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

Back

The god of the back
must be a lonely god,
god in the shape of man-headed hawk.

Long ago
a man had been sailing the river
and the hawk had been flying beside him
for days. Mornings,

the man would wake and look,
yes, there it was, dark tip-to-tip, the hawk.
His hawk, he began to think of it.
And after a time

he forgot the point of the journey,
he only woke each morning to see
if the hawk was there, to move if the hawk
moved with him, to not rest

if the hawk did not rest. And all of this love
was done in silence, between animal
and animal. There

beside him in the air and there
beside him in the water, the yoke
of the hawk. Once he had a family. Once
he had a city to go to and something

to bring back. More and more
he began to see his life
as a story the hawk was telling

holding the rat of the field in its claw, meaning
There is another world
and I will take you in it.
This

is when he became the god,
god of the back, the beautiful
brow of leaving.

-- Beckian Fritz Goldberg
Lie Wide Awake, 2005

Mugshots!

Hehe. I was googling photos of Ray Bradbury for the previous entry when I stumbled upon this site: writersmugs.com .

Game!

Kaya n'yo bang hulaan king sinu-sino ang mga manunulat sa baba nang 'di tumitingin sa website? May libreng QUESO DE BOLA sa susunod na pasko 'yung makakakuha ng lahat. AT may libreng isa pang pagkasarap-sarap na QUESO DE BOLA 'yung makakita ng one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-others bonus question!!!! Sino 'yung naiiba?
Sige nga, sige nga!

Harpy New Year

"The newspapers says, says
Says it's true, it's true
And we can break through
Though torn in two
We can be one

I, I will begin again..."
--- U2, New Year's Day

Prends, plugging lang. Firstly, bili naman kayo ng Philippine Star this Sunday, New Year's Day. I've been told an essay I wrote on Ray Bradbury will come out in the lifestyle section.

Ikalawa, bili na rin kayo ng Men's Health Magazine, January issue. I've an essay on poetry plus a few nagpapaka writer, ultra poser-looking photos in borrowed Armani polo. Ahehe.

Tre, baka naman meron kayong kilala na nagtuturo o kaya'y may aklat tungkol sa pag-aaral ng salitang Italian. I really need to study it so I can defend my thesis this semester. Ilang buwan na lang ang nalalabi sa semestre eh.

Ciao! Kitakitchie!

Father's Lullabye

In the true idea
There is no dying
Because the world is imaginary.

If a flash of green
Foresees our sun as a splash
At least you lived among colors.

Adapt to the night
And since the world has already ended,
No need to fear each night’s sleep.


Fanny Howe
American Letters & Commentary
Issue 16

Boomtown Rat Redux

This week, I'm starting a retro tribute of sorts on seminal bands/artists of the past two or three decades. Mostly because I find many existing music columns incredibly self-indulgent. I think we need less of these collaged, cut-and-paste, namedrop-this-and-that band sort of thing. Let's go back to the music.

Secondly, and honestly, because I simply miss doing music reviews. Back in the mid '90s, I maintained a column called "Boomtown Rat" in the pages of the then Gokongwei-backed Manila Times. It was good while it lasted. Hay...(the faraway look, the audible sigh).

Ehem...Anyway, I'm not saying that the write-ups here will be critical reviews, really. More of "tribute" reviews just to share the poetry and music of certain bands.

So there.

Boomtown Rat

"Philosophy is a walk on slippery rocks,
Religion is a lie in the fog..."
What I Am


Artist: Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians
Album: Ghost of a Dog

Ghost of a Dog is Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians' follow-up to the critically-acclaimed (and much loved) first album, Shooting Rubber Bands at the Stars.

While most second albums have a high suck ratio and often plays up on the pop allures and ditties of the first, this one is immediately redeemed by the intelligent lyrics and stripped-down melody. Ghost of a Dog is easily more melancholic, subdued, and poetic.

Brickell's future hubby Paul Simon and Johhny Lydon (Sex Pistols, P.I.L.) make vocal contributions to certain songs in this album. I'll leave it to you guys to find out which ones.

Choice cuts from the album are the short, folksy ones "Oak Cliff Bra" and the title track "Ghost of a Dog" and the angry "Stwisted".

My fave track is the ballad:

Me by the Sea

I'm glad no one's here just me by the sea
I'm glad no one's here to mess it up for me
I'm glad no one's here just me by the sea
But man, I wish I had a hand to hold

I saw an orange starfish on the side of a rock
I poked on his back & tried to pull him off
A crab scared me away he ran close to my toes
And man, I wish I had a hand to hold

The moon is nowhere almost time for the sun
The voice of the waves sound anciently young
I'm a prisoner of freedom ten toes in the sand
And man, I wish I had a hand to hold

I'm in the habit of being alone
I try hard to break it I can't on my own

I'm glad no one's here just me by the sea
I'm glad no one's here to mess it up for me
I'm glad no one's here just me by the sea

NCCA Writers Prize

Mga friends, bayaw, at hipag, ang saya. I read in the Philippine Star issue today (Monday) that I got the NCCA Writers Prize For Poetry! It's a grant of P250,000 (taxable pa) to write my first poetry book, "What Little I Know of Luminosity". This is slated for publication by the end of next year (hopefully).

Other awardees are Egay Samar for Fiction, Vim Yapan for Short Story, Danton Remoto for Translation, and Rebekah Marahombsar Alawi for Essay.

The money will be given in tranches (i.e., installments) quarterly within 2006. Formal awarding is on Feb. 24, 2006 at the NCCA's Bulwagang Leandro Locsin, in conjunction with the National Arts Month Celebration.

Congrats to the other awardees. I know you all are as excited about this as I am. :)