Iwahig Penal Farm Colony

Something brought back memories
Down large mudholes
Long strands of green
Ducks wobbling their feet on muck

Freedom is where there are no rails
And in shirts of orange, blue, and brown
They fill out the vast horizon
Where silence clips sounds

I watch tires make their marks
Leaving imprints on dirt
Where many names should have been called
For whom freedom's enfolding

I came out thinking

Is there freedom in them?
Who toil for a new shirt
a bar of soap, a milk powder pack
To induce sleep down a hammock?

I came out asking again

What is freedom
More than a softer bed,
A hot meal at day's end
and a loved-one looking from beyond?

Flashback

Wheels turn loose inside
they lead me back
cobbled streets, horsedrawn carriages
I was 20 at Fort Santiago
looking at a man
holding the reins

It was 10 years ago
many things happened
Nothing's changed
I think, I feel
Yet the same

Wheels grind stones
In my memory
They appear mighty
going on, going round
Never stopping

Wheels they remind me
Of a long lost folk song
"Wheels of fate"
Life is a wheel in fate

How can fate stay the same?

-Ava Villareal
November 23, 2008 (McDonald's SM City-Cebu)

Memory of a Russian Lover

You were seen
At the bay
Your back against
the shadow
Cast by the sea

Your fingers
Still clutching
The vodka bottle
I wonder if they
Remember my body
its contours
the depth, dark
pit they caressed

cause I do
I still see
Your filmy eyes
They hide
secrets
no, not women
not philandering
secrets of
your untold past

Those sheets
crumpled
By movements
bathed
In our fluids
They knew
They kept them

I know now
cause I listened
I feel it
The great ache
remnants
Of a tyranny
wounds, uncertainty

I know now
cause I've seen
How you clutched
To that vodka
bottle of spirit
Dying to be free.

-Ava Villareal
October 9, 2008

The Reason

Wounds cascade like boulders from a cliff

I can hear them roar tonight

In the acquiescence of the night

In the solitude of my night lamp

They’re coming like the past

Revolting, searing, haunting

I have been underneath

I have been hiding

In its shadow’s deceit

Alone, fearing its strength

Until I found myself broken

Wounds tingle like pebbles

I can feel them crouch

In the embers of my dream

In the soft sound of sleep

Like the memories

Of heydays and losses

Left on the sands of time

I have been there counting

Alone, too long

I found myself

And yet still broken.

In this climb, here on my mountain

As I succumb to my pains

You ‘re all I need to untie my wholeness.

The Junction

While I'm at it

I'm starting to stare

At my own eyes

It leads me back

to that emptiness

the numb

that blinds the mind

and wrings the heart

While I'm at it

I feel lost

Alone and yet

Unfeeling

Nothing comes

Between now

And yesterday

It is there

In that space

Where only

I and myself

Hold and link

With each other

It is there

When I

Need you most.

Somnolence (I crave all nights)

Waves of uncertainty playfully caress my eyes
Blinks devour the rapid glimpses of reality
While sensuously I rub my fingers
On the smooth, dry surface of my skin
Tears drop unsolicitedly on my cheek's contour
This, then the mouth gapes, revealing a dark mass
Suddenly a soft moan comes about
A tiresome surrender to unconsciousness
Or a lover's call in the crack of dawn
In my vision, darkness covets and relents to light
Dapples of sun's brightness sway in an ethereal dance
With its rhythm, things cease to exist, numbness tickles
The body slowly limping into a subconscious existence.

Unseen Aide

You did help
You did help
Me end it
The love, the lust
For naught
For the confused kind
Planted, nurtured
In the pit, the deep
Oh how come
It was real
To the touch
I thought it true
Were you
Did you
Feel, deny it
Was there
There was more
A wallowing hole
Abyssmal ecstacy
In a withering hue
Of doubt, clarity
Sanity, entropy
Of truth and imagery
Of prism and transparency
Opacity of dream
Reality is true
It was you
There was you
Tangible in spirit
Abstract in contrast
Was it revealed
Was it shown
Were you really
The hand that led me
To my clearer sanity?

Ephemeral

When the mind defies words
And the heart floats as an empty tune
Is the city’s blur enough to muddle its beat
Would that childhood seawall’s memory
Drown out inner ripples, crumpling the surface
When distance brings more than lack
And the light bears no brightness
Wallowed in the residues of a confused absence
Of hanging embers scathing the self
Is there more to time and this
The waves of silence breaking walls
Hollow darkness, a night of make-believe
That happiness is resolved in a feat
Of strength, an acceptance of frailty, a choice
An abstract abandon to life
Or offering that gnawing thing to eternity
But finding its return in a blink.

Farewell (for Xlibris)

Say good-bye, while you're able to do so
No looking back, no turning in
A plethora of memories rush
Into a sublime nature of independence
Once when the tide was high
and the murky waters flowed
When rivers ran through mountains
heeding the call of its dried beds
You were lost in the crevices
And now found your own,
hurting in the shadows.

Absence (for Barry)

In your silence
is the wonder
the ache, the cold
Coming back
with a vengeance
Like the split splatter
of rain it comes
ripping the knots
untying the whole
breaking pieces
into voids


In your silence
is the hate
the chaos, the dark
engulfing
in a rampage
Like the whip whap
of crickets
deafening
losing the sacred
breaking the night
into years

I lay myself
spread-eagled
basking
in the memory
of your lightness
waiting for the last
whip, astride
in the shadow
of your face

There is complete truth in nothing.

Crucible Delight

It was dark when I first took off my translucent veil in front of you. The sand was warm, the din of the gongs and canned music drowning the drumbeats of my heart. I felt your warm fingers swarm the contours of my face, before its heat led down to the inner recesses of my being. Your fingers were soft and full of understanding. They caressed the hard-pressed callousness of its tight skin, made thick by years of silence and absence of emotion.

Just the other night, it was again dark when you blocked my way right down the stairs. I sensed the turmoil, crawling out from all of you; I thought of you, how it is to have you lying beside me, in the dark, both listening to our silence, feeling our pain from the air, from nothing, embracing them with our warmth, as we rekindle our memories and weave them together, those times when we were far from where we are at this point . . . Instead, I pressed my body into yours. I wanted to feel all of you . . . as if they would escape the fabrics of your clothes, break free from the entangled existence we are forced to live by. Your eyes were cast down. You were staring within and beyond my chest, yearning to fondle it, feel everything in it, yet doubting of its consequence. And in that moment, I felt you; you were inside me . . . the hard, pressing need to be one with me. There was current in the air that night; your shoulders and the soft skin, the childlike shape of your face, made me want to soothe you, flow by with your calmness, drink your joy, bathe in your innocence . . .

Eversince that moment, I pine for you to live by me, consume me, empty out this vacuum of deep, dark need. Fill me with your light, your banter, your bare immensity . . . Free me from my own evil.

Home Far Away

Where the moon rise
In that boulevard
the fireflies sing
of a thousand cries
Up here in the north
where city life din
of loud music
and muffled voices
Tug at emotions
The wind murmurs
My needs as fresh
dews in the morning
Smell of coffee
percolating, simmering
The beans grinding
its sweet, savory
Clouds of smoke
drifting, molding a face
of my yearning
For the road beside
The bedroom
Window is ailing
me to bare truths
I long to bathe in.

Eros's Deception

Is it gone
Upon the light
Where my mind
gave it a slice
A truth, a figment
I create my mind's
realities, turn them true
Outside this realm
we call existence
We are a game
our feelings fleeting
How can we
justify emotions
when they come
when they're gone
the neurons, hormones
logic, chemical imbalance
Is it here
How does he feel
Is he hiding
Does he know
All along
It might be
he knows the world
Better than I do
I should have
existed, loved
Outside my mind
Translate feelings
Feel their truth
Live with its tugging
In the midst
of people's lives lost
in labyrinths of hate
pain and anguish
It will survive
comes out, in
another package
It could be gone
But it was there
and it could
still be there
lurking, seething
what lust
what love
what chaos
Is not
Could not
Be not
A battle
between the sexes.

Deluge of Chaos

Asexuality


Chainsaws and axes
gritting the pavements
Of naked thoughts
Scraped off welts
with blood dripping
Drenched bandages
Tourniquets of void
Chaos and promise
Of death gripping
Fear of freedom
Hypocrisy at the height
A moral dilemma
Social disparity
gaping in genuine
lust and passion
Lightyears worth
of questions
Universes of blood
stigma, pus
Of sensations only
Honored by its own
In far-flung
pathways of galaxies
Of millenia about to be
A metamorphosis
of a kindred
No, there's no man
No, woman, nothing between
Gender is a piece of each
Our mind's
assiduous dream.

Looking Back to My Tequila Adventure with Barry

I'm now looking down to a deep pit, where I just found myself lately. Been wanting for that spirit in a bottle to drown me in my most needful moments. It finally showed its head to me last Saturday.
I couldn't say I didn't enjoy every emotion that ran through my neurons down to the tiniest veins of my bloodstreams. I had one hell of a drinking session, one that had me drunk all my fears of people. Yep, I finally put an end to that thought that I can please all people, by being the goody-two-shoes that others would want me to be. I just am not that at all. I've always been so attached to my reality, one that I almost always curtail brought by the demands of the workplace, etiquette, norms, and social responsibility, the other side of myself. I had to free it to regain what I lost, a restoraton of a reservoir of fervor and zeal.
So it was when I was about to lose my normal self did I find the real me, the angst-ridden, unfulfilled adult with an adolescent heart. Barry Hibionada's tequila led me to that depth of myself which I had never been, and that brought me to familiarity with the guy. While sipping that crystal-clear liquor, memories and scenes way back whirled around me in a tapestry of emotions played up by alcohol. I yearned for someone who would be with me until I bare all, and I realized it's good to be free in someone's company, especially when one feels belonging, and being a part of, even when things are as muddled as my thoughts were.
Right on the sand particles that I played with my toes, and the beat from the blasting speakers, I dreamt of myself and my inner desires, and it was way beyond the bottle's spirit or the music's erotic beat; it was greater than myself, greater than anything else that happened that night, it's love, the genuine thing from somebody who's real, full, and strong, whoever, wherever, but now. That feeling of wanting and being wanted, that in every thing I do, it leads me to a greater feat, of creating greatness in another's heart. That bottle led me back on solid ground; it made me fight for my truth, the bare-all reality of my battles alone. Barry had his way when he asked for a drinking spree, but I aced him in everything else.

Editing Overload

One day at a time when sleeplessness deprives me of a clear and functional brain, I escape from the lines of scribbles found in an unknown author's manuscript. I travel to dreamlike places and shake hands with iridescent people, mostly inscribing an illusory reminiscence of the past, and make peace with brooding and unpretentious fears of the future. The following words were laid down, acclaiming real tidbits of imagination as they find their way to reality.

Seaside Revolt (Inspired by the memories in Baybay Alliance waters)


In that starlit night
Where thoughts fall
as rapidly as sand
washed to shore
by mighty waves
Torrent of desires
Held captive by needs
Leaves me abandoned
In a memory
of drifters, clingers,
idolaters
Thrust in a vacuum
where undercurrents
exist in a time warp
Lost in the vicissitudes
of stones, sand, weeds
I caress my mind, my feet,
My luminous soul
Braving the dark
Facing the wind
Salty air on lips
Untarnished remains
of yesteryears
stumble in reverie
alone, unashamed, free.

Tessa Jazmines: A Recall of the Persona

I met her during the junior years of my Diliman days. One look at her, I knew that we would hit it off together. Who can doubt her sincere and smart-aleck attitude, one who could snap at a stubborn guard "Kaya kayo binabaril eh!" once when we weren't allowed to attend Mass in Greenhills for lack of IDs, but still she could manage to warrant respect from her colleagues and students.

Ms. Tessa had been the greatest influence during those crucial years of my college life. For a person who loves variety, it only took one class session from her for me to decide having my on-the-job training in her public relations firm. And I was never wrong in my gut feeling. During those drab days of lull when client calls are hard to come by, and we wait for our crafts to be published for days, she always has ways to perk up every member of the team. She would ask for large orders of canton and whatnot, just to keep us from leaving the office. She's not the intellectual snob who would throw you a barrage of theories instead of lend you a book.

In fact, it never came to my mind that she was then the associate professor of the UP College of Mass Communication Journalism department. She never acted like one; though I still remember how generous she was of her experiences and ideas that I thought she was too trusting, especially for a business enterprise where ideas are the most prized asset. Can you just imagine how one day I got my copy of the Diliman newsletter and found out that she's already the vice president for academic affairs. Then I realized, despite all her media and corporate contacts and engagements, first and foremost she is an academic; and that's what makes her firm grounded on value formation the academic environment provides.

I got to read her works just this afternoon while taking a break from a back-breaking job of correcting misplaced commas and semicolons in my latest manuscript. Upon reading even just the first few of her articles gave me a clearer understanding of what public relations is all about. But what amazes me most is the variety of her topics; from one sector to another, she appears to be keen in research and gathering accurate information from the right sources.

A friend of mine said our dean, Luis V. Teodoro, doesn't consider PR as journalism. I was a bit overtaken by disappointment in my lifelong dream of having my own PR firm because of that; but when I read Ms. Tessa's works, I got to see a lot of chances for PR to redeem its name of being inclined to business or corporate interests rather than performing its function of bridging the gap of one social sector to another through communication channels. PR is not stright news journalism or not even the investigative PCIJ-type of reportage, but it is even more difficult. It functions as a buffer zone among usually warring entities, like media and a private company asking for government support for its projects.

Indeed, it's still a long way to go before public relations would be totally understod by laymen. But until then for as long as we have people like Ms. Tessa Jazmines, then we wouldn't have to doubt if we can make use of PR to achieve our patriotic goals for the country.

Intellectual Braggadocio

This would serve as a sequel to my blog with regard to Nick Joaquin's speech in his acceptance of the Ramon Magsaysay award. A matter-of-factly, I found solace in his words, that of concluding the rivalry between literature and journalism, instead linking one to the other. If only that most writers would adhere to the idea, then we wouldn't be seeing people with the right faculty and creativity to write but are so into themselves that they lose that force to connect with their readers.

I have seen and suffered from these people for so many times already, and I can say there are still more coming. I don't know if I reached the last point of protecting myself through emotional immunity. I'd say I'm probably too intoxicated with reality weaved into fictional style, that I forgot how it is to deal with people who have that self-flattering perception of their craft.

Just this afternoon, I got myself caught in its cobwebs. From out of the blue, while we were killing time near the workplace's lobby, I resorted to editing a tarp displayed in front aloud, knowing that the people who designed it were probably a stone's throw away. I felt quite so full of myself, so arrogant, after I finished talking though in the end I did something as a futile attempt to save face. More than anything else, I don't want to have that reputation of being high up on air. I've always loved the ground, and I always check myself if I'm still on it or if I'm somewhere else.

I don't want to name names or put some of my friends in bad light. But there is one thing I have to say. Most of the people I emulate are those who tend to shy away from compliments and stick to their ideas, without the need to shove it down anyone's throat. Why is that? Because they are the ones who are more successful and profound in thinking, not to say with a humanity that feeds life instead of curtail it.

A writer-designer friend of mine once told me that writers are waxing egoists. It's probably true, but for somebody who grew up in the company of media personalities and writers, it's easy to tell when humility is fake and pride genuine and in-depth. Somehow along the way while reading Joaquin's speech, I gained the respect for my chosen degree which is journalism, it being at par with the respect I have for the works of art, especially those pertaining to language.

I can finally say to those snobbish literateurs that fiction will only mean the death of reality when one is cut off from experience. So for writers and wanna-bes, be with people, be the people, and understand people; it's the only way for truth and fiction to lose each other in themselves.

Counterstike: An Appeal for Violence

Just this morning, a ex-reporter friend told me to browse Yahoo news for a story about a new killing in Virginia. He said what startled him was that that the heinous crime was inspired by a computer game, which has been popular among teens and even young professionals long enough to have versions of it.

The game is called counterstrike. The Wikipedia has it: Counter-Strike, commonly abbreviated to CS, is a team-based, tactical first-person shooter video game which originated from a Half-Life mod of the same developers, Minh "Gooseman" Le and "Cliffe", featuring real-world weapons and shootouts. The game has been expanded into a series since its original release, which currently includes Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and Counter-Strike: Source.

If I'm not mistaken, it's the same computer game that got my brother hooked to the extent that he almost flunked out in all his subjects. After a few months, the government approved an ordinance on Internet cafes not to accept student customers during school hours. I don't know if that was only in our small barangay in Surigao; but I still recall that it has become a national concern.

I also remember clearly the Columbine High School massacre in the United States, wherein the psycho killers were students of the same school, one of the duo was hooked into a very violent computer game. After both of them died, a journal landed on the authority's hands. It was clear in its entries that the owner was so much consumed by ideas of violence and angst, which to put it straight is a natural phenomenon for those in puberty, brought about by hormonal imbalance and other physical and psycho-behavioral changes.

If there's one thing that the adult world can do to compensate for the detriment that advance technology can do for morality and social consciousness of the young, then it is perhaps that of teaching them to distinguish what is worth reading and not. It is important that they may know how freedom is at their hands in the World Wide Web but then no matter how advance technology can be, it still boils down to the age-old adage that Freedom Comes with Responsibility.

In fact, once they learn this adage by heart, it will extend more to other aspects and not just the use of time for worthwhile activities. It will become a mantra for life to them, and their every act would be defined by it.

The Silence of the Pen

Lately, I got these issues of Philippine Journalism Review from a friend who lent it to me. The timing was just impeccable. It happened in the time when I was sold out that I'm going to be a public relations practitioner. I've always thought of myself as creative, and I didn't think that would fit in my being a journalist in profession. I always thought of journalism as straight facts, killing that instinct to present views in ways that are nearer to the heart rather than the mind alone.

The other night I read Nick Joaquin's speech during the Ramon Magsaysay awards. It's entitled Journalism versus Literature. It hit me like lightning, when I read that part when he said "So, the question of Journalism versus Literature? No longer has to be asked. The old feud is over and the two rivals are now more or less on even terms. If journalism has been upgraded to literature, literature is being reinvented as a species of reportage. In the some five decades I have been in journalism, those are the developments that I find most moving—because my own writing career has moved in the same direction: from fiction to reportage, and from reportage to non-fiction as literature."

He gave me another perspective at this point in my life when marriage is out of the question and a good career break is a long time coming. In fact until now I'm still on that phase of sking myself if I were to be what I dream of or if there's something awaiting me, something I've been running away from ever since.

Back to the PJR copies, I read the paper in the office just this afternoon, and it really struck me as to how fulfilling it would be to be writing for truth, and that nothing beats the feeling of having done something bigger than yourself, in pursuit of a task whose impact is immortal.

And right now, I'm back to my confused self, but I keep on praying that I would have the enlightenment I so long need. I know it has been my frustration, not having worked for a publication. Perhaps that the only link that's missing for me to be able to finally call this life productive and myself a true citizen.