When Workers Work...

When carpenters work, they don't argue if God or which god prefers a hammer or pliers to hammer

that nail; they just use a hammer to hammer that nail.

When road construction workers work, they don't debate whether God or what god recommends concrete or hay for the highway; they just pour the concrete to pave the highway.

When agricultural workers work, they don't fight over what god or whose god commands the use of sickle or disposable razor blade to harvest rice; they just cut with the sickle to harvest rice.

We eat, travel, and live thanks to the workers who work and suffer under the few ungodly gods among us; providing us food, roads, and shelter that we may all eat, travel, work, and live.

In solidarity with USA workers, on their nation's Labor Day next month, September 7, 2015.

Photo from Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (BMP)/Solidarity of Filipino Workers.

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Check out My Personal Anthology (12 Poems). 

This blog is sponsored by Limitado

phone nos. 09167840522/ 023588753

and S.P.R.A.W.L.-MMA

3rd floor JN Building, 657 EDSA corner Monte De Piedad Street, Barangay Immaculate Concepcion, Cubao, Quezon City

THANK YOU, Philippines Graphic, for having my poems...

...grace the whole page 42 of your current July 20, '15 issue! It is truly an honor. (Philippines Free Press in 1998, then now Philippines Graphic. I guess getting published in the country's two esteemed news-and-literary paper magazines, in two consecutive centuries, ain't bad. ;) )

Now, on other "related" news. Ayon kay Senador Ralph Recto ('SONA IS POETRY, BUDGET IS PROSE'):

Poetry: State of the Nation; prose: Technical Report to the SONA and the proposed national budget.

What he isn't saying, the common Filipino's experiences and struggles:

Epic poetry: The true state of the nation.

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Anyway, print on photo of page, bottom of this post, is a little too small already. So here they are:

Shadow on Bathroom Floor

I watch my shadow stare back at me without eyes,

omniscient as I perceive it to be, knowing all about me...

when it's just a splotch the lit light bulb on the ceiling,

above the toilet bowl, casts before me,

upon the tiled floor cum Rorschach test.

Okay, all-knowing it isn't. Neither is it dumb.

Or anywhere in-between. It's just there;

dark and futile mimicry of reflection.

Wing envy

Grounded humans we, wax only figuratively,

When we refer to ourselves as having those

Pairs of “membranous appendages,” of feather,

Flesh, and bone, that our avian cohabitants

Flap vigorously to fly, or hold still and extended

To glide in the blue, gray, or blue-gray sky.

But there is no direct relation between earned respect

And altitude, it seems, for those naturally endowed

To leave earth for a while.

And so the treatment, “accordingly”: If we can’t fly,

At least we do vicariously, through piercing steel

Projectiles, launched from lethal devices, also of steel.

As experts, we have learned to reach and decimate

What we can only see and aim at, but can not touch

nor soar with, solely with our bodies.

Such immense satisfaction:

To see eagle or dove plummet like a shuttlecock,

Except with feather, flesh, and bone – and blood.

(And, what's with the computer "program" that erroneously conjoins two separate words? removing the space in-between? I didn't know "norsoar" and "solelywith" would appear, prior to submission. Sorry...So please consider the above the final texts... :p Though now, with this blog post, I got a problem with the spacing between lines/stanzas/paragraphs... :( )

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Check out My Personal Anthology (12 Poems). 

This blog is sponsored by Limitado

phone nos. 09167840522/ 023588753

and S.P.R.A.W.L.-MMA

3rd floor JN Building, 657 EDSA corner Monte De Piedad Street, Barangay Immaculate Concepcion, Cubao, Quezon City

"Hell is -- other people!"

...said Jean-Paul Sartre, in "No Exit."

One day, I'll travel the world naked

and holding nothing (not even a travel bag).

One day, everybody else will be blind.

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Check out My Personal Anthology (12 Poems). 

This blog is sponsored by Limitado

phone nos. 09167840522/ 023588753

and S.P.R.A.W.L.-MMA

3rd floor JN Building, 657 EDSA corner Monte De Piedad Street, Barangay Immaculate Concepcion, Cubao, Quezon City

My Collections

Then . . .

I counted my books of poetry
and comedians' biographies,
and was surprised to find the latter
far outnumbered the former.

So I tried to even things out,
and more of the former bought,
until somehow they numbered
the same as the other.

Now .  .  .

 

I've lost count of how many
books I have of poetry.
Likewise of how many
I have of comics' biographies.

But now I don't really care
if each set equals the other.
Still I can't help but wonder:
Which is sadder?

Dedicated to the late Robin Williams (comedian, actor, wrestler, among others), and the others... 

Robin Williams (July 21, 1951 - August 11, 2014)

(Photo attribution: "Robin Williams 2011a (2)" by Eva Rinaldi - →This file has been extracted from another file: Robin Williams 2011a.jpg.Flickr: Robin Williams. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Robin_Williams_2011a_(2).jpg#/media/File:Robin_Williams_2011a_(2).jpg.)

Poetry and Plumbing

A little past noon. Reading "This World: Poems by Harvey Shapiro" while seated on a short concrete fence bordering between Royal Midway Plaza building and its parking lot. Two utility men wearing green shirts printed with "Royal Midway Plaza" approach and slide off the concrete cover of the manhole, a meter and at a forty-five degree angle left of me. It reveals three big pipes and one small one, all bent downward at a ninety degree angle. I close my book and ask, "Sa tubig ba 'yan?" ("Is that for the water?" Really my way of asking, "That's not the septic tank, is it?") The older guy replies, "Yes," and tells me and his companion about fixing the water supply with plumbing jargon. He'll buy a "floater" (yes, I believe that's what he said). They leave. The manhole, with its cover slid off (and perhaps an empty tomb laid at its bottom), remains open. My book of poetry remains closed.

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Check out My Personal Anthology (12 Poems). 

This blog is sponsored by Limitado

phone nos. 09167840522/ 023588753

and S.P.R.A.W.L.-MMA

3rd floor JN Building, 657 EDSA corner Monte De Piedad Street, Barangay Immaculate Concepcion, Cubao, Quezon City

Remembering You

A ghostly flower blooming and withering,
(or blot) blinking with colors that strain to brightness,
to equal those of what were seen before;
fragments, with the music or plain utterances
attempting to be as loud (or as soft)
as what they really were...

But all in vain.

Blurred and ephemeral. Just for a haunting and fleeting...
Many times an unexpected visitor,
an intruder, inside...

What is complete and constant is that depressing spirit:
Void of form and details, yet lingering, encumbering,
dragging. Punctuated, highlighted,
by the thief that intermittently
gives, curses, and leaves

with a piece.

*  *  *

Check out My Personal Anthology (12 Poems). 

This blog is sponsored by Limitado

phone nos. 09167840522/ 023588753

and S.P.R.A.W.L.-MMA

3rd floor JN Building, 657 EDSA corner Monte De Piedad Street, Barangay Immaculate Concepcion, Cubao, Quezon City

Prose, Poem, Prostitute

Based on her true story.

I.

She was a minor when the raid happened. Videotaped dancing naked onstage. On national TV news with her soon-to-be-lady parts pixelated along with her face. The raid, led by an international-something agency, was conducted to rescue them and arrest the perpetrators of a major offense. 

Brought with the other victims to a facility of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), she was the most defiant and engaged the department secretary in a shouting match. Innocent and ignorant perhaps of her own exploited innocence and underagedness -- and all its criminal implications and liabilities -- she demanded tearfully for her immediate freedom to work for food as she knew how.

II.

Under the government agency's custody, she -- they -- soon found out she was pregnant with her then-lover's child. They advised her to sue him: statutory rape. She refused; he was her lover.

She threatened abortion, giving them more reason to keep and watch over her.

She seriously considered adoption, till she gave birth and saw the face of her firstborn and decided to keep and raise her baby daughter.

III.

They were protected, trained in livelihood skills, and rehabilitated.

Upon her release, she soon found out that he was immigrating somewhere to North America.

Upon her release, she worked at various odd jobs, barely supporting herself and her daughter (whom she sent off to live with her family somewhere in Southern Philippines).

Months after her release, she was back in the oldest profession. Anyway, she would soon be of major age.

IV.

She prefers it here in a provincial city, where the bar owner gives her, them, the option to refuse takeout service. She prefers it here in a provincial city, unlike in Metro Manila where the bar owners compel her, them, to render takeout service. (Who knows what lurking monster or monsters will end up with her, alone in a secret den.)

She worked in one of the classier and higher paying joints in the big city, though. But she wouldn't go back there as it is humiliating: It is always assumed that those who left that high-end brothel "successfully" married their rich customers, or "progressed" into kept women. 

V.

She tried her hand in swine raising, in her home city, but found it difficult to earn only every three months, when the hogs are grown and ready for sale. (She had, and has, full-grown pigs for company every night. One of which was 66 years old, and it just didn't stand a chance.)

VI.

Back in Metro Manila, the DSWD gathered homeless street dwellers off the streets; among them where the apartment she rented, stood. And she had opened her gate to a fleeing mother and child, every time, to spare them from measly meals served at the government facility. 

VII.

There are months when she could afford a vacation, and lives in her home city with her mother and now six-year-old daughter. There she mostly stays at home, in plain shirt and pants. There in their poor neighborhood, she knows women who are regularly fetched by the mayor's aides. She refuses to be one of them.

She doesn't want her daughter to think that she's that kind of woman.

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This work is republished at Pacifiqa as a photo essay (with beautiful photos!), and retitled as She doesn't want her daughter to think she's that kind of woman.

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Check out My Personal Anthology (12 Poems). 

This blog is sponsored by Limitado

phone nos. 09167840522/ 023588753

and S.P.R.A.W.L.-MMA

3rd floor JN Building, 657 EDSA corner Monte De Piedad Street, Barangay Immaculate Concepcion, Cubao, Quezon City