I explain some things…
about blogging, letter writing, elvis, whitelight, & of course Voganism.


I love writing letters. It’s the only time I feel like I don’t have to be vogon. I don’t know why, maybe because it’s not intended for public viewing. That you give yourself permission to

present yourself as closely to the original as your thoughts will allow.

Not to say, that I don’t have a vogon side to me in real life; but I would like to think that this alien entity is just a part of me. A component of many parts that make up a whole. Not to suggests that I’m a Volkswagon, whose conception takes place in an assembly

line. But more like a humanoid that’s comprised of skin and bones, a spirit & a soul. And what you see, exhibited here is only what transpires on the surface. With nothing much to go on but pure space, the chances of contact is very unlikely.

But like the constellation of planets that make up the universe.

The probabality of one colliding into another is limitless.

After all it’s been said that the Universe is infinite and ever expanding. But the continuum of our thoughts in cyberspace, is it infinite also? After all, as long as my archives is online, the conceivability of a new blogger making contact with my thoughts is ever a possiblity. Which brings me to letter writing. The mere act of letter writing insinuate that there’s another ‘thingy’ on the receiving end. And as long as the recipient is not too busy, or is not mad at you. Or taken into account that you’re not writing to God or Santa Clause, or to Whom it may concern, or the ever infamous hip-shaking Elvis; the likelihood of you ‘making contact’ is more than a possibility. I’d say that it’s only a matter of time, before you get a one on one correspondence. Of couse, one must not under estimate the contingencies.

Maybe the said ‘thingy’ went on a vacation to the Noth Pole, and does not have access to the internet. Or maybe, he or she has caught an extraordinary rare strain of virus, and is now in the hospital. Experiencing a phenomenon which others call ‘White Light’. I have never seen this before. Therefore I am unable to attest to its brilliance or degree of luminosty. But I heard it’s really, really, bright.

So even in letter writing I suppose the possibility of rejection is aways…well a posibility. But nevertheless, that doesn’t take away from the joy that I experience once I am punching away those keys on my keyboard. It makes me feel the that anything is possible. After all, life is all about possibilities.

mga tanong na walang sagot

inspired ng post ni dee tungkol sa kanyang kaarawan na mala melodrama ang eksena.




mga tanong na walang kasagutan


Paano makahihiling kung walang cake na may mga kandilang,
may mga usok na nagtatangay ng ating mga kahilingan sa langit?

Paano ako magigising kung walang liwanang
na hahatak sa aking papalayo sa dilim?

Paano ka mabubuhay sa alaala kung ikaw ay may amnesia?

Paano kita masisilayan kung ang mga mata ko'y bulag na
sa katitingin sa buwan?

Paano ako masusundo ng spaceship kung ubos ang kaniyan gasolina?

Paano ko marirnig ang halakhak ng ligayang napawi na sa akin?

Paano ko makakain ang Big Mac kung kinain na siya ni small mac?

Paano ko tatapusin itong mga tanong kung marami pa sa aking
ibinubulong?

si little birdie....... pakainin....pakainin..pakainin ng corn si little birdie.... para siya ay mabilaukan....
(wala.....wala......wala...ng bumubulong bruhahahahahahahahahahahaha !!!!!!!!!!)







sarangola

Parang isang sarangola ang kahilingan,
na sinasayaw ng ihip ng hangin.
Ninanais makarating sa buwan,
Ngunit napapadpad kung kahit saan.
Nung minulat ko ang aking mga mata,
hawak, hawak, ko pa rin pala.
Ang patid na tali ng sarangola
na minsa'y aking dinala.
Nasaan na kaya nakarating,
ang sarangolang pinakamamahal sa akin.
Nasa langit o nasa lupa ba,
niya binagsak ang aking pagasa?

Blast from the past curtesy ng kapitbahay kong ayaw pasaway

My volume upping, karaoke singing, cigarette-smoke spewing neighbor, was at it again today. First, it started with an over the top karaoke duet. I’m still trying to dislodge this one from my memory. This puzzles me, I don’t understand why some people think it’s okay to do a full blasted, ear splitting, (albeit very heartfelt) rendition of Ocean deep…I’m so afraid to show my feelings. I mean really, if you’re afraid to show your feelings, why don’t you just shut up about it? Do they really think that they’re doing the neighborhood a service by this outward display of bold courage? I mean, if you can tame a wild lion who’s been sitting hungrily in a cage for days, trying to think up of ways to turn silly human into food, I will be very impressed. Now, I’m not trying to be mean, honest I’m not, but you didn’t hear what my ears heard. So please don’t judge. Next, it was followed by a slew of 80’s number one hits; brought to you by a special multiplex compilation tape. Starting with: ice castle, take on me, starlight express, & that one whose title I can’t remember. But it’s that theme song from Mac and me, that E.T. rip off movie that I used love when I was a kid. To combat this sonic assault I played some radiohead. Luckily this calmed my nerves. But still, I found I was unable to get back to what I was doing. ( I was reading A room of one’s own by Virginia Wolf). I dunno, there’s something about 80’s music that really makes me feel very depressed. It reminds me of that carefree time of the big-haired, mismatched clothing, debbie gibson’s I get lost in your eyes, transmitting on every radio frequency. & who can forget Corey Heart and fra lippo lippi? If you don’t know what I’m talking about then you’re lucky. For me, these were the things that characterized the 80’s. ‘twas pretty much an easygoing era: campy, harmless, outrageous, clueless, fun-ny, cheeky. blue eyeshadow, (nevermind).
There was no hyper violence stories on the news, not much evident poverty you stumble upon in the streets. NO Internet, NO
CDs. NO celfones. NO cable channels. NOt much to do pretty much. In constrast, there were a lot of cheesy movies that we watched on films; lots of waffles and Icee we ate at Ever; lots of miniature puppets singing christmas carols on the rooftops of the now defunct COD department store, that we laughed at. & always, lots and lots and lots of fun. Although, I was just a little kid when all of this wholesome madness transpired. Maybe, it is precisely because I was so young at the time, that to me everything around me seemed like fun and games. Because when you are a child, your entire world is blanketed in innocence. And everything that you lay your eyes on is just wrapped up in magic. And the things that you don’t like, the things that you find threatening; well, you just sorta leave them alone. Making a mental note to yourself that later on when you are big and strong, you will take the time to make these discoveries in the future. Well guess what, I wish I hadn’t!!! Well not really….I guess there’s no such thing as a childhood forever, that’s Peter Pan’s territory. Besides, if even given the choice, I highly doubt that I’d want stay a kid forever, (although, I reserve the option to change my mind). Sure, there’s a lot of joy that you experience in being a child. But there’s plenty of perks that comes with growing up too…. What those are, I shall not elaborate on that. That’s something that every little kid has to find out for themselves. And when you do, I can guarantee you that you’ll be glad that you passed up that chance to hold the Pied Piper’s hands.

I SOUND SCARY ON BLOG

" But it’s okay, cause I’m good enough, smart enough, and doggoneit people like me!"

I have just re-read the stuff I have written here, what can I say? I am sincerely horrified.I even had to skip some of the passages on some of my entries, ‘cause it was just too much for my sensibilities.My last entry entitled, lost signal, was particularly mind numbing. & Some of the poems I have deleted. & I think will continue to do so, because most of them are still a work in progress. I am constantly working on my drafts. Besides, I don’t like leaving my poems on display for too long. Not here anyway, where I feel like they’ll just be abandoned. At least they deserve a proper burial place. I have a special place in my hard disk where poems eternally sleep, until I decide to pull a Frankeinstein and ressurect the dead back to the living. For my blog I’ve decide I am going to write transcient poems.
speaking of poems here's another haynaku


xox

mother’s
smile undisturbed
in the seashore

like
a snowflake
trying to become

whole
a symmetry
of many parts

but
silence interrupts
attempts of correlating

stars
S.O.S. signal
with mother/child

perhaps
twilight is
a melancholy light

when
darkness falls
light comes up

never
meeting, jointly
eye to eye

always,
one has
to say goodbye

© em franco

LOST SIGNAL

Nakakabuwisit kahit saan ako pumunta wala akong mahagilap na signal. Paiba-iba pang hand positions ang akin tinry, ( I tried) It’s very hard to write in taglish (tagalog + english combined) cause we have so many words that don’t really translate well in writing format, (I make things up as I go along, I like to get creative with my usage of words.)
Also my tagalog vocabulary is pretty atrocious, non-existent in writing, I can speak it well enough, fluent as fluent goes, with what i got i totally rock it,albeit the scope of my vocabulary is small enough to fit in your palm. I just recycle the same words over and over again, and always, I have to sneak in a few English words in there for added spice. It's not really a problem when it comes to verbal communication, it's just the writing that gets to me.

It’s not just me, I think I’m pretty much describing a small percentage of people here who fit this profile, the new generation of new people who's inherited a nation which is in a state of atrophy.

At first I thought, tagalog as a dialect doesn’t particularly lend itself well to eloquence/cadence/poesy. It doesn’t sound mellifluous when spoken, there are too many vowels in each word, we have way too many words that are littered with a’s & o’s but more a’s. Plus, it’s not expressive enough to communicate your ideas when you attempt to elaborate on them, not emotive enough when enunciated, it lacks nuances, the words lack inflection of meaning when put into different usages, there’s not enough adjectives in our vocabulary, and what about synonyms? Forget it!! it takes me ten minutes to scrounge up a synonym from my measly store. So naturally, I thought this was the reason, why, for the life of me, I cannot write a decent poem in tagalog. Right? eeekkkk…. Wrong. & Of all things, it took me a local fantaseria extravaganza, to realize this presumptuous mistake. I’m not gonna name that show, basta!!! But there’s a little dude in it that looks like a talking stump of a tree, me thinks, the producer of the show was trying to channel in yoda. But really, he looks like one of those wooden elves that you leave in your driveway during Christmas season to let people know you’re aligned with the holiday spirit. But they are pretty freaky…freaky..freaky.
Back to my main topic, honestly I don’t watch that show, just a few episodes, (less than twenty). I didn’t even see the beginning,
but something about the dialogue intrigued me. I have never heard tagalog spoken that way before. They would use phrases like "sa agricultura ng aking puso". Before I would think, you could only use that world in reference to cows and farming.
& also there was something about the syntax of the sentences in the dialogue that I found irresistibly charming. It sounded eloquent, it sounded cultured and graceful and original, probably the way Filipinos spoke tagalog in the olden days. My only recollection that stands anywhere near, but not really, not at all, (it's not even in the same vein) to this bygone world would be those black and white movies, that I used to watch once upon a time, starring: Dolphy, Chichay, and Gloria Romeo, not in the same movie, but my memory wants to make a special director’s cut.

So how weird it was to hear tagalog spoken in that fashion, & for the first time I think I perceived it in a new light, it was then that it occurred to me that tagalog does sound beautiful. At the same instance it dawn on me, that my ineffectiveness at using my own dialect in writing goes deeper than first suspected, I just don’t really bother writing tagalog poems all that much, cause trying makes me want to cry, i get stumped so easily. The last one that I wrote was that rain haynaku that appears here, come to think of it, that was mostly in english, Ambon just makes a cameo appearance. I find when I’m writing in tagalog, it’s a hit or miss, when I think of a word that I think is cute, I just run away with it, just get to the finish line, content be damned, let's keep our fingers crossed!!! The result… hhhmmmm…nevermind.

I write about bugs

For as long as I can remember I’ve held a secret anger towards bugs. It’s never easy when fear stares you in the eyes, in this case, beady little eyes that you can barely see, but know it’s there. It’s not the eyes that bother me, it’s what they represent.
It’s such a humbling experience when a fairly sensible, brave, noble, peace-loving, earnest vogon, has to flee when confronted by the menacing presence of what I’d like to call fugly little-flying ipises.

The symptoms of fear: first you freeze from head to toe, rapid breathing ensues, then the desire to shriek on top of your lungs, coupled with the inability to communicate sound under human frequency/ vogon screams fall on deaf ears. Then your heart drops in the pit of your stomach, culminating with the queasy feeling that your body’s about to turn into fuuuujello. At this point I am completely enshrouded in fear.

I die.

digital thought of the day

I am what I write?
If this is true then I’m in trouble, I’d like to think there’s more to me than just being vogon. I mean seriously I am not even really, indigenously vogon, but I think, therefore I am. Strange how this voice came to me, or how I was possessed by this inability to talk without injecting some kind of a tragic sense of humor into my speech, tragic because number one, it’s not really funny, number two, I’m not really trying to be funny, it just sorta happens. This is how I communicate, when I’m left to myself, unsupervised. I also like to eat paper from time to time, when I think nobody is watching. I dunno, maybe this is a passing phase, every writer goes through it? I imagine at some point in his life, Truman Capote wrote the early drafts of his novel in a pink bunny suit, just to get a feel of what a pink, furry, hunted bunny must feel like. I am sure, although I am really not, that Earnest Hemingway must’ve practiced being the big fish in his bathtub before sitting on his desk, ears still red from too much flapping, subsequently, writing what was to become The Old man and the sea. Where does this leave me? is this my training ground for my future battle? am I now, writing what is to become the legendary early drafts of my award winning, turned teevee movie on the hallmark channel, afterschoool special all proceeds go to charity of the vain but insane, cautionary tale of a masterpiece called diary of a madwoman, turned vogon, on the way to recovery, but first let’ s blast into space, & eat some ducks. a trilogy in one.
………kewl.

I arise from the dead


I
arise from
The dead. Syllable

Of
The Word.
I: Cannot, (utter)

Prolix
In silence.
I am satisfied.

To
Fork more
Silence: my body

Just
Happen:stance
like a seed

Plucked
from: Womb
of a man

who
fell asleep
during the act

of
Creation. (so)
here I am

So
hear. (I)
am. here. hear.

Here.
I am
(not) going, anywhere.



© em franco

Another rain poem

it
is starting
drop by drop

rain
rainbow rain
ushers away: sunshine

i
am happy
becoming: rain also

clearing
the streets
of its sorrow.

baby
rain: ambon
smiles as Migrain

goes
away. Migrain
equals Big Rain

a
nickname given
to Big Rain

by
ambon. because
he always give

Clouds
A headache.
he-he-he

© em franco

culture of blogging

As I get more & more acquainted with this new blogging land of mine, I sorta realize that
people here take blogging very seriously. There have been so many informative, intelligible, creative blogs that I’ve visited; raging in topics from poetics, (which I truly love), to politics, to movie trivia facts, to philosophy, to semantics, that now I am starting to feel ashamed of my measly contribution. I realize that blogging should never be about pleasing other bloggers, that one should blog for oneself. As I’ve only been here for a few days, it is understandable that my blog is the fugliest. Plus, my original intent was only to comment on branwell’s blog, except that I had to sign up first, before I could post anything on his blog. But then I thought since I’m here, why not avail of all that free space they’ve got and see what I can make of it. How it works in my mind is all that white space that I see in front of me i translate into a digital canvas, and I’m just sorta sketching words into it. I know this is a confused line, cause I should’ve said one giant, sketch pad, since I can’t paint, I mean physically I can, but the stuff I come up with has nothing to do with art, and everything to do with my inability to grow up. The images my hands create always end up looking like the doodle masterpiece of a three year old. But I can sketch. Okay, that’s a lie, too. I mean, I kinda can, in a way. I can make Rorschach patterns, exhale, I find solace in this form of release. But that thought came to me too late, for a second there, I convinced myself I could really paint. Ah! Our dreams when they depart always leave us empty.

So now, I’m thinking, maybe I should take my blogging seriously, too. I think I’m considering
putting more effort into this, and maybe even, upgrading to a more savvy looking,
digitally friendly style. (Did you understand what I’ve just said, coz I certainly didn’t.)
But first I must consult with gollum and smeagol, before any big decisions can be made.


More of my serious thoughts:
Blogging helps me untangle my thoughts, and practice the craft of writing. I don’t mean poems.
I mean the art of prosespeaking, *smile*, which I’ ve never been good at, one reason I’ve always kept away from writing prose was I could never climatize to the length, and cohesive, continual thoughts the nature of prose demanded. I am a mushroom of a few words, what ever I have to say, I prefer to say in a few words, intelligible if possible, if not that’s okay too, that is why poetry has always been & will always be my Star Trek enterprise ship. (hear that Spocky? we’re in it for the long run…could you tell me where I can get me a pair of ‘hem pointy ears?…cause they sure look lovely).

So, I’ve been thinking more and more about the culture of blogging and if there’s really such a thing as. And how much blogging really plays a part in a blogger’s life, how important is blogging to you, and what satisfaction/ gratification or anything else do you get from maintaining a blog? If somebody could answer this question, that would be great. I’m the type of a person who likes to get into the bottom of things, to understand them beyond the surface, and arrive at some sorta sensory/psychic understanding of things. I don’t know if this makes any sense to anybody else, but I know it makes a lot of sense to me, cause I feel it. I feel it when I’ve achieved this purpose. It comes to me as a result……. that feeling of peace that circulate through your head to the tip of your toes,

and you ask no more.

coz i had nothing to do

Rats and censorship

I wave the rats away, * yeh yoo…. move it move it…. DO IT DO IT DO IT' ben stiller style in hutch and

starsky.

i am the master equivocator

Every now and then I have to stop what I'm doing to wave the rats away from my kitchen. Shameless little buggers, I usually just tap on the desk, and the formidable sound that this makes is enough to scare them away. It's weird that I am getting used to their prescence, in fact, I think I am starting to think of them as pets… no stop that. that's horrible, who would want a pet rat? Strange to think, but rats have families too, a dad rat & a mom rat…and little kiddy rats….just like us, except we are people. But who's to say that in a different planetary dimension that we are not the rats, and the actual rats are the people, think Monterey Jack & Gadget from the Chip and Dale rescue rangers. I wonder if animals love? When we see a couple of chimpanzees grooming each other, I wonder if this is a sign of affection? Or it this part of their mechanism/ function of daily survival? "I scratch your back you scratch mine". Where have I heard this before, I think in a gangster movie. I've never had a pet, so the animal kingdom is a total mystery to me. We almost had a dog once when I was little, but my dad sent him away, for whatever reason, he belonged to one of our relatives, I never saw him again, his name was Peachy, white furry, docile, little puppy. I didn't even get to touch him, I was afraid of dogs at the time, I still am…a little.
Anyway, I wanted to talk about censhorship in arts, personal censhorship that is…That's when you take a hankerchief from your drawer and roll it into a polka- dots suman, and then you stuff it in your mouth. GRrrrUUHHMMYY… Do you ever feel the need to stop your thoughts whenever it borders into a territory that's too sensitive. I have a lot of poems that someday I'd love to share with the world, on that faithful day my Vogon spaceship comes back to pick me up, and I leave this planet forever. I figure that that would be my time to shine, so I'm wiping the dust off my giant megaphone now, & saving it for later. GO OUT WITH A BANG BABY…that's my motto in life. But seriously it kinda sucks to think that you might have to store away some of your most beloved poems simply because their presence might hurt some people that you love. I don' know what sucks more, that or that POEMS CAN actually HURT the people that you love. I find writing therapeutic, as indicative of the way I write, I need a lot of help. Spaceships and rats and polka-dotted sumans…oh my!! Wasn't it Billy Holiday who said that " If I didn't laugh I'd cry". I don't know what question was asked during that interview that drove her to come up with that response, but I think, if you have any idea who Billy Holiday is, you wouldn't need to ask. Context is not important here, I don't think.Those poignant words defy interpretation. I mean, anybody who's ever felt pain, would know, she wasn't kidding, so go ahead you can have this line. I've been munching on it all day long. Anyway back to what I was saying… Hurt is a strong word. I don't write I hate you poems or semi death threats, not even the occasional squeezed in vitriolic remark, disguised as a metaphor.I just simply write what's in my heart. There are certain things that happen to us childhood that are so painful to discuss you can't say it out loud. Like the first time somebody stole your lunch when you weren't looking during recess in kindergarten; or the time you found yourself mysterious locked up inside your very own locker, trying to pick your way out of the darkness; or the first time your dog went away to take a long walk and never came back. Except I'm not really talking about these things, not really.
Speaking of things, I think, things are only a keepsake for a certain amount of love that occupies our hearts that we project to the outside world, I guess that's why when some of our things break or become loss, you feel that a little part of you also gets taken away & you are devastated. I guess this would explain why some people can't part with their things no matter how old, or rusty.This would also explain why some people, without naming names, become trash collector, because of their sentimental value. Now I don't mean to imply people are like things. Because we are not, WE ARE HUMANS & WE CAN RECIPROCATE LOVE, animals too, and I've heard some very special breeds of pokemons, but understand this is very rare. And also, you don't really project love towards the people you care about, 'cause you actually feel it; it's an invisible truth that makes itself known in you heart. I mean, but if you have to project.....................then you're really in trouble.
Where am I going with this play-by-play account of a brain surgery, good thing nobody reads my blog, or else they'll be more confused than I am, except maybe fo Del, which I prefer to call branwell. It's his idea that I start blogging in the first place.Look what you've started!!!! I hope this doesn't give him a headache, but if it does, well then, you deserve it. *evol grin* This is how my brain works, it just can't stick to the plan & my writing reflects… I hate..i hate…I hate… I guess what I'm trying to say is, we share our history-lives with others, and like it or not when you write about certain things that are happening to you, sometimes it can't be helped, you also indirectly write about the people that populate your landscape, and I'm not even talking about the poems that specifically address people, cause I have those too.
It took me forever to spew that out, but still I didn't really get to the essence of what I wanted to say. typical. what can I say, I am the master equivocator . I even fool myself.

this post is a continuation of my previous, previous, post entitled possibilities. In keeping with my obsession with rain emerges another poem.




why i write about the rain


this is my shot at light.

this motion

i've recopied

so many times

with my fingers

as if the gesture of wetness

is enough

to rectify

the original.

this is really not about rain

or its transparency

that i wrap around me

like a second skin,

this is my attempt

to find love,

in the strangest of places.

it is not rain

i am seeking

it's the meaning behind

every drop,

which carries its significance.

the possibility of making a rainbow

bending a light, (bending a body)

being at the right place,

at the right time. leaving my future

( at the hands of mercy)

that makes me fumble for each drop,

as if the continuance of the sound,

of raindrops,

echoing in the streets,

opens up another door,

to another one seeking.

Under the recipe of hope,

or inside the belly of the

Nothern star (madness)

somewhere,

in these lines

lies a trail of raindrops,

that i have sought & fought

hard to follow.

maybe in here,

in this accumulation of wetness,

you will find what you're looking

for. while i journey on

to write another poem

about the rain. Never giving up on a promise.

Never giving up on the secret hope,

that one day i wouldn't need another,

single drop of rain,

Stop.

I leave everything to chance


© em franco

tagalog hay(na)ku

This is my first ever tagalog hay(na)ku, probably only the third tagalog poem I’ve ever written. entitled munting paruparo


munting
paruparo, halika
samahan mo ako

pumunta
tayong dalawa
sa dalampasigang masaya.

doon
kaibigan, makikitang
muli. iyong mukhang-

tinatak
sa alaala’t,
sinarado sa pilikmata.

kaya,
halika paruparo,
samahan mo ako.

dalhin,
mo pati,
ang iyong anino,

aking
mga mata
ay ipinipikit na,

ngayon
magsasayaw tayo,
sa puting tubig.

© em franco

poetry hay(na)ku style

this is a cool new format of poetry: revitalizing, energizing, refreshing, sweetness.... invented by Eileen Tabios. She's here somewhere, I mean her blog is. To find out more about this kewl new
poetic style that's sweeping the nation. :) please use the search feature to get to her blog.





It happens

Beginning
to wonder
about the possibilities

of
making something
out of nothing.

Strewn
beneath this
curtsey: exists, naught

One
But, two,
Possibily. Three. Hay(na)kus

In
A row.
But who’s counting?

What
I am
trying to say

Is
I hear
A murmur. murmuring

Behind
the syllables
A heart.beat(s)

Of
Words trying
to sell me

A
Package of
Girl scout cookies

As
If I
Could say no

To
this confectionery
extortion: my soul

Opening
In exchange
for some buckaroos

Loss
That I’ll
Surely, regret later.

When
the sweetness
has dried off

My
Tongue/ delights
for more. sweetness

But
Nothing is
Left. But this

Poem.
regurgitated/ original
a bulimic poem.

© em franco