Third prize in a recent mini competition

A small poem unexpectedly got the attention of judges in a mini competition I joined in March 2023 soon after I returned to Cape Town. (I know that I still have to share stories about my trip to the USA to attend the 2023 AWP Conference and Bookfair – one of these days I promise to get around to that.)

You Were Never Alone
apologies to Sting


This is a way to mend
what I did not know was broken.
For how could someone missing
something like a leg or an arm
keep on running? Keep on flapping?
Yet you did, and further than anyone
ever dreamed of one born
beneath an angry star. You did
perhaps despite that absence
or because. Too late
now that all the feathers
have been pushed out
like titanium needles
through bone, through skin,
filament by filament drying
in the evening sun. Sting of dawn
a blessing, a promise of flight
of youth and all that would be lost.
So long ago.
So long to go.

-o-

 

This is what I sent to the AVBOB people when they asked for some background on the writing of the poem:

I always look at calls for submissions to journals and entries for competitions as both a game and a challenge. It just so happens that back in December 2022 I had written a poem that I thought might be a good fit with the AVBOB theme, so I entered that one. (I also wrote a new poem, but that one wasn’t as lucky.) “You were Never Alone” is a bit like a letter to myself, but as if I were someone else at the same time. It interchanges the “I” and the “you” and looks at a personal history as something in the past and still about to happen. In the subtitle I had to say “apologies to Sting,” as I borrowed  a few images from him. The title of my very first book which was published in 1992, Beneath an Angry Star, comes from his song “Fragile” which goes “For all those born beneath an angry star, lest we forget how fragile we are.”

HERE IS THE LINK TO THE ANNOUNCEMENT AND THE WINNING POEMS; https://www.avbobpoetry.co.za/Blog/View/135

Here: Lies, Love for Money, Murder

I’m currently in Seattle, USA to attend the AWP Conference and Book Fair where my new book, Waking Up to the Pattern Left by a Snail Overnight, will be launched and presented alongside other writers with Asian heritage. NOTE: I now have both Asian and African roots, if you ask me.

The book will be officially released in April, but pre-orders are now open. Here are my publisher’s website and some distributors you can check:

GAUDY BOY

NORTHSHIRE BOOKSTORE

BARNES & NOBLE

BOOKSHOP.ORG

AMAZON

Early copies will be available during the AWP Conference and at the following events. Here are the relevant posters:

Since I was going to be in Seattle before an audience, my good friend from my university days in the Philippines, poet and musician Zosimo Quibilan (who is now based in the US) asked if I could say something about the concept album by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim, “Here Lies Love” – about the so-called rags to riches story of Imelda Marcos. “Here Lies Love” is now also a stage musical with audience participation that was apparently performed in Seattle, among other places, and will soon hit Broadway.

I admire the early work and solo output by David Byrne. I hate censorship, so I have no right to tell any other artist, including Byrne, what they must or must not produce. But putting out anything in the world naturally opens it to feedback and criticism.

I think his concept album is a complete misfire and should be challenged. Not because he is white. Not because he played no part in the dark Filipino history he claims to focus on. But because of how the Imelda Marcos he chose to depict was never shown as complicit and even active in the abuse and murder of countless Filipinos.

Imelda Marcos has been convicted by the Philippine courts for fraud and corruption, and should be in jail (check #ImeldaIselda). Her family, including the current president of the country – perhaps president only by some magical mathematical calculation attributable to fautly vote counting machines and invisible hands – owe a few hundred billions in taxes and refuse to admit or pay for them. Not to mention their refusal to apologize for their past deeds and to return what their clan stole under martial law.

Imelda, to cite one instance, was never held responsible for what happened to the now-abandoned and haunted Manila Film Center. During construction, part of the structure collapsed. The bodies of the workers were not dug out but simply buried with quick drying cement. Those whose bodies protruded, including survivors, had to be cut to pieces so that she could open her international film festival on time. With this concept album, and now stage production, one can only expect Imelda Marcos to be hoisted up as some nearly-mythical and desirable figure who will gain more sympathy than she deserves. The whole affair, despite the few hints of failed irony in the lyrics, tramples on the bones of the victims.

The album cover should not have been that image of Imelda as some damsel with an umbrella, but this one:

Perhaps a better concept album title and appropriate work has to be put out there to challenge Byrne’s. Before I even heard of his album I had actually started putting together a chapbook of poetry (aiming for a full collection) tentatively called “Blind as Love.” Maybe I should re-think that and replace the title with – HERE: LIES, LOVE FOR MONEY, MURDER – THE REAL “IMELDA THE CENTIPEDE STORY”

Injured in the Night – a poem for Joel Pablo Salud

Here is part of what I said during the Zoom event (watch it on YouTube) for the announcement of the winning manuscript for the 2022 Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize:

This September marks the 50th anniversary of the declaration of Martial Law in the Philippines by the late deposed dictator Ferdinand Marcos. The lies that continue to be spread by Cambridge Analytica-trained social media handlers of the Marcoses will keep trying to decimate the memory of those who fought the regime.

My manuscript  doesn’t just tackle martial law, but I chose these particular poems today to highlight the anniversary of the declaration.

There are four sections – Bound by Wood, The Belly of a Termite, Something in Its Grip, and Resonate. The first three sections deal with nature, politics, and departures respectively. The fourth has all three, but the themes are bound together by a single line from a song by Icelandic musician Bjork, a line “misheard” in different ways becomes the title of each poem in the final section.

“Injured in the Night” is among the poems I read, written for Joel Pablo Salud who has many interesting stories about those martial law years.

Injured in the Night
for Joel Pablo Salud


September is a war of memories
in the home country. Roads and alleys, 
unmarked cemeteries. Billboards 
are nothing but metal skeletons hiding 
behind the clash of colours on tarpaulin. 
The promise of whiter skin looms 
over the patchwork maze of shacks. 

No one mends a bullet-ridden car. 
It becomes fodder to the crunching jaws 
of scrap machinery, not a piece of evidence.

Who will remember those injured 
in the night, the disappeared? 
Are we only here to scavenge 
a landscape where smoke coils 
long after the last burning?

-o-

Something about a snail

From 4.30am ET on 30 August 2022 I will be allowed to share some good news. It is an unexpected and welcome gift – yes, I prefer to see it as a gift – that gives comfort and hope for the act and journey of writing that is often solitary and unrecognised.

So until tomorrow then. For now I shall share this photo of a snail that escaped being crushed by my large and clumsy feet.