 2

The car in front
two seconds ahead of mine
struck him head on.

Two years since the day
the sun scorched his blood
onto the asphalt,
a trapped ghost.

It is still there, close to the island
on the highway, a dark shape
stretched on a darker surface.
Invisible to other drivers.

Now think of a calculated kill,
the intentional randomness
of bombs raining.

How many ghosts will there be
in cramped school halls, in homes
of huddled children? Fear and grief
systematically torched.

Beyond the chemistry of blood
reacting with asphalt
in the midday sun,
there is something I’d like explained.

-o-

Vampires that do not Fear the Light

Read two articles from the Mail & Guardian online that should scare all those who think international law can protect sovereign countries and their population from a special breed of Vampires.

-o-

Mbeki: We should learn from Libya’s experiences

Recent events in Libya should raise alarm bells about the threat to Africa’s hard won right to self-determination, former president Thabo Mbeki said on Saturday.

Addressing the Law Society of the Northern Provinces in Sun City, Mbeki said it “seemed obvious” that a few powerful countries were seeking to use the council to pursue their selfish interests.

They were also determined to behave according to the principle and practice that “might is right” and to sideline the principle of self-determination.

“I must state this categorically that those who have sought to manufacture a particular outcome out of the conflict in Libya have propagated a poisonous canard aimed at discrediting African and African Union (AU) opposition to the Libyan debacle.”

He said this was done on the basis that the AU and the rest of “us” had been “bought by Colonel Gadaffi with petro-dollars”, and felt obliged to defend his continued misrule.

He said all known means of disinformation was being bandied about, included an argument that Gadaffi’s Libya had supported the ANC during the apartheid struggle.

“The incontrovertible fact is that during this whole period, Libya did not give the ANC [African National Congress] even one cent, did not train even one of our military combatants and did not supply us with even one bullet…

CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE.

-o-

West rushes to grab its Libya reward

Britain’s new defence secretary, Philip Hammon, announced that British companies should “pack their suitcases” and head to Libya to snap up lucrative reconstruction contracts.

It all sounds disturbingly familiar. Think of the American companies streaming into Iraq to aid the “reconstruction effort” after the invasion. If there was any doubt, this modus operandi may soon define what seems no more than a new form of neocolonialism in the Middle East. American, Nato (or both) armies will destroy your country under the guise of ushering in democracy, and Western companies will assume the lion’s share of contracts to build it up again.

And with Libya’s National Transitional Council having already announced it would “reward” those countries that were in its corner during the “revolution”, it’s anyone’s guess who will be the biggest of the war profiteers.

Whereas in the past Gaddafi’s Libya was only dealing with China, Russia and Italy, the playing field has now been levelled, in a manner of speaking. Though it has portrayed itself as having had only a “back-room” role in toppling Gaddafi, the United States wants to be the number-one oil buyer from Libya, to compensate for its decades of deprivation of Libyan oil. There can be no doubt that in due course we will see that the US will want a far bigger cut of Libyan oil supplies than it is currently letting on.

It will be said in the future that the end justified the means: the removal of a hated dictator who terrorised his own people for four decades. This may be so, and nobody in their right mind could endorse what the colonel did to Libya. But there are some questions to be asked about the selective morality at play here.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE.

-o-

Please proceed to the nearest toilet to throw up.  Now pull yourself together and fight the propaganda machine of these Vampires.

From William Blum’s Anti-Empire Report

One day I’m going to write something about the idiotic SMART POWER bandied around by HAILary CLINGON… err… what’s that transmogrified creature’s name again????

For now, here’s something from William Blum.

-o-

It doesn’t matter to them if it’s untrue. It’s a higher truth.

“We came, we saw, he died.”
— US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton,
giggling, as she spoke of the depraved murder of Moammar Gaddafi

Imagine Osama bin Laden or some other Islamic leader speaking of 9-11: “We came, we saw, 3,000 died … ha- ha.”

Clinton and her partners-in-crime in NATO can also have a good laugh at how they deceived the world. The destruction of Libya, the reduction of a modern welfare state to piles of rubble, to ghost towns, the murder of thousands … this tragedy was the culmination of a series of falsehoods spread by the Libyan rebels, the Western powers, and Qatar (through its television station, al-Jazeera) — from the declared imminence of a “bloodbath” in rebel-held Benghazi if the West didn’t intervene to stories of government helicopter-gunships and airplanes spraying gunfire onto large numbers of civilians to tales of Viagra-induced mass rapes by Gaddafi’s army. (This last fable was proclaimed at the United Nations by the American Ambassador, as if young soldiers needed Viagra to get it up!)¹

The New York Times (March 22) observed:

… the rebels feel no loyalty to the truth in shaping their propaganda, claiming nonexistent battlefield victories, asserting they were still fighting in a key city days after it fell to Qaddafi forces, and making vastly inflated claims of his barbaric behavior.

The Los Angeles Times (April 7) added this about the rebels’ media operation:

It’s not exactly fair and balanced media. In fact, as [its editor] helpfully pointed out, there are four inviolate rules of coverage on the two rebel radio stations, TV station and newspaper:

• No pro-[Qaddafi] reportage or commentary
• No mention of a civil war. (The Libyan people, east and west, are unified in a war against a totalitarian regime.)
• No discussion of tribes or tribalism. (There is only one tribe: Libya.)
• No references to Al Qaeda or Islamic extremism. (That’s [Qaddafi's] propaganda.)

The Libyan government undoubtedly spouted its share of misinformation, but it was the rebels’ trail of lies, both of omission and commission, which was used by the UN Security Council to justify its vote for “humanitarian” intervention; followed in Act Three by unrelenting NATO/US bombs and drone missiles, day after day, week after week, month after month; you can’t get much more humanitarian than that. If the people of Libya prior to the NATO/US bombardment had been offered a referendum on it, can it be imagined that they would have endorsed it?

In fact, it appears rather likely that a majority of Libyans supported Gaddafi. How else could the government have held off the most powerful military forces in the world for more than seven months? Before NATO and the US laid waste to the land, Libya had the highest life expectancy, lowest infant mortality, and highest UN Human Development Index in Africa. During the first few months of the civil war, giant rallies were held in support of the Libyan leader.²

For further discussion of why Libyans may have been motivated to support Gaddafi, have a look at this video.

If Gaddafi had been less oppressive of his political opposition over the years and had made some gestures of accommodation to them during the Arab Spring, the benevolent side of his regime might still be keeping him in power, although the world has plentiful evidence making it plain that the Western powers are not particularly concerned about political oppression except to use as an excuse for intervention when they want to; indeed, government files seized in Tripoli during the fighting show that the CIA and British intelligence worked with the Libyan government in tracking down dissidents, turning them over to Libya, and taking part in interrogations.³

In any event, many of the rebels had a religious motive for opposing the government and played dominant roles within the rebel army; previously a number of them had fought against the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq.⁴ The new Libyan regime promptly announced that Islamic sharia law would be the “basic source” of legislation, and laws that contradict “the teachings of Islam” would be nullified; there would also be a reinstitution of polygamy; the Muslim holy book, the Quran, allows men up to four wives.⁵

Thus, just as in Afghanistan in the 1980-90s, the United States has supported Islamic militants fighting against a secular government. The American government has imprisoned many people as “terrorists” in the United States for a lot less.

What began in Libya as “normal” civil war violence from both sides — repeated before and since by the governments of Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria without any Western military intervention at all (the US actually continues to arm the Bahrain and Yemen regimes) — was transformed by the Western propaganda machine into a serious Gaddafi genocide of innocent Libyans. Addressing the validity of this very key issue is another video, “Humanitarian War in Libya: There is no evidence”. The main feature of the film is an interview with Soliman Bouchuiguir, Secretary-General, and one of the founders in 1989, of the Libyan League for Human Rights, perhaps the leading Libyan dissident group, in exile in Switzerland.

Bouchuiguir is asked several times if he can document various charges made against the Libyan leader. Where is the proof of the many rapes? The many other alleged atrocities? The more than 6,000 civilians alleged killed by Gaddafi’s planes? Again and again Bouchuiguir cites the National Transitional Council as the source. Yes, that’s the rebels who carried out the civil war in conjunction with the NATO/US forces. At other times Bouchuiguir speaks of “eyewitnesses”: “little girls, boys who were there, whose families we know personally”. After awhile, he declares that “there is no way” to document these things. This is probably true to some extent, but why, then, the UN Security Council resolution for a military intervention in Libya? Why almost eight months of bombing?

Bouchuiguir also mentions his organization’s working with the National Endowment for Democracy in their effort against Gaddafi, and one has to wonder if the man has any idea that the NED was founded to be a front for the CIA. Literally.

Another source of charges against Gaddafi and his sons has been the International Criminal Court. The Court’s Chief Prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, is shown in this film at a news conference discussing the same question of proof of the charges. He refers to an ICC document of 77 pages which he says contains the evidence. The film displays the document’s Table of Contents, which shows that pages 17-71 are not available to the public; these pages, apparently the ones containing the testimony and evidence, are marked as “redacted”. In an appendix, the ICC report lists its news sources; these include Fox News, CNN, the CIA, Soliman Bouchuiguir, and the Libyan League for Human Rights. Earlier, the film had presented Bouchuiguir citing the ICC as one of his sources. The documentation is thus a closed circle.

Historical footnote: “Aerial bombing of civilians was pioneered by the Italians in Libya in 1911, perfected by the British in Iraq in 1920 and used by the French in 1925 to level whole quarters of Syrian cities. Home demolitions, collective punishment, summary execution, detention without trial, routine torture — these were the weapons of Europe’s takeover” in the Mideast.⁶

Departure 1

I posted the following on my facebook account. Then I thought, hey, I should really put this on my blog. haha.  So here.

-o-

I just remembered. I boarded a Singapore Airlines plane on 22 October 1994 – the day after a powerful storm struck Manila. I walked around Ateneo and saw massive acacia trees with their roots pointing skyward, branches and leaves on all the roads. I was trying to say goodbye to whoever I might come across, but not many. Mostly maintenance workers. I said goodbye to Mang Jaime, the caretaker of Colayco Hall. I told him I was leaving for South Africa. He said “Aren’t there black people there?”

-o-

That was my first international flight. I was given shrimp. I remember nearly throwing up as our plane went through one of the last whipping arms of the typhoon that had struck Manila. Lucky me. My ass was being kicked on my way out.

The plane let us off at Singapore Airport. I was terrified to be so alone, and the possibility of missing the connecting flight to Johannesburg and Cape Town. So I went off in search of the next terminal and sat there for four hours. There were half a dozen other Filipinos milling around the spot. It was also their first flight out of the country, to work for at least two years on a contract. I wished them well. They were all headed for Johannesburg.

A Fragile World – Philippine Daily Inquirer review of BAHA-BAHAGDANG KARUPUKAN

A Fragile World, a review of Jim Pascual Agustin’s Baha-bahagdang Karupukan
by Gary Devilles, 26 September 2011 Philippine Daily Inquirer

Philosopher Soren Kierkegaard believes that true existence is achieved only by reckoning with one’s intensity of feelings and in Jim Pascual Agustin’s latest collection of poetry in Filipino, Baha-bahagdang Karupukan, not only do we encounter such forceful emotions, but we see an intimation of this sustained struggle to transcend oneself, where the infinite merges with the finite and the universe is incarnated within.

The poem “Kristal na Holen” which serves as the book’s prologue demonstrates how such transcendence is achieved by comprehending one’s limited sense experience and through which one is able to grasp, albeit partly, this otherworldly moment. In the poem we see our world refracted from the prism of the play marbles and despite the violence of smashing the marble on the floor we are summoned to listen to a reverberation which can only be a pulse or heartbeat and yet as archaic as man’s existence in this world. The poem ends with these haunting lines:

May ningning. At ngayon may mga
nakatingin. Ginagagap ang anino ng anino,
alingawngaw ng alingawngaw. May awit daw.  

There’s a glittering. And now there are
people looking. Trying to grasp the shadow of a shadow,
echo of an echo. Apparently, a song.

The marble is not just a plaything after all, it is the world as seen from a child’s point of view and in this poem our fragmented world becomes suffused with songs and possibilities, experiences are intensified as colors break in thousand hues. Agustin uses the child’s innocence motifs in most of his works not just to be romantic but to elucidate on how we stand in relation to the cosmos, on how we are somehow ironically childlike, quite helpless and still struggling to find some answers.

In “Bagyo,” we find similar theme of naiveté, the children’s victimization, and the attempt to transcend the moment into a perspective. We find the force of nature sparing no one and the children in school, not knowing what is going on, become helpless against the storm ruining their classroom. The final image of an ajar door clinched the precise sentiment and becomes the objective correlative of the tremble and fear we feel in the poem:

nililingkis
ng putik ang mga eskinita
sumisingasing
papalapit sa aming
pintuang napanganga

rushing mud
takes over side streets
slithers and hisses
closer to our
gaping door

Agustin as an impassioned poet able to conjure these passionate everyday scenes, is quite adept in handling images and he is also successful in “Kapiling ang Gagambang Agiw,” where the world of the child is likened to the world of spiders. As the children play hide and seek, the spider tries to conceal itself by its meticulous weaving of web and in the end what is seemingly an innocent play or game becomes an artifice, an intricate design, and the art of discovery and the mystery of revelation.

Other than transcending the world of the child, Agustin invokes a transcendence of space. In “Hawla sa Magdamag” we see the persona imprisoned temporarily by his dreams and yet the boundary between the waking world and the unconscious is reedy and whatever dream images are summoned can only come from dread reality:

maalimpungatan ako
sa kaluskos ng kumakaripas na ipis
at pukpukan ng mga sapaterong kapitbahay
…Matigas ang unan
manipis ang kumot,
hindi mapinid ang bintana
…manipis na dingding

the sounds of a cockroah
scuttling away
and the hammering
of shoemakers next door
rouse me from slumber
…the pillow is stiff,
the blanket thin,
the window is stuck open
…the wall flimsy

Agustin as a poet of space articulates the alienation of being in another country. In “Kalawakang Binabagtas” we see how the persona, distraught by separation with his loved one, is lost by the different time zones of countries and yet it is precisely this difference in time and space that the persona attempts to reconcile by recognizing not just hours, but memorable years that have spanned between him and the loved ones he left behind. Agustin has always a sense of scale and what is seemingly small and insignificant takes on a magnitude and the overwhelming scene is dwarfed into a perspective. In “Balita” we see how Agustin crafted “nationness” or the persona’s sense of nationhood within five lines of news report and use these very lines to invoke the overpowering image of devastation that happened in his country. Irony is quite strong in Agustin’s poems and in “Dayuhan,” we see a more assertive persona who claims his private space as his birthright, believing that nature knows no race or country:

At maglalakad ako sa dalampasigan
dadamhin ang sagpang
ng init at lamig.
Sapagkat walang hindi niyayakap
ang araw, ang dagat.

And I shall walk to the shore
feel the stinging
heat and freezing water.
Because the sun and the sea
never hold back their embrace.

And sometimes even myopia or bigotry is something that persona admits happen in all places even in his own homeland as hinted by the poem “Sa Tuwing May Sisitsit sa Akin.” Agustin’s Baha-bahagdang Karupukan is a testament on how our everyday lives prevent us from seeing our true selves, where we experience ourselves as commodities, replaceable and dispensable. However, Agustin’s poetry always alludes to certain possibilities as we encounter pain and suffering, orientating us towards the future. Our world may be fragile and there would be levels of fragility, but in Jim Pascual Agustin’s collection of poetry, underneath or in between these levels of fragility is a space of the real and authentic.
-o-