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.

1
the last words i heard from you
were not words

the chemicals in your body
were clawing at your veins

invisible knives, or the sharp ends
of feathers, were stabbing you

merciless angels were grafting wings
on your yellowing back

yellow like the bare skin
of fighting cocks

that made it back home
limp

2
i refuse to remember you
leaving this way, father

but my sisters thought it best
to share your last breaths

with family, no matter how distant
no matter how much more resonant

the static on the line, those cries,
words that were not words

3
this visit is three years
overdue

a measured slab of marble
your name carved in script

rectangles of grass
boundaries for each buried

there is so much silence
out here, landscaped

father, i would like
to speak to you,

but my three-year-old twins
are running away laughing

not minding the dead
under their feet

you understand, don’t you?
did you?

March – October 2006
-o-

On this day in 2003 my father passed away.  I wasn’t there.

I found this photograph of him on my last visit to my parents’ house in Marikina, a week after the floods of Ondoy.  I wonder how old he was in this photo.

Train Ride

Remember? she kept saying Remember?
as if it were the last few
bubbles from her drowning.

But she wasn’t drowning.
Her hair was dry
and she had a smile,
not the frozen stun
of someone sinking.

She could have said the word
over and over like she was
underwater. And this guy,
her boyfriend, I gather
by the way she lost herself,
threw her the look
of someone pushing a stranger
into the cold, dark water.

I pretended to be still
reading the old newspaper
I found at the station.
Whatever she wanted him
to remember, I’d forgotten.

The train was pulling
again and all of us
felt the jolt.

March 1995
-o-

This poem had been in quite a few anthologies before it ended up in Alien to Any Skin. It was one of the first few poems that I managed to write while adjusting to life in South Africa.  Dr. Gemino H. Abad (Sir Jimmy) has included this in a few anthologies he has put together.  He informed me that he even used it as part of an introduction to a collection of Filipino short stories in English.

If I remember right, I did start writing this poem in a Cape Town train. I had lots of time travelling in trains in this city with two oceans and a looming mountain (with Devil’s Peak as the name of its summit).

I remember one time coming home from work, missing not just my station but shooting past about six others.  People grew more panicky as the train gained momentum.  We all felt there was something wrong.  Some folks tried to pry open the automatic doors.  But the train was going too fast to jump off safely, so they shouted outside to anyone who could hear as the train hurtled between stations.  Everyone held on to something firm.

I had in mind what awaited us: the brick walls of Cape Town Central Station, literally the final stop.  Then there was an ear-splitting screech that dragged the wheels of the train.  I could imagine sparks flying.  People screamed. At last the train shuddered to a halt a few metres from certain catastrophe.  Some men jumped out on to the side of the tracks fearing the train might move again.

When the train did begin to pull again everyone screamed. This time though it felt like we were on one of those amusement park trains for little kids – a gentle walk was faster.  At last we reached Cape Town Central Station with not just a sigh of relief. The platform was instantly full of frantic voices, clamoring for an explanation from the train driver. He got out clutching his leather bag. He was shaking, his knees buckled every now and again as he pushed his way to the Controller’s Office without uttering a word.  His face was a mess.

I hung around the station for a few minutes to get the story.  Apparently he had been accidentally locked out of the driver’s car. He must have climbed through the windows to get back in.

I could have ended up as one of the dozens trapped under crumpled steel and shattered bricks.  Just another news item for another train passenger to read about.