Friday, July 30, 2010

LET ME MEET YOU O! MOTHERLAND!

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago



Let me O! Motherland meet you
With warm embrace and sweet solace
On wind and air above you.

I now have grown more than the bud
That I was then some dozens of summers past
Now am I prepared for tougher tasks
As all the carabaos are in your sturdy breast.

Accept my offerings—my brain and brawn
To plowshare for your scions’ nourishment
And lift them up from want and hunger done
By sickening evils wrought by lords of wrath.

Let me with your children sumptuously dine
I have no more than heartfelt words to give
So hopefully this might their souls satiate
So they’d regain states o’ sobriety and power.

Let me O! Motherland! Meet you again
Beneath your oceans, seas and lakes
Benign these blankets are to me so real
In them I’m freshened always as a babe.

Wake me up from slumber o! Motherland!
Let me rise up forever from this boorish state
I’d rise the more to bequeath my love
To your scions with whom I am betrothed
For they make sanguine giants out of ants
Gold are they beyond all spellbound words.

Let me reach out to your scions all, o! Motherland!
Arise shall my voice be so redeeming
To herald what dear Destiny had covenanted
‘Bout greatness that resides in all of them
Let them feel your Bosom thru this voice
That rise shall they therefore the quickest
‘Twards magnificence their wondrous wherefore
O’ this swearword let me not just rescind
To rest in nasty bowels o’ Oblivion
Far off your scions shall arise above the hovels
They’d lighten up your sky as rays they are
Of suns and suns from all yon galaxies
O! Motherland you’re lightened for all times!

Let me go forth in fights o! Motherland
To citadels of wealth and luster of crafts
Learn more from them I’d frame commission
Embankments of mind enriched for your accrual
For you alone, yes you alone o! Motherland!
I bade you not in sadness no not this
But in cheered one sweetened by your flowers
Return shall I, I swear, I dutifully swear
‘Tis heard aboard the melodious winds above you
To be a part of your triumphant enshrinement
In all the world’s magnificent halls of Light.


[Writ. 09 March 92, University of the Philippines Manila]

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

UNIVERSITY CLASSROOM

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


A noble ground it is this wondrous room
Where enthused adepts wait in seats a-poised
While mentor fills the air with notes a-flamed
That conquer maladies Ignorance had unveiled

Said conquest needs complete obeisance then
To reason and empirics’ tones of truth
Without which otherwise all things fall ‘part
As dark as what yon Medieval had cast

Sacred! Sacred is this noble ground we’re in
Where flaunted are ideas in liberty fulfilled
Where rigodons of reflection bring emancipation
Eschewed are dogmas—ikons’ benediction

How cool the air from humming fan is blown
Reminds us thus of sunlit valleys warm as old
Where there descend cool breezes from boondocks’ heights
Relieved is tensed up mental bank of yours

Sometimes the heat flack up thermometer’s gauge
Bring swelter hence to enthused minds a-blazed
Alright just mind not that which puts one a-glazed
For cool will be dear mentor’s words unfazed

Let there be praises for all women and men
Who’d fuse their minds in this Platonic den
Should they have grasped so well each lesson learned
Their worlds off walls would better be in zest


[Writ. 02 March 92, University of the Philippines Manila]

Monday, July 26, 2010

EMBLEM OF THE DUST

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


I am but the emblem of the dust
Blown smoothly away by the wind.

Born from out of the dust
Where rests the cosmic elements
Over a century known in all;
Nurtured within the womb of Terra
Mother of all Mothers;
Delivered as seed by Firmament’s demiurgos
The ultima pater noster;
So was I born, a dust.

Chartered was my life through sojourns
By my Self
Betwixt worlds
Of shadows and sunlit dales
I the dust, I the crafter.
Molded was I so exquisitely humane
Betwixt cast of the hardest metals
Harder than Bernardo Carpio’s will
Was I nurtured out extruded
I am my own furnace, my dust I am.

Founded was I a warrior
Crafted in the trade of the blade
Whose countenance is blanketed with Courage
A most scarce diadem;
Bear I the Will to thrust the majestic sword
Unto the fleshy morsels of obstacles
Conceived by Existence, Uncertainty, Death
That I rise, am I arisen
I a dust, yet a Warrior.

Blown forth am I the dust
Blown forth by my own Will
Astride winds sunbeams waters
Ne’er fixed and transfixed neither
By mischievous forces of diabolical climes
Now dust am I, my Will wind
‘Tis my starship to galactic
Worlds of humans.

What has come to pass in my biographic trails?
My Past and Future, of what constructs made of?
They I’ve myself made
I the baker who’s always been attending
To chores of my oven’s commands
I’ve had my whereabouts made
Even as Future and Past cancel out
In the nothingness of the Omnipresent Present:
Time is but non-Time altogether
A leaf that has crumpled in its own face
‘Tis but a premise of one who’s never lived
So is it a pest that distracts awhile
And later fornicates in its death traps.
What’s the most illustriously true
But that I the dust was ever present
In time as time to me was spent a-non
I therefore live forever.

I’d gazed at the celestial mirror
And glanced at Eternal Thou
Or was it? Eternal Thou? What’s it?
A chimera derived from my own image?
An extract from the prurient I?
Or is it the whole Kosmos focused
In the magnificent galactic lens so said?
O! Kosmos! O! Nature! You are Eternal!
Am I Thou?
Please whisper the answer softly
In my ear
Amid the hypnotic melodies
Of the celestial music…
I so earnestly await thy response!


Wherefore the dust shall have gone forth
In the tapestries and gourdian knots of Nature
To be a part of and yet not
Of elements among whom it had immersed
As the Ego does to the countless Alters
It “Is” now and yet “Is Not”
A concrete now and yet a phantom as well
The moving and the rested wedded together
It is, it is such, it is
For and only for it to scale altitudes
To where it fuses with the bounds of its source
It is the changeling, the changeling
That dons the matterly cloak: the Kosmos
Of which it Is:
The Iota and the Whole are One.
Henceforth shall it have known
The All and the Self
Finale regal of its sacred mission.

That I am: the dust
Caringly blown away by the wind.


[Writ. 19 Feb. ‘92, Cubao, Quezon City, M.Manila]

Saturday, July 24, 2010

FAREWELL TO ACADEMIA

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago



The time, yes the time has come
For me to say farewell to you o! Academe
I’d again face the hostile world outside
Where rapacious Existence devours its gullible prey.

How gently comforting are you o! Academe!
A supreme shelter against diabolic boulders spewed
By the volcanic raptures of a putrescent world.
You are the soft bed where I’d laid
My tired body, tired from sojourns aplenty
You are the stars and moons joined together
That illuminated the nights of my life’s first half
You are the magical stove that patiently cooked
The ideas harvesting from my ever-searching mind
You are the resting stations all in all
In the Calvaries and Golgothas of my life.

Why depart I now that in you I am in bliss
Clearly because I’d been fated by history and self
To entrench my soul in humanity’s bosom
Share in the extirpation of malignant social ailments
Rooted in sorceries of injustices and imperial lust
They that had mired people in fecals and hovels.
Thereof I go forth, the molded warrior-poet
To thrust once more my blades against historic demons.

What words have I to say my gratitudes
These I can’t but feel them from my heart
I know that off your walls you are my trusted pal
Whom I will caringly long for in the morrows
Rest assured thus I bade farewell in full comfort.


[Writ. 16 Feb. 92, Cubao, Quezon City, M.Manila]

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

THE GREAT RETURN

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


That which was
Lost may not be lost
‘tis but slumbering in its bed
Beneath its epithelial chambers.

Soon shall it wake up
To conquer its sleeping state.
Soon shall it triumphantly march
To possess the majestic estate bequeathed to it.
Soonest that it triumphs its tremolo of voice
As herald of its presence in the here-and-now

It has come again.

Nay, it shall stay.


[Writ. 15 Feb. 1992, Cubao, Quezon City, M.Manila]

TO SOME YOUTH LEADERS CIRCA 1991

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


O! Star youth of the Rizalandian race!
Truly so lovable and minds quizzical
Begotten as leaders yon echelon of thy gesselschaft
Who are to me so near and made so
By dancing with me together in the great hall
Of academic undertaking: tangoed we
As authentically ordained partners: ordained by fate
To feel and think together in states o’ sobriety
By commands of duty and obligation
For whom my everything my mind and heart
Had been encumbered for as my sole offering
Offering my soul’s betrothed my soul’s pure halo
My person a gift given collateralized
Without me demanding for the basest return
Yet but build they their gesselschaft and self sterlingly.

O! Knights and knightesses of today and tomorrows
How in the world can I besmirch thee all
Of whose countenance are to me endeared with plenitude?
Behold there isn’t one iota of doubt in me
‘Bout your knighthood’s prowess and trade’s wherefores

There at the summit of Cheop’s pyramid
Resides my esteem for thee all:
I shall lift up thy esteem
Towards abodes of gods
‘Twere firmaments
Fade in the dazzling light a-beauty
Of the aeternal Thou

I can no more bethink of reasons
For the begrudged flames in thy hearts
I now the crucified caper before thine eyes
Ne’er meant I to unlock a Pandora’s box
For which findest thy self in unfounded apprehension
Not for my endeared partners ne’er for thou

O! How I hope that grasp thou all so clear
The sincerest meaning behind my swearwords of late
That we ought march as one to champion
The triumphant denouement of our joint deeds
In their unique sense be they simple or compounded.


[Writ. 27 July 91, Univ. of the Philippines Manila]

Sunday, July 18, 2010

THE PROMISE

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


I

Rise up, Man! Rise up!
Your commonwealth’s history had been astride
The cosmic pendulum that had darted
From yon up. Pendulum has reached dead center
And again is rising beyond the dale of time.
The center was lodged betwixt camel and palm tree.

Reckon, reckon that the East calls
‘Twain the valley of time expectant.
Respond shall the camel benignly
And twill change hands with the carabao.

Snail paced is this beast the carabao
And so is your ascent, o! Man!
To the pinnacle of your godly, godly zen.
You shall be god, your being’s made
By you a living clay molded
Millions of times by your own hands.

II

Man! The Light has come forth
In dazzling photons it fused with seawaves
And fluvial ripples. Gracefully had
It landed, guided by a dozen eagles.

Shine brightly shall the Light
Sky beacon that illuminates eagerness
The clear landscape of the Promise.
The Promise has been slumbering in a bed
Of coal and gold: ‘tis coal and gold.

The Light shall burn the coal
To be fed into the waiting furnace
Where the gold shall be molded into one
Magnificent icon as tall as the azure sky.
‘Tis the longed for icon that shall herald
The historic swing to grandeur’s height.

III

Wherefore lies the heart of grandeur?
Wert this not but a dead man’s wish
Long buried in the hovels of the earth?
Wert this not but a sweetened piece
Of bitter gourd: its stinging taste betrays
Its endless senselessness in the world sensical?

Man! This height of grandeur is the state
Indescribable to the wisest among grandfathers
A million generations stretch: ‘tis a million
Times a million times of pure majestic luster
Only but Inner Selves can comprehend.

‘tis the founded form-being of all
Sublime inner selves that have been struggling
In putrescent marshes of history.
This to the grandfathers is mere dream
Induced by the spirit elixirs of Bacchus.

IV

Rise! Rise it shall
High above the hills and valleys
‘Twards the azure firmaments
This majestic commonwealth of yours, o! Man!
For which freedom-in-life is
A concluded spell of benevolent magis.
Reside shall its spirit in people’s bosoms.

Gone shall be the seismic struggles
Alone for bread as if this were the most
Valued diadem atop the zenith of greatness:
The world shall be its own bread
And man, the luminary figure at last
Whose coming was pronounced before
By a trillion bards of eagles and doves.

Rise! Rise it shal
From where corals had made lands
Where sturdy races have eked out living
And slave they were for others;
No more are they slaves but are free cranes
Atop carabaos their benign carriers.

V

What is reality after all o! Man!
For which you have buried yourself
Millions of times in search for its enigmas?
Is it like spiral moving poles a-clashing?
Maybe, but maybe not. Maybe
‘Tis a swarm of flies that swats
Made festive killings by the dozens
And yet aren’t flies but gems.

When upon each gem Light gently touches
It brings forth radiance to all
Corners of the cosmos: it makes bounds
Anon betwixt its grounded state
And the unbrimmed infinite extent
Apast spaces: ‘tis unbrimmed space
And yet spaceless brims.

VI

Man! A promise made a million times
And delivered a million times makes a million
More than its primeval state: ‘ts a grain
Of sand and the universe made one.
The sea has recognized this secret lore
And had sung it lyrically in melodious tunes
That no one cared to listen to

Save for man-slaves on a dozen mountains.
Mushroom-eaters they are who’d sensed
What the real is: the Promise realized overboard
Its primordial state—a giant that wakes up
From zillions of earth revolutions or slumber:
‘Ti a Being stronger than ever that turns rivers
Into founts of gold, cause for merriment
Atop the nature-world the bed of bread.

VII

Happy, o! happy will be
The suns and stars and moons
And winds and waves

Over your final dawning, o! Man!
Even as the day starts on the sixth hour.

Man! You are the sixth estate:
Risen and made one, freed at last
From tsunamis of disintegrating forces.

Behold! No more forlorn are nature and cosmos
The citadels of true life.
And you, Man, finally regained, revived,
Realized as your guardian and maker.


[Writ. 22 July 1991, Cubao, Quezon City, M.Manila]

WHAT’S THE WORD FOR?

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


Restive is my heart, o! sweetest Friend!
Again has it lifted Will and Reason
Astride vortices of waves from beneath
Ocean’s floors: to you it reaches out.
Is your heart not restive too, sweetest Friend?

Wish I in the eternal moment
In the morrows too wish I
That we gift one another with words
Worth the world’s fauna.
Yet what for are words? They need not be
The best chronicler of the sublime messages
Heart longings of any willful person.

Ah! Words, what loathsome bedfellows
Wert they used to mask as can be
The impeccable messages of the Inner Self
In garbled twangs and phantasmagoric abracadabras.
Nay, had can they be for someone
Who wishes ceaselessly to be in illusions entrapped
For the person who refuses to heed the calls
Of Inner Self the true bank of being
For someone who’s being chased by shadows
Dark shadows of indecision.

Indeed what are words for, spoken?
They aren’t the slightest necessaries
For an authentic reader of the vast book—one’s
Inner Self—made calciform in the Outer
One can’t conceal the message in the sphere
Of action the truest ‘word’ beyond the spoken.

Thou and I, readers of the Book
Let us listen, listen to the murmurs
Of our inner selves.
O! Sweetest Friend, heed the call
Of thy Inner Self!

Heed! Heed its call!
Heed it! Its noblest call
‘Tis music in most stately beauty.


[Writ. 22 July 91, Cubao, Quezon City, M.Manila]

PINATUBO MOUNT OF TRIUMPH

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

Petrified is our inglorious state as people
Crystallized, our hopelessness and shame
We are but loathsome slaves on Planet Earth
Unfit as subject of a stately epic.

A nation of sleepwalkers we are, unblessed
An utterly coveted and sick people of Asia
Wantonly plundered by gluttonous alien Titans
And so too by local lords of similar mold.

Need we rise up from the mortified doldrums
To get back to the folds of Rizal’s grand era
To regain the trust in self built by Bonifacio
To foster again the sublimest nationhood.

Come forth, Pinatubo!
Thunder our valleys and hills
With your majestic voice
On the day of our national freedom!
You are the longed for herald of Apocalypse
Of our dim and stinking state.
Burn down the Sodoms and Gomorrahs of ours!
Demonic icons of imperial lust.
Bury the putrid old world with pyroclastics!
We shall regale the burial with wondrous dirges.

Why ought we wish you with infinite praises?
Why not indeed when you sprinkled vast lands
With ashes: mark of holiness a la Ash Wednesday?
O! majestic mount! You’ve heralded
Soon shall arise a glorious nation in our midst.
The holocaustal tapestry you’ve evoked
‘Tis but the birth pangs of greatness.
This nation, a Sun that others seek for Light
Undying—of justices, wisdom, compassion.

Hail! Sacred Pinatubo Mount of Triumph!


[Writ. 21 June 91, Cubao,Quezon City, M.Manila]

Friday, July 16, 2010

HERALD MY LADY COMING O! MORNING SUN!

poetry, Argonza poetry, Asia, culture, arts, inspiration, literary, literature, Philippines, Philippine poetry, Erle Argonza, technorati, love, Eros, sex, Venus,

By: Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


Tell me O! morning Sun, tell me
What destiny has providenced for every man?
What meaning too behind the arching mills
Of fate whose noble architect humans are?
What more fate in store?
What more treks to traverse?
What further joys to delight in?
What further sorrows to bear?

When knocks again Eros upon my heart
Is this the ultimate hour for the waiting
For her the lovely woman
Foretold a myriad times in dreams?
Foretold too by well-meaning seers?
She, the sporter of the long flowing hair
A-flashed her sight is beneath my mental screens?
She a wondrous damsel though in pains
Conceiver of my first born scion?

So let it be O! Sun! So be it
I wait no more for this foretold of old
Fulfilled shall be my being in her
Fulfilled more as mount of Light I am
With life a-nurtured as will
She be with me.

[Writ. 25 June 1991, Cubao, Quezon City, M.Manila]

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

JUSTICE

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


Everyday is a mortal tablet
upon which is inscribed the expectation
of all
that kings and princes
must exude
wisdom and justice

But justice is facilely broken off
It is a cheap jar bought from
an obscure bazaar
on planet Earth
broken
by kings and princes

[Writ. 04 June 1991, Cubao, Quezon City, M.Manila]

TWILIGHT

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


I fathom not what twilight brings
Beneath the last vestiges of the sun beams
Beneath is the labyrinthine sky
The cosmic basket of all emotions

Twilight is the crucible of moods
Of all sorts, a puzzle it is
To presage which one is first a-floated
Within one’s self,
But to the poet

Only one mood is certain
Only one, the knowledge of which
The poet possesses alone as private estate
‘tis the estate that commands pen again
To fill up blank pages with sensical words
And words even beyond the sensical

Beyond
Twilight’s brimmed expectations


[Writ. 04 June 1991, Cubao, Quezon City, M.Manila]

Monday, July 12, 2010

ON MUSIC

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


That I sing and make music
Brings joy and solitude to the psyche
Praise be to my wise grandfather
Of mathematical and musical genius made
From whom my bard’s mind was crafted.

Music is the holiest mover
It combines all powers of gods
From Olympus and all heavens
It shakes and rattles souls the most.

Music is certainly mathematics
Of metrics and calculus built
For which its maker anticipates
Astride rhythm and rhyme
The sonic bursts from orals and instruments.

Calculated is the world too
In music, a most moved audience
By booming sonics of its trade.


[Writ. 04 June 1991, Cubao, Quezon City, M.Manila]

FEW HAVE HEART FOR THE OVERSEAS FILIPINO

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


Few have heart for the out-migrant
Few recognize the grinding hardships faced
In strange lands
Few sympathize yet so many beg
For the migrant’s gift when home
S/he comes –the rich person
Overnight. Overnight is saved money
Sucked too by bloodsucking kins
And neighbors and all.

Never mind the possible abuses
Or racist exploitations encountered
The compatriots surely have heart
When the migrant gives, when
And only when wine flows
And songs are sung upon arrival, when
Home is filled up by multitudes
Home is fiesta’s venue everyday!

The migrant’s absence makes people
Caricature him/her and kins
As a malignant felon.

No, nobody sympathizes with the migrant
Just wait till s/he arrives, when
The sky showers with Imeldific graces
Happy are kins and friends
Happy is government too
Happy is the merchant
Happy is everyone but
The migrant.


[Writ. 04 June 1991, Cubao, Quezon City, M.Manila]

Sunday, July 11, 2010

A SUM OF PARASITES

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


To serious thinkers an X unknown
is the sum of financial technocrats
and foreign debtors

but to the paupered lot
the sum means
more tasty diets consisting
of liver flukes
of ascaris
of tuberculosis
of kwashiorkor
of bronchopneumonia
of pinworms
of schistosomiasis

A sum of parasites
is always equal to parasites
and nothing less


[Writ. 04 June 1991, Cubao, Quezon City, M.Manila]

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

THE GUERILLA

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


Fine, fine is the guerilla
knows s/he that the hinterland
is an infernal zone
where the enemy’s textbook lessons
seem like lost dots and dazed calculi
in a wildly vast encyclopedia

Fine, fine is the guerilla
s/he the master of warfare’s laws
of cunny maneuvers
amid tricky foliages and fields

The guerilla
Just like culture heroes
Is a sung hero


[Writ. 04 June 91. Cubao, Quezon City, M.Manila]

OF ARTIST AND DUSK

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


O! Eager artist!
Benign sib of the dusk
Vessel of the spirit of imageries

The dusk—
Is this your fraternal twin
Who reminds you always
Of your noble mission?

You are a speaker
And audio system fused
As one
Before the world

Your absence to many means
A worldless world, lifeless life

The dusk always reminds you
That salads of ideas are
Concocting
In your mind
Waiting to be revealed


[Writ. 04 June 91, Cubao, Quezon City, M.Manila]

Sunday, July 4, 2010

MORNING

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


Morning is a wondrous haven
It emboldens me to beg the plants around
Tell me where’s the heavenly gate
That leads me, leads me
To the folds of Aphrodite
With whom I can best fashion queries
About the whereabouts of my sweet
Lifetime partner

For indeed weary had I grown
I am disdained by time and fate
Faulted though I am guiltless
I simply hasn’t seen the least chimera
Of my love desire even if ‘tis were
But a mere chimera


[Writ. 03 June 1991, Cubao, Quezon City, M.Manila]

THOU ART MY BENIGN TALISMAN

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


You sweetest Lady are my benign talisman
A billion bewitching charmers combined
Your Aphroditean countenance makes
The mind-rending world of peoples
A magical Eden alive
No more can poetry fathom
Your limitless charm and glow
You are to me the endless narrative
All epics’ visions fulfilled at last


[Writ. 27 May 91, Quezon City, M.Manila]

Friday, July 2, 2010

(Untitled)

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


Indeed O! sweetest lady
Sweeter still than honey and wine
Whom Dionysos frenzies for delightfully
With whom all men are enthralled by
You gorgeous sight
You are the soothing wave that massages
My tired heart, tired in searching
For you and no one but you

Come forth!
Bring our foreshadowed fusion
To its marvelous close!


[Writ. 27 May 1991, Cubao, Quezon City, M.Manila]

WAR

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


War is the namesake of the islands

A Dantean discernment will not
Permit one to argue that
The archipelago
Is a paradise
Lost or regained

Of the islands’ fetid state
Excrement and humans sanctimoniously fuse
They cajole in ecstatic screams
Over killings and bombings
Gore is everyday’s luscious panorama

We’re brought back to Rome
Here
Where jubilant crowds satiate themselves
With sights of bloody gladiators
In combat

Brought back to Jesus’ Jerusalem still
Since everyone wants to play
Pilate
Guiltless of motives behind
Wars
In hinterlands
In cities

Is gore the imprimatur of honor indeed?
Just like blood is eaten as delicacy?


[Writ. 29 May 91, Cubao, Quezon City, M.Manila]