So again, How Do You Write?

I think for scratching dirt that your art may live, you are bound
to be found in another time by someone also scratching dirt.


Call me what you want, but I don’t really think of my works, of what I write, as craft. I don’t think of myself as an artiste, I am less than that, and also, sometimes, I am more. Life is always bigger, monstrously so, than all that we can do and live for to insist on a fame we can die with.

But of course, I gash if a colleague in the writers guilds or some artiste group dismisses me as less than a writer, or if they drop me for a crappy radfem beside their nationalist artist status. Or when Aida Rivera-Ford, for instance, dreadlocked and well made-up, introduces me to a baffle of high school students as “the next case” as in “the next case is a feminist”, or when the aged Don Pagusara waves me away as “kabalo pud mosulat”. Artisthood, along with craftmanship, is something I really don’t consciously aspire for. I cannot recall counting the meters of any of my verses. If by chance some tallied, either they wrought themselves or, I must have played by ear. I’m bad at quoting the masters and I often mix things up, mistaking one for the other, but for every line they say that serves me, I thank them, and it’s enough moment of glory. Today I quote Walt Whitman: I stand in my own day, and to that I add, And fuck immortality.

I know what I am great at: ransacking the English language, for one. I used to envy those who could name themselves, Audre Lorde, for instance, who called herself a warrior-poet. I did wish I could call myself a warrior-poet. But war is high art and effective power is something I never felt I had. Whether as a feminist, or a lesbian activist, I always felt the mowed one, at each turn.


Someone I can't recall now once said that every time he speaks, his sense of endangerment increases. Speaking before an audience still scares me. I always have this image of cocked guns aimed at my head, whether the listeners were male or female. Speaking before a largely feminist audience in Lausanne, so surprised was I to see heads nodding at statements I made which I myself did not feel very intelligent. More surprised was I when they laughed at something I thoughtlessly said. If someone comes up to me to tell me she likes what I said on the mike, I still trip on my toe. At a poetry reading in Davao attended by Philippines’ so-called best, I panted as I read. I felt I was running. I felt I bombed the place and I should be picked up and manacled rather than shaking hands with people who patted me for my brave take on myself. Always, when I think of myself as speaking and when I think of my words as important, I cannot get through this image of people’s faces stonewalling me. Maybe what happened with me was that I had unconsciously made poems like some people make petrol bombs. Maybe I really want to bomb walls that stop me.

But to call myself a suicide bomber poet is a lot of bullshit. Bombing is high action. I have not demolished anything, not even made a hole on the wall. And anyway, my radfem sisters in Europe warned me not to be taken in with stories about female suicide bombers: It could be that those Muslim women who joined the suicide squads were not really there out of patriotic reasons. It could be that they’re patriotic, but likely, that’s on top of their patriotic brothers and fathers’ fielding them there in the suicide squads for having committed honor crimes, like they got themselves pregnant or they were adulterous and would be honorably rid of anyway. I’m no bomber, certainly, despite the strong terrorist streak in me.

I think I’m just a robber-poet. I can read Whitman or Plath and no sooner had I gotten to the second stanza than I had made up a hack of a poem that can only be called my own. I refuse to be shamed for what I did with the masters’ works. If anyone so much as take courage to castigate me for sacrilege, or theft, likely I will just tell him, How did you know it wasn't mine? I caught Whitman quoting me! My mother used to slap me: Just when she was most angry and was about to absolve me, I always had something better to say. She was proud of that. I heard her brag so to my Aunt and our neighbors. In my adult years I would be slapping strangers who would invariably slap, hit and spit back at me. It’s a hard take, but I just return to my mother’s pride and I stay sane.

I got to read Walt Whitman just very recently. I did not find him new; maybe because I got him already early on through Ginsberg or through Dylan or some other late begotters of him that I’d run into first. Of course I realized that in his time his writings were radical. I did feel unliterate not knowing for a long time what made him such a big event in literature, but I really didn’t know many people in world literature and in Philippine folklore and letters, for that matter. I have this stubbornness in my soul to keep away from the gods. You worship Who? Pues, I will not read him. Maybe I owe it to Rolaiza. She would always refuse to watch movies that the intelligentsia liked to queue at; always refused to read the bestsellers that came with them. She reads Hardy when none reads him anymore; and she reads bestsellers when they’re not bestsellers anymore. She always had a thing or two to say of the Hollywood movies, and also of the intelligentsia that watched them, and I stayed by her word and by her side not only because I did find her innately more intelligent than most of the intelligentsia I knew, but also because she always paid for our tickets.

Or maybe it goes back far into my childhood. To my elders’ annoyance, I always drew the pictures of the anti-heroes in the komiks I read: the adulteress, the robber, the prostitute, the tomboy, and I always drew them beautiful. Reading Jane Eyre, my sympathy and interest went long to the burning woman in the attic, not to Jane and her master for whom I did not feel the least admiration. When later Jean Rhys wrote a novel reinventing the girlhood and marriage of the woman in the attic, I gloated at my perspicacity.


I tend to look to those unrewarded ones. Or to those who get rewarded despite. I even would rather look to those who have altogether stopped writing or have not taken to writing at all but read deep and wide. Like who? I could not think of one immediately. I never got to know what makes other writers stop writing, momentarily or permanently, but I do think that productivity is for the pineapple and the banana industries, not for writers. That’s what sucks with the writing business: if writers start thinking they should meet quotas of works or awards or else they will perish. I admire people who do not fear their own absence. The social scene is the death of the writer. What is she doing there anyway.

I could not think of who belong to the rewarded despite. I hardly follow the awarding ceremonies to know who are there. César Ruiz-Aquino maybe. But Stories, if I remember right, won third, not first prize in the Palanca. And his collection of stories got a belated award, thanks to his friends who must have missed him in the Manila scene for some time. Don Pagusara has been rewarded for the wrong things. His better creations, if I followed his career right, were his poetry and freedom songs made in the 1980s, maybe in the 1970s, and later the Cebuano poetry which DEMS, the cultural education outfit he was once part of, made into songs. The stories and plays that won him awards and grants are so-so. I think it unfair for artists and writers to win for the wrong things. A writing fund awarded in your retiring years to see you through your battle with cancer or to help you look after your comatose artist-husband can be painfully humiliating when you know that you deserved recognition way back,in your braver years. It is unfair. Just like how unfair for Renee Zellwegger to win Supporting Actress for her negligible performance in Cold Mountain when she performed better in Chicago. All because the judges would rather have depressive writers with heroic husbands than heartless wives to clueless dudes, as Salon.com said.

I cannot think of others that are unrewarded despite, and I cannot count those who do not join literary contests because they don’t believe in them. And anyway, you wouldn’t know who are good and didn’t get awards because most of them do not have the resources to publish themselves. Doris Lessing, who might never win a Pulitzer for what she writes and for her productivity, said something about women writers who are good only as far as they can go: They had to pay the penalty of being shown as good women even if they weren’t, according to the hypocrisies of their time. Of George Elliot, Lessing had this to say: there is a great deal that Elliot does not know, does not understand, because she is moral. I hauled Lessing in because that’s the thing with awards. You have to produce literature that is moral according to the morals of those who govern.


Unrewarded people are good judges because they owe no one. You may not agree on a single thing when it comes to art or what one should write about and how, but because they’re not bound by the institutions of learning that exhort people to write or think in a certain way, then they tend to be truthful. They are guileless and guiltless in their criticisms of you, and if they like you, it is not as though they conceded anything to you if they let you know that they admire you.

I cannot say a thing about texts I haven’t read, so I will just make a few notes about those I’m quite familiar with. Lualhati Bautista got rewarded several times over because she is good (even if she’s a hopeless heterosexual – at least as of her last novel) and also at the time her three novels went out, protest literature was the marching order. Same thing could be said of Jun Cruz Reyes, although he tends to sentimentalize those who are so much poorer and hungrier and did more for his much romanticized struggle than him. I do not like the screenplay Lualhati wrote for Bata, Bata Pa’no Ka Ginawa and don't give a damn about if it won an award in Belgium. The concessions she had to make to commerce. Lea Bustamante had to be shown a good woman because she happens to like sex. I think in a healthy society, everybody must like sex, and get it too. In Bata, Bata… Lea had to be shown a bleeding-heart mama above all her other virtues just so to counterbalance the “whore” in her. Motherhood feminism, I'd say. Movies like that are like religion: comforting to those of us who had so little for so long, but cultural mishmash nevertheless: They tend to confuse rather than.

When Sean Penn won Best Actor a few years back – and Bill Murray and other rebels in Hollywood – you would think a little poetic justice was in order. Ever the dogmatist that I was, I could not think of it as a good thing, because anyway the movies they must be doing now must have nothing to do with anything that critiques Establishment, so winning the award has no significance since there are no significant rebellions now in many Christian and moral countries. Of course, Mystique River is a great movie, nothing effete there; it might not be about the IRA (why did I think Hollywood should be making movies about conflict resolution in Ireland?), but it is still the kind of movie that anti-Establishment Sean Penn will choose to appear in. So the fuck with you and your issues, says faggot critic Douglas, Sure, Establishment can now afford to be kinder to its rebel sons since their rebellions are passé, who listens to them now, anyway, and Hollywood is triumphant capitalism, anyway, but for once look at it this way: Hollywood has been mollified, made sober by the times and the money it rakes, that now it can afford to recognize talent where talent is found: Despite being bad boys, Sean Penn and co. are really great actors, first and foremost, before and beside their being great rebels, where is your aesthetics? Did the fag Douglas say those? I think I said those.


There is a movie that Douglas once showed me: Frances. But maybe it was Jessica Lange’s portrayal that got us. Frances, the 1982 Hollywood edition, had a male angel who always appeared each time the evil mother deposited Frances to the mental asylum that lobotomized her. The male angel prop notwithstanding, the movie was depressing. But you hate the lie Hollywood produced for someone who struggled so much to live and have her one life count, and was killed, inch by inch, by Hollywood and the men who run it. The Chicana lesbians are right for their condemnation of what they call Hollywood feminism. I used to be sorry for my deprivation, but when I think of what Hollywood and the glossy magazines could have done to my mind had I been raised around them, I cannot be more grateful. Without them, I had been differently educated.


I want writings that leave a stake in the heart. Hardy on Father Old Time, Thomas on the house a little wrong on the head, Thurber on the murder of that fuck of an aviation genius Pal Smurch by the President of the US of A, Willa Cather about that wedding entourage that got fed to the foxes, and maybe Cesar Ruiz-Aquino's siring of a madwoman whose newborn got eaten by a dog, never mind if for an autobiographical take these were mostly in the third person and more than a day removed from the narrators.

Of the musician-poets, I still love Bob Dylan best because he knows what hurts and will not spare you. I got to know Bob Dylan by mistake. I was in this movement that manufactured poetry with barbed wires, candles and raised fists on T-shirts and posters. One that I liked was the Dylan Thomas poem which the detainees appropriated and rewrote into Do not go gently into the night, rage, rage against the dying of the light. As I said early on, I tend to mix things up. I did not have a phonograph at home, so at first I could not get it right which Dylan sang the times they are achangin’, the one with a bob, or the one with a thomas, and which Dylan wrote rage, rage against the dying of the light. Anyway, I just sort of flipped through the stacks in the library and it so happened that I got to Bob Dylan first before I got to Dylan Thomas. Around that time also, I got to meet Viktor the poet bum, and Diutay the musician bum. Also quite by mistake, the three of us got into some kind of a living arrangement in Diutay’s place, an interesting menage-a-troi on Andre’s back. Andre is Diutay’s wife who didn’t love Bob Dylan as much the three of us did, or at least she didn’t pretend to.


It used to be that when Bob Dylan sang Shakespeare he’s in the alley, with his pointed shoes and his bells talking to this French girl who says she knows me well (this could be a paraphrase), I’d fantasize that I was the French girl whose attention Bob Dylan was rather proud of procuring over Shakespeare. Now I fantasize I am Bob Dylan, and the French girl is a girlfriend Shakespeare didn’t know to be a dyke moonlighting in the Red Light District of Amsterdam where we met. Things are fine: If you believe Bob Dylan, you would think Shakespeare’s more interested in him than in me or in my French girl.

But to go back to barbed wire poetry:

Viktor used to say what a hopeless peripatetic I am that I could not leave behind my national democratic politics. I could not tell Viktor frankly then that beside that politics I thought nothing of him except for a dopehead. But I think he knew it, and though how he liked to quote Bob Dylan’s My Back Pages as a way of gently telling me that life is like a river it moves, he really let me alone with my bouts of nostalgia. That must be 1996 and the times were very different. I left Davao for Silliman because I was beginning to hate everyone in Davao. The natdem politics I put over on Viktor was really at its knees then or in deep recession, so when I spoke of natdem politics to Viktor, I really was still stuck in the eighties. And Viktor actually knew that, too, and that must be the reason he pitied me, at least politically. So as I said, first thing I did there was look for Bob Dylan in the library, thinking he got plenty of barbed wire poetry since they say he authored The times they are a changin’. But instead, I got Lay, lady, lay and his Back pages. Then I found Dylan Thomas and discovered how the natdem guys stole his poem. Thomas he didn’t say a thing about the dark days of military rule and anything of that sort, like the activists made out; he said, and again, this might be a paraphrase: Do not go gentle into the good night, rage, rage against the dying of the light. Imagine my happiness having the god of him rail against retirement plans in a period of triumphant reformism!


I always had a beef against the cliquey literati. They publish each other, they read each other, they reward each other. It’s no wonder they think so well of themselves which is a shame considering that they’re still living and shopping and history has not really begun yet to beat them into a knead. Thanks to Affirmative Action, the NCCA in Manila also now redistributes the funds and the awards to the provinces and so here in Davao, DWG and other grantees can have their own writers’ workshops, literary supplements, book projects, ethno-historical plays. The writing guild people can now also get to read their poems to captive college students and get paid in dimes for the effort. But what of that? And who joins the writers’ workshops, for instance? Take it from a Grind Inc. panelist: “It’s been a long long time since I last read a good story.” And Jose Sionel, quoting someone else: "Writers’ workshops are responsible for the publishing of third-rate poetry in America."

What I think is that writers’ workshops are responsible for the notion that writers are a lovely class of people. Writers’ workshops are some kind of a yuppie health spa, a self-affirmation cum mutual support program for writers in the same way that sessions like Towards A New Women’s Spirituality work for women activists, in the absence of fury. What they mostly teach in writers’ workshops is technique, structure, language, the rules. The rules, especially. And that to never trust the first draft. If you listen too much to them, especially when you haven’t begun to kick on your own yet, you will not be able to make your own stride, or if you had already, you might stagger to a stop. You won’t find your own voice, your own heartpace. You will sound just like everyone else. Better to write alone, when nobody’s watching. Publish later when you’re ready. Or to save yourself the trouble, publish posthumously. Have at least one friend, don’t trust husbands of lesser talent. If you cannot fight back alive, how much more when you're dead. Don't even trust lovers or friends of lesser grace. Hang them dry. Remember what Ted Hughes did to Sylvia Plath’s diaries? Lobotomy is not done only to the living. The dead’s surviving scripts get it, too.


I say hail to the first draft. You know it’s yours. No one else could claim to have mothered it, just you. No poachers, no coaches, no godfathers, no godmothers. You might start bloody, and it might take years to come, but what the heck, your first drafts will come to their own in time. The good thing is, it’s your strokes, it’s your grammar, it’s your language, your line, your text. They can’t touch it with their praises. They tend to overpraise, anyway, especially if you’re young, provincial, and good looking, or at least photogenic and slightly modest. “She’s ours, one of our best!” Imagine winning world reknown, and someone in the province telling his students over beer or in class that Oh, so much for Rosca. It wasn’t her work exactly, the New York critics circle kneaded it. Whoa!


Back here in Davao, I actually appreciate the pains tenacious nationalists and regional writers make, insisting on writing in Filipino or Cebuano, the writers’ workshops and creative writing classes being mostly alien shops, as Don Pagusara says, that will exterminate the race. I really am not an evangelist for the race, in so far as the race has progressed, and I’m no evangelist for the Cebuano language, at least in so far as the Cebuano text has been written. But I do care for those who work for a mass-based culture, even if they go to ridiculous lengths translating and spending so much time making themselves understood by the Manila literati and other audiences. Like Don Pagusara, for instance. I don’t understand why he had to give them the English translations of his works each time. Why?!? So that they will not say that he is not good in the language they are good at? Fear that his Cebuano writings will go extinct if he did not translate them himself into English today? I think for scratching dirt that your art may live, you are bound to be found in another time by someone also scratching dirt.


I have a case against translating. Fidelity to the maker, which is often equated with fidelity to the text, is a great thing. But to bring trains, cable cars, snows, bears and oak trees to the esteros of Dabaw? Unsa may atong bation ana. One can’t get fixated with poetic technique and language skills so much. Why bother to translate if you cannot take the heart of the poem to those who might hear it because the foreignness of the thing stays? That’s the trouble with the hegemony of English: you’ve got to prove that you’re not hurting it by translating it into a local language. As though you could harm Walt Whitman’s poetry if your Cebuano did not come near enough to his American English. As though Walt Whitman would bother to turn in his grave with your quoting and ribbing him. As though Walt Whitman was talking about American English when he spoke of poetry. As though Walt Whitman himself spoke the poetic language of his time. So much for faithfulness to the gods when the gods themselves favor rebels and infidels.

Poetic technique, just like structure, can get in the way of poetry. You wonder why reading some texts, you follow the words, you can see the skeleton (it shows through the skin), but where is the heart?


Taking up The Snows of Kilimanjaro, I liked to annoy my well-off students in ADDU for what it says about writing and gangrene. They could not see how hard it is for a writer to write about her friends who dine and wine her. They could not agree that comfort corrupts and that it could spell the death of a writer. I told them that saying No to money requires moral courage. But of course, most of them will never get to know what hunger can do and will do to you.

Douglas says hunger and depravity, direct contact with hell, makes one a better writer. I say to him how true. But first, it will make Douglas bitter.

And to take it from me: Biting the hand that feeds you requires as much moral courage, if not more.


(slightly revised from a piece written in 2006)

Nudes and Poetry

I don't follow my beginnings anymore,
And I don't want to see any of you anymore;
All I know is that I ran into you inside,
And I alone escaped.



OLD LOVE
for my parents

Lia Lopez-Chua

Finally the slow burn of love
Hottest
Brilliant in that inevitable sunset
Raging as it dies

Swim in my depths
Now
For all the time that we have
Must be ours

Love me with all that you have learned and abandoned
All of me in the palm of your hand
A flaming punctuation caught in the breath of our time
My last words your first memory

Remember this when we say goodbye
I have kept nothing at bay
All that you are
Into this long moment of love

Nganong Mohubad Man

Kanang ilhon kang maayo nang mosuwat sa Binisaya, o bisan na lang kamao sad mosuwat og Binisaya, sa mga banggiitan susama nilang Tita Lacambra Ayala ug Ricardo de Ungria, mobukhad pud biya imong atay. Bisan pa kahibalo ka nga ila ra tong nasulti tungod kay sila mismo dili suhito sa lengguwahe. Mao nga kun ila kang ingnan (sa pulong nga ininglis o tinagawog ba kaha) nga apan kinahanglan imo hubaron sa ingles imong mga sinuwat “aron masabtan,” malipay tuod ka, unya pagkahuman malibog! Sa ato pa, bilihon imong mga pulong mao nga nag-iyawat pud silang ilang mabasahan ug makuptan? Apan kun tinuod nga bililhon, nganong dili nila kini basahon ug tugkaron sa pinulongan kun asa kini giligwat? Nganong suguon pa man tawon kang badbaron na sad sa hariunong ininglis?

Sa tinuod lang, ang sinultiang Binisaya, dili sab akoa. O dili maoy pulong nga akong nahimat-an. Sulagma ra, matod pa sa mga kaubang nakahiagom og susamang maayong aksidente. Sama bitaw sa gugma o sa disgrasya, napangandaman man o wala, basta ikawy maoy nasakpan, unya imo na lang maamgohan nga uy, dunay nahitabo, dunay nabag-o sa akong mga pamulong ug panan-aw sa mga butang, dunay nahitabo ug nabag-o sa akong pobreyanong kinabuhi!

Unsay nakapaukyab niini?

Kaniadtong batan-on pa kayo ko (lagmit mga disisyete anyos) ug naninguha pang makatiwas og kolehiyo, kahinumdom ko nga bisan tuod Binisiya ang sinultian sa kasagarang nangeskuyla sa tunghaanang akong gitungtungan (didto sa Mindanao State University sa Marawi City) ang akong gustong tun-an ininglis gyud. Alingugngugan ko sa mga Dabawenyo ug mga Surigawnon nga nagpanon didto kay hastilan, perting paspasa moistorya, walay tuldok, walay kama, murag mga pabo nga murag baga nga trapiko sa intersection sa Acacia ug Claveria. Nga-a nga amo na sila mag-istorya, haw? Daw nagapamuyayaw pirmi!, ingon pa sa akong rumeyt sa Princess Lawanen Hall nga Ilonggo sad, si Jo Baltero nga taga-South Cotabato. Sa mga Maranaw nga mga tubo adtong dapita, labaw kong gikuyawan sa ilang sinultian. Tungod kay sa akong adlaw-adlaw nga pakighimamat ug kukabildo mga Bisaya ang kanunay nakong kaatbang, nakat-on kog pinulongang Binisaya, bisan pa sige kog masawayan sa mga taga-Maco kay wrong grammar lagi daw. (‘nanglitan: asa ka paingon Sheil? Mangaon.) Pero wa sa akong laraw kanang magkat-on ug magpakamaayo sa Binisaya. Ang ako lang gyong gustong masteron, ang sinultiang ininglis. Apan ambot sa unsang panghitabo kay bisan gani akong kursong A.B. English wa gani nako natiwas og istreyt kay sa ikaduhang tuig nako sa maong tunghaanan, didto na ko sa PolSci, naminaw sa mga batbat sa mga sabaan ug usahay mga brayt sad nga mga aktibistang estudyante. Hastilan kadtong mga amawa, magsigeg ininglis, apan ako ray dumtan kay akong kurso kuno kolonyal, nag-agalon sa mga imperyalista. Sige kong tawgong petiburgesya kay kanunay kong mobalibad tambong sa ilang mga pol-ed. Pol-ed ilang tawag anang lektyur ug kukabildo sa mga gagmayng pundok sa mga estudyante sa mga eskuylahan ug mga kolehiyo kaniadtong dekada sitenta hangtod otsenta. Pinamubo kini sa political education, gipauso para kuno mapausbaw ang kahimatngon sa mga walay alimuhag. Kasagaran nila ron nanilbihan na sa mga dagkong kompanya sa droga, o nanarbaho para sa mga proyekto sa USAID o EU, o kaha toa na sa Canada, o sa Alemanya, apan kini ako gyong nahinumduman og pag-ayo: wa ko miapil sa League of Filipino Students tungod lang kay sa makausa o makaduruha nakong tambong sa ilang asembliya, ang ilang presidente dili makaistreyt og ininglis! Ingon ko, nganong motuo man ko ana niya nga di man gani na siya kalahos sa iyang ininglis? Sus Ginuo, pramis pa, ingon ana gyud ko sauna.

Ang akong pagtamod ug tinuod nga pag-ila sa pinulongang Binisaya naugmad ug milambo dili didto sa han-ay sa mga estudyanteng nagdumot sa imperyalistang Amerika. Yama-yama ra gyud tong akong bisaya adtong panahona. Nakahinangop nako ang bulawanong binisaya paggawas na nakog unibersidad. Ambot asang tukmang dapit naggikan, tingali sa nagkalainlaing lihit-lihit nga dapit. Sa kalsada samtang nangape kauban ang mga nagbarikada; sa mga gomahan, sagingan ug pinyahan samtang nanginterbyu sa mga trabahanteng gisisante; sa banika kauban ang mga mga babayeng naggunit og garab ug nagbayo og humay. Basta murag susama adtong gibungat ni Pablo Neruda nga, Wakokabaw. Basta midangat lang sila nga nagpangita nako. Ingon ni Pablo, And it was at that age… poetry arrived in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where it came from. Basta murag ingon ana pud akong pagkahimamat sa Pinulongang Bisaya.

Tingali tuod, wa pud siya miturok kun wa nabisbisan bisan panalagsa na lang. Tinuod, dili sistematiko ang akong pagkat-on og Binisaya, apan duna koy dalunggan para sa mga maayong ideya ug mga bililhong pulong. Pananglitan, akong mahinumduman ing-ani: Si Danny Ong (nga dunay tinipigang mga matahom nga garay sa Binisaya apan karon mas nalingaw na sa iyang bisekleta ug tarbaho sa INGO kaysa magtudling sa iyang mga gibati), si Ompong (o ang halangdong si Rudy Rodil nga karon nakugang na didto sa Peace Panel sa gobyerno) ug si Jack Catarata (nga didto na kuno sa konseho sa Alemanya girepresenta ang mga migranteng kasagaran mga iskulmeyt ra sad niya), nangape sa gamayng lamesa sa gamayng kusina, didto sa usa ka pultahan nga gisak-an sa mga hinawayon sa panggamhanan. Ako naningkulong nga naminaw nila samtang nangape sad atbang sa hilom nga makinilya sa yanong sala-upisina nga gipanarbahoan. Ang ilang topiko: ang kanindot ug kahamili sa pinulongang Cebuano tandi sa ubang lengguwahe, mapaininglis man o tinagawog (Pilipino kaniadto). Basta maoray ilang tawag, Cebuano, dili Sugbuhanon, dili Binisaya. Wala dawy makalupig sa pagkaadunahan sa sinultiang Cebuano. Ilang ehemplo ang pulong nga gimingaw. Dawbi, unsa daw na sa Tagalog bi, nami-miss kita? Hinahanap kita? Naiinip ako sa iyo? Pagkaparota ba. Sa Ininglis, I long for you? Dah, talonglong kaayo na. My hands have left me searching for your breasts? Nah! Kuyaw na kaayo na kun mao nay binisay-on! Mangatawa sila. Taod-taod ilang tul-iron ang musika ni Joey Ayala. Kun unsa kasakto nga moingon si Joey og Dagan, dagan! ug dili takbo, takbo sa iyang awit nga Bankerohan, kabahin sa pagbuto og granada ug pagkasunog sa merkado. Ilang sunud-sunuron ang mga adlib ni Joey. Unya balay na na! Ayay! Natunok kog lansang! Wa ra ba tay insurance. Wa ra ba tay Medicare… Naa man kaha kay credit card diha? Libre ra bang mangga diha, bay. Ug kanang maggabii na nga nagkalami silag inom og serbesa ug hisgot og pulitika, ilang bakgrawnan ilang istorya sa awit sa Patatag ug sa Ibong Malaya nga hastilan, perting bugnawa sa tingog sa babayeng nagkanta, Sud-onga ang adlaw sa kahapunon/Naduhig sa dugo ang nagkuyanap nga landong. Sige kog makuratan. Usahay mamugnaw manginit akong mga kaunuran hangtod buko-buko. Pagkahuman mosimang kang Don Pagusara ilang istorya ug sa hamiling mga babaye nga naibog sa iyang sugbuhanong poesiya. Ug mangatawa na sad sila. Makahunahuna na lang tawon kog taympa, ngano man gud ni sila. Unsa ba gud ning poesiya ilang gikabuangan. Kanang manghawa na sila pauli sa ilaha, o kaha manaka og hagdan para mangatulog, akong buklaton ug ukayon ang mga basahong ilang gikaibgan. Didto. Didto tingaling dapit naggumikan akong kahibuwong ug pagtahud sa pinulongang Binisaya.

Apan wa sa akong alimpungatan nga magsuwatsuwat pud kog Binisaya, mapasugilanon ba o mapagaray. Namber wan fan lang gyud ko sa mga labawng dalayegon. Unya niadtong nag-apil-apil na ko sa mga miting ug mga aktibidades sa mga edarang manunulat diri sa Dabaw, nahibalik gamay akong kaikag sa poesiyang Cebuano. Ilabi na kadtong mga panahon nga magsige kog suroy sa mga nagdasok nga mga panimalay ug mga hagip-ot nga mga kadalanan sa mga iskwateran nahilabot sa mga panukiduki nga akong gipanghimo para sa kunohay mga makamasang NGO, akong kahimuot sa mga giahak ug mga giatay, mga sapatkang animalng yawaka ug unsa-unsa pang mga sinultian sa mga kuwapnit sa kadalanan ug ilang mga inahan, napulihan og tinuod nga kahinangop ug pagtamod. Napukaw, matod pa, ang akong bulubugnaw nga interes. Itandi sa walay bukog ug walay kasingkasing nga mga po ug opo sa mga tribong matinahuron, isog, matinuoron, ug walay giringgiring ang dila sa mga midako sa aspaltong mga anak sa ebakwis ug mga migranteng Bisaya.

Salamat sad sa mga banggiitang katigulangan diri sa Dabaw, ug sa mga batan-ong manunulat didto sa Sugbo, nga kinsingkasing ug makugihong nagduso sa pagpakaylap ug pagpauswag sa lengguwaheng pangkatawhan, hinayhinay nang giila ang literaturang Binisaya. Mao nga karon, makaingon tang ang kaniadtong kanunayng mingaw ug sinalikway nga kawsang Tunhay Bisaya anam-anam nang misibaw. Mao sab tingali nga pati ako nga walay puangod nga naglibodsuroy lang ang maldita ug rebeldehong dila, nadani, naigmat, naaghat nga mosuwatsuwat sab og Binisaya, bisan pa kasagaran sa akong mga garay mga nilangkat ug sinikmat ra gikan sa mga nahan-ay na sa inglis sa mga sikat nga manunulat.

Sa tinuod nga pagkasulti, di ko makaingon nga hayag kaayo ang ugma para nakong ania dinhi sa sekta sa mga makakatawhang manunulat sa Binisaya. Matag karon ug unya, makapadayag ko sa akoa ra sang hunahuna ug hinipigang pagbati, apan sa makadaghang higayon, maglisud og garay akong inalambreng kamot ug nanalingsing og bagnot nga dila. Ug sa kagamay ug kapiot sa luna, usahay mag-iniringay ang mga kaipon sa balay. Pasalamat ka kun maingnan kas matinabangong mga banggiitan nga Dili man tawon Bisaya kanang imong sinulatan, Day, linumpen man tawon na, lengguwahe sa mga way-tungha, pagbasa sa gud og Bisaya magasin! Ang pait kanang ingnan kas mga naniguwang ug mga beterano og, Gasulat ba diay kag tula, Day, gasulat ba diay kag Binisaya? Akong tawag anang dulaa, Inday-inday diutay, Pag-ayo-ayo gyud og kiay-kiay.

Kasapat ba anang pagkapangutanaha, gasulat ko uy. Unsa ba diay ning akong gitudling diri ganiha ra ko dinhi, dili ba diay ni Binisaya!?! Nasuguan naman gani tang badbaron sa ininglis atong mga sinuwat kay wa daw nasabtan sa mga adunahan, sa ato pa, Binisaya tong akong mga nagama!?!

Ug ania ko diri, mga pre, labot anang mulo. Dili ba nga ang mas mahinungdanong pangutana pa, Kinahanglan pa bang atong hubaron ug badbaron sa ininglis atong sinuwatan? Ang pinakasayong tubag, O, siyempre ah. Aron masabtan ta sa uban nga dili uban ang tan-aw nato. Kasigbit ani nga pangutana, Para kang kinsa ba diay ning atong pakiglimbasog nga makasuwat sa atong kaugalingon ug inangkong pulong? Kinsa ug asa ang atong mambabasa? Dili ba ang kanunayng ipahinumdum kanato sa mga katiguwangang makabayan, katungdanan sa mga manunulat ang kab-uton ang mga toa didto sa ubos ug dili ang toa didto sa itaas?

Sa akong pagsuroysuroy sa mga eskuylahan pamaligyag balak kauban sa mga manunuwat diri sa Dabaw, halin kayo ang garay sa Binisaya. Kini, ekspleyn sa ako sa nakaubang bumabasa, tungod kay ako silang nauwat: nauwat nako sa akong sinikwat nga mga poema gamit ang lengguwahe mismo sa mga wa-kilating mga estudyante. Nga akong gikalipay, kay laliman ka, nasabtan ug nahangpan sa mga lisod-lipayon, lisod-atikon nga mga kabatan-onang tapulan ang akong lampingasan ug pinanuway nga mga garay? Kun mao na, nganong kinahanglan pa mang ininglison? Dili na unya masabtan sa ilang hasol ug naghigwaos nga mga salabutan ang akong hubad? Aron lamdagan ang mga ingliserong daan nang daghang ineskuylahan ug tingali wala nay dugang pang gihandum nga mahibaw-an? Ay na. Maayo ra ba og mamakpak sad sila. Basin labayon kog celfons ug high heels unya. Manguli silang nag-untol-untol ilang tikang sa dalan unya.

Ingon sa mga tigbaligyaay og suwat-papel sa kamaynilaan, ug sa mga maluluy-ong patrones sa mga nanglimbasog ug nakigbisug nga mga manunulat sa Bisaya, gikinahanglan gyud nga dunay hubad. Kay sa maong paagi lamang makasabot ug makatampo pud ang uban. Sa maong paagi lamang makulaynap ang pagdawat ug pag-ila sa lengguwaheng lokal.

Tingali. Ug unta. Kay kinsa ba gud ang local nga dili gusto mokuyanap nga murag silaw?

Apan kanang ang manunulat mismo sa lengguwaheng bernakular ang maoy manduhan nga mohubad sa iyang ligwat aron mapasayon ang tarbaho sa mga ingliserong bumabasa sa akademya ug kinahamiliang mga kritiko-artista? Maayo kun parehas tang Don Pagusara nga lupigan pang computer mag-autotranslate sa labihang kakugi mohubad-badbad sa iyang mga tudling mapainglis man o mapafilipino. Apan kun maayo lamang kita sa Binisaya ug walay panahon, higayon ug gugma para magkat-on og ininglis, nganong mag-antos man og badbad-hubad? Tinuod, kun kinsay nagsuwat, mao pinakatakus nga magpasabot kabahin sa iyang teksto ug testamento, pero unsa ba gud diay ka, magmumugna o maestra sa elementarya? Manunulat o tigpasayon?

Unta, kitang mga manunulat sa Binisaya, dili na hasulon pa sa gimbuhatong pagbadbad-hubad, gawas na lang kun kita mismo tighubad pud ang panarbaho. Kun wa sa atong alampat kanang tarbahoa, unta, ipadumala na kana sa uban, kadtong mga nag-ingon nga sila nakig-uban kanato sa atong pagbuhi sa Binisaya ug sa kulturang pangmasa. Sa kanihit sa mga katigayunang makadangat kanatong mga manunulat sa Binisaya, dili angayan nga hatagan pa kita og dugang nga asaynment ug galastoan (kon atong gibili kining tarbahoa, natural kinahanglan ato sang bayran ang maghuhubad, dili bala, CCP kag NCCA?) sumala sa mga rekisitos sa akademiya ug katukuran sa literatura. Unta, ang gusto magtukib og binisaya magbasa sa Binisaya, dili sa badbad sa ininglis. Ing-ana ra man unta na kasimple.

Ug kitang mga manunulat, dili angay nga mahadlok nga dili kita madunggan o mailhan sa mga elitistang bumabasa kun dili ta mag-ininglis. Kay ngano, mahanaw ba diay atong mga pulong kun dili kini masuwat sa gamhanang ininglis? Buot pasabot nagtuo ta nga salamat sa paghari sa mga gamhanang sinultian, sa mga umalabot nga panahon mahanaw na gyud ang pobreng Binisaya?

Ang akong pagtuo ingon ani: Ang tinuod nga bililhong pulong dili basta-basta mapapha, asa mang lengguwahe kini nakasulat. Sa kadugayan duna gyud laing hitakus nga kalag nga makakaplag ug makapunit niini aron buhion ug dad-on didto sa hayag, sa unsa mang lengguwaheng sinultian sa ugma-damlag. Sa atong pagkamatinud-anong pagpangita og kaluwasan, mahikit-an ra lagi ta. Sa atong maduguong pakigbugnu sa bagnot ug mga kalibunan aron makabuhi og salinsing dinhi sa atong lisod-tul-irong panahon, maglaraykatay ra lagi ta.

BLOGSHOT: Punyetang Peace

For a massacre to occur on Week of Peace, it's quite a message from God. I said God because I had been missing Him a lot lately, and also , because I don't think those armed goons keep tab of civil society's calendar of activities to make a point like that. They're mostly illiterates, mind, so they must have no gift of irony to issue a statement like that.

Or, could it be our Godlessness that brought it so?

A few days before that, I and another infidel got ourselves dragged to a peace play . We didn't know it was a peace play, we actually thought it was a gay play, mainly because a gay friend advertised about it to me, and the title sounded to me high action comedy, for us to think it was a rehash of some mother-for-peace-backdrop-Mindanao genre, so when we got seated and found out it was that, I, for one, felt held up and kidnapped and wished I were doing something else instead. The last cultural number that made me cry was Bagong Buwan; after that all the rest were a creel of eels. So when a photographer came around our seats to take a good shot of us and asked us to flash a peace sign, we had to struggle hard to hold our hands from making the dirty finger sign. Punyetang peace, the scowling pagan a seat away from me cussed, enough to send the fotog away. We had been talking about these endless peace programs saturating Mindanao, which we felt were mostly a lot of bullshit, but for the millions that keep pouring in.

Or maybe that is exactly the problem: the millions that keep on pouring in that make people not think anymore of what all these monies could hurt, or who, immediately or in the long run; what all these chromed vehicles cruising through bogs of poverty and despair that fuel all the resentments and the angers as each counted how much, how much did not go to them, do to people’s sense of hope and trust on other people. Was I surprised something like that happened?

No. If you want the truth. It had been there long coming. You could feel it in the air as you get down from those air-conditioned vans wrapped with streamers announcing food for the evacuees or peace peace in Mindanao: in the glances of starved unemployed men that come to you like stabs, in the jokes they make out of water projects and relief goods, in the way the women stare at your blue berried cell phone and fucking camera, or at the pair of rubber shoes you are wearing. In their lack of interest in the questions you pose and the fucking women participation and empowerment issues you peddle as they interview you back: Magkano ang suweldo mo? Am I surprised people down there are capable of such savagery? No. Of course, hold-up is not enough; they know that all your gadgets are easily replenishable now. Kidnap is too much board-and-lodging trouble, especially when there are so many of you vultures for hotspot news. About time the bad news is you.

“At least napasaya natin sila kahit sa isang araw! Nakakita sila ng Amerkano!” a bleeding heart peace advocate driving one of the vans in one of those peace roadshows said as he stepped on the accelerator leaving Datu Odin Sinsuat. Thankfully the windows of the vehicle were closed. The children were beating and scratching with sticks and their fingers at the car’s sides, the day-long waiting for the Melikans must have tired them. “RPG! Padalhan nyo kami ng RPG!” one youth with a Bangsamoro Youth Liberation Front placard shouted. “Dollars! Bigyan ninyo kami ng dollars!” Another yelled. If you don’t feel so good about what you have been doing, you could have guessed that after they threw those fucking placards, they went over to anyone, be it a Mangudadatu or an Ampatuan, for the only employment they can be useful for.

Why weren’t the women lawyers and the journalists spared? Oh. Are they supposed to enjoy divine intervention under the circumstances? Their pos and opos and kasi peace pos were supposed to have saved their pants? They took side, sort of, didn’t they? Or at least they made themselves visible targets, escorting one clan when they weren’t clan ? Who cares about their sex? Who cares if they were artist fags or just some brats with too much talent and little else? And they were escorting one political clan to Comelec, not civilian farmers to their farms or pregnant women to the health center to give birth, and that was innocuous deed ? Even the illiterate pedicab drivers there might have known better.

Gallow slaves hatred doesn’t discriminate. Sure, those savages could not have done it without order from those inconvenienced by human rights and peace issues; but they could not have pulled the trigger with such merriment if they themselves did not share their lord’s pleasure at the butchery.

Next time you think it’s just a clan war that doesn’t involve you, think twice.

Fiction: So All This Could Have Been Mine?

SB Alojamiento

She was plump as a pillow. Looked like she had been left to herself in the kitchen most of the time. Pink cheeks, pink lips. She was especially plump around the belly. I was feeling giddy, like demons were dancing and somersaulting inside my head. Standing there in your yard in front of her, I couldn’t believe what I had just done. I had the notion of retreating. But held out. I inspected your tiny house. So this is where you keep her? I asked for you and she almost turned away, like she wasn’t finished stacking the firewood under your stove yet and she still had to clean the fish and by and by you’d be coming home and she had not even cooked the rice.

“You’re his officemate?” she asked. She must have been accustomed to human rights cases pursuing you down to your hovel. I did not reply and she looked me up once more.

“You’re Incomplete?” she asked again. She had a sullen voice that could have only come from weariness.

“Can I piss?” I answered. “Is there a CR?”

I meant to be a pestering burgis, and already, my eyes were taking in every dreary detail of her environs – earthen jar, plastic plates and plastic glasses; banana peelings on the table and one under the chair; unwashed dishes and uncleaned fish in the sink; coconut husks, a litter of paper, among the fallen bundles of firewood under your stove. The corner of an unrolled mat peeped out of your half-open room, baby’s bottles rolled among empty glasses on the floor, and unwashed diapers spilled out of a pail beside a plastic pee pan under what looked like your writing table. I set my Tamil-woven bag on the wooden bench while I looked around the walls for a possible exit to the urinary. She indicated to me the direction, and I went out of the same door I got in, slunk between nipa thatches, and was surprised to see you had a decent toilet bowl. On the line above me hung your nylon underwears. Red, blue, green. With black prints. I almost fell out of the latrine giggling.

“I'm not his student,” I said, as I picked my brightly-colored bag, put it on my lap and looked at her in the eye. Her lips paled a little. She was waiting for more words, I could see, and I tried to match her anger and her hurt.

“I like him, you know,” I said in a voice that tried to steady itself, “We…” I paused like I couldn’t tell her the rest of it, and she stared at me a moment, her mouth opening a little, before her face jerked toward the window. She was looking out into the sea, like her hopes were dashed anew and were now floating there. A glint in her hurt eyes had that and-now-this-again look, and I knew that I wasn’t a new case really. My fingers twirled with the tassels of my bag, my teary eyes tracing the blazes of the reds and greens and oranges and blacks and fuchsias of the hanging threads. I have a nice bag. I was telling her, you don’t have. She glanced at it, I noticed and I felt high, happy, mad. Had she asked where I got it, I would have told her I’d been to East Timor, scaled its mountain borders and consorted with the Tamil guerillas. But she didn’t. My bag was the last of her concerns. She was more interested in me, and it was I she was examining when I looked back up at her. I knew, too, that at that moment, I looked painfully young and beautiful in her eyes.

“He is always like that,” she finally said, drawing a breath, as she returned her gaze to the sea, her brows knitting with boredom and exhaustion. I almost laughed. You were really all she had, beside a thatched roof and a dirty kitchen beside the sea. And there I was, trying to taunt her with a bag that she didn’t have. But I was happy inside me. I was thinking of you. I was thinking, Now I have outhurt you.

“Why are you here?” she suddenly asked, as she turned her face back to me, more exasperated than anything else. She wanted me out of her house now, I believed, and wanted you home right then, now that she had a thing with you.

“Nothing.”

I was still playing with my bag’s tassels. “I just wanted to see you, I guess.”

She put her hand on the table as though she was about to get up and send me out.

“Now that he wouldn’t see me.”

That held her down another moment and she looked a little puzzled.

I made a funny face, my eyes big and wide on her. “I called him up today, you know, and he wouldn’t talk to me.” Her mouth dropped open.

I looked toward the door, went on talking. “There’s really nothing between us. Really. I mean, there was, almost, but I ran away. I ran away as fast as I could.” I stopped, catching myself grinning and seeing that she was slightly smiling herself. I wished she read English and had read Alice in Wonderland and recognized the line, but what a wide beautiful smile she had, reddish lips and even teeth. For a second or two we laughed into each other’s eyes, and fearing we would break into senseless laughter, I stood up and picked up my bag.

“You’re going now?” She really sounded anxious, to my bafflement.

“I think I have to. It’d be funny if he'd find us talking.” I reached for her hand and clasped it, and turned toward the door.

“Wait.” I paused.

"You're sure..."

“Yes, I’m going now. I’m sure.”

“No.” She looked lonely and pale and was trying to smile. I waited.

“You sure there was… there was nothing between you?”

I laughed. “I’m sure. There was nothing. It was nothing. He loves you.”

“I don’t believe it.”

I felt suddenly annoyed. “That he loves you?”

“No. That he doesn’t love you.”

My knees wobbled a moment. I faced her and held both her hands.

“No matter. The thing is, oh… now that I see you, and saw how it is here, I don’t feel as bad anymore.” I let go of her, adjusted the sling of my bag on my shoulder, and stepped toward the door.

“Would you know it… if …” I stopped, turned around and hang my head to one side. She was a confused heap, her hands making funny movements, her face a grip of anxiety.

“Does he go out with other women, too? Would you know? I mean, do you know of others beside you?” There was urgency in her voice, and the walls of your house shook with my laughter.

Then I stopped. She looked shocked and was flushing all at once and gripping the edge of the table as though she was falling.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh!” I went back to her and hugged her tight, and I lost my head a little.

Next thing I knew I was running down the narrow pathway and out into the road toward the highway. I had a sense of fleeing from something terribly sad and mad. People were staring and were moving aside as I came their way and I realized that I was laughing and crying all at the same time.

Poetry by Lia Lopez-Chua

Alone

I have nothing more to ask of myself
what beginnings I had
I have devoured them all
I am empty I am full

Every day I rise at dawn
I put on my name
and paint a big fire on the wall
I pretend the house is burning
the firemen all dead

The house burns all day
it will go on till night breaks
I live in the heat
never burned never charred

A stiff cluster of pasts goes on
clinging like molds all over me
disrobe me no future wind will dare
I am dressed I am not going anywhere


Lia Lopez-Chua