(3 poems written sometime in May 1991
during the Silliman National Writers Workshop
at Dumaguete, Negros Oriental)
(photo by Storm Crypt from Flickr)
Night of The Rabble-Rousers
Under a mercury lamp
In front of Father Tropa’s white house,
By the sea off Dumaguete,
Gather a crowd of bystanders
Around bible-clutching ministers,
Local sages, native philosophers,
And self-styled prophets of doom
Engaged in a free-for-all match
Of rhetorics, semantics,
Home-brewed knowledge, and folk beliefs
About the myths and mysteries
Ever shrouding the life of Christ.
From a distance,
On top of the concrete seawall,
Over heads and shoulders of the crowd,
I watch with amused delight
The endless bursts of wisdom,
Strange revelations,
Esoteric facts and fiction
That send strong surge of friction
Electrifying the soggy summer night.
Suddenly the lamp expires.
The rabble-rousers do not mind.
The demagoguery goes on unperturbed.
Behind me I hear the sea waves laugh
As they lap the craggy rocks.
Swish. Swoosh. Swash.
Even the quarter moon strikes a sheepish smile
As a balut vendor cries his eggs out
And a tricycle sputters fast -
Its passengers shouting
Obscenities at the crowd.
Night At The Breakwater
By the breakwater near the pier,
A mother and child in rags
Sleep soundly in a battered pushcart
Parked behind makeshift stalls
Selling puso, tocino barbeque, and beer
As disco music blare
From cassette players everywhere
And tricycles roar and sputter,
Weaving in and out of the crowded pier.
Passengers. Well-wishers. Bystanders.
Vendors. Hawkers. Peddlers.
Farmers. Traders. Stevedores.
Boxes. Crates. Cargoes of all sorts.
Wares and merchandise.
Tons of copra. Sacks of sugar. Rice.
Baskets of fruits and vegetables.
Clucking fowls. Wailing livestock.
A lively night market or so it seems.
Another night of pier overload.
On a roughly hewn bench I sit.
Prop my elbows on a weathered table.
And ask for a bottle of ice-cold beer
Plus three sticks of tocino barbeque.
I do away with the grimy glass,
Preferring to guzzle it out
Straight from the brown bottle’s mouth
As I relish hot bits of roasted pork
Soaked in peppery soy sauce and vinegar.
The guys beside me are getting loud.
One kicks a dog by its ass
That sends it scampering into the crowd.
Another one starts to sing and dance,
Holding an invisible mike in his hand.
The other one bursts in laughter
As he sprays with beer-laced urine
The unsuspecting rat nibbling morsels
Below the littered breakwater.
But to me, after the sixth bottle,
The moon appears to be a beer bubble
Tossed up by the frothing sea,
Now hovering between the two dark horns –
The Cuernos de Negros,
Vaguely lending a dull sheen
On thin blotches of salt
That have surreptitiously formed on my skin.
Perfumed Dumaguete Night
Rambling down a dimly-lit street,
I hear a plaintive kundiman strain
Wafting in the night’s humid air.
I stop
And silently stand
Under the greenish bloom
Of an ylang-ylang tree
Whose sinuous fragrance
Reach out delicately
To the sad tinklings of ivory keys
Trailing out of a lace curtain
Between capiz window panes
And hesitantly clinging
To the curvilinear iron grille.
The stream of smoke
From the cigarette between my fingers
Curl up in ephemeral vines;
And, by the incandescent glow
That filters through the square
Translucent capiz shells,
Intertwine with scent
And harmony in mid-air -
Only to gently fade away
As a tartanilla clip-clops
With lovers
On a nocturnal promenade
By the boulevard,
By the sea.
