Edel Garcellano's latest poems

Visit his site at: http://theworksofedelgarcellano.wordpress.com/2013/01/14/tropical-hiatus/

A Singular Experience

2.

There will be no wake

for Jerry Araos,

self-made sculptor

& landscape artist.

Flowers are forbidden

lest his funeral be

mistaken for some artificial

garden.

Cremation will be quick,

& ceremony brief.

He will not allow the living

to speechify on his absence.

Such is the solitary warrior

in him

who must have imagined

a long, long time ago

the kind of his passing

when

revolution was a true word

& betrayal

was never a big deal…

--Edel Garcellano in "The Warrior and Other Poems," http://theworksofedelgarcellano.wordpress.com/tag/artist-jerry-araos

5. Acceptance

Reaching this stage of mourning is a gift not afforded to everyone. Death may be sudden and unexpected or we may never see beyond our anger or denial. It is not necessarily a mark of bravery to resist the inevitable and to deny ourselves the opportunity to make our peace. This phase is marked by withdrawal and calm. This is not a period of happiness and must be distinguished from depression… The dignity and grace shown by our dying loved ones may well be their last gift to us.

Coping with loss is ultimately a deeply personal and singular experience — nobody can help you go through it more easily or understand all the emotions that you’re going through. But others can be there for you and help comfort you through this process. The best thing you can do is to allow yourself to feel the grief as it comes over you. Resisting it only will prolong the natural process of healing. --Julie Axelrod, "The 5 Stages of Loss and Grief", http://psychcentral.com/lib/2006/the-5-stages-of-loss-and-grief/

how would i know, edel,

that the parting

between friends

& kin of spirit

would happen post-breakfast?

 

he took off for another round

of doctor's consultations

a dialysis session

with his wife following

carrying a full picnic basket

since jerry always wanted

to feed the nursing staff

that took care of him

& to tell them how he loved them

 

that morning i toddled off, too,

to pick up a new pair

of eyeglasses to see

the world through

proper lenses, the old pair

having caused

a lot of blurred

real images

 

how was i to know it would

be our last encounter

on that second week

of december

before i tumbled

half-heartedly into

the season's oft-times

mindless celebrating?

 

i left the books on

legacy writing,

on writing down the bones,

on leaving a trace

by a corner table

in his house

confident we would

resume conversing

after the holidays

 

yes, edel, he had begun

dictating, at random, 

all the hurts & garbage 

that had weakened 

a strong, generous heart,

hurts left by mortals

unworthy of him

 

the doctor in the house

said we must continue

these exercises because

they would help him

achieve a catharsis

& perhaps perhaps

complete the healing

as he forgives trespassers

& also forgives himself

 

he had told his wife & me

his dream the night before,

how rock edralin was

summoning him

to join him,

crying out,

here's a better place!

 

he looked a bit shaken

before he could sip his first

half cup of coffee that morn

 

i shushed him,

trying to appear

the expert reader of dreams

who had read & engaged with

jung & freud now & then

 

jerry, it was not rock herself

who was calling you,

that was an aspect

of you,

rock is you,

the rock in your dream

was a stand-in

so the question is,

what did rock mean to you?

what did

she represent

in this life to you?

 

he looked away as was his wont

when we were diving into

deeper water,

then  asked

for the platter of fruits 

to be passed

 

the conversation moved

to another subject

as conversations are wont to do

when one reaches that place,

oh, how he'd hate this pun,

between a rock & a hard place

 

but i had heard him

speak of rock

in another time

in those long ago years

before cancer feasted on her

 

he said

if he faced the enemy

in an attack

where his soldiers

were outnumbered,

he would still be

there leading

with his guns blazing

 

even if his soldiers

had been decimated,

he would keep on firing

at the enemy because

he knew rock

was beside him

standing tall & fierce

blasting away

not flinching at

nor dodging

bullets

 

before long

time quickly ran out

he took his bath

dressed in his branded

shirt & slacks & mocs

& waved me off

with his gruff

"bye babeth!

i love you!'

 

the conversation

has never really stopped

 

--Babeth Lolarga

Dec. 30, 2012

6:22 a.m.

Photo of Jerry Araos at Crucible Gallery taken by Babeth in November 2012

Edel Garcellano's latest poems

Copy & paste the site below to view poet Garcellano's poems on the lies & hypocrisies of getting an education in this country.

http://theworksofedelgarcellano.wordpress.com/2012/07/05/the-idiots/

From the Manolita D. Pacquiao Files

“Happy birthday! Words and paint must flow.”—Edel Garcellano, June 24, 2009.

“Happy birthday to my buddy, artist and survivor of good wifemanship.”—Gilda Cordero Fernando, June 24, 2009.

“Happy reading! May the words paint rainbows on jagged skies!”—Chato Garcellano, June 26, 2009.


Because my middle initial is “D,”
I’ve come to define it as shorthand for “defiant.”

My middle name is not “S,” which in common language is
Short for subservient spouse or even
Submissive silently suffering mater dolorosa, succor of succors.

I will not stand for this,
Your controlling my last bit of space, cyber-highway,
My sole means of unleashing the cry of a soul.

Why do men have control issues?
And why are women mistresses of
The twin arts of subversion & escape?

I sit before this silver-haired man,
Inquire if he has had his fill of fruit,
Coffee & congee in a café called Palm Court
Somewhere in Manila.

I inquire with studied but sincere concern,
Do you have enough food in your luggage
To tide you over for the long six-hour trip
Back to your home?

Long ago, I have stopped referring to any physical space as home.
Home to me is my friends’ hearts,
Wherever I am welcome & given space
To fashion what to others are unfashionable, unspeakable thoughts.

Thoughts like why must a wife/mother
Sit in stunned silence while accused of sins uncommitted
Or not even imagined,
Accused of malicious acts
When all she did was follow her bliss like the gurus said she must do?

So tell them,
I tell this silver-haired fellow,
Tell your outraged relatives that
You wedded for worse and worse
This madwoman beyond your control.

That should absolve you of all blame
For as long as we both shall live.

With this madwoman in your attic
You are at the very least
Assured of an interesting life
To balance the blandness of every day.

So shall we shake on that again?
And live to fight and fight to live another day?

--Babeth Lolarga

first published in Philippine Graphic, 2009
photo of movie poster for "Two for the Road" from the World Wide Web

Aspiration: To Achieve Cat-like Insouciance

Victoria Rico Costina, my friend who has acquired the shibboleth of "Cat Woman of Baguio" and a literature professor at the UP Baguio, will launch her book Those Who Love Cats, essays, profiles, reviews and basic cat care tips for Filipino homes (she's too modest to claim it as her autobiography) on March 4 at the university's student alumni center on Gov. Pack Road. The slim volume (82 pages) will soon be available at Baguio book shops and at National Bookstore branches. Coinciding with her book launch, Vickie invited UP Diliman journalism alumna Angie Salanio to exhibit her watercolors of cats at the same venue.

Vickie asked me to introduce  her book with some urgency while I was holidaying with family in the US. I responded with equal urgency, but then she had some difficulty finding a welcoming publisher until she took matters into her own hands. Recently, she asked me to act as program emcee. I've begged off from that duty.  But I'm returning the honor by reproducing the intro as my contribution to the book's marketing.

I'm especially proud to be connected to the book. Firstly, it's a Baguio production through and through--from the writing to the illustrations (by my fine arts classmate Czarina Calinawagan and fellow visual artist Rishab) to the layout and design by Frederick Pedragosa to photography by Vickie's husband Ruel and printing. Secondly, like I wrote in the intro, this book may be some kind of first in Philippine publishing. Thirdly and more importantly, it marks Vickie's coming out as a writer. So enough of false modesty, Vickie. Please follow up this book with a second one. Congratulations and much affection!

_________________________________________

Do cats procrastinate and prevaricate? Put off things for later at the rate that I do and delude myself that nothing is as important as prioritizing de-stressing for health’s sake?

Author Victoria Rico Costina, in what must be the first book of its kind in the Philippines, described cats as pleasure-loving creatures. If I have a choice, I would like to be described that way—a pleasure-seeking adult who has never quite grown up. One time Vickie did call me a “lady of leisure,” but the image that entered my mind was of a matron with bejeweled fingers playing endless rounds of mahjongg with amigas.

I was raised with a killer combination of Catholic guilt and Protestant work ethic so I’m not quite there in the cat summit of perpetual pleasure seeking. I aspire to days of lazing on the bed, curled under a comforter on another foggy Baguio morning. I’d rise when I want to, comfort myself with a glass of milk, pad around softly in the house in my nightgown, go back to bed and siesta as much as I want. Then I’d stretch again, go down to the fridge, help myself to more cold milk, sniff around the bookshelf.

Come to think of it, I’ve been leading a cat’s life of some sort on the day I officially declared myself graduated from the workaday world. So much for guilt and working hard for the money.

I had a black and white cat in my youth. I called him Omar after the Egyptian actor. My kid sister Gigi never forgot how I got her to cradle him like a baby so I could take a picture of her in her sando and shorts. She never forgot the experience—she must have been less that six at that time. I was teaching myself to take a different kind of portrait with my new instamatic camera. I didn’t want anything posed so I instructed her to hold Omar the way a mother would. He would have none of it. For posterity, the photo captured Gigi flinching in pain as Omar clawed her. Perhaps this is why Gigi would rather care for mini pugs and pinschers and has had nothing to do with cats to this day.

Omar was admirably independent. I have no recollection of minding him, except for the time he came down with conjunctivitis. My cousin, a vet, advised me to put ointment on his eyes. By then I was working. From the office, I’d call home and instruct the helper in detail how to apply the ointment. My officemate overheard me and was smiling when I put down the phone. The smile read: “All that for a cat?”

Indeed, that can be said of Vickie’s book. I hope that it’ll be the first of many on singular loves.

To care this much for God’s small creatures, to allow them to take over her life almost to the exclusion of everyone else, affirms her humanity. She reminds me of another cat lover, Nieves Benito Epistola, also a professor of English and literature who reserved her gentlest cooing when she was caressing the head of one of dozens of cats that had the run of her house and garden.

Like Vickie, Nieves always used her cats for a reason for declining an invitation, even if it was a year in Greece with Anton Juan.

The Garcellanos of Kamuning, Quezon City, are in Vickie’s league. They count Kayenne as a family member. Whenever I drop by their place, I try to remember the “catiquette” observed there, one of which is not to talk about the cat when he is present in the room. Kayenne senses when he is the subject of the conversation. Kayenne and his deceased brother Bugsy are immortalized in Edel Garcellano’s poetry in the same way F. Puss the cat “nanny” is in Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast.

“The cat world has a lot to teach us,” Nieves once said in a professorial tone.

I wonder sometimes if the cats in Vickie’s life observe her as keenly as she does them. Like F. Puss, they may be her sitters and she the baby they protect.

Nov. 15, 2009
Torrance City, California

 Cover of book reproduced from philstar.net

Perfect Timing

On July 26, 1984, a singing quartet serenaded a newly married couple, one Babeth Lolarga and one Rolly Fernandez, at their reception at Nielsen Tower on Makati Ave. The musicians just rendered two songs: "Bayan Ko," which moved their godfather Armando J. Malay to stand up and raise a clenched fist all throughout the singing, and "Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Old Oak Tree," a lighthearted ditty that took the edge off the first song.

Forward to the same day and month 25 years later. There were more than 25 songs sung that evening at Cafe Juanita. Days before, the fretful newsman in Fernandez worried that GMA might just spoil everybody's plans, including ours, by declaring a state of emergency at her hopefully last SONA. His fear never came to pass. But six days later, the death of Mrs. Aquino began galvanizing Filipinos again to unite against injustice, corruption and the assorted excesses of GMA. And once again I see yellow ribbons wherever I turn--around pine trees, at the Volante Pizza parlor's posts, etc.,--and the cheesy song about receiving a letter telling me I'll soon be free is so very in again.

One of our anniversary singers, journalist Vergel O. Santos, once winked at our First Draft group of women writers, saying: "Don't you just think that getting married is all about perfect timing?

These poems from Edel Garcellano's blog www.theworksofedelgarcellano.wordpress.com do not quite follow the line cuts he did. My stubborn computer refuses to follow the cuts and stanzas that Edel used to fashion these three verses. So they appear here like prose poems (sorry about that, Edel):

7.

A.
Anniversary

In a cafe, 
they are all smiles
 as she confides 
over the microphone
 she & her groom 
leave well enough 
each other alone – 
neither too near
 nor too far –
 unlike igneous rocks 
that upon close contact 
spark a fire.
 Goethe’s
elective affinity of desire? 
This: 
the secret of the feast
 that stood the text 
of their own conjugal times.
 & If the merrymaking 
among friends,
 who open doors
 for the bride’s flair,
 tells a story 
for all to learn,
it must have been
 Solomonic 
for a bonding
 to steer clear
 of short-lived passion,
embracing instead
 the cool danger
 of reason.
 Gold medal
 for him 
visible with ascetic grin?
 Applause for her 
who collates goodwill
 of kith & kin?
 A toast to hearts 
who beam
 at the fairy tale
 rendition 
worked out 
with delicate precision.

B.

At 11pm 
the celebration 
was almost 
done
 but the singers 
were still belting out 
nostalgia 
as if they had 
just begun
 to feel the heat
 of fun.
 Outside Cafe Juanita
 of post American
 Tertulia,
vibrant 
with old world air
 & yellow lights
 from lamps 
wrapped by 
silk gowns,
the rain had stopped,
emitting a scent
of late-night 
cool.
& after the formal
 settling of the bill,
 rearranging of chairs,
plucking of wine bottles 
off the tipsy tables, 
the couple 
would drive home
 a few blocks away, 
as if overwhelmed
 by love’s 
strange declaration.

C.

They came,
singly or in packs, 
to be with the couple
 despite the heavy 
rain.
 They, who stood 
through thick & thin 
of accounted years:
 laughed at the same
 tried jokes;
 exchanged warm toasts;
 heard the chorus
 of ersatz troubadours 
that drew 
the night to a close.
What is there
 to expect 
after the celebration 
of beatitudes?
 Another 25 years
 of magical struggle
 & passionate hope.

Photo by ANNA LEAH SARABIA.

Bato-bato sa Langit

Poet Edel Garcellano never fails to astonish me. His words, arranged into tight, compact verses, unfailingly find their target, traveling fast like an assassin's bullet. We, the lesser gifted, just blog.

His latest posting shows how some people are blinded by titles like National Artist/National Intellectual. They forget that artists (I use the generic term to include visual, literary and performing artists) have a history of being the conscience of society. And now this NA the poet is referring to has a security guard to protect a little perk like parking space?

There is one NA I shan't forget. How many times have I come across Nick Joaquin walking like any pedestrian on the shaded path of the original EDSA Central? Leo Benesa also wrote a short poem about seeing Joaquin alighting from or getting on board a public jeepney at Gabby's in Mandaluyong City. Wish Nick would haunt this other car-riding NA.

20.
Parking
The guard
was courteous but firm:
please park elsewhere–
slot is for a National Artist
whose credentials include
keynoting progressive causes,
serving the people.
The state generously allows
balding dignitaries
who have been honored
as creative treasure
space for their
genteel habitude.
But what gross entitlement
is this
for dissenters
against neo-fascist rule?
The ploy is real,
disarming radical discourse.
For blind he is
to the irony
consequent of his NCCA
consecration…
Down with injustice!
& earn a seat
on the platform
rising over a crowd
in hysterics
over radical agendum?
In Russia,
commissars
have their dacha
& state sinecure.
Do we repeat
the reign
of Stalinist repertoire?
--Edel Garcellano, www.theworksofedelgarcellano.wordpress.com