Monday, February 27, 2012

ABOARD TRICYCLES, JEEPNEYS, FERRIES

ABOARD TRICYCLES, JEEPNEYS, FERRIES

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


Well they do

Carry you

To your travel’s destination


These tricycles

Jeepneys

Ferries


Hallmarks of tropical Filipiniana

Whose travel trails are mixtures

Of well paved avenues

And dusty rugged roads


They do make your tours

Altogether fascinating and crucifying


Even as the good buses

Flashy yatch and jet planes

That cater your travels

Lead your ocular organs to witness

The tapestry of wretchedness

And inertia of blighted villages

That altogether inevitably erases

The shangrilaic imageries about the tropics

That may gather in your mind

Like clouds over the Sierra Madre

That the Pacific wind eagerly dissolves.


[Writ. 09 Oct. 1987, Proj. 8, Quezon City, M.Manila.]





Sunday, February 19, 2012

CHEERFULNESS

CHEERFULNESS


Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


Cheerfulness

Is never allowed to be dormant

Among children

In whose currents it

Freely flows

When it erupts

Like sunbursts

That all other cosmic bodies

Gladly accept

As life blessings.


[Writ. 09 Oct. 1987, Proj. 8, Quezon City, M.Manila.]



Sunday, February 12, 2012

DANCE NOT ON THE GALLERY’S FLOOR

DANCE NOT ON THE GALLERY’S FLOOR

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago



No one should linger in a gallery

To dance on its floor.

The Cardinal

Has spoken. The clockwork

Of deception has flung open

Its can of worms. Churchwords

Don’t always bear powers

Of ex cathedra. The cardinal is human.


Schoolboys care for ice cream and delicatessen

On their classes’ end

They do not read their books’ pages’ lines

Nor recite oral tests to their masterteacher.

School breaks are not school days.


Guerillas

Are trapped int eh underground.

They do fall

And they’ve fallen before

As before had their minds

Been preset to consume instinctively

Their warehouses’ rummaged goods:

The goods are dwindling and no more

Are these

What peoples

Notice, or wear, or prefer.


Let no one

find Christmas trees

on summertime

not on summertime!


And those songbirds from Siberia

They whose flights to the south

As winter approaches

Curiously add spices to the blowing winds

The wind drafts bear them nearer

To the equator

Where they merge with the life forms

Of the tropics

And then they’d go northward

When the icy days of their homeland dissipate

Into the blasts of warm breezes of summertime.

They only make flights upon

The summons of their wing carriers.


Even ants have trails

That are propagated by the aromatic

Odors oozed by their feet

Or the feet of their advanced seekers

In hot pursuit

Over sweet

Merchandise.


There are no sighs of relief

On painful moments

No mimicking of sufferings

On circumstances of heightened euphoria.


For sooner as the die is cast

It reads aloud the number registered

On its face. It settles

Gracefully on the flat panel board where

It landed with few rattles.


Cortes

The conquistador never epitomized the good

Nor the search for peace

The elusive end of existence.

Christ

Shan’t ever be remolded in a new image

To reappear as his own nemesis.


A glass that holds water

Will show the way to its utility

Drink the water

Drink to live


[Writ. 28 Sept. 1987, Univ. of the Philippines, QC.]




Tuesday, February 7, 2012

ON CRAFTING THE FUTURE

ON CRAFTING THE FUTURE

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago


What is

the promising denouement

of aspirations for betterment

by all the Earth’s dispossessed

if not that

the fidelity

to the visions

they’ve conceived

can unfold

in their nonpassive

creation.


Yes, the future

has shapes and forms

that can be exquisitely

crafted.


[Writ. 27 Sept. 1987, University of the Philippines, QC.]