May iniisip ka?
Oo.
Ano?
Ayaw kong sabihin. Baka magkatotoo.
Dahil makulit ka
Kilala kita. Oo, ikaw 'yun: Nagkasalubong na tayo minsan, sa LRT, sa Gotohan, sa kanto ng Aurora at Katipunan. Nagkatinginan tayo. Hindi mo ako kinausap, pero alam ko, nakilala mo rin ako. Kaya ka narito, di ba? Para sabihing, Oo, oo, ikaw nga 'yun. Naaalala kita.
"From the perspective of state authorities, the mere fact of secrecy constituted a crime. Members were thought to evade recognition from above rather than seek to solicit it. Out of reach, they were able to tap into other circuits of communication beyond the hierarchy of languages."
Halimbawa:
1. May nagbabasa nito na hindi marunong magtagalog.
2. Nakita ko rin ang buwan kagabi.
3. Noong isang araw nanaginip akong naghuhugas ako ng kamay, kamay na nakatutok sa gripo na nakatutok sa banyerang sumasalo ng lahat ng kasalanan ko. Nalingat lang ako nang tinawag mo ang pangalan ko. Pagtingin ko sa banyera, may apat na uwak nang umiinom mula rito.
(3.1.) Kung naiintindihan mo ito (Kung naiintindihan mo ito) "Kung naiintindihan mo ito."
4. Sa isang lupalop ng mundo may wikang winiwika at hindi mo ito naiintindihan.
5. Heto ang litrato ng isang kutsilyo:
"... [A]s with every communicative media, the source of its power, that which endows it with the capacity to makes possible such articulations, remains unseen. It is a power that persists and insists in the world, but as a secret, withdrawing at the very moment when its agents are seen and its effects are felt. As secret, it is a power that always remains to be seen even as it makes possible the arrival of what is given to be seen."
- Vicente Rafael
Halimbawa: May gusto akong sabihin sa iyo. Magpapatuloy pa tayo. Hayun. Hayun.
Letter To a Friend Who Had Just Written a Poem for Me
Monday, September 22, 2008
When will we begin to love? we once wrote in a poem we passed between ourselves, lost now, discarded by some girl we had both privately imagined naked and writhing under the power of-- what is it we call it now? Utterance. Bowstring hairs and hungry black eyes then there is a strand, there is a hand I cannot hold. Let me tell you now: I am sitting in a hallway with a borrowed pen and all I can think of is, Maybe we have loved enough. Maybe too much. Earlier I was out to buy beer and there was this sheet from an old calendar keeping in step with me, persistent, iambic. Karmic, maybe, in the way it crested and led my eyes to half-lit alleys, my hands to my pockets, my heart to-- where? There are words I find difficult to hold now: Heart, love. Pen. Now I desire no more from poetry than true feeling, you used to always quote as we fumed at formulas and the nitpicked organicness of this. Have we grown that old? That true feeling is something contrived, distant, not held? Now I desire no more from poetry than silence. And if not that, then the word heart. If not that then flowers. Listen: One day you will pull a book from a shelf and you will find this, brittle and incomplete like some old flower, and you will consider this poetry. Don't. This is just a heart, its throbbing wild, and tremulous, and stifled. These are just lines. This is just a gift, unwrapped, its silence the only thing of value to anyone.
Let me tell you about longing. Let me presume that I have something new to say about it, that this room, naked, its walls pining for clocks, has something new to say about absence. Somewhere the crunch of an apple, fading sunflowers on a quilt, a window looking out to a landscape with a single tree. And you sitting under it. Let go, said you to me in a dream, but by the time the wind carried your voice to me, I was already walking through the yawning door, towards the small, necessary sadnesses of waking. I wish I could hold you now, but that is a line that has no place in a poem, like the swollen sheen of the moon tonight, or the word absence, or you, or longing. Let me tell you about longing. In a distant country two lovers are on a bench, and pigeons, unafraid, are perching beside them. She places a hand on his knee and says, say to me the truest thing you can. I am closing my eyes now. You are far away.
A child sits by the stairs unsure about the meaning of the word sadness. (Or stares out the window, plunges a knife into his own igneous heart.) What does it matter, where he sits, what he stares at? Or if he is a child? Look, a cross sits lonely atop a cathedral’s spire, a sparrow chirps its laments perched on rain-laced electric wires. The city burns with the static fever of what was the word again? (And later, stars. Looking down at a vastness littler than themselves.) Everything expires. This means, (he is a child,) this is a knife. This is a litany of knives. This is a staircase. There are steps to be taken.
