POETRY
Sekhmet
-smsaboy
You are the romance I read,
you are the poetry I recite.
Your birth rewrites a chapter
of The Arabian Nights,
but your youthful life is worth
more than a thousand and one stories:
You are the myriad faces
of mashriq and maghreb,
a thousand palm trees with a million dates,
a hundred dhows with a thousand pearls
in this island between two seas.
You are that lone mesquite in the desert
and that tree corridor by the shore.
You are the old fort in Riffa or Arad,
and the graffitied ruins of Zallaq;
You are the oil fields in Awali or Sakhir,
and the towers in Manama or Juffair.
You remind me of Khayyam, Jibran and Tuqan.
I want to wax poetic and make you swoon
with mellifluous rhythms and rhymes,
alliable alliterations and measured metaphors.
But what else could I write
to even make you bat an eyelash
seeing you are poetry personified?
Shall I pick out lines
from your pages instead, and tattoo them
on every inch of my skin?
And shall I draw threads
from the tapestry of my dreams
and sew them into my soul,
while I savor the memory of when,
as we sat on a carpet in Wadi Rum,
I watched the stars lose
their twinkles in your eyes?
Mourning
-smsaboy
The street yonder would not know
there’s a casket in the house;
nor will the sky hear the sighs
of the widow down below
– for the cars go roaring by.
They’ll ne’er note the fading dirge
crooned by aged, languid lips
those whose youthful yarns and bets
and smoke keep the night awake
– while the cars go sputtering by.
The black hearse lumbered toward
that city sleepy and white
Where kith and kin, foe and friend
Sleep beneath, by Lethe’s brim
– as the cars keep speeding by.
Kist, flowers the grave devoured
And mourners tow’rd home have trudged:
Talks are small and food is cold,
Mem’ries haunt both dawn and dusk
– and the cars keep passing by.
BEACHHEAD
-smsaboy
Let the sands shudder with fright:
Roll over the barbed wires;
Punch through the walls;
Dig out the mines,
Take out the snipers;
Blow up the bunkers;
Smoke out the tunnels;
Strafe the thickets.
Let the lands know your might:
Occupy the vanquished land,
Raise the victor’s flag,
Spread the ideology,
Multiply the copycats,
Let the supplies in,
Train the next batch,
Make sure your success.
But let the ages roll:
The structures you dismantled
Will again be rebuilt;
The lines you erased
Will again be drawn;
The changes you made,
Will themselves be changed;
And the land will forget.
So let everyone know:
In all the battlefields
Mankind has warred
Beachheads once staged,
In the name of the heavens
and of the earth
and of the self,
Must soon again be made.
SANGACHIL
(FINONTOK 'BONTOC LANGUAGE')
-smsaboy
Sumaa ak, tay nalakayak et.
Yaim nan olo ay saghang
ta waday iilan nan aanito
ay da matey ya umey ed adi kalagip.
Yaim nan pinagpagan ya fayyaong
ta adiyak intaytayengteng
ay manikid ed adi kaila.
Kumaanak et, ‘dwani ay nan wanga
m’id et ‘snan khawa nan fatawa;
nan khongowan da masementowan;
ya nan alak nan tayan khumwab
isnan es-esang ay afong.
Sha, ikhaobyo et
nan sangachil ay sana.
Na’ya, chengngek nan umak-akit
ay antoway ya anako nan inin-a…
Chengngek nan umak-akit
ay kantan Churya ya Kidla.
DEATH-CHAIR
I’m going home, for I’m now old.
Bring me the ceremonial [carabao] head
So the ancestral spirits can see it –
they who are dying and going to the land of the forgotten.
Bring me the death and burial clothes
so I won’t go trembling
on my way up the land of the unseen.
I’m leaving, now that the river
is in the middle of the world no more;
the stonewalled pits are now overlaid with cement;
and the waterway from the communal forest now goes
to a single household.
So be it, go bury
that death-chair.
Ah, I hear the fading
dirges of the old women
I hear the fading
song of Churya and Kidla.1
1Churya and Kidla are personifications of the Bontok villages of Samoki and Bontok Ili which are located on either side of the upper Chico River. An eponymous folksong has Bontok situated at the center of the world.
DIFFÉRANCE
-smsaboy
affluence/poverty
civility/savagery
martyrdom/terrorism
virtue/vice
orthodoxy/heresy
wisdom/idiocy
-- like beauty --
are in the beholder’s eye
and in the speaker’s tongue
for texts paginate sight
and contexts color vision
discourses inform utterance
and guilds set taste
Scott Magkachi Saboy
Bahraynuna
(Our Bahrain)
‘‘In Sumerian mythology, the mythical Dilmun was known as the bright and pure land, a paradise where sickness and death did not exist.... Some archaeologists... have identified the mythic Dilmun with the Island of Bahrain, located south of Eridu in the Persian Gulf. Positioned between Mesopotamia, India, and the East African Coast, Bahrain became the host of influential middlemen trafficking copper ore, diordite, gold, tin, ivory, and semi-precious stones into Sumer, Babylon and Assyria until the mid-second millennium B.C., activities attributed to people of the Dilmun Civilization, which occupied both Bahrain and the neighboring Arabian coast.‘‘ - https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends/mythical-dilmun-and-island-dead-006801
You were born as a flint spark
against an array of lightning strikes,
a teardrop in the midst
of a downpour and a flood.
5 Then, in your infant bosom
Ziusudra once curled pining
for a cosmos the gods had made
too large for his barge.
Then, out of your barren waste
10 sprouted gardens ‘til there were
enough trees for him to tutor,
you to build your own boat.
Then, as if on cue, at last
he sailed on upwards
15 to become the seed
of a sign in the heavens.
And quite a sailor you’ve become,
for you’ve tamed the east wind,
uncovered gems in the deep,
20 and sculpted shrines from the desert.
You’ve spoken the tongues
of the waves of the sea,
you’ve understood the whispers
of the oasis and the wadi.
25 You’ve watched the tides
for so long now to know
that time unravels mysteries
if one but waits and seeks.
You thus do not ask what magi
30 scorched the gardens of Dilmun
to lay bare a spectral kingdom,
a memorial of ranked tumuli.
Nor do you ask what sorcery
could turn dark waters underneath
35 sheets of sand and beds of rocks
into pulsating fires in the sky.
And now we have come,
sojourners from the seven seas
with a dream to claim
40 or a nightmare to face.
Palms on our chests,
we go through the gate;
prayers on our lips,
we trudge past the barrows.
45 Scarves on our heads,
we pay homage to the tree;
sandals on our feet,
we scurry over grainy grounds.
And now, we have become one
50 with the water and the sand;
scourers and frackers, we are
cracked rocks and winnowed dust.
We are shapers of clods,
and the jars for potsellers;
55 we are the boat’s crew,
and the planks for the stern or bow.
In this island between two seas,
two worlds beat in our bosom –
one a refuge, the other a confinement;
60 one to die for, the other to live with.
How long this sojourn
is not ours to say, for even
the tides that wafted us ashore,
cannot tell when to wash us away.
65 So we shall toil in the tubes
‘til the flare stacks expire;
we shall mold and be molded mud
‘til there is no more need of jars.
We sail on ‘til the sea lanes
70 lose their current,
and the forked lightnings
lose their spark.
The Flamingos of Zallaq
-smsaboy
The flamingos
honk at me with derision
for I could not sleep standing
on
one
leg.
“Show off!” I snort,
raising an inflamed eyebrow
as they march back and forth
in perfect cadence.
I cross my arms and watch them break
ranks and stage their routine
head-flag,
twist-preen,
wing-salute,
inverted wing-salute,
and wing-leg stretch.
Nonpareil
-smsaboy
They say the seasons blended their colors
just to paint your portrait.
Ay, that may be so.
But your soul is far more vivid
than your picture and stays immutable
while snow entombs cities
or mud cracks crawl across pastures.
They say the winds plucked the choicest strains
of water and land to tune your voice.
Ay, that may be so.
But your thoughtful silence can be
as musical and profound as your speech
and is neither as fickle as the breezes
nor as fleeting as the sound of music.
They say the stars set your eyes as windows
to the eden that is your heart.
Ay, that may be so.
But they are portals too
to worlds the heart can’t contain:
the uncharted depths of the sea,
and the endless promise of space.
Bucharest
-smsaboy
What a delight to do anything as I please
in this city of joy: I can be Bucur and catch
fish by the banks of the Dâmbovița
and taste its legendary sweetness as well,
visit nearby Băneasa Forest to hunt down some strigoi,
play the prince at the Ion Luca Caragiale theatre,
or live like the outlaw in the tunnels underneath.
Now, I traipse over to the Palace of Parliament
to tinker with Sabin Bălașa’s masterpiece
just to make Ceaușescu squirm in his grave,
take a peek at the museums along Victoriei,
kiss a glass at a pub somewhere in Lipscani,
or test the mettle of tough guys at Ferentari.
Ah, the joys of flights of fancy along
a network of trails in the worldwide web!
I run wild like a Hucul pony
in the Carpathian range, untamed and free:
present where I am absent,
be what I am not and can never be.
Igorot 1
-smsaboy
Gawked at in St. Louis,
Hailed in Bataan.
Begged at Botanical Garden,
Feasted in Congress.
Scarred in Batong Buhay and Lepanto,
Soothed in Banaue and Sagada.
Hoped for autonomy,
Dodged its guillotine.
Spread my ideology,
Splintered by its mortars.
Prided in my ancestry,
Haunted by its ghost.
Igorot 2
-smsaboy
I remembered a MacArthur
His smoldering tunnel in Malinta hankering
for the smoke of his pipe
and his tunnels in Lepanto piping up
a high grader’s song.
I wept for a Campbell,
her worms boring holes through
Masferre’s sleek shots
while their kins burrowed into
the terraces.
I was shamed by a Scott,
his prolific quill inking the blank
notepads my children shelved
in the cobwebbed attics
of memory.
Igorot 3
-smsaboy
I ain’t Filipino cuz I got no
sense of country, sing Garth Brooks
and sport Stetson hats,
leather jackets, tasselled jeans, boots and spurs.
I ain’t civilized either
for I make my home in the woods
and feast on maggot-laced pork,
dog-meat, and bloody chicken.
And they say I ain’t human at all for
I got me feathers on my crown and tails
down my belly
and my butt.
In Your Dad's Jitney
-smsaboy
Take comfort in your sofa
by the gear stick warmed by
the sputtering engine.
Snore with the roars of cars
and suck in the colored air
that blankets you.
No worries, ‘Tay’s bony hand
grips the sooty towel
for your sweaty forehead.
Be glad, soon you’ll be home
where awaits your feast
snatched from the carinderia.
MINAK
-smsaboy
The best recalled grazing land of the Baguio Cariños during Mateo’s generation was Kafagway… _[T]he grazing land covered the prairie traversed by a creek that eventually became Burnham Park....
In…Kafagway…was a section called apunan…[where] salt would be spread on the ground, and a horn would be sounded at certain hours to summon the livestock to feed. Cows, carabaos and horses grazing from as far as Camp John Hay are remembered to come stampeding from many directions to answer the summons. (Tapang 2009:16)
You have grown, dear Minak [1],
you have grown:
Serpents and swans now skim
to the funkiest rhythm
where once eels and leeches snaked
while hoofs thundered
toward a mound of salt.
Platforms for lovers sit where Mateo [2]
squatted on his haunches mulling over
his battle with rinderpest.
No longer clannish, you went global
with wireless fidelity
as years ago your new name launched
you abroad
(for evolution must spell
a trendy nomenclature);
no longer savage, you patched your nakedness
with fast food wrappers.
You have grown dear,
Minak,
you have grown.
1 Now “Burnham Lake”
2 Mateo Cariño, an Ibaloy patriarch who once owned Kafagway (now Baguio City’s CBD)
Ili Mi
(Vanaw Language)
-smsaboy
Ili min nagomgom-an,
pitan ji kavivil’gan:
Adtu kamin malinglingsiw,
angos mi mantittiliw.
Kamaan yu pay ina, ama,
agi, susunud a kapipiya?
Piga kad on jin kummaysan?
Kamaan pay janat nataynan?
Kavivilog pay kad nin
janat nangangtaal a tuling:
vyallaguyus, jangu, uggayam
alva-ab kan ja jallong?
Wangwang nu un nalin-ong,
vivvilig nu un napongpong,
tattalun nun natuninung
— amin ikami in-inopon.
Nu timpu pay ji kakan
hajatu ikami maalimanmanan:
jalipong un manjajatngan,
kapi’n naintian, tipoy a nasilian.
Jakami’n nantatayap
situn laklaksid jin lonap.
Somsomok jin man-iyajani
sin tinaynan tan ili.
Ili mi un jummaklan
avit nu kami pay yan:
Ta ojog nu anapon mi
nu kumilop jit algaw mi.
Ili mi ud Kordilyera
vumilog, matagu ka!
Jaan nan mampauli s'nat
aanak nun naisiwalak.
CHILD OF THE EARTH
-smsaboy
I am a child of the earth:
I bathe in the quiet ditch
in the company of leeches and aphids;
I eat my food with bare hands
that reek of pesticide;
my splayed feet
are a home to microbes,
and my cracked soles
get tickled by nail-like thorns.
They lay my head
on bamboo slats
at the time of my birth.
They squeeze my body
into a coffin of fresh wood
at the hour of my death…
There will be
no governor
to weep o’er my muddy grave, no bishop
to extol me in a eulogy,
no acolyte
to peal the bells
for my passing.
Soon,
I shall be the soil
another’s tractor turns.
For I am a child of the earth.
In vino veritas
-smsaboy
Wine cellars make good
glasses by which the masses see
how their loftiest dreams can be
bottled up nicely
in sacred repositories.
condominium
-smsaboy
God is
a condominium
with exactly
66 storeys,
1,189 walls,
and 31,102 chambers.
And, oh, a velvet leather roofing.
-smsaboy
In Hangzhou
-smsaboy
The ancients say,
“There’s paradise in heaven
and then there’s
Zhūzhōu and Hángzhōu
on earth,”
and I believe them.
The moderns say,
“There’s hell near heaven
and then there’s
Xīzáng and Guíyŭ
on earth,”
and I believe them too.
