Thank you to all who voted! And enjoy the poems from Alien to Any Skin that are available online!

Just a reminder, the online retailers that carry the book are Mary Martin Booksellers and Kabayan Central

My poem “People Like You”   has been reprinted in this week’s edition of Philippines Free Press. The poem first came out in Rhino 2011 (click THIS to hear me read it!)

This is one of those poems that seemed ready even as a first draft. It practically wrote itself. Gemino Abad once spoke of being in tune to what the Muse is trying to send you, as if you had an antenna that had to be fixed just at the right angle, at the right moment when the transmission is being sent, then KABLAM! The poem arrives on paper as if by magic. You feel more like a transcriber than creator.

I hope the poems in Alien to Any Skin and in my other books will somehow reach more people than I will ever meet in person. That my words will outlive me – go beyond this feeble existence each of us is given for a time.

I’m not in the best of moods at the moment so hearing about a poem being published/reprinted is like being able to breathe again, though momentarily, before the sink-or-swim thrashing resumes. And no, it’s not exactly an uplifting poem, but I do believe it is worth reading.

Maraming salamat, Joel M. Toledo, poetry editor of Philippines Free Press, for letting this poem (and this poet) breathe again.

Those Who Still Have Black Blood Under Their Feet

know the faces
of your friends and family
like the landscape
you grew in

remember every street corner
you walked in the day
and then at night
when the dogs
called you as if you were
one of them

you will not see them again
in the same light
not anybody or anything
that has teeth

your skin will be the desert’s

we shall release you from this burden
this nation of bleeding
each other dry

ripping each other
to shreds with petty beliefs
and primitive arms

just watch the skies
listen to the humming
of our oil-thirsty machines

we will bring you peace
and forgetting

now run

-o-

This poem was first published in the revived Caracoa by the Philippine Literary Arts Council.  It has been selected as one of six finalists in the current Goodreads.com poetry competition. No prize up for grabs except for inclusion in the Goodreads.com Newsletter which reaches millions, apparently. If my poem wins then it would be a good way to spread the word about ALIEN TO ANY SKIN.

Here’s the link to the competition. You need to join Goodreads.com and sign up with the discussion group POETRY! in order to vote. I know it’s a long shot, but hey, any way to spread the word about this book can only be good, right? Here’s hoping.

At the moment orders outside of the Philippines may be placed with Kabayan Central and Mary Martin Booksellers.

ps I found one review of Caracoa 2006 by poet Marne Kilates. Mentions my poem which he understandably considers to be about Apartheid.

When ash falls like snow
(though snow we’ve never had
and snow I’ve never seen)
why do we remember America?

Is it Sesame Street outside
where racism is non-existent
and the eagle is a big yellow bird
talking to a rag in a can?
I do not know what
they’ve taught us to forget.
Yet the memory of snow persists.

Walking on whitened streets
I thought of America moving out
of the volcano’s danger zone
leaving my ancient sisters and brothers
curled up in their huts
like so much pubic hair.

I cannot read the earth,
but this much I know:

the world will not end.

There still is so much to unlearn
like fabricated memories
of America where it snows
and children make snowballs
and snowmen with carrot noses.

It is ash that falls, not snow.
I must learn to tell the difference.

June 1991
-o-

A news item made me remember this poem which is in Alien to Any Skin. Here is a link to my blog, matangmanok.

Here is a screengrab which also functions as a link to the page.

Here is the link to the poem:

http://matangmanok.wordpress.com/2010/11/02/chagos-islanders-still-in-limbo/

Here is the link: Poetry that Protests Inhumanity, Desires Justice

-o-

Poetry that protests inhumanity, desires justice

By: Gary Deviles
Philippine Daily Inquirer 5:20 am | Monday, January 16th, 2012

Poet and social critic John Berger believes that desiring justice is as multitudinous as the stars in an expanding universe with the suffering caused by genocide, war and natural catastrophes which happen unnoticed every day.

Jim Agustin’s latest collection of poetry, “Alien to Any Skin” (University of Santo Tomas Press, 2011, 186 pages) acknowledges the depth of these suffering and meditates on the cruel use of power as our moral compass has gone awry.

“Rounding Up the Dogs of the Children Who Died of Sadness” tackles militarization and the violence committed by armies as they rounded up and evicted people out of Chagos Islands, part of Mauritius, then a British territory campaigning for independence.

In the1960s the Chagos Islands were separated by an Order in Council and renamed the British Indian Ocean Territory, or BIOT, displacing thousands.  Agustin dramatizes the horror of these children as they see armies as monsters, rendered in lines, Monsters came one day, dressed/ in stiff uniforms. They were fed/ largely on red meat and so had grown/ like giants compared to the islanders/.  The poem effectively ends with that terror: They were taken amid screams and cries/ hearts cracking like husked coconuts/ flung against jagged rocks/.

In “That Bullet is Alien,” the persona tries to interrogate his trained killer, telling him that bullets are alien to any skin or race and people everywhere have suffered enough.  Agustin is very perplexed of the inhumanity of some people. This theme of loss of sense and sensibility or the persistent inquiry to an old philosophical question why evil exists is evident in this collection.

In “Preliminary Notes on the Physics of Modern Torture, Big Dog Takes a Walk” and “TALON Robot Examines a Body,” Agustin demonstrates how our knowledge and technology become instruments of aggression and oppressive power, implying that our modernity only amounted to barbarism and extended fascism.

Sometimes, acts of aggression can be seen in the most innocent acts of our tourists as they take pictures of other people, unaware of the violence and the very abstraction concomitant to these acts, as intimated in “What You Have Taken.” Agustin renders Blakesian philosophical musings on the existence of evil and unwarranted sufferings as most of his poems end with questions, such as “If you speak a human language, tell me/ that I may somehow understand/ what words taught you how to pull that trigger?/ or in lines like Will anyone know how carefully/ his young fingers treasured/ the very first feather/ in his hand?”

Agustin documents the homelessness of millions deprived of the most basic freedoms as his poetry become mute testimonies to terrorism and the profound despair arising from it. Consider “Threats and Deeds,” which looks at US imperialism, its seemingly benign face against its threatening deployment of power as demonstrated in Afghanistan and Baghdad today and as had been experienced in his own country, the Philippines.  The poem mocks this imperial face:

“You are everywhere. Not by choice/ of those who are/ forced to stare/ at your long arms,/ or are they tentacles?//

“Hard to see/ when, just as we think/ we can sense your kindness,/ one of us gets whipped/ to submission.//

“Sat on.//

“Barbed Barbie/ on missile point/ heels,/if anyone says/

“Ouch//

“We get a taste of your beauty and animosity.”

Indeed Agustin’s poems serve as reflections and illuminations in these troubled times and become more ever relevant when the bombardment of images induced by cultural capital numbs us, make us complicit to these crimes and dehumanization.

Here’s the link to the post.