Ericson Acosta: Mga Pira-Pirasong Alaalang Nakakatawa’t Nakakatuwa Noong Dekada Nobenta

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(Ang makata at aktibista na si Ericson Acosta, pinaslang noong ika-30 ng Nobyembre, Araw ni Bonifacio, 2022, edad 50.)

1. May rally sa Elliptical Road, unang bahagi ng dekada nobenta. Maglalakad kami, tatakbo . . . at ang kanyang chant (in swardspeak): “Jogging, jogging, bayan ko! Jogging ngayon ang laban mo!”
2. Gabi, konsiyerto para sa UP Fair sa Sunken Garden. Pwede pang uminom noon ng beer at alak. Ang stage ay malapit sa Grandstand. Kami naman ay malayo-layo, sa bandang malapit na sa Main Library. Tisoy ang bokalista ng bandang noo’y tumutugtog. Aniya ni Ericson, “Atenista ‘yan, eh. Atenista . . .”
3. Sa tambayan ng Amnesty International, hawak ni Ericson ang pinakabagong kopya ng Kule na kung saan siya may sinulat na artikulo tungkol sa sining biswal. May kuro-kuro siya patungkol kay Roberto "Bobby" Rodríguez Chabet, na tinuturing “father of Philippine conceptual art” at noo’y nagtuturo sa College of Fine Arts. Pasimula ni Ericson, “May iconoclast dyan sa Fine Arts, eh . . .” (Eniweys, di niya trip si Chabet at/o ang mga ideya nito.)
4. "Lagi akong napagkakamalang Koreano!"
5. Nakasabay namin ng kaibigan ko si Ericson sa dyip na biyaheng Katipunan pabalik ng UP, pagkagaling namin sa National Bookstore. Naupo siya sa dulo sa bandang labasan ng dyip. Balisa siya. Sa parte ng kalsada sa harap ng Miriam College, sabi niya, late na raw siya sa rehearsal sa teatro. Medyo trapik, tapos lumiko pa ang dyip pakanan papasok sa gasolinahan ng Petron. Napamura si Ericson, “Putang-ina! Magpapa-gas pa! Magta-taxi na ako!” Tumalon siya sa dyip at sa Katipunan, kinukumpas ang kamay sa pagtawag ng taxi.

    6. Ito kuwento ng photographer at co-staffer ni Ericson sa Kule (na nakalimutan ko na ang pangalan):

Ericson: Hirap na hirap na ako maging pogi. 

Isang kasama nila: Naiintindihan kita.

Ericson: Hinde! Hindi mo ako naiintindihan! Maiintindihan mo lang ako kung tunay ka ring pogi!

      7. Cultural Night at nakapalibot sa may hardin sa harapan ng Faculty Center ang mga kasalo.                       Nakaupo si Ericson sa damo at kumakanta’t naggigitara. Parang hinaharanahan niya ang isang      babaeng co-staffer niya sa Kule habang nanonood ang boypren nito na napapangiti na lang.

      8. Nakaupo sa ugat ng puno ng akasya sa Sunken Garden, sa bahaging malapit sa Vinzons at Eduk.            Tinanong niya kami sa modulated na boses, “Naranasan niyo na bang (dramatic pause) . . .                      umibig”?

      9. Huling bahagi ng dekada nobenta, gabi ng UP Fair ulit. May booth ang organisasyon na tinatag              ko: nagbebenta ng mga t-shirt at kung ano-ano pang mga paraphernalia. May t-shirt ni Che                      Guevarra at Mao Zedong, atbp. (kahit na hindi Maoista ang grupo namin). Para sa pagkalap ng                pondo. Napadaan si Ericson, at bumili ng isang Mao t-shirt. Kalahati lang muna ang binayaran.            (P150 ata sa presyong P300.) Hindi na rin nasingil ang balanse, pero lubusang higit pa ang binayad           mo, Ericson, sa pagbuwis mo ng buhay para sa bayan – sang-ayon man ako o hindi sa iyong                  napiling paraan para sa progresibong pagbabago ng ating lipunan. (Sana nga “jogging” lang ang              laban ng ating abang bayan.)

Maraming salamat sa mga alaala, Ericson. At maaaring magkampeon ang parehong koponan ng basketbol ng UP Fighting Maroons, men’s and women’s, nitong UAAP Season 86! Sakaling may bonfire, pipilitin kong dumalo. Pipilitin maging kasing-saya ng kasalukuyang henerasyon ng mga Isko’t Iska sa isa na namang gabi sa Sunken Garden.

(Photo credits:

First photo, of Petron Katipunan Square, from Eric Martinez PH. Second and last photo, of Sunken Garden, from Jules Bañgate.)

 

"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.

 

 

One-Minute Hirit 24: Pinagtataguan Kayo Ngayon ni BBM?! Eh Matagal Nang ...

Mula sa description box:

Sa totoo lang, maliban sa mga atraso ng mga Marcos sa kasaysayan ng ating bayan hanggang sa kasalukuyan, yung mismong pag-iwas ni BBM sa mga debate noong kampanya ay RED FLAG na! Isipin mo, tumatakbong pagka-presidente tapos umiiwas sa mga debate! Masamang precedent at ehemplo! Ni di na nga ako magtataka kung may mga bata sa elementarya na tatakbo para sa student council nila, tapos iiwas sa debate at idadahilan, “Eh presidente nga ng ating bayan, umiwas sa debate, ako pa kaya?” (Mabuti pa si Ka Leody de Guzman, nagpakita at nakipagtagisan ng talino sa lahat ng debate noon . . . Ang imahe sa thumbnail ay mula sa balita ng Philippine Daily Inquirer, "Bongbong Marcos shuns Comelec debates, cites 'preferred mode of communication with people," ni Neil Arwin Mercado, ika-14 ng Marso, 2022.)

#ElizabethOropesa #BBM #TeamUnity kuno #Philippines #oneminutehirit

One-Minute Hirit 23: SMNI Partner Na ng TV CGTN ng “Komunistang” Tsina?!...

“Matagal na akong nagtataka kung bakit hindi nireredtag ni Lorraine Badoy at Jeffrey Celis ang bansang People’s Republic of China, eh itong bansang ito ay lantarang pinamumunuan pa nga ng kanilang partido komunista, ng Chinese Communist Party.”

The ADHD Chronicles: A Sunday Mass Memory and Some (1980)

(Interior of Ascension of Our Lord Parish Church - Greater Lagro, Novaliches, Quezon City, photo from Fr. Raul Beni Barcela, from the church's Facebook page's post, July 11, 2023)

Now that I'm a father of more than 17 years, the more I realize that I really was a different kid. For years now, occasionally during Sunday Mass, right before the offertory we tell any of our three children to volunteer and pick up a collection bag and go around. And any given Sunday's chosen one does it promptly and properly.

When I was five, for the first (and last!) time, my mother asked me to do the same at the Ascension of Our Lord Parish Church in Greater Lagro, Quezon City. So I picked up a collection bag, but I just stood near her—paralyzed. I just kept mumbling to her repeatedly, "Which aisle should I go first?" She replied and, I'm sure, gave me directions. But I didn't, or couldn't, follow. And soon the offertory song was over and I just returned the collection bag empty. (And just now, I'm thinking, if there were five collection bags in all in that church, then they must've lost approximately 20% of their Sunday Mass income because of me.)

Also at that age, I moved the slowest in kindergarten: always the last to return my empty saucer at the end of (or after!) recess, the last to unpack and repack my bag or plastic envelope, etc.

I still remember the day we visited the Infirmary for our very first annual physical checkup in UPIS, and when we were through, I was the last to climb aboard the bus because I stayed overtime at the last clinic struggling to tie my shoes. (I finally figured out how to tie my shoes properly in . . . first year high school!)

When we returned to our classroom, during dismissal, our teacher announced that she would distribute giveaways. So we all gathered excitedly around her desk. Unfortunately, she followed up with a condition: "Only for the kids who move fast."

Well, I wasn't that slow not to realize that I was excluded from the final blessing. So right there and then I walked out of the classroom—quickly, uncharacteristically.

+ + +

(And you can check out one of my latest published poems here!)

One-Minute Hirit 22: Logohan sa Bagong Pilipinas: Gumawa ng Logo, Parang...

“Moderate your greed.” – Romulo Neri, former NEDA Director-General of GMA’s administration

One-Minute Hirit 21: Isang Pagpupugay kay Amando Doronila, Magiting na M...

From Veteran newsman,author Amando Doronila; 95 By: Julie M. Aurelio, Philippine Daily Inquirer, July 9, 2023:

More than a decade ago, he already sensed the emerging challenges to newspapers from the internet.

“Newspapers today are flooded by social media stories from Facebook or Twitter which are hard to verify and authenticate,” said Doronila who served as chief editor of the Chronicle before it was shut down by Marcos and after Marcos was toppled.

“Cyberspace journalism gives us an oversupply of information from impressionable citizen journalists. And this Internet journalism poses a threat to the survival of the newspaper as a medium of information,” he said. 

Born on Feb. 6, 1928, in Dumangas, Iloilo, he began his career as a reporter and columnist for the Manila Bulletin and was a political columnist for the Daily Mirror from 1963 to 1972.

When Marcos imposed martial law in 1972, Doronila and other journalists like Luis Beltran and Maximo Soliven were arrested and detained.