Frankie and Tessie in the Clair de Lune

Tuesday was one of those crazy-daisy days. But its staccato beat went andante when I ran into Frankie and Tessie Jose on the ground level of the Shangri-La Plaza. He had his cane. I had mine. He wore a transparent plastic eye patch over his right eye. The ever solicitous Tessie said, “Let have coffee,” our code over the years for “Let’s catch up.”

The Joses have always been Frankie and Tessie to me. They never made me feel that I had to address them with honorifics like “Sir” or “Ma’am,” “Mister” or “Missus.” We met when I was a college sophomore who’d occasionally pop in at the top floor of their Solidaridad Book Shop in Ermita, Manila, after I'd read a newspaper announcement about a visiting writer. The first time I climbed the stairs to that floor was when a Russian poet blew into town. On the way to the book store’s literary soiree, Rolando Tinio, who accompanied the visitor in a car, rapidly did an on-the-spot translation from English to Filipino of the poet’s work. With no rehearsal, Tinio read aloud the poem feelingly as only a poem ought to be read before an audience of about a dozen people.

Back to the Joses. Because Frankie and I were hobbling with our canes and a cataract had just been removed from his right eye, Tessie offered to join the Starbucks queue to get our orders—he for an espresso, me for a regular. His first question was: “What have you been writing?” I rolled my eyes and said, “Potboilers here and there.” He smiled, saying, “No matter, you’re still writing, and that’s good.”

“Any new poetry?” Frankie asked as a waiter brought our orders. I poured milk into my cup, averting my eyes when I answered, “A few, all fits and false starts.”

He told me to get a copy of the latest Free Press magazine. He read a poem, he wasn’t sure of the poet, by a certain Sunico. “You must be referring to Rayvi,” I said. “Raul is the pianist, the dean of the UST College of Music.”

Frankie got the little jug of remaining warm milk and poured the contents of his espresso paper cup into the jug, then re-poured the new mixture back into the cup. He was sure it was Raul the pianist, not Ramon the poet-book designer, who wrote the poem. Frankie praised the poem's innate musicality. It was like reading something by W.H. Auden, he added.

He has always watched out for rhyme, including interior rhyme, meter, alliteration, assonance, etc., in the poems that he reads. He is frustrated with a retired Ateneo professor’s books of poetry. I played Devil’s Advocate, saying that the prof is a musicologist. I told Frankie of once dropping by the prof’s modest Quezon City apartment in the 1980s, and hearing a Beethoven concerto playing full blast in his stereo.

“Nevertheless, he is tone deaf when it comes to his poems!” Frankie insisted.

He admires certain Filipino poets in English, prefacing his remarks with “But this is only as far as the boys are concerned.” Topping his list is Cirilo Bautista followed by Krip Yuson, Gemino Abad and “that fellow from Davao,” Frankie shook his head, trying to recall Ricky de Ungria’s name which I uttered.

“Don’t you read any of the guys who write in Filipino?” I asked.

Frankie’s answer was whenever he listened to Bienvenido Lumbera speak in Filipino, he would tell this other National Artist that he (Frankie) couldn’t understand what Dr. Lumbera was saying. “I tell him, how come when it’s Jun Cruz Reyes who’s talking, I get him? And Bien would only laugh.”

Frankie struggled with reading Lope K. Santos’ Banaag at Sikat but thoroughly enjoyed Lualhati Bautista’s Dekada ’70. He once asked a Liwayway editor in the ’60s or ’70s to compile the best short stories published in the magazine for a number of years , and he'd publish them.

Frankie was disappointed with the compilation submitted to him. “They all had O. Henry type of endings! Was that what Filipino writing all about?” he asked.
He continued, “You must remember, Babeth, that I arrived in Manila from the province in 1938 with no knowledge of Tagalog.” He learned his Tagalog along with way.

He hectored on other topics still close to literary shop talk until we drained our coffee. Tessie stepped out to buy load for her cell phone so she could call the driver. Before long, we said our goodbyes, and in my mind, as Frankie walked slowly with his cane toward the waiting car, was a memory of him taking young reporter Babeth in a midnight spin in his sedan with him at the wheel singing along to the soundtrack of The King and I.

Photo of F. Sionil Jose by JULIO SAMBAJON from Howie Severino’s blog

Number Crunching Time

How does Einosuke Rudy Furuya love Baguio? Let us count the ways. A full-blooded Japanese born and raised in the highland city until his family was repatriated to Japan in 1945, Furuya, 75, still considers Baguio his true hometown. He has spent several decades away from it working as a commercial photographer in Yokohama.

For his solo picture show at The Gallery of SM City Baguio, he presents his affection for the place that continues to haunt his dreams. His subject for this second of his “Sense of Baguio” series is numbers. This is his unique way of doing a countdown toward Baguio’s centennial as a chartered city, to be formally marked on Sept. 1 this year.

In her introduction to the exhibition, curator Patricia Okubo Afable wrote: “Furuya brings us the fruits of three years of perambulations through Baguio, past familiar gateways, hidden portals and discreetly-announced welcomes. (His) work takes the pleasures and accomplishment you get from counting and amplifies them. While historians think ‘chronology’ and demagogues point to ‘progress,’ he playfully shrinks Baguio’s past one hundred years into images of numerals. In each house number, stamped label, or hand-lettered mark, Furuya collapses time and place. Then he captures for us, in the sign maker’s momentous claim to identity, our daily striving for privacy, for belonging, and for personal art.”

The numbers are a throwback to Furuya’s innate shyness. As a boy holding a camera at age 10, he was ashamed of taking pictures of people so his first subjects were still life of stones, flowers, grass, other facets and parts of nature that early pre-war Baguio had plenty of.

Furuya said in a message at the exhibit’s opening, “The unique numbers that I found in various corners of town are more than simple numbers. They stand for personalities in a city that is very close to my heart. For this Baguio boy, they represent kinsmen and friends in the land where I was born. I have returned here in quest for these numbers... It has been like seeking old friends to talk to and exchange feelings with.”

Shooting with natural light, he zeroes in on numbers not just attached to gates or doors of private homes and buildings but numbers on the saddle of a horse, most possibly at Wright Park. But the sense of Baguio-ness is ever present.

Furuya said, “As I’m growing older, the more I love Baguio. That’s how important a birthplace is. If I had been born in Mindanao or Manila, I wouldn’t think of Baguio so much. But Baguio is so beautiful and wonderful. It is quite different from before. However it changes, it is still my Baguio.”

“Keeping Count, Homing In,” Rudy Furuya’s exhibition of 120 photos celebrating the Baguio centennial, is still on at The Gallery, SM City Baguio, until June 14. The exhibit will move to the Bencab Museum on Asin Road during the month of September as the museum's offering for centennial month.

All photos by RUDY FURUYA

A shorter version of this article appears in the June 10, 2009, issue of Philippine Daily Inquirer, Northern Luzon Supplement.

The Near, the Dear Jacqui Magno

How wonderful to listen to jazz, at last, in a cool, enclosed space. Because of a strict anti-smoking ordinance in Makati City, there was no cigarette smoke fogging up Merk’s Bar/Bistro in Greenbelt. Nor were there distractive customers chatting away while the performers of the caliber of Richard Merk and Jacqui Magno did their thing.

A great noblesse oblige gesture Richard did by being the front act of the still magnificent Jacqui. She was stalled by traffic caused by the on-and-off downpour Wednesday night. The audience of jazz aficionados waited for her and drank bottle after bottle of their favorite poison.

Richard, seated on a stool to forget the pain caused by a sprained toe, set the mood right away with songs I have not heard sung live for quite some time: “East of the Sun, West of the Moon,” “A Foggy Day,” “It Had to Be You,” the even more rarely heard “It Could Happen to You,” the theme from the Nicholas Cage-Bridget Fonda romantic comedy of the same title, “Laura,” “Lullabye of Birdland,” “C’est si Bon” and “All of Me.”

I might’ve missed a song or two because my friend Anna Leah Sarabia and I came in a little past 9 p.m. Nevertheless, Richard’s unrehearsed asides about the songs were informative. The ballad “Laura” had been interpreted by Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Tony Bennett before and Richard surmised that this mysterious woman must’ve been so special based on the lyrics alone: “the face in the misty light,” “she gave her very last kiss to me—that was Laura but she’s only a dream.” He found it ironic that one so special should turn out to be just a dream.

Anna looked around us and saw a couple of children. “You see,” she said, “jazz is now considered safe music. You can bring along your kids and dance.”

When Jacqui strode onstage in her fuchsia and black caftan, there was no taking our eyes off her. Talk about stage presence. And all those eight de-lovely songs she meltingly interpreted! I almost swatted away an old classmate from my St. Paul College days who suddenly re-introduced herself and was eager to chat—she got in the way of my fuller appreciation of Jacqui’s “Here’s That Rainy Day.” Some other day, Jojo Juan.

And on to “Gingie,” a snappy, danceable “Fool on the Hill” accompanied with scatting, her signature “Bridges,” which, according to Anna, the singer used to close her club gigs at Birds of the Same Feather, “Evergreen,” “Our Love is Here to Stay,” “The Very Thought of You” and “How High the Moon.”

In “Our Love is Here to Stay,” Jacqui improvised a couple of times to update the song a bit: “…every IPod and the movies that we know are just a passing fancy and in time they go…”

The weather that night was, as she accurately observed, great for "snuggling, spooning, crooning or just reading a book." Not for me though. I was infected with the second-to-the-last and the last song syndrome all the way home.

Jacqui returns to Merk's, Greenbelt 3, on June 17. It's Pat Castillo's night on June 10. Expect two middle-aged groupies to again sip their vodka while nodding their heads to the beat of jazz.

Ricky Lee and Other Miracles of This Season

"Weird" was how the author described his feelings at the launching of the special edition of “Si Tatang at mga Himala ng Ating Panahon:Koleksyon ng mga Akda ni Ricky Lee” Sunday at a standing-room-only section of Power Books, SM Megamall, complete with Noranians punctuating the air with cheers every time Nora Aunor’s name was mentioned.

"Weird" because he never thought that the book, which has gone into third printing since it was first published in 1988, would enjoy popular, not just critical, success despite its unconventional format with no demarcations dividing Lee’s reportage from his fiction and screenplay of “Himala.”

More than upsetting conventional storytelling forms in Filipino and ridding many feature articles of traditional punctuation marks, Lee, 61, has been able to enjoy something rare among writers: financial success and independence. Much of this has been due to the box-office appeal of his more than 150 produced film scripts, five plays, even a best-selling first novel “Para kay B.”

An early memory of his name being mentioned at a humanities conference at the University of the Philippines Faculty Center in the 1970s flashed in this writer’s head. Theater-film director Behn Cervantes recounted how he was pitching a story treatment done by Lee to a producer. The producer asked, “Ricky Lee? Any relation to Ricky Lo?”

Sometime in the late ’70s, this writer also saw Lily Chua, an English graduate and Lee’s friend, turn over his letters addressed to her while she was in the US. She had come home for a short reunion with friends at the UP Diliman home of Dr. S.V. and Nieves Epistola. She was due to marry and begin a new life in the States.
Lee sat in a corner, reading his old letters and laughing silently. Among his written observations was how he pestered Lily to buy him a long list of books he wanted to read and how he was spending a lot of his time inside movie houses after his release from political detention.

He was so turned off by the poor quality of the movies that he vowed to Lily he would make those producers pay one day for the valuable money he spent watching badly scripted, poorly shot movies. He had more unspeakable words about the kind of acting being done by the actors.

Dr. Epistola snorted, “And now they (the producers) are paying through their noses.”

In the feature story “Tiririt ng Yvonne,” excerpts of which were read by actress Jean Garcia, the subject of the profile, a bold star, said, “Ewan ko, pero para sa ’kin, pag virgin ang isang artista hindi makakaarte ng husto. Dahil when it comes to sex nandiyan lahat—comedy, drama, lahat. Pa’no sila magri-react sa sexy scenes, paano sila makakapag-aaahh, ganyan? Tapos, virgin pa sila? Saan, sa tenga?” (Somehow the piquant remarks of Yvonne get lost in translation.)

Comedian-singer-composer Ogie Alcasid brought the house down with his reading of another excerpt from a report, “Ang Paggawa ng Himala,” through the eyes of Joel Lamangan. Lamangan was assigned as casting and crowd director of the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines-produced movie. But director Ishmael Bernal made exacting demands on him like bringing truly ill and infirm extras.

To get a flavor of the living theater of the absurd that was the set of “Himala” in Paoay, Ilocos Norte, here is Lee’s account with Lamangan as narrator (again these lines are not quite as funny when translated in straight English):
“Si Ishma ang naturo sa akin how to crowd direct. At kung paano maging magaling sa pagka-cast. Pag kailangan ng mga extra, kumukuha ako sa iba’t ibang barangay. I need 50 sick people, sasabihin ni Ishma

“I want to see the sickness, sasabihin pa niya. I have to see the disease!

“Di puwede ang me hika lang, o sakit sa puso. Kailangan nakikitang malaki ang ilong, o me cerebral palsy. Isa-isa pinahilera ko ang mga maysakit sa harap ni Ishma. O ito, sabi niya, puwede. O ito, disapproved. Hiyang-hiya ako! Sorry iho ha sabi ko sa isang maysakit, hika lang kasi ang sakit mo e!

“One time nagpahanap si Ishma ng batang maraming galis sa mukha. Para ito doon sa eksenang karga-karga ng pulubing si Aling Pising ang isang bata habang sumisigaw siyang Elsa, pagalingin mo ang anak ko!

“Ayaw ni Ishmang prosthetic lang. Gusto niya laging totoo. Nakahanap kami sa napakalayong barangay. O ayan, Ishma, sabi ko, me langib-langib pa ang ulo!
“Nang panoorin ko naman later sa rushes, full shot pala! Di naman nakita! Momsy, sabi ko ke Ishma, ba’t di mo pinakita ang sugat? It’s not necessary, sagot ni Ishma.”

Later, Lee expressed his gratitude to his circle of friends, especially the ones he met at UP Diliman and spent time with in the underground movement and in prison.

He said, “My friends were the ones pushing and inspiring me to write. I was a thin naive provinciano then who didn't know much about the world. They were always helping and protecting me, telling me I wrote well.”

Friends Jo-Ann Maglipon, Flor Caagusan, Aida F. Santos, Fanny Garcia, Lilia Quindoza and the late Romulo Sandoval encouraged his early writing attempts.

Lee was a political prisoner for one year with now National Artist Bienvenido Lumbera, Caagusan and Maglipon. He recalled, “Immediately after I was released from prison, I lived at the Protestant Chapel, then later with Ninotchka Rosca and Luis Teodoro in their house at UP.”

Lee told this reporter, “Most of the short articles and journalistic pieces in ‘Si Tatang at mga Himala’ I wrote at UP, either at the Narra dormitory or in Area 1 in one of the boarding houses there. I was a working student, first as a waiter, then as proofreader and later staff member of Asia Philippines Leader while studying AB English at UP.”

He considered UP his refuge after all these years from the time he ran away from his hometown in Bicol. Every time he has a book launch, he goes to the UP Catholic chapel to hear mass first and make an offering.

A constant presence at his launchings are people who are the products of the free scriptwriting workshops Lee has been conducting since 1982. His other payback gesture is sending donations of books and similar educational items to his hometown.

In the works is a reprint of his scriptwriting manual “Trip to Quiapo” to be combined with his memoirs. Somehow, despite his success, he has managed to look homeward.

“Si Tatang at mga Himala ng Ating Panahon” is published by Writers Studio Philippines Inc. and distributed by Anvil Publishing Inc.

In a photo taken by FLOR CAAGUSAN, Lee (in white shirt) poses with Aida Santos, the blogger, Jo-Ann Maglipon and Anvil's Karina Bolasco.

A shorter version of this report appears in the June 4, 2009, issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Pia on Porn

From the office of Sen. Pia Cayetano comes this statement regarding the whole brouhaha about sex, lies and videotapes:

Senator Cayetano appealed to the public to refrain from
downloading, watching, sharing or purchasing electronic files and CD
copies of the controversial sex videos of Dr. Hayden Kho with several
celebrities that are circulating on the Internet and mobile
phones, and sold openly or covertly in pirated video stores.

Instead of further fanning the controversy, Cayetano urged the
media to help focus public attention to proposed solutions seeking to
deter and outlaw video voyeurism, and help raise people’s awareness on
women’s rights and privacy issues.

She is the principal author of Senate Bill No. 3267, the proposed
Anti-Video Voyeurism Act of 2009.,

“By watching and spreading these materials to others, we are
not helping address the problem but are in fact contributing
to it,” Cayetano, who is chair of the Senate committee on
social justice, said

“Bear in mind that the women victims are violated all over every time these videos are played and made a spectacle in our computers and mobile phones, or in our homes and places of work,” she added. “Do your part, don’t watch these videos. Otherwise we, in effect, become victimizers ourselves like Dr. Kho and his ilk.”

She has refrained from watching the videos and has encouraged her staff and friends to do the same as a way of showing respect, not only to the victims, but for all women in general.

A prolific blogger, she posted an entry on her blog, www.mydailyrace.com tackling the basic rights of women in light of the controversy created by the sex scandal videos.

In her May 23 blog entry, Cayetano listed the various forms of violence and remedies available to victims under Republic Act 9262, also known as the Anti-violence against Women and Children Act of 2004.

“This scandal is ugly and unfortunate, but it also opens our eyes as to how some people would shamelessly go to extreme measures of humiliating a woman and violating her rights with the use of modern technology and the internet.”

“We should focus on the unlawful act and not the content of the video. We trivialize the damage done to those women by watching these videos.”

She advised those who have already downloaded the sex scandal videos from file sharing sites to voluntary delete the same from their hard disks and mobile phones.

Proceeds from a Long Laughing Break

Upon learning that I was spending half of summer in seething Manila, Cynthia Alberto Diaz, my ex-colleague at the now defunct Raya Media Services Inc., rounded up the usual suspects for a long overdue luncheon reunion yesterday at Pot and Noodle Restaurant on the fourth floor of SM Megamall. The others who confirmed attendance were our drinking mates at John Michael's, a restaurant at the original EDSA Central.

Few wanted to try out another ex-Raya officemate Joel Sarmenta's place on Morato Avenue, Quezon City, which they found too far (he is now in the marketing department of a food chain after a colorful career as history teacher at the Philippine High School for the Arts, University of Asia and the Pacific, St. Paul College, then onto more marketing duties for an insurance firm, a motorcycle manufacturer, among others).

It is not for anything that my life partner likes to call me and my friends put together "Baltic and Company."

My first stop once the glass doors of the mall opened at 10 a.m. was at the Pain and Rehab Care for my fifth physical therapy session to lessen the tenderness in my sprained left ankle and the shooting pains in my right knew joint (signs of wear and tear or degenerative conditions as I move ever farther from five-oh and closer to 60). As the therapist counted while I wrote the alphabet in the air with my pointed left toes, my cell phone pinged. Pablo Tariman announced that he was at the Chinese resto already, waiting. Give me a few minutes, I told him, to wind up my rehab session. He texted back: "In that case, I shall do my yoga."

I managed to walk with a cane to the fourth floor where Cynthia and painter Grace de Jesus Sievert, former Raya graphic artist, were already seated by a long table. Fellow freelancer Pablo was sipping hot tea, an image I still find incongruous to this minute, at a separate table. Apparently, they failed to recognize each other--that was how long they hadn't seen one another.

I ordered the jellyfish with century eggs and a bottle of San Mig Lite for Pablo and me. He didn't need to be persuaded to change his drink.

We weren't done knocking off our second bottle when the hooting and laughing began. Amadis Ma. Guerrero waltzed in, barely catching his breath to say, "I only have five hundred pesos in my wallet. Two hundred is my share for this lunch. Two hundred for the Aeta children. Leave me one hundred so I can have transportation money to collect my contributor's fee from Inquirer and go home." (A few days before the reunion, I had asked my friends to bring donations of old/unused children's clothes, old/new children's books, toiletries like shampoo, soap and toothpaste for 38 Aeta school kids in Dinalupihan, Bataan, where I am set to go to do outreach work with a friend and our daughters, but that's another story.) Forthwith, I fished out P100 from my wallet and handed it to Amadis. His P500 went to Jo Ladisla, the efficient executive assistant from our Raya days, who was appointed treasurer for that afternoon.

Then in came Bob Navarro, Joel and finally Rustie Otico. By this time the noise emanating from our table was making heads turn, especially when Pablo let out his signature laughter which we could only blame on natural exuberance.

Finally when the bill arrived after that long, lingering meal and drinking, there was enough change added to the common pot. Before I knew it, we managed to raise in one afternoon P1,460 for the Aeta children's cause.

Amadis quickly advised me to spend the money not on something "luxurious" like shampoo but on a basic staple like food...or maybe soap. He approved of the last item. And off to the supermarket I went late that afternoon for some serious shopping with the memory of friends having that long overdue "laughing break." This kind of break, I'm proud to say, I instituted at the old Raya office in Paranaque. Whenever I felt stressed out from pounding on my typewriter in the early 1980s, I'd go to the table of our circulation manager Jose "Ping" de la Paz, who'd cheer me up with one corny joke after another until a joke found its mark, and I'd be filled with an incredible lightness of being.

Next outreach is scheduled on June 12 . Please reach out to the children of Dinalupihan. Drop-off points for donations are these addresses: 3 Santa Clara Street, Barangay Kapitolyo, Pasig City, or 47 Mahabagin Street, Teachers Village East, Quezon City.

Notes on a Cellist

Music writer (and lately memoirist of sorts) Pablo A. Tariman sends his friends regular updates on the goings-on in Filipino musicians' lives and careers. Cellist Victor Michael Coo recently got married apart from maintaining a busy concertizing schedule.

Just the other day, I found my notes on him and the article I submitted for a publication that went unused due to "space limitations," according to the editor. Well, such is the fate of freelance writers.

So this is my belated toast to Mr. Coo as he forges ahead with his life partner with Bach and Beethoven playing in the background.

And to think that the cello was almost an afterthought as his instrument of choice after he initially trained in the violin, piano and flute. A few months before he auditioned for a slot at the Philippine High School for the Arts (PHSA), his mother, his first piano teacher, convinced him to learn how to play the cello.

When he was accepted at the PHSA, he trained under family friend Amador Tamayo and Wilfredo Pasamba. After graduation Coo headed for Boca Raton, Florida, and spent two years under Johanne Perron. In 2002, he began studying with Evelyn Elsing at the University of Maryland. He describes her as gifted with “a musical imagination beyond the notes printed on the page.”

He won first prize in the 1997 National Music Competition for Young Artists. In the US, he has won three concerto competitions in Michigan, Florida and Indiana.

Coming from a family of musicians (sister Cecilia is a violinist and a soprano while elder brother Jonathan is a pianist and tenor), he believes that “music is a language that you don’t necessarily have to learn. It’s just like any first language. My mom had a lot of piano students so I heard music constantly. It was so much a part of my childhood that I didn't really feel that was something beyond the norm.”

He acknowledges Yo-Yo Ma for helping increase people’s knowledge about the cello, adding, “He has served as an inspiration not only for young people to take up the cello as an instrument but also to explore other languages within music using the cello. I think it’s wonderful that there’s a surge of classical musicians from Asia.” Coo does a lot of chamber music with Koreans at his school and thinks that their country is producing “a lot of wonderful players.”

During the school year, he spends his time rehearsing in chamber groups and with an orchestra. But when he wakes up, he likes to start the day with personal practice. He also uses up “a great deal of time listening to recordings for pure pleasure.” He ends his day with more personal practice.

Regarding the Philippine government’s lack of support for artists, Coo turns practical. “Well, a government has to worry about a lot of things and unfortunately, the arts program can only flourish when the economy is stable. Artists do need a great deal of support from the government. Talent can only go so far in a given situation. But that shouldn’t stop an artist from dreaming and doing his best within this situation.”

He is motivated to go on because no matter where he has been, “where there are music lovers, there’s a great appreciation for what we musicians do.”

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