Adam at
Hahaha! Binlog mo na yung notes mo from last night?
Reply:
Hindi pa. Lalabas yun baka by thur. Si Joel nagtampo ata konti dun sa last eh. Mukhang I was dissing it raw. Asus, si Manoy tampopot. Hahaha.
Adam:
Haha! Oh well. Ako, kahit icriticise mo, I’d still think it’s funny!
Reply:
Hahaha…Sabi ko comedy kako eh. Hayaan mo, gawin kong obvious yun entry, may malaking caveat: read when high therefore funny. Hahaha.
My stint as A Rebelling Critic Without A Disclaimer:
A foreword for my Manoy Joel Toledo
so that he won’t think I’m ‘dissing’ the 18th
because I like you and I admire your dedication to this project, fostering a writing community with all its joys and horrors that bring joy at least to me.
I appreciate it so much that I make it a point to come on Happy Mondays, traversing the deadly river of traffic from Bundok Makati to
Of course I exhale “Thank you God and MTV!” when I arrive just on time, with the reading starting late as usual because poets are not really all-the-time-rock-stars but people who have jobs, can be drowning in traffic, and may have Indian-blood too.
I had a migraine the whole night, by the way, and I was still suffering withdrawal symptoms from the painkiller I took for my dysmenorrhea the day before.
This is how that monthly cycle works: if you were watching me, you would see that dude whom Edward Norton had made to bite the gutter and then crushed his head with his boot in American History X. [And you don’t definitely say “Yeah!” this time.] But I’m that dude and practically begging yummy Edward Norton to “parang awa mo na, papa, crush me na, please, thank you.”
I just hee-hee-hoo or HEE-HEE-HOO-FUCK-YOU that dysmenorrhea-pain away. Sometimes pain breaks me [and it breaks my heart to see everyone around me feel so helpless] so I have to take pills that would kill it.
Of course, these painkillers would trigger a super headache which we call a migraine. And the only thing that would take that migraine-pain away is to take the same pills that would bring the same migraine when they wear off.
Puts a whole new perspective on “vicious cycle”: it’s Sidly Vicious and of course, these pills are so guerilla-addictive. Such is the nature of third and fourth generation pharmaceutical drugs.
So I couldn’t pop or inject Tramadol HCl and be blessedly drugged in a very dark room or poised over a toilet bowl to vomit an overdose and my splitting head out because it’s a Happy Monday!
Now think of this 18th Monday happening on some Happy Mondays and I had to listen to Angelo Suarez screaming.
I pray that someday he will have a female reproductive system.
Or that he stops playing gymnastics soon and just get down to writing.
Magaling siya naman kasi eh.
Sayang naman.
Traffic, Withdrawal, Migraine, Talking to people about this and that: I couldn’t even scream in pain in my head because that would be painful. I even stood swallowing bile while facing fatality from a glaring supernova spotlight and read my smiles because I was asked to.
That, Manoy, is how much I appreciate you and Happy Mondays.
Walang issue, ha?
Ya-Ya!
Anyway:
The “obvious” pun was in reference to Adam and my discussion of Angelo Suraez’s third ART/iFACT/ifICE installment because Adam had actually bought that book last Happy Monday.
You know I like what I like and I don’t like what I don’t like, based on my framework i.e. poetics i.e. standards in life. I don’t call people “stupid” just because they don’t agree with me. Well, maybe sometimes I do when it’s obvious that what I’m saying is universal and your planet is in another universe.
Enough said…except this one [refer to highlighted lexical gymnastics above] made me feel like some poor clueless damsel in a damnsel costume on my way to a Christmas party and gunned down in a drive-by shooting by some crunked ghetto thugs.
At least where I grew up or in
And the poor clueless damsel in a damnsel costume gurgles out blood while choking on it like Tyra Banks in the movie Higher Learning: “WHY?”
Or maybe the poor clueless damsel in damnsel distress should be like that African American lady in “National Security”, slapping the hell out of Steve Zahn, “Didn’t your Mama teach you not to kill your Mama!?”
And I bet you a book you really want that someday Angelo Suarez and I will end up being good friends.
And maybe someday I’ll make a blog all about “I LOVE YOU JELLO!” and make him uber famous. Wait, I am already making him famous. Oh well.
And Adam thinks I’m getting soft.
And the rest is history.
Highway:
Adam David
Adam gets heckled when he explains the constraints of his poems because otherwise they won’t be appreciated--- especially if it’s for oral reading. He’s heckled because we already know what a tautogram is and such.
I appreciate this gesture though because I always think of people like my Ma who might be in the audience and they don’t know what we know. At least, they’re given that token point of reference. We are all writing to share our insights and jokes to them in the end anyway (and not just to the members of this magical literary circle), right?
Anyway, the poems are dominantly visual and will be largely appreciated by magical people but I found the last very funny. And the 3rd and 4th sounded good.
Whenever I think of Adam and his Paraluman variations, I always think that it’s the epitome of “pounding poems into form.” Brilliant paradox: PoMo in sensibility and treatment but pounded into form.
Now, how many writers or poets can really do that and get away with it? Ever even tried writing a sonnet or a sestina that made sense and that people would remember? How many free-verse poets can write in form?
And he’s still evolving.
I’m waiting for where he will take me.
As to why he is what he is now?
Thank the comic book “Punisher”. And his thank-you-award speech someday would be: “Thank you…thank you…mas okey and bumenta ang fuck you ko kesa kay Jello” with a smile.
Cool siya eh, bakit ba?
Ya-Ya!
Joel Toledo
The end line was an atomic-word-bomb i.e. one that makes me think. The second poem was like a Poetry/Ars Poetica/Modern Poetry/And-More that almost made me cry, as in iyak dahil nahipo ako, na-touch ba.
He also had heckled Adam with something like, “These are new poems and they’re like haikus, you know with
And of course we and Adam laughed.
It’s funny, ano ba?
Ya-Ya!
Kash Avena
I apologize, I couldn’t hear. The migraine had sprung on a wave of deafness. But, welcome to my space and I hope when you link it, you won’t use my real name. Kasi, ikaw makukulit ng stalkers ko.
Next time? I promise to stand in front of one of the speakers even if I had a migraine. Mabalos!
P.S. And payat mo, magpataba ka! More Pale Pilsen!
And the elves and dwarves go “Ya-Ya!”
Marge De
Ang taray naman ng mukha ng batang ‘to. An attractive vibe about her though. Read an excerpt from a story “The Head”. (Oh my head, my fucking head, huhuhu.) Good tone and good variation in tone in the reading. Use of sibilance in one line is brilliant. What’s the dominant voice in the head? Where is “The Head” taking me? (Oh my head, my fucking head, huhuhu.)
Does she have a series of stories on body parts? This one’s “The Head”. In PSF3, it was about semen. Great idea! I’ll make a story about a talking penis (like that Potato Chips or V-Cut commercial) and we can all start the whole new genre of KripYuson’s term “Dick Lit”.
Ya-Ya!
Douglas Candano
His disclaimer (and he said so): I read in monotony. If I’m going to butcher someone’s work, it might as well be my sister’s.
He read Catherine Candano’s “Naming Archipelagos” (which I had silently read in bed a couple of nights ago so I knew the poem.)
He butchered it, all right.
I hear that the butcher is a good fictionist. [I had read his story in PSF1 and it sounded didactic to me]. And I saw that the butcher was better at that eye-contact where Kristos Mon (in our teasing) had failed with Kash.
Butcher of poems trumps Poet and the butcher is a Fictionist.
Ya-Ya!
Rock Drilon
Rock, baby, rocks…tick, tick, tock.
And Sir Rock had officially begun the poems-written-on-a-tissue movement.
At nadadagdagan ko ang kita ni Sir dahil sa bill ko every Happy Monday kaya can-afford siya to support Happy Mondays.
Ya-Ya!
Chingbee Cruz
Soulful.
That night while I read, I saw her nodding. After, I laughingly asked, “Ma’am, pumasa ba?”
She nodded again and laughed, “Diyan ka na pala interested ha?” in reference to the topic of the two poems: womanhood. Those I wrote for her class were some of the last I had written (and that was in 1999 or 2000) and they were definitely not about womanhood.
I laughed, wanting to quip, “Ma’am, sa infidelity with a waitress ka na pala interested ha? Uuuuy…” but I didn’t because she’s my second poetry teacher kaya---
Ya-Ya!
John Torres
had a read a very funny poem written in taglish by his guy “friend”. It was about meeting the nanay, tatay and siblings and the guy “friend” was given pansit, and made use of “ngunit, subalit, datapwat.”
We were all teasing him:
Oh John who’s your guy “friend?”
Is it John Lapuz or “Sweet” who likes to use ngunit, subalit, datapwat?
John ha? Galing kang Ateneo high school di ba?
Wag mong sabihin ikaw ay---
Ya-Ya!
Pancho Villanueva
said, “Wala akong dalang
Pancho’s poem “from a tissue with love” is in social-realism mode, as real as the words he used like “rugby” or as social as “kulangot”.
When in doubt over what you’re reading, use Jello-Tactics and suddenly scream, “THIS IS A TWO-MINUTE POEM BECAUSE I SAY SO!”
[The suicide bomber in the movie “The Kingdom”: Ya-Ya!]
Andrea Teran
wants to be chatty in her new poems (she said so). “Smoke” reading has definitely a better tone this time for me, made use of some distortion in the rhythm and had good end lines.
The winner is: her reading of her CNF piece entitled “When it rains, it pours” and it’s about women’s sex in this country told from a scientific method ala Ms. Tapia.
And I have the first ever printed copy with matching inserts and a dedication.
[Fyi to the Strawberry Generation]
Ms. Tapia is from Iskul Bukul, a sitcom in the 1980s-early 1990s which made Tito, Vic, and Joey--you know, like those pips from Eat Bulaga--- and other alumni famous. For reference call GMA 7 and ask for the I-Witness documentary on Iskul Bukul.]
I laughed and laughed while Adam kept on heckling me, “Nag-aagree oh!”
How can I not laugh ergo agree with lines like:
“…Now, ladies, I am sure you have noticed that unless we have steady partners, people expect us to be chaste—and chaste I might add--- and when we do choose to have some casual, recreational intercourse, the men expect us---with a certain dread of course, but expect us nonetheless--- to act like some version of Glenn Close in that movie, Fatal Attraction…”
[Fyi to the Strawberry Generation]
“Fatal Attraction” is what your generation calls a “classic”,
just like Kenny Rogers being part of Classical Music.
Ya-Ya!
Text message to Adam:
Hahaha! Natuwa naman ako dun. For the record, natutuwa akong kausap ka, ever since naman nun mas bata ka pa. Hahahaha.
[He was only 17 or 18 at that time, by the way, fresh out of high school.]
Adam:
Ako rin, actually, natutuwa pag kausap ka. Hahahaha! Drama!
Reply:
Hahahaha. At least di putang inang emo.
By the way:
What’s the etymology of “diss” anyway?
You think Sir Jimmy Abad knows?
I’m imagining Sir Jimmy saying:
“To ‘Diss’ comes from the word ‘dismiss’ in this language created by former slaves-- in their struggle to be free from a vernacular of slavery (and remember that vernacular means in Latin ‘to speak the Master’s language’)---
“And what’s this language? No, not Latin, kaibigan. It’s called Rap, Hip Hop and sometimes R&B--- thought to be cool therefore imitated by the not-so-former Masters in the Land of the Free.”
“Ay, ‘gay--- ang history nga naman--- son of a gun!”
Ya-Ya!
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