Inflection
The true aim is desire.
I'll email you why.
A heave of smoke vanishing,
blacker than coal.
~
The Mimosa
Permanent years have refused contact. A
contrast of space, the center the swell
that grows inside. It resides as
something to deny eventually.
~
The Paradigm
I love you, idiot.
Read closely
If you want to
Know how deep.
Cold Places
inside a cave
dust
from another century
house of
desolate rooms
huge blue door
a white hand vanishing
~
Father's Room
emptied of feeling
of odors
your room
floats
~
Old House
between rooms
cabinet doors
floorboards
remembering memories of lives other
than ours
waving
shadows passing
~
Photograph: Father and Kids at Home
In the background, the house looms, a
child you sit on your haunches, clutching
your whole world.
May mga panahon na talagang malaprobinsiya rin
dito sa'min: malamig ang simoy ng hangin; tahimik
sa labas ng bahay, mga tilaok ng manok at ugong
ng makina ng traysikel lang ang umaalingawngaw;
lagaslas ng dahon at awit ng ibon ang bumabati sa
di-kalayuan, tuko sa isang pader; ang isang kapitbahay
ay naguumpisa nang magluto ng almusal; at pagdungaw
mo ng bintana, ang malansa-pa-sa-patay-na-isdang
amoy ng tae ng alaga niyong aso.
Nakatali kasi-eh-heh ...
This has been a Vlad Gonzales Moment.
Regular programming will resume shortly.
Dream Song
I am dreaming the world again, all life,
another love lost or broken. I am
dreaming her breath, her body, the bed,
downcast windows, left leg, the chancy
accident, the face, scent, shadow. All
that has abandoned me.
I am dreaming clumsy things, places,
distance, even loss, death, even night,
perfect hours when I dream that I am
laughing at a joke I swear must be
bigger, senseless things we've lost
through the changes:
a voice, name,
dream, a world,
photographs.
~
The Truth about the Sky
It is true
the sky is the sky is
a System of unfolding
the sky is the sky is
She Adored by Silent Angels
Image cast by hands untiring for whom
these graven angels sing a pray'r
unspoken unbroken by a god whose image
carved by sculptor borne by rough calloused
fingers timber splinters inflicted depicted
unrestricted mold I now behold
worship adore wounded no more in
splendor.
The Lepanto Union
Gold rest in chunks of gravel
and ore, rice, sugar,
and milk, torches, flags.
~
Third World
I love you sunrise after sunrise. I love you dark brown earth.
I love you sweat, bread, wood. I love you fruits, fish. I love you
rivers, valleys, shy birds, forests. I love you ballads, lullabies,
prayers. I love you workers, markets, factories, fields of tears,
famine, poison. I love you history, culture. I love you slaves, bullets,
guns, manifestos of resistance.
Clockwise
learn unlearn
unreel rotate
left to right
and where do we begin?
left to right
movements
running
in transition
going against
~
Looking at a Lotus
A visionary styled its shape and form. A
surprise unveiled: bloom. Petals floating in
the mud, anciently divine, exotic, new.
Portraits of Despair
The size of feet
perfect,
still,
whole.
Damned concept: burning the dead body. Gray remains
burn with oil, the grease black. Dad's naked feet, cold.
A concept: Mother caresses the wound that you carve, places
bandage. The cry echoes, does not survive perfect.
~
Tryst
The moon. The brilliance of stars. The night thick, seeking, expects
nothing. Waking fears sleep, the rhythm of lullabyes, drowsiness.
Underneath: licking, darting, passing - wait, cry - dancing, humming.
~
Why Sit There James
brooding a nasty casualty, bored, sighs
of your trouble trouble too much, yes, they
talk about it up and down the slope of your
life, of your pain, but you just sit, become
infinitesimal, and everything becomes
nothing, exploding.
Across Continents
Through the frame
your arms, elbow, hand, cheek,
feet lightly bent,
the slightest touch unsettled you.
~
Betrayal
Modesty is a lesson our bodies bear shame
shapes her breast this lump in the body scars
the heart a secret best suffered against
itself an excess concealed with such ardor.
~
Shut
that mouth that face that story of a fall of a voice of lips.
Years later, bruises blossom bright purple, hidden, isolated.
art and words circa 2004
feels like a lifetime ago
♂: ...♬ ♪ ♫ ♫ ♬ ♪...
♀: ☠!!!
♂: ✌!!
I
I’m thinking shitty things, ill-fitting shrill things, things I think I’ll dismiss if I insist in thinking “This isn’t right!”, still I think “Kill him, kill him, his shirt is insipid! Slit his thighs, his wrists, his lips, his lids! Slit him ‘til his spirit is piss!”, I fight this dirty, glib ill will, still, I’m thinking “Will I slip? If I slip, will I kill smiling, grinning, liking it slightly?”
II
First finding I’m living with HIV, it’s silly, thinking “I’m dying! I, victim!” Sickly, dizzy, high in pills ‘til, inspiringly, I inflict HIV willingly in dining grill I stint in nightly, rightly victimizing girls, mixing chill piss in spicy chili, shit bits in sizzling sisig, thick spit in icy drinks ‘til midnight, ‘til, tiring, I sit in high spirits, ticklishly giggling, priding in illicit thrills, in kicking, in fighting HIV, in living!
III
Limbs limp, shitting in fits, pissing pink, his sins in vivid tints - bright, shining - I, crying, pity him, dying.
IIII
It's simply this: I insist in trimming his girth, finding it right, finding it fitting. Think: him sitting, pissing. Inspiring, isn't it?
IIIII
If I find him, I'll hit his shin with dirty piping. I'll kick his chin, split his lips, nick his lids with pins. I'll bind his limbs tight, strip him, inchingly skin him, dripping wicks blinding him in bits, his crying rising, insisting I simply kill him icily, finish him kindly, still his stinking, sinning, victimising spirit! Itchingly inspiring. Still, I'll dismiss his wish. I'll still skin him nightly, in strips, him still living, kicking blindly, still crying, 'til I'm grinning, in giggling fits, brimming with his spirit's light, 'til I think it's swimmingly right. It's in timing it. It's simply in timing it.
First things first:
The Free Press Nine
Siyasatin natin ngayon ang kanyang akda
“Image Fiction” and the Safe Sanctioned Transgressions
of Khavn’s Ultraviolins
Down at the poultry
Cultural Imperialism and Political Artistic Nostalgia
in Gerry Alanguilan’s Elmer
Pity not the elite, but do not condemn them all
Social Irrelevance and the Pinoy Postmodern “New”
in Miguel Syjuco's Ilustrado
You Are A Joke. You Are Not A Joke.
The Oppresive Obfuscations of Shock-&-Awe Poetics
in Angelo Suarez’ Dissonant Umbrellas
The Best Books Of 2008
A Blogger’s Discourse
The Devaluation of the Writer as Intellectual
and the Spectacle of Me
in Milflores Publishing’s “Creative Nonfiction” Catalogue
Better Living Through Xeroxography
Literary Patricide by way of the Small Independent Press
Propositions for the Pinoy Postmodern Novel, Part One
TV Dramaturgy and the Search for a “Popular” Literary Language
in Ricky Lee’s Para Kay B
Mistakes We Knew We Were Making
A few addenda
Just so we have all of these things in one easy-access post, being the nine essays that burned down more than its share of books and bridges all along the watchtower of that legendary long-legged centenary magazine the Philippines Free Press. These essays have been described by at least one person as "the main reason why I buy the magazine" but also in the same breath as like "(listening to someone) taking a shit," so really, you take from it what you can as that's how we really ultimately all seem to float in this all too precious Contemporary Literary Scene of ours. Here in my room in Cubao, at the risk of sounding like tearing out the sutures of an already scabbily-healing wound, we call it "that job that I tried doing well and on time but unfortunately neglected to pay me well and on time," but I already gave up on hoping to earn from This Thing We Call Art circa 2005 so I don't really know what I was thinking expecting stuff in exchange for stuff back in November-December 2008. Youthful Optimism, maybe? Or maybe a stir of a spell of a maelstrom of Artistic Avarice in my cooly-objective analytical intellectual heart? The Mystery endures.
The Maurice Arcache of Philippine Literature Department: I was mentioned as one of five "poets of note" in Patke and Holden's The Routledge Concise History of Southeast Asian Writing in English, which is exactly what it sounds like. The main event was a three-page rundown of Contemporary Philippine Poets writing in English. From what I can remember: a page and a quarter was about Conchitina Cruz' poetry and processes; Paolo Manalo, Neil Garcia, Angelo Suarez, and the founders of High Chair shared a longish paragraph; Jose Beduya got a paragraph for his oblique poetry; Marc Gaba got around half a page for his typographical lingual caesuran playfulness; and the five "poets of note" shared one breathless sentence laden with paranthetical descriptions of our stuff: Joel Toledo, Naya Valdellon, John Labella, Mark Cayanan, and me, described as "one of the most experimental and avant-garde poets of his generation." Naks. Not a bad assessment, all things considered, as they based it off of a book that was 60-70% in Filipino. I should probably use that to get my books published by the Mainstream Presses, I think.
The Routledge mention is pretty special for me as I pretty much cut my Pop Crit teeth with a couple of Routledge books, namely Chris Gray's the Cyborg Handbook (where I got the inkling of the idea of using Marxism/Feminism/Postcolonialism as critical framework for Philippine Speculative Fiction), and this book of essays on the Contemporary Japanese Weird with the title I can't quite remember right now and for some reason I can't find online (I'm tempted to say that it's this book, but it isn't), but I was 18-19 years old and the books had critical appraissals of William Gibson's Neuromancer and Donna Harroway's Cyborg Manifesto and Mamoru Oshii's adaptation of Masamune Shirow's Ghost In The Shell, Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira, etc etc etc, and really, the impression was mindblowing as that was the first time it was shown to me that these things - scifi, manga, anime, the things I was joyously wading in up to my eyelids - are actually texts worthy of highly-academic critical study, and that these studies frequently blossom with insights on the society that beget them, etc etc etc, so yeah, being mentioned in a Routledge book, however minor the mention (it was really just my name and a description of my stuff) is really fucked-up in that happy geeky way where you get to see that fanletter you sent to Strikeforce: Morituri published in the letters pages and with Gillis and Anderson even answering whatever questions you had about the Morituri Effect or whatever. It's really Something Else. And it's coming out this 30th July 2009! The book's $30, though, and money being money, I'm kinda hoping they give the Philippine printing rights to maybe UP Press so we Pinoys can have cheap copies of it in our bookshelves. I mean, it is about our literature, so, what the hell, Routledge should throw us all a bone and make it available to us in the most accessible way possible. It's all for the March of Progress of Art, dude!
What was very interesting with the rundown of Contemporary Philippine Poets was what how pretty much everyone mentioned are poets who don't deal with the usual dominant form of the Ineffectual Intellectual Romantic Artisan whose patter is dictated by the metronomey heartbeats of the Muses. As far as I know, the only poets mentioned who deal with the dominant form are Toledo and Valdellon (and maybe Garcia?). Everyone else mentioned has something or the other in their poetry that can only really be futiley described as Formal Play. Very interesting too how the three main contemporary poets discussed - Cruz, Beduya, Gaba - are all independently published, all coming from High Chair. Interesting how all three of them are absent in the just released antho of Contemporary Philippine Poetry in English Crowns and Oranges. Yeah, dude, what's up with that? Haha, intriga.
And this blog being founded on that Georgia O'Keeffe quote "Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest," I pretty much avoid posting any Life Stuff here, but I have been known to post a few here and there, which is why I'm posting this one here, as it's really Just One Of Those Things: I'm still looking for a job, been looking for one for about three months now, on and off, on and off as I keep finding racket stuff, but, you know, one can't live on that sort of thing alone, especially if you have a pretty big house to run. Hopefully, I'll find something that'll actually pay me properly. Do we still have that sort of thing here where we are floundering along the tailend of Vainglorious Arroyonomics?
To Be Continued... !!!!!!!
Yeah, it sure feels like it's just one of those days when every little thing leads towards yet another little thing that leads towards another little thing ad nausea in a Rube Goldberg rigmarole machine that industrial-light-and-magically turns molehills into Vesuviuses and all you can really do is to step back and at least try to admire how the red hot lava flow looks from the privileged view from the rim of the mouth of the crater, and then let rip at it a thick globulous wad of spit. Fuck you, 20th June 2009. Fuck you in the mouth with my big fat hairy cock.
and the first thing i did was post a rather long-winded comment here, where the discussion about literary criticism, discourse, its worth and whatnot, continues. and in such great company: chingbee cruz, marc gaba, mabi david (no relation), angelo suarez, and ohfucking-ehyeah: vlad gonzales and angas ng kurimaw.
a preview of stuff
Rodriguez & David
Javier & Nicolas
Samar & Teves
Paolo Chikiamco tweeted that some of us try our hands in doing six-word stories the whole day Independence Day yesterday, specifically SpecFickish type of stories, and me itching on doing some creative work after weeks of doing book layouts, I was more than up for the challenge. I ended up doing twenty-seven six-word stories, five of which were stuff I've already written before, so I only really made twenty-two new ones. You can read all of them here, but Chikiamco has a better view of things here, where he posted all of the contribs to the whole day affair.
anyway: I'm off to Batangas.
and in the middle of it all i get a new eMail from Miguel Syjuco, he of Ilustrado/Man Asia fame, as we've been corresponding for maybe a couple of months now, in and out (but oh what volume [in number AND loudness] of words), been talking about writing (of course), and Syjuco's approach to it, basically his training - twisty, traumatic, but funnily the norm OUTSIDE of the Philippines - makes for very very interesting reading, if only for context and maybe just a little punch to the balls about how we're going about doing our things here in the local scene (and of course me included, Dumavirus). maybe i can put up some of our conversations here? i'll ask.
Syjuco was working on extensive revisions on his novel when the whole Free Press thing exploded so we weren't able to talk about it when it was happening, but he did send me eMail to ask how everything was along the trenches, an eMail i regrettably wasn't able to respond to at the time, an eMail i've been planning on responding to once i get the free time that that eMail deserves, but sadly, again, this book i'm doing layouts on is really kicking my ass, so i keep putting off responding to that eMail, up until thirty minutes ago when i woke up to yet another eMail from him, again asking me how everything was, and so, bedhair and dried spittle and all, i decided to once and for all do this thing first thing in this morning while my brain's still fresh from a creepy dream about my dad, and here now i'm postmodernly back-pattingly quoting myself from the eMail, talking about the value - or apparent lack of value - of criticism in our Current Mode of Literary Production (of course).
"one of the many things brought up ... was how my brand of criticism (= hateful) doesn't really work (... pretty much ... doubts me saying that we're setting the future conditions of literary production as we produce our stuff and how we produce our stuff, or at least, ... if my writing has/will have that effect), and i figured it's really ... more or less 95% of everyone writing right now seeing writing as this really self-serving outpouring of personal verbiage thing and really ultimately not of any real consequence (thus the lousy output), and criticism (any criticism, actually, if you read [the detractors'] statements about it critically) even less so, as the two things have always been regarded as separate - one is creative/artistic, the other is deconstructive/academic - and not influencing one another, when actually, if you just think about it even for only three minutes, you'll figure that that notion - criticism not influencing creative writing, and vice versa - is really a very stupid notion, especially if that notion is coming from the keyboards of people who grew up as writers constantly in and out of the inter/national and classroom and informal workshops of the past twenty-five years or so when/where the workshop method really actually started making big waves producing writers by the dozens per semester, when/where the workshop method actually helped produce shelves and shelves and shelves of literature, and yeah, apparently, for a select few - and all of them cut their teeth in their own respective workshops, and all of them now actually panel members in the exact same workshops they graduated from a decade earlier - criticism does not influence creative writing. if so, why bother with the workshops? what is it for, then, if not for dialogue, for honing ideas, for hearing new insights, for criticism? maybe it's for the free vacation, ano?"
which is probably my first post about criticism postFree Press. yeah, i know, it could've been better, but still, right now, "i just more or less take the stuff i'm thrown." and with that, i go back to getting my ass kicked.
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