Los Chupacabraz at Purple Haze

Photos courtesy of Ed Geronia. Wazak na wazak!

Bayaw Studies # 1

Books 24

Mostly poetry books. VG condition. Pick up on July 12 Wednesday 2pm somewhere along Katipunan. Unahan na lang sa comments box.

1. John Ashberry, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (Poems) P300
2. Paul Auster, Disappearances: Selected Poems P300
3. Henri Cole, The Look of Things: Poems, P300
4. Roald Dahl, Skin and Other Stories, P350
5. Chou En-Lai, In Quest: Poems of Chou En-Lai, P200
6. Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair, P300
7. John Gery, The Enemies of Leisure: Poems, P300
8. Frank Herbert, Dune, P200
9. Edward Hirsch, Earthly Measures: Poems, P300
10. Michael Horovitz, Wordsounds & Sightlines: New & Selected Poems, P300
11. Denis Johnson, The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium
General Assembly: Poems Collected and New P350
12. Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, P300
13. JoEllen Kwiatek, Eleven Days Before Spring: Poems, P400 (HB)
14. Stanley Kunitz, Passing Through, The Later Poems: New and Selected, P550 (HB)
15. Octavio Paz, The Other Voice: Essays on Modern Poetry, P400
16. Octavio Paz, Selected Poems, P350
17. Ruth Reichl, Comfort Me With Apples, P400 (HB)
18. Asne Sierstad, The Bookseller of Kabul, P350
19. Mona Van Duyn, Near Changes: Poems, P300
20. Joni Mitchell: Shadows and Light- The Definitive Biography P450
21. Harlan Ellison, Slippage (Stories) P450
22. Margaret Atwood: Selected Poems (1965-1975) P450
23. Is Sex Necessary? by James Thurber & E.B. White 75th Anniv P400
24. Neal Stephenson, In the Beginning... Was the Command Line P400

Almost There

Here are some studies Pancho Villanueva came up with for the Caracoa cover. Konti na lang, papalaot na! Pardon the missing s sa ArtS. Concepts pa lang naman. Ayuz!

First Day Funk

pls drop by for a few. not yet in the list but will also read is lourd de veyra.

Hack-a-Shaq

Opens Tomorrow-- The Onion

The Mercy of Lazarus

Groggy, sure, and in the midst of bad dreams,
it must have been a dispirited awakening -
expecting everything settled, the long night
without interruption suddenly interrupted,

like a four A.M. alarm bell but worse, the rock
rolled back, to be called forth, told to pick up
the yoke, to pay your bills, get the roof fixed,
to become a bit of proof in the lord's affidavit.

Now the crowd pushes forward, demanding
to hear your cries of thanks. If you refused,
crawled back to your tomb, well, their hope,

lately upraised, would need a tomb of its own.
Where would be His miracle without your deceit -
your laugh and eager shout, the outstretched arms?


Stephen Dobyns
Mystery, So Long
Penguin, 2005

Jagged Little Pill

-- from foetry.com

Winding Up

I live on the water,
alone. Without wife and children,
I have circled every possibility
to come to this:

a low house by grey water,
with windows always open
to the stale sea. We do not choose such things,

but we are what we have made.
We suffer, the years pass,
we shed freight but not our need

for encumbrances. Love is a stone
that settled on the sea-bed
under grey water. Now, I require nothing

from poetry but true feeling,
no pity, no fame, no healing. Silent wife,
we can sit watching grey water,

and in a life awash
with mediocrity and trash
live rock-like.

I shall unlearn feeling,
unlearn my gift. That is greater
and harder than what passes there for life.


-- Derek Walcott

----

Thanks to all those who texted me this morning.
And a million thanks to my panelists Paolo, Chingbee,
and Sir Neil. Mabuhay kayo!

Caracoa 25

Hereunder is the list of 25 poets chosen for the 2006 revival issue of the Caracoa. We received submissions from 71 poets and we had a tough time trimming the list to 25. The works of those who were not included in this revival issue will be forwarded to the upcoming Caracoa anniversary issue which will come out within the year or early 2007. We are now working on the design and layout of the book. To all those who submitted, thank you very much for contributing and for keeping the Caracoa afloat.

The Editors

------------
1. Alexander Agena -- Lady in an Imaginary Painting
2. Jim Pascual Agustin -- Those Who Still Have Black Blood Under Their Feet
3. Ivy Alvarez -- The Elephant
4. Oscar Alvarez -- Economy Class
5. Glenn Atanacio -- Journey of Flowers
6. Amado Bajarias -- Artifacts 2 / Happiness in Other Planets
7. Luis Cabalquinto -- Details
8. Mark Cayanan -- As Dina Bonnevie
9. Frank Cimatu -- The Manifest Destiny Routine, or My Fetid Sestinna
10. Mikael De Lara Co -- Tongues
11. Vincent Coscolluela -- Church of the Meek
12. Adam David -- Instructions for the Inclined: Help Found A Writing Org
13. Raymond de Borja -- Tell Me, Where is the Soul
14. Rodrigo dela Peña -- Algebra
15. Israfel Fagela -- Condolences
16. Eduardo Geronia, Jr. -- Surfing in these Islands
17. Luisa Igloria -- Minim / Archipelago
18. Ken Ishikawa -- End of a Frontier
19. Arkaye Kierulf -- Horses
20. Sarge Lacuesta -- Modern Girls
21. Paolo Manalo -- Weekend Couple
22. Wilfredo Pascual -- A Filipino in the Charlie Brown Musical
23. Jose Ocampo Reyes -- Glimpses
24. Naya Valdellon -- New Year at the Wake
25. Joel H. Vega -- Interiors

Books 15

Rush Sale. Pick-up on June 1, Thursday, 2pm, Fruit Magic, Katipunan. But if you can get them earlier, the better (like tonight; sobrang walang pera eh hehe). just email me thru ramblingsoul@yahoo.com or leave a comment. thanks!

-------------
1. Neil Gaiman: Anansi Boys (HB) -- P600
2. TS Eliot, The Invisible Poet (Criticism) -- P300
3. Poems on the Underground (HB Anthology) -- P400
4. Italo Calvino: Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories -- P400
5. Jessica Hagedorn: The Gangster of Love(Uncorrected Proof) -- P450
6. The Penguin Rhyming Dictionary (Poets, Writers, Slogans)-- P400
7. Writers at the Movies: 26 Authors on 26 Movies (Carson, Baxter, Coover, Dobyns,
Hirsch, Moody, Raab, Rushdie, Simic, Sontag, etc.) -- P450
8. Seamus Heaney: Electric Light (Poems)P400
9. Don Paterson: Landing Light (HB Poems) -- P400
10. Thomas Lux: Split Horizon (Poems) -- P300
11. Raymond Carver: When Water Comes Together with Other Water (Poems)-- P350
12. Andrew Hudgins: Babylon in a Jar (Poems) -- P200
13. Jorge Luis Borges: Labyrinths -- P400
14. England's Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock & Beyond -- P700
15. Jorie Graham, Essays on the Poetry (by Thomas Gardner/Hard to Find) -- P1,000

To The Soul

Is anyone there
if so
are you real
either way are you
one or several
if the latter
are you all at once
or do you
take turns not answering

is your answer
the question itself
surviving the asking
without end
whose question is it
how does it begin
where does it come from
how did it ever
find out about you
over the sound
of itself
with nothing but its own
ignorance to go by


W. S. Merwin
Migration: New and Selected Poems
Copper Canyon Press 2005

. E r / ( . 9 ^ m A L / N d ^ .

up the stairs.

Reminder: Caracoa 2006 Deadline May 15

Those interested have until 6pm on Monday (May 15) to submit one to two unpublished poems with a short bio info of the writer. Caracoa 2006 will publish the works of 25 poets for this 25th anniversary issue. Works by poets who have not been previously published in the Caracoa are preferred. Thanks!

The Legend of 'Howl'

In which one ecstatic, idol-shattering poem heralded the '60s counterculture--and spawned the myth of its own radical break with the past

Allen Ginsberg (left) reading in San Francisco on Nov. 20, 1955, and (center) in New York City's Washington Square Park on Aug. 28, 1966. At right, the City Lights Pocket Poets edition of 'Howl and Other Poems.'


By David Barber | April 30, 2006
The Boston Globe

POETRY MAKES NOTHING happen, Auden duly informs us, but when mythology takes over, anything goes. Or so it would seem, to judge by a new collection of essays, ''The Poem That Changed America: 'Howl' Fifty Years Later" (FSG), commissioned by Beat hagiographer Jason Shinder to mark the golden anniversary of Allen Ginsberg's epochal barbaric yawp.

Ever since ''Howl" first appeared in its instantly talismanic City Lights pocket edition in the fall of 1956, it's been hard to reckon where the poetry ends and the mythology begins. The Poem That Changed America? Never mind that there's no parsing such a blunderbuss hypothesis-the startling thing is that any poem at this late date can still have the kind of potent half-life in the collective imagination usually reserved for platinum pop hits.

When the legend becomes fact, runs the imperishable line in John Ford's ''The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," print the legend. In the case of ''Howl," it was a seamless transition: The poem was already legendary before it saw the light of print.

In the standard telling, it all began with a thunderclap on what Jack Kerouac later called that ''mad night" of Oct. 7, 1955, in an erstwhile San Francisco auto-body shop converted to a Boho art gallery. That was the mad night Ginsberg took his turn on the orange-crate podium and declaimed his work in progress to the assembled ''angelheaded hipster" faithful, leaving the throng in an uproar and Beatnik paterfamilias Kenneth Rexroth in tears. That was the mad night that Ginsberg's full-throttle first line-"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked"-burst into the American vernacular as the first and perhaps still unbested of countless generational war cries. That was the mad night that turned a spindly Jewish twentysomething from Jersey into a rock star avant la lettre, prompting ever-canny City Lights impresario Lawrence Ferlinghetti to fire off a telegram the next day that echoed Emerson's storied note to Whitman on the publication of ''Leaves of Grass" exactly a century earlier: ''I greet you at the beginning of a great career."

It's the stuff of fable, and it goes to show that there's nothing like a classic creation myth for industrial-strength staying power. That night has gone down in the annals as the official kickoff of the San Francisco Renaissance as a brand-name literary movement, but that's not the half of it. There was an earthquake that night, and it presaged the birth of the counterculture, the spawning of Sixties youth rebellion, and the annunciation of redemptive transgression as a radical social creed and a libertine fashion statement.

''Howl" was its epicenter, and the fault lines would be redrawn as battle lines practically overnight. By the time the revised text began to circulate far and wide as Beatnik samizdat, complete with a lionizing benediction by Ginsberg's old hometown mentor William Carlos Williams (''Hold back the edges of your gowns, Ladies, we are going through hell"), ''Howl" was already more of a landmark cultural artifact than a mere work of literature, the breakneck lines on the page barely able to keep up with the zeitgeist whirlwind they were reaping.

Pop culture chronology is of course the inverse of geological time-a year is an era and half a century is the rock of ages. It may appear more inevitable than ironic, then, that Ginsberg's brave new caterwaul was destined to be remastered as an Old School anthem.

The conclave Shinder has rounded up is a conspicuously mixed bunch (professors and pundits ranging from Marjorie Perloff to Andrei Codrescu jostle with assorted literati like Marge Piercy, Rick Moody, and former US poet laureates Billy Collins and Robert Pinsky) and the plan was clearly to size up the ''Howl" phenomenon from every conceivable angle ('''Howl' and the Language of Modernism," '''Howl' in Transylvania," ''The Poet as Jew"). Taken together, though, it all rather smacks of committee work, a laborious bureaucratic effort to affirm that ''Howl" is still everything it's cracked up to be, and then some. This predictably leads to a good deal of boilerplate prattle-"'Howl,' so perfectly titled, was coolness, madness, anger, and some of the secular beatitudes all wrapped into one poem," Collins chirps. Nevertheless, there's a suitably thoroughgoing remedial education to be had for those of tender years whose strongest recall of Allen Ginsberg may be as one of those dudes in the retro Gap khaki ads.

Despite some faint traces of disenchantment in the air, the festschift's prevailing tenor is pious, even starstruck, as the eclectic panel queues up to attest to ''Howl"'s totemic mystique and revolutionary vibe, albeit at times straining mightily to dissolve any contradiction between the poem's iconoclastic clamor and its canonic stature. That's mythic grandeur for you, but it's also a case of dutifully taking the poet at his own word. ''In publishing 'Howl,"' Ginsberg avowed in a brief retrospective piece the anthology reprints under the oddly poignant title ''I've Lived with and Enjoyed 'Howl'," ''I was curious to leave behind after my generation an emotional time bomb that would continue exploding in US consciousness in case our military-industrial-nationalist complex solidified into a repressive police bureaucracy."

. . .

In the face of such commemorative fanfare, it almost seems churlish to retort that the time bomb has come to more closely resemble a time capsule. That's not to say ''Howl" and its cult following haven't had a china-rattling cultural impact: There's no arguing with the archival evidence that the poem administered a genuine shock to the body politic and body poetic alike. But what if its unreconstructed acolytes have it exactly backwards, and the enduring allure of ''Howl" has less to do with its groundbreaking raw language, and its rip-roaring sales pitch for a new brand of antiestablishment enlightenment, than with what a defiantly old-fashioned poem it is? What if its ''powerful resonance today," as the anthology's flap copy trumpets, is an elegiac rather than a prophetic echo, a last gasp instead of a clarion call?

We are talking about a poem, after all, that's modeled on ancient prosodic blueprints, bardic and Biblical: the litany, the psalm, the dithyramb, the catalog. It's a poem whose original working title was ''Strophes," knowingly harking back to the incantatory template of Attic choral odes and Athenian tragedies. It's a poem inescapably cosponsored by those two magisterial 19th-century rhapsodists, Blake and Whitman-and not merely in its impassioned appropriation of their soundtracks (great rolling cadences, cascading refrains, margin-busting line measures) but also their mindscapes (ecstatic hyperbole, cosmic visions, declamatory speechifying). Its hyperventilating denunciation of ''Moloch" as the personification of the soul-corrupting social order (''Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money!") is a trope straight out of Old Testament scripture; its feverish ''Footnote" (''Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop apocalypse!") is nothing less than an amped-up liturgical chant. We are talking about a poem, in other words, that's animated by the most atavistic article of faith in the book-the power and glory of poetic utterance itself.

The party line on ''Howl" pays lip service to all this, but what's seldom owned up to is how dolefully retrograde it now feels to take Ginsberg's explosive poem-any poem-on those sacramental terms. It's safer to exalt ''Howl"'s vehemence at the expense of its earnestness; it's easier to buy into its subversive scatalogical explicitness than to put stock in its subversive absence of irony. A San Francisco magistrate's ruling in the 1957 City Lights obscenity trial that the poem has ''some redeeming social importance" assured that its uncensored publication would go down as a thumping victory for trash-talking free speech and fire-breathing political dissent, and yet in another sense it was a coup de grace: Enshrining ''Howl" as a social manifesto seems to have had the irreversible effect of embalming it as a period piece.

''The appeal in 'Howl' is to the secret or hermetical tradition of art 'justifying' or 'making up for' defeat in worldly life," Ginsberg later wrote, but the erudite ring of that remark is just one more chastening reminder of how the spirit in which his poem was conceived has been swallowed up by the theatrical spectacle of its public acclaim. The notoriety of Ginsberg's opus as an all-purpose, pocket-sized rite of passage-part do-it-yourself kit for demolishing taboos, part passport to polymorphous permissiveness-scarcely afforded ''Howl" the fighting chance to earn its keep as a poem. Indeed, it's hard to dispel the impression that the most dated thing about the poem is that it is a poem.

So are ''Howl"'s latter-day adherents succumbing to false nostalgia in proclaiming the poem as a national monument? Not at all: The nostalgia is genuine. It's surely wishful thinking to imagine that poetry was ever close to the center of American public life, but in the clear light of hindsight it sure looks like it was within closer hailing distance once upon a time than seems remotely plausible today. If Ginsberg's message has stood the test of time better than his medium, that may be the real secret as to why his dirge still touches such a raw nerve. Poems don't set our ears on fire like that anymore, and they know better than to even try.

David Barber is poetry editor of The Atlantic

Study: Alligators Dangerous No Matter How Drunk You Are

May 10, 2006 | Issue 42•19
The Onion

BATON ROUGE, LA—In a breakthrough study that contradicts decades of understanding about the nature of alligator–drunkard relations, Louisiana State University researchers have concluded that people's drunkenness does not impair the ancient reptiles' ability to inflict enormous physical harm.

Photo: Drunkard Jim Boudreaux taunts the alligator he called "a total pussy" in front of friends.

Alligators exhibit the potential to inflict serious harm, regardless of the blood-alcohol levels of their victims.

"Our data strongly indicates that human intoxication does not transform an alligator into a docile creature that enjoys wrestling," said professor Ryder McCrory, chair of the Wildlife Taunting Department of LSU's prestigious Center For Bullying And Hazing Studies. "Despite its slow-witted demeanor and tendency to bask motionlessly in the hot sun, it's a mistake to believe that an alligator will passively tolerate a half nelson, no matter how much Southern Comfort is fueling it."

McCrory said the study yielded statistics that speak for themselves.

"In 10 out of 10 documented cases of violent alligator–drunkard encounters, the reptile was not influenced by the fact that the victim was 'just kidding' or 'just having some fun,'" McCrory said.

To an alligator, McCrory explained, a human forearm, even drunkenly dangled between the creature's casually opened jaws, still appears to be prey.

In field experiments, members of the control group performed no better-—and often far worse—than their sober counterparts in defending themselves against a 300-pound, seven-foot bull alligator. Even when armed with an empty tequila bottle.

"At best, the bottles bounced harmlessly off the alligator's snout," said LSU research assistant Tracy Sawyer.

When placed in water, the drunken volunteers fared even worse, and the alligator markedly better, Sawyer said.

In addition, the alligators far outperformed their inebriated human counterparts in the following areas: lunging, biting, crushing, dismembering, and swallowing.
Enlarge ImageAlligator and Drunk

According to the study, an alligator's characteristic grin should not be interpreted as a lighthearted reaction to the outrageous nerve of an alcohol-addled human. "Don't let an alligator's easygoing appearance fool you," Sawyer said. "These creatures have no empathy for drunken pranksters looking for fun. They are not black bears."

McCrory recommended that alligator wrestling be undertaken solely by professionals, specifically roadside-attraction proprietors. For drunkards interested in proving their mettle with alligators, the researchers proposed these guidelines:

Instead of baiting an alligator, seek another form of drunken recreation, such as attending a strip club, burning a pile of tires, or painting one's buttocks with a funny face and videotaping it.

Sick or infant deer are considered a far safer match for most inebriated humans; kicking a raccoon or squirrel already dying by the side of the road is also recommended.

Experts suggest that those who become aggressive after consuming alcohol would be safer channeling that energy into more constructive behavior, such as calling an ex-lover.

And McCrory warned drunkards who "absolutely must assault an alligator while inebriated" to first make sure it is not a John Deere Gator cargo utility vehicle. This oversight "is a common occurrence," he said.

New Wave Naman...

we'll be as we are
when all the fools who doubt us
fade away
-- "Hollow Horse"
The Icicle Works

Music I Like

(Updated) Call for Submission: Caracoa 2006

*mga prends, paki-link/update naman ito sa mga blog n'yo. thanks! :)


Caracoa, the official literary publication of the Philippine Literary Arts Council (PLAC) and the longest-running journal of poetry in English in Asia, is now accepting submissions for Caracoa 2006.

The return of Caracoa marks the 25th anniversary of the PLAC. It will be the first Caracoa anthology to come out in almost ten years.

There is no specific theme for this issue. Those interested should submit two unpublished poems in English via email (word attachment only) thru caracoa2006@yahoo.com. Deadline for submission is May 15, 2006. Those submitting should include their contact info and a brief bio-data.

Caracoa 2006 will showcase the works of 20 to 25 poets and will be guest edited by Lourd De Veyra and myself along with a group of other poets writing in English. Caracoa 2006 is targeted for publication this coming June (not September as originally posted), and will be the first in what is envisioned to be a semi-annual publication of the journal.

About the PLAC

PLAC or Philippine Literary Arts Council was founded in September 1981 by prominent English-language poets Gémino H. Abad, Cirilo F. Bautista, Alfrredo Navarro Salanga, Ricardo M. de Ungria and Alfred A. Yuson.

The group edited and published Caracoa: The Poetry Journal of the Philippine Literary Arts Council, until it became a regular quarterly by the mid-1980s, with funding and administrative support provided by British businessman and writer Michael Adams.

Intermittent funding led to sporadic release in the 1990s, until the heretofore last issue, Caracoa 96, theme-titled "Heroes & History," which came out in 1996 as part of the start of the Philippine Centennial celebration. It was actually the 27th issue of the poetry journal published within a span of 15 years.

By then PLAC had expanded its membership to include notable fictionists in English, so that its roster of membership read as follows.

Honorary Fellows: Carlos A. Angeles, Franz Arcellana, Tita Lacambra Ayala, Erwin E. Castillo, Ricaredo Demetillo, Ophelia A. Dimalanta, NVM Gonzalez, Edna Z. Manlapaz, Bienvenido N. Santos, Edith L. Tiempo and Emmanuel Torres.

Associate Fellows: Cesar Ruiz Aquino, Juaniyo Arcellana, Ma. Luisa Aguilar B. Cariño, Fidelito C. Cortes, Jose Y. Dalisay Jr., Simeon Dumdum Jr., Marjorie Evasco, Felix Fojas, Eric Gamalinda, Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo, Marne Kilates, Susan Lara, Clovis Nazareno, Charlson L. Ong, Danton Remoto, Ramon C. Sunico, Cesare A.X. Syjuco, Ma. Fatima V. Lim-Wilson and Ruel S. de Vera.

The Founding Fellows still comprise the Board of Trustees, with the exception of the late Freddie Salanga.

Outstanding thematic issues of Caracoa have included: Caracoa 1 featuring early works by PLAC's founders; Caracoa 3: Nine Women Poets (October 1983: Isabela Banzon, Bing Caballero, Ma. Fe Rhodora A. Espinosa, Ma. Linda Felipe, Fanny Haydee B. Llego, Priscilla C. Supnet Macansantos, Ma. Annella Manalo, Grace R. Monte de Ramos and Marjorie E. Pernia); Caracoa 4: New Voices (July 1984: Ramon Bautista, Fidelito Cortes, Francis C. Macansantos, Clovis Nazareno, R. Torres Pandan, Victor Jose Peñaranda and Ernesto Superal Yee); Caracoa 5: Sub Versu -- An Anthology of Poetry in Protest (November 1984); Caracoa 6: Eros -- Poems of Love and Desire (February 1985); Caracoa 7: Breaktext -- Poems Dancing on Their Heads (May 1985); Caracoa 8: Genius Loci: Poetry of Place (August 1985); Caracoa 9: Meta -- Of God, Death & Beyond (November 1985); Caracoa 10: R+A+D+I+O (February 1986, featuring the first poetry collection of Ricardo M. de Ungria); Caracoa 11: Coup d'EDSA -- Poems on Freedom (May 1986); Caracoa 15: Ex Patria; Caracoa 17: Women of Letters (January 1988); Caracoa 20: In Memoriam: Alfrredo Navarro Salanga (November 1988); Caracoa 22: GAIA: Versecology -- In Celebration of Earth Day 1990; Caracoa 24: Flipside -- Poems on America (January 1991); and Caracoa 26/95: Gaudeamus (1995: A Collection for the 1990s of New Voices, Award-Winning Poems & Recent Works by Established poets).

The caracoa was a war vessel plying the waters off Mindanao and the Moluccas in the 16th century. The rowers stayed close to the hull, while the warriors stood with their spears on a platform. The poet sat alone at the far end of the boat, manning the rudder. He was neither rower nor warrior, yet he decided where the prow should point. His own thoughts knifed through the immense sea of his solitude, though the waters kept him company.

In him was rower and warrior; he himself was a double-decked vessel of grace
and irony. He was far back, yet he provided direction. At times the caracoa lost its way. No matter. The sea would still be there, and the shoals would still be duly recorded.

Fairly Legal

just got these photos c/o white rabbit Iwa Wilwayco. Los Chupacabras in the recent U.P. Fair! Rakenrol, mga bayaw!!!

*Note: If you look really close, you can spot the well-hidden attorney and an interesting display of band "synergy". Nyehehehe.

Extra! Extra!

Got a text from Augie Rivera about this. It's so friggin' funny, I just had to put it up. Get your copies now, people. And long live press freedom! Ahehe.

Manila Times headline today (March 14 2006):

Hooded ex-NPA fingers Dinky

Mobo Modding

Itching to get myself at least a 6800GT video card to do this...

Ignorance of the Law is No Excuse

We were warned about spiders, and the occasional famine.
We drove downtown to see our neighbors. None of them were home.
We nestled in yards the municipality had created,
reminisced about other, different places --
but were they? Hadn't we known it all before?

In vineyards where the bee's hymn drowns the monotony,
we slept for peace, joining in the great run.
He came up to me.
It was all as it had been,
except for the weight of the present,
that scuttled the pact we made with heaven.
In truth there was no cause for rejoicing,
nor need to turn around, either.
We were lost just by standing,
listening to the hum of wires overhead.

We mourned that meritocracy which, wildly vibrant,
had kept food on the table and milk in the glass.
In skid-row, slapdash style
we walked back to the original rock crystal he had become,
all concern, all fears for us.
We went down gently
to the bottom-most step. There you can grieve and breathe,
rinse your possessions in the chilly spring.
Only beware the bears and wolves that frequent it
and the shadow that comes when you expect dawn.


John Ashbery
Where Shall I Wander: New Poems

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.

Warning: Poetry is Good for Your Health

Is Poetry the New Prozac?
by Christina Patterson
27 January 2006

Poetry is good for your health. That, at least, is the premise of studies currently under way for the Arts Council and the Department of Health. One study, published a couple of years ago in the journal Psychological Reports, suggested that writing poetry boosted levels of secretory immunoglobin A. Another, undertaken by a consultant at Bristol Royal Infirmary, concluded that poetry enabled seven per cent of mental health patients to be weaned off their anti-depressants. Poetry, it seems, is not the new rock'n'roll, but the new Prozac.

This was not instantly evident at the ceremony for the TS Eliot poetry prize last week. Perhaps it was the strip-lighting, but the assembled throng of pasty faces and panda-shadowed eyes did little to foster a sense of radiant health. As feel-good events go, it ranked just above a tussle with your online tax return, but probably below a Thai takeaway in front of Celebrity Big Brother. It was, of course, not fair of Cyril Connolly to describe poets as "jackals fighting over an empty well", but it is true that £10,000 prizes do not, on the whole, boost the health and happiness of those who don't win.

The prize, in any case, went to a paean to psychosis. Carol Ann Duffy's collection of love poems, Rapture, is a moving and, at times, skin-crawlingly accurate portrayal of a process that psychologists have recently identified as a form of madness. We have all been there: tending the mobile "like an injured bird", repeating the name "like a charm, like a spell". For most of us, falling in love is a season in what Duffy calls "glamorous hell", and not a sojourn. We might suffer a few sleepless nights, or even eat a bit less than usual, but we can't sustain life at this pitch. And, luckily for us, our minds comply.

Many poets - a higher proportion, apparently, than of the average population - are not so lucky. John Clare, Anne Sexton, Robert Lowell and, most famously, Sylvia Plath, all knew the torments of a mind that would, on occasion, burst out of the crucible of what Freud called "normal human misery" into the nameless horrors of mania. The mad poet may be a cliché, but it is not a myth. Poets continue to write of their experiences of mental illness. If poetry is some kind of wonder-drug, it sure ain't working for them.

So who is making these headline-hitting assertions, and why? The answer, of course, is arts administrators, and they're doing it for money. And kindness, and the philanthropic impulse, and passion and a desire to help the lost and the lonely and the miserable and the mad. But, to do all this, you need money, and to get money you need to go to funders, and to go to funders you need studies, evidence, and results.

A current project is a good example. Poems in the Waiting Room was set up by an enthusiastic social worker eight years ago. Run, like most of these things, on a shoestring, it has had little pots of funds from trusts and foundations as well as the Arts Council, the Poetry Society and the Foreign Office. It aims are, you'd have thought, worthy and modest: to cheer up miserable places (hospital waiting rooms) at an anxious time with a little injection of art.

Their online "evaluation", however, tells a different story. Amongst a dizzying range of aims and objectives listed in its executive summary are "to gauge the external consequences of displaying poems in waiting rooms", to see "what new behaviour follows" and "what new activities". An extensive discussion of the "methodology" follows, with tables of facts and figures. The one thing, in fact, that the project doesn't allow for is for someone to read a poem and keep quiet about it. This is poetry as life-coaching. You must read and act and reach your goal. And you must do this in an act of self-improvement in which most poets, critics and readers have failed.

In a brave moment of honesty and bathos, the project's organisers assert that "the precise impact of the poems displayed... was always going to be hard to measure". The final report consists, as these things always do, of pages of anecdote masquerading as science, and ends with the hope that further funding be found. My heart went out to the organisers. Like most of us, they're simply doing their best in a league-table culture where everything is judged by results.

There is, in the right hands, a fine role for poetry as social work, but let's not pretend that it's the same as poetry as art. Poetry, like all art, is not a panacea. Perhaps it's more like homeopathy. A great placebo - some people swear by it - but the studies are inconclusive.

Boomtown Rat

A Walk Across the Rooftops
The Blue Nile
1984

This debut album by Paul Buchanan and the rest of The Blue Nile was easily one of the more important releases to emerge from the so-called '80s new romantic scene. Most of the tracks in the album offered a novel mixture of stripped-down electronic backbeats with haunting, almost eerie melodies that complemented Buchanan's sad and heartfelt words. It has been claimed by many critics as an album way ahead of its time, primarily because the band chose to relegate to the background the screaming synths and danceable rhythms that were all the rage in that era.

While A Walk Across the Rooftops did house the popular (and danceable) new wave anthem, "Stay," most of the other songs are slow and folksy, progressing along a more soulful and introspective line. When Buchanan wails "The lights are always changing/The black and white horizon/I leave the redstone building/And walk across the rooftops..."(A Walk Across the Rooftops) or the more direct, "Do I love you? Yes, I love you. Will we always be happy-go-lucky?"(Tinseltown in the Rain), his scarred voice seems for a moment to make up all the melancholy in the world. He was no Jeff Buckley or Mark Kozelek (Red House Painters), but it probably was better that way. And this will become clear in the bands' succeeding albums, which has been hailed as two of the most important albums of the past two decades (Hats and Peace at Last, respectively).

Now with four albums under their name (the latest to be released was the again acclaimed High, in 2004), The Blue Nile have cemented their status as an important and (still) influential force in the modern rock scene.

Easter Parade

The line of traffic comes to a stand still
For the love King, out in the morning air
I find a place I started from
The wild is calling, this time I follow
Easter parade

In the bureau typewriter's quiet
Confetti falls from every window
Throwing hats up in the air
A city perfect in every detail

Easter parade

I know you, birthday cards and silent music
Paperbacks and Sunday clothes

In hallways and railway stations
Radio across the morning air
A crowd of people everywhere
And then the people, all running forward

Easter parade

Attachments

I love how things attach themselves
to other things. The rocks sitting stubbornly
beneath a river, beards of moss.

I choose a color and it connotes sadness.
How long must the symbols remain true? Blue
is blue, not lonely. After a time, one gives up

reading the sky for shadows, even rain.
There is no promise, only a possibility.
A moment moves to another, and still it feels

the same. Like old letters in boxes,
or how the rain, at times, falls invisibly.
Finally, the things we love demand more love,

as if we have always been capable of it. Yet
I can only offer belief, mirages that mean water,
long travels that lead somewhere. I am reading

old letters, trying to make something
of what's been said. It might be raining;
some pages are unreadable.

Meritage Press Holiday Poetry Contest

Arkaye's award-winning pose (hehehe)

Thanks so much to Ms. Eileen Tabios, Ms. Jean Vengua, and the people from Meritage Press. Congrats to all the winners, especially bayaw Arkaye and Kael.

From the email:

Meritage Press is delighted to congratulate the following winners for the 2005 "Babaylan Speaks" Poetry Contest, judged by Jean Vengua:

FIRST PLACE:
"Spaces" by Arkaye Velasquez Kierulf

HONORABLE MENTIONS:
"A House" by Mikael de Lara Co
"Save as Draft" by Joel M. Toledo
"APO BAKIT" by Amalia B. Bueno

SPECIAL MENTIONS:
"way /way/" by Marlon Unas Esguerra
"charmed" by Yvonne Hortillo

To see the winning poems and the Judge's Commentary, please go to the Meritage Press website.

Sobrang salamat po! :)

The Ascension

In which the holy man carries the child
up the mountain, and the world is changed

Because in every collapse
the body is drawn into itself.
And, because the sacrifice
will lead to an understanding
of the fallen child, the prophet
climbs upward and endures the voices.

He closes his eyes,
wondering how he can just leave
everything behind: the faces of children
with their round, doomed eyes,
their hands crushing flowers, and how
the wind kept resurrecting the fallen leaves.

He trembles slightly, almost losing
his footing. There must be a lesson
to be learned here, he says to himself, even
in the resisting. Meanwhile, the path ahead
climbs upward, gives way to a certain
solitude. For this, he wept.

There are too many questions. But
this one is moving quickly toward a resolution. Surely
the weight of the world can be so natural.
But the child, the gradual loss—
He is too young, he murmurs. He is unready
for such faith, such curious display of love.

The years have softened the man,
his face marred by wisdom and diminished
strength. He ambles onward, his hands
slow and yet with each painful step,
the sky is opening for him. He thinks himself
unfairly dressed for departure, but

his people won’t have it otherwise.
The ceremony must be followed. And as his back
fades into the glare, the old man accepts his role.
He is the symbol of His age, the bearer of meaning,
the body He carries more feeble than His own:
the impossible burden of His child, a young

forgivable world.

Cafe Ysabela Gig

Some photos from the Los Chupacabras gig last monday in Cafe Ysabela, courtesy of sir Krip. Also, check out Paolo Manalo's tigidigging of our song, "Santa Rules" (hehe).

Balot, Pinoy

Saan ba talaga sa tatlong kanta na ito
lumalabas ang ating dugong maharlika?

Noypi
Bamboo

Tignan mo ang iyong palad,
kalyado mong kamay sa hirap ng buhay.
Andami mong problema nakuha mo pang ngumiti
Noypi ka nga ASTIG!
Saan ka man ka man naroroon,
huwag kang matatakot sa baril
o patalim sa bakas ng madilim

HOY! Pinoy ako! Buo aking loob, may agimat ang dugo ko
HOY! Oh Pinoy ako. May agmay ang dugo ko

Sinisid ko ang dagat, nilibot ko ang mundo.
Nasa puso ko lang pala ang hinahanap kong kulo.
Ilang beses na akong muntikang mamatay
Oh alam ko ang sikreto kaya't nandito pa't buhay.
Oh sabi nila may anting anting ako,
pero di nila alam na diyos ang dahilan ko

Dinig mo ba ang bulong ng lahi mo?
Isigaw mo kapatid ang himig natin

-----------

Pinoy Ako
Orange and Lemons

Makikita na
Ibat ibang kagustuhan ngunit iisang patutunguhan
Gabay at pagmamahal ang hanap ko
Pagbibigay ng halaga sa iyo
Nais mong ipakilala kung sino ka man talaga?

Pinoy ikaw'y pinoy
Ipakita sa mundo
Kung ano ang kaya mo
Ibang-iba ang pinoy
Wag kang matatakot
Ipagmalaki mo pinoy ako
Pinoy tayo

Ipakita mo ang tunay at kung sino ka
Mayroon masama at maganda
Wala naman perpekto
Basta magpakatotoo oohh...oohh..
Gabay at pagmamahal ang hanap mo
Pagbibigay ng halaga sa iyo
Nais mong ipakilala kung sino ka man talaga

Talagang ganyan ang buhay
Dapat ka nang masanay
Wala rin mangyayari
Kung laging nakikibagay
Ipakilala ang iyong sarili
Ano man sa iyo mangyayari
Ang lagi mong iisipin
Kayang kayang gawin

--------------

Ako'y Pinoy
Florante

Ako’y isang pinoy sa puso’t diwa
Pinoy na isinilang sa ating bansa
Ako’y hindi sanay sa wikang mga banyaga
Ako’y pinoy na mayroong sariling wika

Wikang pambansa ang gamit kong salita
Bayan kong sinilangan, hangad kong lagi ang kalayaan

Si Gat. Jose Rizal noo’y nagwika
Siya ay nagpangaral sa ating bansa
Ang hindi raw magmahal sa sariling wika
ay higit pa ang amoy sa mabahong isda

Wikang pambansa ang gamit kong salita
Bayan kong sinilangan, hangad kong lagi ang kalayaan

Ako’y isang pinoy sa puso’t diwa
Pinoy na isinilang sa ating bansa
Ako’y hindi sanay sa wikang mga banyaga
Ako’y pinoy na mayroong sariling wika