Slip of the Pen

Inseparable
by Phillip Kimpo Jr.


The morning mist
Sends shivers down my spine
My hand trembles in the cold
Even as I hold yours,
Yours grip mine.

Both hands shiver
As we wait to cross the street.

Light turns green. Go, walk! – is your cheerful
Shriek.
The morning mist
Numbs my feet. Drag me
To the middle of the street
Where two sides meet
Dangers peak
And the road is
Split.

Your feet walk miles, mine an inch
Hands shiver.
Soothe me. Whisper
Those three words
Now foreign, now dull,
Fire dampened
By the morning mist.

Whisper, whimper
Tug at my hand
Pull me over, cross the divide
Pull me to the other side.

But my hand
Pulls otherwise.


1:30 AM
January 23, 2005
Quezon City


[Yeah, a month-old poem. Picture courtesy of one of my closest buddies, Pepoy. Taken in UP Diliman. The low-resolution scan does great injustice to his superb photography.]

Without him, my life would’ve been in tatters. He is my comrade extraordinaire, having saved my life a thousand times. You’d think I’d be eternally grateful to him, but to tell you the truth, I’d rather live my life without his company.

I call him bestfriend Ventolin. Yes, that Ventolin Inhaler. A certified object of idolatry for asthmatics like me.

I think my asthma has progressed, er, worsened these past years. It all started when I abandoned NBA Live on PC for the real, gritty, hardcourt game of basketball. I’m not that tall, but I can dribble and shoot my balls (damn, what balls?). Then I’d do weights every other day, just to have that Greek masculine physique that completes an athelete. The reason?

Checklist for Vainglorious Human #1292348916:

1) Face — “Mukha ka namang pang-Starstruck eh.” Actually, what they’re insinuating is that I resemble one of the teen idols from that GMA-7 flick. I object. But still…CHECK. (After all, when I was all chubby and silly in my grade school days, I appeared on several ABS-CBN kiddie shows. Don’t you tease me about it!)

2) Intelligence — Although I boast of several failed subjects in my early State U days, I’m still surviving, even grabbing a spot in the Dean’s List one time, so…CHECK.

3) Arts — I’d like to trample my self-esteem and say that I can’t write, but for the sake of getting a passing mark on this checklist…CHECK.

4) Sports — Scrabble? Game of the Generals? Ehehehe. Ah! Sports on PC and the Playstation! Not counted? Shit. So please excuse me while I leave this item UNCHECKED.

5) Physique — Wooow. My eyes see a vast, infinite blank for this item. What glory.

See?

Oh yes, I was on the road to transcendence…rather, checking the last two items off the list. I was becoming a fast learner on the court, with my shooting emerging as my strength. My dreams of rippling muscles were slooooowly becoming reality. But in true tragic fashion, Fate handed me the sweet gift of asthma. Add to that my benevolence in keeping FIVE dogs inside our house, and soon the Ventolin Inhaler became my bestfriend.

Even now as I type this post, my lungs are pleading for another puff of the inhaler. I missed my classes this day as asthma got the better of me. Wait…

::puff::

There you go.

Now, I believe I must excuse myself. I need to rest.

Tomorrow’s a day I’m not going to hand over to bestfriend Ventolin.

[Better late than never.]

Act I

February 14, 2001.

Valentine’s Days in high school are fun. As fun as a jackhammer pounding your heart. As fun as your self-humiliating exercises in stupidity when courting a loved one.

And the only people who understand this perverted ‘fun’ are those who will kiss Cupid’s ass for her (or his) love. Funny.

I submit to you this pathetic excuse for a suitor as Exhibit A. Yours truly.

Two bouquets. One barely surviving. One already wasted, its petals trampled by similarly-eager lovestruck students at the PSHS lobby. And of course, the insanely-expensive Ferrero Rochers, ubiquitous this romantic season. Ready to be sampled by her dormmates.

Valentine’s Days in high school are fun. Waiting for her for three damn hours at the dormitory is fun.

Hey, no problem. Anything for her. Even a kiss on Cupid’s butt (told you so).

And in a few days, the prom. Unlike the more pathetic guys around me, I’ve got a date. The Princess. (That is not her name, commoner, but a true sultanate title. In romantic, fairy-tale fashion.)

“Love is as much of an object as an obsession, everybody wants it, everybody seeks it, but few ever achieve it, those who do will cherish it, be lost in it, and among all, never…never forget it.” — Curtis Judalet


Act II

February 14, 2002.

Love is a luxury. But when your head is all inflated and you’re feeling mighty, it’s an afterthought.

They already call me the ‘King of the Philippines’. A week ago, General Santos City became my throne. Of the thousands of high school campus journalists, I emerged on top.

I don’t need love. My pen is the only thing I need, baby.

Eat my exemplary journalism, Cupid.

Oh, yes. Prom is — again — a few days away. No promdate. Don’t want to have one.

Actually, it’s the Princess who wants to go ’stag’. Not me.

Hah. Her loss.

Er…

Please take me back, Princess!

I am a triumphant loser.

“Do you believe in love at first sight? Or should I walk by again?” — Jane Seabrook


Act III

February 14, 2003.

Third year of proudly exercising my right to become a woman’s slave.

Nick Joaquin would be proud. Imagine — Corsarius, new hero of The Summer Solstice. Tadtarin Part 2.

High school Valentines are over. The University is the new battleground. But yes, same girl. Same Princess.

Three roses. A poem. This’ll do. Though I’ve heard her bestfriend’s going to shower her with bouquets upon bouquets.

To heck with it.

I will NEVER lose.

After all, have you ever heard of a peasant failing to win the princess’ heart? No. It always ends up nice and pretty in fairy tales.

Imagine. THREE YEARS. Sa’n ka pa?

The ending of this tale is going to be perfect.

And yeah, tried to give my own bestfriend a blue rose. Failed. She said her mom and pop would get suspicious.

“I ran into my ex today…then I hit reverse and ran into her again.” - Unknown


Act IV

February 14, 2004.

Bestfriend Sophia is with me. McDonalds Philcoa is our haven.

Minutes ago, we were cavalcading ourselves on the Palma Hall steps. Fighting over what were the correct answers to the Physics exam.

Eat magnetic induction, Cupid.

I wonder how the Princess is faring with her ‘bestfriend’.

“I’m not rushing into being in love. I’m finding fourth grade hard enough.” — Terra (10 yrs. old)


Act V

February 14, 2005.

No money. The bank is brimming with people changing cheques to bucks. I’m not one of them. I’d be nowhere near the middle of the queue when the bank-tellers pack up, presumably for their own Valentines dates.

My salary’s going to be for nuts, after all. Goodbye, Valentine’s Day.

Love’s commercialization is sickening.

That’s why bestfriend Sophia and me are sitting here in a dingy restaurant in UP Diliman’s Shopping Center. Breaded porkchop for me. Icky squid for her.

No roses. No red-pink-rosy Hallmark cards with center-aligned rhyming ‘poetry’.

I said: No money.

Commercialization is optional.

To paraphrase the late and the great Jose Garcia Villa*, “Always and always the Cupid astir / Ages and ages assailing man the fair / Assuaging now afflicting now man the alone / Stuff that rubber arrow into your fat arse!”

Belated Happy Valentine’s Day to y’all.

*Please, esteemed poet, do not go a-rolling in your grave. Please.

Who loves fire?

No, not me — you won’t find arsonist tendencies within this writer. Well, I admit that maybe as a kid I had; after all, I used to re-enact the destruction of the Spanish Armada in my bath. I neatly arrayed tens of paper boats into two sides facing each other in the tub. I would then get into a matchstick-lighting spree, throwing the flaming sticks at the boats as if they were darts (Exocet missiles, baby!). In this way I simulated a naval ‘battle’, which only ended once both ‘fleets’ were burnt to the water. I guess who ever emerged ‘triumphant’ in such a battle would’ve had a decidedly Pyrrhic victory.

But when I grew up, here in the urban sprawl where buildings catch fire as easily as men catch the cold virus, I came to fear fire. I came to shun its gleeful destructiveness.

Who loves fire?

I don’t. But I grudgingly respect it. I am in awe of its searing, blazing fury.

An ancient Greek thinker once held fire in the utmost esteem, viewing the element as the origin of all things. Every other substance in the world can be exchanged for fire, and vice versa. If fire can destroy, then fire can forge as well. Out of the crackling, chaotic, eternal flux of the burning flame, order arises.

Quite similar to my personality, as the blog quiz below justly presents (from Blogthings.com):

Your Element Is Fire

Your passion and emotion are as obvious as the brightest flame. You make sparks fly, and your passion always has the potential to burst out. You are exciting and creative - and completely unpredictable. You sometimes exercise control, and sometimes you let yourself go. Friends describe you as sensitive, spirited, and compulsive. Bright and blazing with intensity, you seem mysterious and moody to many.

And, if you’re a role-playing slash fantasy junkie like me, you’ll be interested in the following test:


Find Your Element
mutedfaith.com

[In Tagalog: Sakto!]

Another Dog Died This Day
(in memoriam)
by Phillip Kimpo Jr.


all this I saw
as the jeepney passed him by:

the blood wasn’t as crimson as I thought it would be
it had a purplish tinge, but
blood nonetheless.
the dog wasn’t as dead as I thought it would be
he was twitching spasmodically, legs sticking out into the air,
       broken, twisted in a macabre moment, but
dead nonetheless.

carefree and carefree he must’ve been, running through the street
careless and careless was the man behind the wheels, who
       slammed his car into carefree dog.

even as the dog’s life twitched away
his red snout pointed upwards, his eyes pierced the skies
his head shook convulsively, as if
laughing.

this pleasant, sunny day
another dog went to heaven
laughing at men’s
frailties.

10:18 AM
February 10, 2005
Quezon City

[God, I shouldn't have peered outside the jeepney.]

What makes a villain?

I believe it’s all relative. There aren’t any clear, delineating marks between what we usually brand as ‘villainous’ traits and the ’saintly’ ones. Decreeing a definition of what is wicked or not for the whole of humanity is like having faith in the existence of the amaranth; it simply doesn’t exist. For example, people like to think (myself included) of Hitler as the penultimate villain in history, but in all probability he might be condescendingly regarding all of us as miscreants in whatever afterlife he’s dragged himself in.

Absurdly enough, talking about ‘villains’ brings to mind the girl which I courted for three years, centuries ago (see my related post). During that awfully-long time, I placed her atop a pedestal, a princess worth my life and much more. (Uh, I guess the ‘much more’ means dozens of short stories and poems, one of which was a five-page ode for her 18th birthday.) But as is cliche for love stories, the pedestal came crashing down one day.

Don’t hate me for this, but I’d be more of a jerk if I won’t admit that she instantly became a villain in my life. At least, just for one or two weeks after she spurned me. And hey, it wasn’t a one-sided deal — I learned that she was growing close with another guy all the time I was trying to win her heart. I unknowingly fulfilled the role of a pest, a devourer of her time, time which she could’ve blissfully spent with the other guy. Maybe I was a demon in her life, too. (Not that it really mattered, because they ended up lovers in the end.)

The day we parted ways was a nadir for our friendship, and at the same time a pinnacle for marking each other as ‘villains’. The villain-stuff wore off as time passed by (at least for me), but unfortunately we haven’t really talked much after that day. We still catch glances of each other in UP, but absolutely no exchange of words, no perfunctory how-are-yous. She only greets my bestfriend, Sophia, who’s with me most of the time.

I tried chatting her up for the first few months or so, but when she wasn’t responding, I quickly got tired and gave up. I’ve moved on, so there’s no reason to waste time trying to initiate a healthy conversation with a person who wants to keep her mouth shut. My friends hazard this silly guess that maybe she’s finding herself guilty for being a one-time villain in my life. They say, after all, she made you cry for three damn years. They say, that’s why she can’t look straight into your eyes.

Really now. I love being the guy that everybody loves to hate, and so I must discard their notion.

She was the heroine, and I was the villain.

*****
And if I’m right about that, then I’m a…

What Type of Villain are You?
mutedfaith.com

Corsarius: A Self-Proclaimed Jaded, Unfeeling Bastard. But still, this happened to me.

*****

It was supposed to be another humdrum day.

It all began with another boring commute to the university, aboard an FX taxi*. A half-hour spent on the road, listening to the radio, looking out of the window and seeing the stories of humanity unfold around me. Only my musings kept me company — the driver was muttering a curse about traffic policemen, another passenger was humming absently, and to my left sat a young woman (I assumed she was young), all complete strangers.

I didn’t bother to even give the girl a sideway glance. It isn’t my nature to go staring at people, especially at women. I guess I’m a shy boy, your quintessential torpe; I sat there benumbed, unable to observe her from the corner of my eye, even if the sweet, hypnotizing scent of her perfume was all-too tempting.

Believe me, the only thing which kept me from going crazy right there in the FX was the thought that she: 1) wasn’t a beautiful girl, 2) didn’t have the soft, angelic, ivory features that accompany the stereotype of a “beautiful girl”, 3) and if she was that pretty, she was a spiteful lady with demonic sneers that starkly contrasted her angelic face.

The FX taxi trudged along, and the girl went out of my mind, until –

“Sa tabi na lang po.” The vehicle screeched to a halt, meters away from the escalator ascending to the Quezon Avenue MRT station.

It was her. She actually spoke! What. A. Sweet. Wonderful. Voice.

She shifted towards me. “Excuse me,” she softly whispered. I suddenly realized that I was the jerk between her and the car door. I opened it, and got out to let her pass.

We came face to face with each other.

1) She was a beautiful girl. I WAS WRONG.

2) She had the soft, angelic, ivory features that made her a true stereotype of a “beautiful girl”. I WAS WRONG.

Cross Items One and Two. Item Three was still a mystery. But I WILL BE RIGHT.

I stepped sideways to let her pass. She did likewise. We ended up face to face once more.

Repeat the above routine for fifteen damn seconds.

Unbelievable? Believe it. Surreal? It happened. Stuff of pulp fiction? I ended up like pulp, after this:

“Ah..” her voice trailed into uncertainty. Her lips started to curl into my great prediction — a spiteful, demonic sneer. I waited for doomsday to smack down upon me.

She smiled. In stupefying, heavenly fashion. “I’m so sorry,” she said in the sincerest tone you will ever hear.

Chuck Item Three into the waste bin. I WAS WRONG.

“Ah.” It was all I could manage. She stepped sideways one last time, and walked away towards the direction of the train station.

*****

The FX taxi whizzed past the MRT escalator, even as I craned my neck in a futile attempt to see the stereotypical-girl-with-angelic-features-and-heavenly-smiles for one last time as she ascended into heaven, er, the station.

A day after, I’m still having trouble twisting my neck. The pain is unbearable.

February 2, 2005 is a day which shall live in infamy. Stupid day.


*FX taxi - a Toyota Tamaraw FX used as a public transport vehicle. Slowly taking over the streets of Metro Manila.