Crush On The Critic's Board

The subject’s presence is acknowledged--- its absence has been noted--- and so the meeting begins:


Noticeable is the subject’s silence in the noise of numbers and bulls, and when silence is broken it is by laughter. Or a shake of the head that says, “I am in the fracture.” This fracture the subject has felt as books were celebrated, says, “Really, I can no longer exist in the grounds of the young and their experimentations in the language of college drama.” With the older as their torches--- professors of their own soap operas--- as their stormy language houses.


The subject has always been cautioned by the older and more so by the eldest sister then, “Life in the university is not the world.” Nor the word. The subject had nodded and nod still now no longer with a scoff because the subject says, “Look, for the young that is the world.” Or the word, and in the fracture the subject knows that this is true yet not.


Or as Abstract had recently said, “The university is just a speck.” And the subject had laughed and said, “We are now in agreement.” Abstract and the subject had argued for years about this, had even resorted to screams and slurs of arrogance in the past ten years, and the subject saying then to Abstract, “You don’t know shit!”


How many years has Abstract been out of the University Reality? Five years, maybe seven. There, Then---


In the Year of Two Thousand And Nine Shits, the subject had declared to Adamant in one meeting of the Board, “You tell me who are promising or brilliant. Whatever. But they have to produce outside their universities so that I and the others can see if their shit is the shit and we can buy and read their shit.” (The subject then had snuggled onto the back of a geeky spine for a pillow, falling asleep amid beers, jeers, and cheers, mumbling, “Sorry Dude, just so tired from work.”) It is indeed work to re-work maps of languages so that expression feeds you.


----Is the shit, after all, just another speck? That would be swallowed by the turds of bills and telenovelas of the world, unto the constipated word, crapping the NEW or the NEXT. Hail Mudra Mary, Full of Drag Queen Grace, Save the subject from more mentions of “The Next American Essay” in Philippine Nonfiction.


And what is Filipino? The country is the experience of it---- remembered from no electricity that was life then and now it is called “nativist nostalgia for Filipino-Americans”, still a fact in some places in this country amid the booming uploads of images and words, more crap saying “Crap! What are we going to do?!” in a blackout. Remembered because that is what is done as one grows older, and really none can be young forever…So how about a collection for all the victims of this flood, or that massacre, or this impending eruption that all become a tourist attraction? Bravo! More for the chicken-and-pig-innards-munching crowd! Does anyone even remember all the other floods, or all the other massacres, or all the other eruptions, or all the other excretions?


And then the Journal Entry # 6 Now A Verb has said, “I now write and publish poems.” The subject and the now-verb laughed about it. Why, Oh Why Be, Cause----


It is short and that is what time in the real world sometimes can allot for love of the word. Or perhaps poetry has finally stopped bogeying you? True, true, and so the subject has always said, “It is a matter of endurance. Stars burn bright for a time then they burn out, birth crap. So, longevity is the word. And so is love.” And these stories about love in the presses: recycled, romanticized, unreal, hankering for a fuck, to make art of non-event, oh impressed love, oh pressed “CRAP!”


Not “Bullshit”, mind, as is the quick word in Virtual Reality: A faux pas that sparks more bullshit. The point is lost in the slinging of more argumentum ad shitinfinitum. Oh ye fingers donning hats of the EDITOR and CRITIC, remember your vocabulary, that word choice, that tone, what sense is there in your sentences imposing sensibility.


BOO!
BOORS! And so be mindful of what words would come out of your fingers:


Oh “Get real,” the subject had heard that Dead Francisco “Franz” Arcellana would say. Oh “Get a life,” the subject had heard the still-kicking Gemino H. Abad say.
Oh “Get laid,” the subject had heard many say.

In this business of the word: to write first, to put into what words---
PREROGATIVES--- choices made on a certain time. The subject wonders about the value in post-facto crucifixions of the meaningfulness of wit, intelligence, heart, soul, body, memory, form, formulas---


What is done is done and we forge the next for nothing really is new.

The first order of this business has been forgotten: WRITE; DO NOT JUST WRITE OF WORDS THAT ARE NOT YOUR OWN.


And so the subject has been venturing in silence on how to make each word crapped in shit or gold come alive again. The Crush says, “reserve a little space for revision.” Time remembered tells you that the now is not then nor will be----


SENSATION!


The subject is no longer in fracture, but in revision.