Minsan, sinusubukan ng panulat kong
magtae ng mga salita.
Pilit hinahasa ang bolpen,
sinasaid ang tinta.

Karaniwan, gusto kong ubusin
ang mga pahina ng aking notbuk.
Kayurin nang husto ang manipis
ngunit pinong papel.

Ngunit madalas sa hindi,
hinihila ako ng pangangailangan
ng trabaho, pag-aaral,
ng aking pamilya.

Madalas sa hindi,
iniisip ko muna ang mga
asayment, kalechehan sa trabaho,
ang ibabayad sa kasera ko.

Madalas sa hindi,
nauuna ang iba kaysa
mga tema, scenario, dayalogo
at anumang kapritsuhan ko.

Kaya pagbuklat pa lang ng notbuk,
pagpatak ng unang tinta,
pagtikatik ng mga ideya,
sumusurender na ang mga salita.#

With No Immediate Cause
by: Ntozake Shange

every 3 minutes a woman is beaten
every five minutes a
woman is raped/every ten minutes
a little girl is molested
yet I rode the subway today
I sat next to an old man who
may have beaten his old wife
3 minutes ago or 3 days/30 years ago
he might have sodomized his daughter
but I sat there
cuz the men on the train
might beat some young women
later in the day or tomorrow
I might not shut my door fast
enough push hard enough
every 3 minutes it happens
some women’s innocence
rushes to her cheeks/pours from her mouth
like the betsy wetsy dolls have been torn
apart/their mouths
menses red split/every
three minutes a shoulder
is jammed through plaster and the oven door/
chairs push thru the rib cage/hot water or
boiling sperm decorate her body

I rode the subway today
and bought a paper from an east Indian man who might
have held his old lady onto
a hot pressing iron/ I didn’t know
maybe he catches little girls in the
parks and rips open their behinds
with steel rods/ I can not decide
what he might have done I
know every 3 minutes
every 5 minutes every 10 minutes
I boughtt the paper
looking for the announcement
there has to be an announcement
of the women’s bodies fond
yesterday the missing little girl
I sat in a restaurant with my
paper looking for the announcement
a young man served me coffee
I wondered did he pour the boiling
coffee on the woman because she was stupid
did he put the infant girl in
the coffee pot because she cried too much
what exactly did he do with hot coffee
I looked for the announcement
the discover of the dismembered
woman’s body
victims have not all been
identified today they are
naked and dead/some refuse to
testify girl out of 10 is not
coherent/ I took the coffee
and spit it up I found an
announcement/ not the woman’s
bloated body in the river floating
not the child bleeding in the
59th street corridor/ not the baby
broken on the floor/

“there is some concern
that alleged battered women
might start to murder their
husbands and lovers with no
immediate cause”

I spit up I vomit I am screaming
we all have immediate cause
every 3 minutes
every 5 minutes
every 10 minutes
every day
women’s bodies are found
in alleys and bedrooms/at the top of the stairs
before I ride the subway/buy a paper of drink
coffee from your hands I must know
have you hurt a woman today
did you beat a woman today
throw a child cross a room
are the little girl’s pants in your pocket
did you hurt a woman today
I have to ask these obscene questions
I must know you see
the authorities require us to
establish
immediate cause

every three minutes
every five minutes
every ten minutes
every day

Tied-up young

sometimes, I just wanna slow it down a bit and feel the vacuity
of things, the small, irreparable things free mortals take for granted.
i miss that when I have all the rubbish I need for the day.
i miss screwing around coz I’ve got no money and the baby needs milk
while his dad needs some cooing and pampering like an old self-indulgent kid.

many times, I think of what would have happened if the balloon didn’t pop
or if I just borrowed the extra cash my friend loaned me to buy a good one.
or if I made the right choice of keeping the baggage, the hard extra
baggage that goes with you throughout lifetime without even a snooze.
i’d think of that while the bastard’s waiting for his second round of tune-up.

most of the time, I get tired of living in this manhole I call home
i miss the life of a pariah I once had and think of what a perfect one
i could have chosen, living in a shelter with no one but my old self
thinking of nothing but food for my stomach and a pillow on my head
but it isn’t fine to mope while the little ones cry their heads off, screaming at me.

i don’t have that time, anymore I’ve got diapers to wash, plates to clean up
carrots to feed, blankets to starch and groceries to buy.
then I’ve got 10 minutes to prepare myself and think of how I look
while my husband scolds me that I don’t look pretty enough for him,
not even for the grocery guy downtown who enjoys his job gawking at ladies’ legs.

i await the time, after sex at night, when the king gets tired and dozes off
then I can go to my own place where everyone thinks I’m still comely
for a woman who’s been ravaged by the same old people every single day.
I stay there till the rodents scratch my back for their next day’s coddle
and I again do my toil, with a voice squealing in my head to get out of this hell.

06/05/01 Balibago, Angeles City

One-Afternoon Stand

Fidgeting, awkward
Looks of desire
We exchange
Kisses, brushing
each other’s skin
Drunken with words
We grieve knowing no
reason enough but these.

Dreaming, love’s
Unconscious happenings
We engage
Tongue exchanging
Body caressing high
with innocent passions
Knowing no other future
Can hold us together.

Leaving, awakened
Minds awhile introxicated
We force
push each away from each
Fearing reckonings and
answers for the great unasked
Knowing with certainty
Nothing of us even mattered.

02/09/01
Balibago, Angeles City

Walt Whitman
I Sit And Look Out

I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all
oppression and shame;
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with
themselves, remorseful after deeds done;
I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying,
neglected, gaunt, desperate;
I see the wife misused by her husband–I see the treacherous seducer
of young women;
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be
hid–I see these sights on the earth;
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny–I see martyrs and
prisoners;
I observe a famine at sea–I observe the sailors casting lots who
shall be kill’d, to preserve the lives of the rest;
I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon
laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
All these–All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look
out upon,
See, hear, and am silent.

Barren Woman
by Sylvia Plath

Empty, I echo to the least footfall,
Museum without statues, grand with pillars, porticoes, rotundas.
In my courtyard a fountain leaps and sinks back into itself,
Nun-hearted and blind to the world. Marble lilies
Exhale their pallor like scent.

I imagine myself with a great public,
Mother of a white Nike and several bald-eyed Apollos.
Insread, the dead injure me attentions, and nothing can happen.
Blank-faced and mum as a nurse.

Writing moments

I feel the need to write
with my head
I feel the need to catch
the words that come flying
across the wind
before they leave me
for another drifter

Rain pours softly
like a song from a past
I could not remember
Sad thoughts come running
through my hands, into thin paper
And I forget to breathe when
tears fail to leave my eyes.

Words come to me like
morning hunger strikes
Subtly first, then gently
eating away sentience
until one can think of nothing
more but the moment
of multicolored themes.

I feel the need to write
While silence fills the second
And I remember to be a stranger
To a world where everything
freely questions anything
Dysfunctionality then
becomes my very nature.

No one joins me in this place.
I lock myself firmly
with a cloud of smoke,
my pen and paper,
my solitude and hunger
As I try to catch the words that
come flying across the wind.

Saglit ng Pagkatha

Hangad ay kumatha
Gamit ang kamalayan
Kailangang mahuli
Ang mga salitang mailap
Na sumasayaw sa hangin
Bago nila ako iwanan,
Ipagpalit sa isa ring
Naghahanap.

Malambing pa ang buhos ng ulan
Tulad ng awit sa isang gunita
Na di ko na rin maalala
Nagpapasaring ang kalungkutan
Sa aking mga kamay,
Na dumadaloy naman
Sa isang manipis na papel
Limot na ang pagsinta
Dahil nakaantabay
Sa mga patak ng luha.

Dumarating ang mga salita
Tulad ng gutom sa umaga,
Hindi matindi sa simula, ngunit
Unti-unting dumadausdos
Sa katinuan hanggang
Maipit na lamang ang sarili
Sa sangandaang sulatin.

Hangad ay kumatha
Habang wala pang imik
Ang pagkakataon
Tulad noong bagong-salta
Pa lamang ako sa isang mundo
Maraming tanong ngunit
Salat sa sagot.
Hindi ko ito matanggap
Kaya minsan akong
Nawalan ng halaga
At dahilan.

Nag-iisa ako rito.
Inaakap ng mahigpit
Ng mga alapaap na usok,
Ang pansulat at sinusulatan,
Pangungulila at gutom,
Habang sinusubukang
Hulihin sa hangin
ang mga salitang
Mailap sa akin.

(ni Myla Torres, salin ni Remir)