Dumas Goethe Powems 4rom Weeei Bach

Two poems about dumaguete from co-fellows below. One's a lawyer now and the other's a magazine editor. Then they were just drunken buffoons.

These just bring back memories of sea and bacchanalia and hedonism. Mostly sea.

Nightlight on Breakwater

Negotiating the last port of call past midnight,
Post-conversation in a coffee shop in Pasay,
I take your white hand through an aisle
Of gaslamps bathing the vendors in orange light

Until we face an opening to the open sea,
Tossing in the world's shadow, keeping
Whole islands of countries together or tearing
Away at their edges, breaking off engagements.

Late into dark, the docks retire the whores,
Transvestites watch each other with suspicion.
Drunks huddle in a conspiracy to murder the full moon.
The policeman points his flashlight at parked lovers.

If we could ride a rented bicycle across the ocean
Morning would find us bright with sand in the Visayas
Reservations called through a seashell payphone
To a hotel whose beds we'd turn on one by one.

Maybe if I tell you all this you'd come with me.
An oil tanker slides out the harbor of heavy chains.
The captain paints small rainbows on the trail
One might follow another to Dumaguete.

-- Easy Fagela

Surfing in these Islands

The Sony of this island
is causing us some minor dilemma.

Waiting offshore are Dumaguete dolphins
and their happy sonic squeals
for the first time Costeaus:
couch potato mariners
of Discovery channel whale
and Trinitron shark fame.

But on simulcast are Misses Cuba
with her luscious Havana- pout boca,
China (Taiwan) and her mixed English maxims
of a 21st century Confucius confused,
the girl with enormous chakra
coal-dancing nails-for-a-bed India,
and Italy sleek as a Ferrari
all set to win her race the Universe.

Since Electricity it has been like this:
our eyes splashed with occasional static,
our bodies suddenly jerking to a halt.
A hot finger on the pause button of our lives.

-- Ed Geronia, Jr.

Eh Los Lobos Kaya, May Nakaisip Na?

Dang. Was looking for a good picture of chupacabras online and found out that our band's name, Los Chupacabras, is already being used by a band in the U.S.
(O nga naman, malamang nga may mas naunang nakaisip 'nun.)

Double dang because it's also the name of a friggin' frisbee team. Palit na ulet ng malupet na pangalan, mga bayaw!

By the way, ang sarap tumugtog sa U.P. Fair! Sana napanood n'yo kami.

New Century, with Dragon

Since there is little else to convince me that time moves forward
but the usual bright arcs and descents of sunlight, I am going back
to the age of dragons, the great age of stumbling into strange forests
where there are reports of knights who wield enchanted swords
that sing into the fire-bellies of fierce, gigantic beasts
and sightings of sorcerers in sudden castles looking out from towers,
scooping magic dusts from passing clouds. I wonder now,

turning the lights off and yielding to the older code of sleep,
how the years have managed to keep such fictions. I'm thinking
of uprooted trees and the elaborate paperwork. Or earlier deeds:
a young, dreamy-eyed scribe moving away from the din of medieval ballads
by the campfire into the woods, knocking quietly on the branches
and leaves. The next day, they will say he simply and understandably
lost his way. For that was also a time of faith; his companions believed

in disappearances. Tomorrow, in honor of these ancient convictions,
I will leave for some other place, somewhere with canopy and undergrowth
and many dark holes to sleep in. And I will find that man: stirring
and yawning and generally just scribbling about in that old morning
like nothing in the world could ever possibly change.