The Tetanic Tercet

Why wound if not mortal?

Mortal the wound,

Wounded the mortal.

(Also on my Instagram,)

Mala-James Bond

 

Tularan siya para may paglalagyan sila,

Anuman ang mga hamo’t balakid sa pakikibaka!

 

Pinapapatay siya sa mga ekspertong hitman.

Pinapatay nila ang kanyang mga kaibigan.

Pinapatay nila ang kanyang mga bebot.

Pero di siya natitinag sa kanyang misyon.

Ni lungkot o luha ay bakas sa mukha

Ni Bond, James Bond.

 

Tuloy ang kanyang laban para sagipin ang mundo!

(O ang Inglatera lamang?)

Espiya pero ilang beses nang nakipagbarilan!

Ganunma’y di pa rin nila bistado

Ang tunay niyang katauhan

Bilang lihim na ahente

Ng kanyang imperyalistang pamahalaan.

 

“Para sa ikauunlad ng bayan, si James Bond ay gayahin!”

Sigaw ni Jaime Bandong na magtataho sa amin.

"Datuterte: Imagined Confessions, 2025": There is now an AI Overview entry on my published political poetry collection

There's now an AI Overview entry on my published political poetry collection, "Datuterte: Imagined Confessions, 2025!" So I guess it's gaining some traction online ... Here's the link to the FREE online collection, published by the International Human Rights Art Movement (IHRAM).

 

Siklo

Ngayo’y sumasabog, nag-uumapaw,

Ang aking puso’t diwa sa kaligayahan.

Kaya bumubuwelo na rin ako sa bwelta,

Sa hagupit, ng paparating na kalungkutan.

 

 "Primordial," watercolor, 1993, by ... me!

The Snakeman's Dream

I'm glad that TPT Magazine features four of my poems in their latest November 25, 2024 issue (Issue VII). Three can be read on this page. One, "The Snakeman's Dream," is not printed but an audio recording of my reading can be accessed here. And that's why I'm sharing the text of the poem in this blog post:

The Snakeman’s Dream

 

No python, so it won’t constrict

and squeeze me to my last,

but it’s poisonous still.

 

Unfailingly, every night

this reptile crawls out of its hole

in a corner of my bedroom wall,

then entwines and slithers all over me

as I lie in bed alone.

 

Unfailingly, I wish

that its head is your hand,

and its body, your arm.

 

Ah, different bodies,

same venom.

Buy my poetry books here in my Ecwid online shop, Karlo Sevilla Books & Stuff!

(image from TPT Magazine's webpage, November 25, 2024)

"Datuterte: Imagined Confessions, 2024" by Karlo Sevilla (WTF is this?!)

Trigger warning: various shocking contents. Read it here for FREE!

(Cover art by Kaleb Sevilla)

• Published June 10, 2024, this is the first of three individual poetry projects that I committed to complete as a 2024 International Human Rights Art Movement (IHRAM) International Fellow.
• What I wrote to IHRAM Executive Director Tom Block upon submission:

For this collection, "Datuterte: Imagined Confessions, 2024," I assumed the (despotic, brutal, chauvinist, misogynist, condescending, foulmouthed, etc.) persona of the previous Philippine president, Rodrigo Roa Duterte, and via a series of portrait poetry and prose attempted a fictional autobiography which narrative arc begins and ends with his contemplation on his current situation: now that rumors are rife about the imminence of his arrest by the International Criminal Court over his alleged crimes against humanity, mainly the extrajudicial killings committed during his brutal “war on drugs” that claimed tens of thousands of lives.

Imagined but based on the subject’s actual statements and reliable news reports, the persona narrates his childhood, young adulthood, and his political career that began with his appointment as OIC vice-mayor of Davao City and ended when he finished his six-year term as president of the Philippines. In his stories, he speaks of the multitude of fatal crimes under his separate administrations as mayor then president; including the ones he purportedly committed himself – straight from his own mouth as factual statements, or tough talk to pander to his fanatical supporters, or both.

The fictional narration delves into the psychology and personal background of an autocrat, along with the social and political milieus within which each select slice of the storyteller’s life was lived, and the crimes he committed personally and/or under his leadership. Insights are also shared on how and why a significant number of a populace end up embracing fascistic propaganda and supporting tyrannical and (therefore) anti-human rights policies as possible solutions for social ills, preponderantly for the perceived or actual breakdown of law and order.

At the very least, I hope that this small collection will serve as a quick reference for any student of contemporary Philippine history, specifically about the administration of the 16^th president of the republic (2016 to 2022) that is now widely considered as the most murderous and with the highest number of human rights violations when it comes to state-sanctioned violence.

• A positive review from Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Nominee poet Gretchen Filart:

If there is anything you will read today, make it Karlo Silverio Lagman Sevilla III's free digital poetry collection, Datuterte. It's a unique, honest, and powerful collage of first-person poems spoken from Rodrigo Duterte's viewpoint, using real-life statements during his bloody six-year regime as Philippine president. It offers an encompassing grasp of his violent political term and is a product of Karlo's fellowship at International Human Rights Art Movement (IHRAM).

And, again, you can read "Datuterte: Imagined Confessions, 2024" by yours truly here for FREE.

Karlo Sevilla Books & Stuff‍

Address: 7 Matiyaga St., Brgy. Central, Dist. 4, Quezon City

Phone no. (+63)933-525-0100

Hello! This blog post now serves as the official address of my personal Ecwid store, Karlo Sevilla Books & Stuff. My initial offerings are for my two newest poetry chapbooks, respectively:

The following are my products: the books and packages. To order, you can visit each book and package's ECWID CHECK OUT PAGE and PRICE by clicking on any of the blue text or images below. Thanks! 

1. Figuratively: A Chapbook of Shape Poems, for Philippine and international markets (bonus: plus "Recumbent" for Philippine market only), Php440.00
2. Recumbent - Personalized Signed Copy (international market), Php560.00
3. Recumbent and Figuratively 2-in-1 Package (international market), Php950.00
4. Figuratively (Philippine market), Php240.00
5. Recumbent - Personalized Signed Copy (Philippine market), Php300.00

You'll find the product details when you click on the images above. So just keep clicking and hitting those buttons until you successfully make a purchase!

Also:

• You can buy Recumbent straight from the publisher here. 
• For further inquiries, please email me at karlosilverio.sevilla96@gmail.com or text me (+63)933-525-0100. And because my full-time job is hectic and prohibits yours truly from getting distracted during (long) work hours, I'll try to respond immediately but please give me 24 hours max. The best time to call me is on Saturdays, 2:00 PM to 10:00 PM.
• Also, whether you buy my printed books or not, you can read for FREE my digital collection of political poetry, "Datuterte: Imagined Confessions 2024 (IHRAM, 2024) here!
• And last but not the least, my full-length poetry e-book "Metro Manila Mammal" (Soma Publishing, 2023) is available here on Amazon.

Thank you! 

"Recumbent," my new poetry collection from 8Letters Bookstore and Publishing, is now available!

From Bob MacKenzie, author of unbroken and on edge:

The poems in Karlo Sevilla’s Recumbent can seem an arbitrary selection without a particular theme.  Here we can find vignettes of family life, dreamlike sequences, vivid images of street violence and political murder, even fully surreal poems and surreal images secreted in others.  A surface reading cannot adequately reveal a consistent theme which may run through these poems.  There’s something else going on here, a barely hidden backdrop to the tales Sevilla brings to the table.  The poet suggests a deeper and darker theme when he writes “I’m here fallen / where even shadows / dare not fall.”

This collection of poems is an illusion, a trick of the eye and the heart by a clever magician.  At surface, the poems here may appear to tell simple tales of home life and family, uncomplicated slices of the poet’s personal life.  But something else is here, just below the surface.  Karlo Sevilla hints at this subtext in his epigraph, a self-written type of subtitle: these are, he says, “poems about and from the body laid or lying on any surface–steady or unsteady, dead or alive.”  This theme is repeated and enhanced in poems throughout this collection.  Sevilla’s poems are less about the hard-copy world we inhabit than a sense of the absolute Silence through which we all move from birth to death.  In a poem describing a man tortured and dying, the poet writes that the man “ never squealed; / not another’s whereabouts compromised / nor a single real name revealed.”  In his poetry, Karlo Sevilla walks a thin line between our mundane lives and another, darker place where, his narrator says, “it’s  the light that makes the shadows” but his young daughter “shakes her head, ‘It’s the dark.’”  It’s along this subtle line that we will see the magic in Sevilla’s poetry.  In the world Karlo Sevilla describes in his poems, each of our lives includes a place of shadows where our secrets hide in the Silence.

 

(Image from the publisher's Facebook post.)

August 25, 2023 UPDATE: I am sad to share that Bob Mackenzie passed away about two days ago. He has been a peer of mine in Rat's Ass Review's online poetry workshop, and has been one of the most exacting and helpful in giving valuable feedback to the poems forged in that crucible. We'll miss him badly. And I also deeply appreciate that my book's publisher, just this morning, kindly decided to reedit its manuscript to make Bob's review as the introduction to my book. Rest in peace, Bob. This one's for you.

Local orders here: https://www.8lettersbooks.com/.../recumbent-karlo.../....

International orders here: https://m.facebook.com/8lettersbooks?mibextid=ZbWKwL. (If you have any questions about ordering, please send a private message to the administrator.)

And thanks to the following literary magazines and platforms where the poems in this collection were originally published: Ariel Chart, Collective Unrest, Duck Duck Mongoose Magazine, Eclectica, Exist Otherwise, Gray Thoughts Writers Club, Haikuniverse, I am not a silent poet, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Origami Poems Project, Querencia, Shot Glass Journal, The Five-Two, The Sparrow's Trombone, The Wombwell Rainbow, and 3 Moon Magazine.

 

 

Why I submit my poems to literary magazines?

(Image is from 11 Indie Magazines You Be Reading by Steve Watson, Electric Lit, January 21, 2020)

The following is an excerpt from my first post on my Ko-fi page, I'm a Litmag Freak*:

Now, why do I submit to literary magazines? Aside from the fact that I love reading and writing poetry, let me quote from the following two articles about literary magazines: 

From The New Yorker’s The Persistence of Litmags by Stephanie Burt (July 7, 2015): 

“A little magazine, as Jonathan Farmer, of At Length, explains, ‘depends on creating a community.’” (Incidentally, this article mentions the magazine DIAGRAM that has published two poems of mine.) 

From CNN Style’s Long-standing literary magazines are struggling to stay afloat. Where do they go from here? by Leah Asmelash (February 10, 2022): 

“The magazines are a runway, where new literary styles are tested and emerge. New voices break through.” (Incidentally, this article also mentions Protean magazine that likewise published a poem of mine.) 

So I submit to literary magazines because I want to belong to an international community of writers and have my small voice heard once in a while – subject to the discernment and mercy of editors.

*Initially, I wanted to use "junkie" instead of "freak" but I thought the former ain't "wholesome enough" for Ko-fi. 

Me in the news (for the nth time), now re wrestling's staying in the Olympics

From The Manila Times' WAP HAILS WRESTLING'S TRIUMPH (September 10, 2013):

“We believe we have a great shot at winning a medal—hopefully, gold—in the 2020 and 2024 Olympics,” said WAP Secretary General Karlo Sevilla. “The international wrestling community, led by the International Federation of Associated Wrestling Styles (FILA) and our president Nenad Lalovic, united in showing passion, determination and innovation in the campaign to keep our sport in the Olympics – right until the FILA panel’s presentation to convince the IOC GA membership of our case immediately before the vote, resulting to our majority win.”

The WAP also hailed the move to include wrestling in the 2014 Palarong Pambansa initially as demonstration (based on “Republic Act 10588) as one of the sports to be contested among high school students in the annual national youth games.”

“This is especially encouraging as our wrestling is all set to make its debut in the 2014 Palarong Pambansa. Definitely, the talents we’ll discover in the coming games of the Palarong Pambansa of DepEd and Batang Pinoy of the Philippine Olympic Committee-Philippine Sports Commission (POC-PSC) will enjoy sufficient time, years, to mature as potential Olympic qualifiers and winners, come the third decade of this century,” added Sevilla.

Wrestling is one of the 10 priority sports of the PSC citing its impressive showing in its previous international tournaments including the 2011 Southeast Asian Games in Indonesia. The national wrestlers won two gold, three silver and three bronze medals.

“Add to this wrestling’s status as among PSC’s 10 priority sports for the second straight year, receiving significantly more support than other sports, and we can’t help feeling confident in achieving our Olympic objectives.

“WAP looks forward to enjoying with DepEd what we have with the POC and PSC: an efficient and harmonious working relationship in promoting sports among the youth, and developing future Pinoy Olympic champions,” Sevilla concluded.

From  Philippine Daily Inquirer's WAP hails IOC’s ‘reinstatement’ of wrestling (September 11, 2013):

Wrestling Association of the Philippines (WAP) secretary general Karlo Sevilla yesterday hailed the move of the International Olympic Committee to reinstate wrestling in the Summer Games, calling the move a positive development for the country.

All for the love of wrestling!

 To keep updated on Philippine wrestling development, check out regularly our Wrestling Association of the Philippines official Facebook page here. (And please "like" it, too! Thanks!)

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