Slip of the Pen

The Something of Nothingness

When I write, I write about something — a day in a bastard’s life, a tragic comedy, a comic tragedy, a poem, an essay, a whitepaper, an emotion succinctly portrayed in polysyllable words. Today is different; I can’t find anything to write about. But that will not stop me from writing something, because when you think about it, I can write about nothing and you will see it as something. Here’s the something of this day’s nothingness, captured in less than a minute. Ready?

tick The blankness of the digital page tock staring at you from your monitor tick appalls you, rendering your fingers frozen tock above the keyboard in stupefaction. tick Face it — you can’t write anything, tock much less a dazzling piece tick of literature (literature governed tock by you, omphalos of the world). tick After all, the cursor blinking tock on-screen is your Freudian id, insistent tick and irksome to an extent, prompting tock you to type something, weave tick something from nothingness. tock Heed your blinking id, gratify tick the primal writer in you, delve deep and type, tock type type type, then dress up tick your writing with fonts (times new roman tock or comic sans?), breathe into it tick red passion, green freshness, black tock simplicity, then decide if you’ll tick skew it to the right, to the left, or tock be page-centric as your egoist self. tick Take your time, decorate your writing tock as you would yourself (admit it). tick But when you’re done, better make sure tock it’s good without the appurtenances tick (blame your blinking id!), because tock the unadorned text is nothing but tick you. tock


[Adapted from my poem written this very day, titled "It’s Cliché"]

Inseparable

Inseparable (pic by pepoy ferrer)
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.]

Another Dog Died This Day

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.]

My Two Cents’ Worth, a Two Cents Poem

First Cent:

There’s no way I can describe the utter shock which swept over me when I received the word.

I’ve been writing my name wrong for 19 years.

It’s actually trivial. On the thousands of pieces of paper that I’ve been submitting to school and hundreds of article bylines, I am “Phillip Kimpo, Jr.”

But according to Strunk’s The Elements of Style, it should be “Phillip Kimpo Jr.” See it?

Yes. There should be no comma.

I have been rendered incomplete.

**************

Second Cent:

If you’ve been watching non-primetime TV shows here in the Philippines, maybe you’ve chanced upon those second-rate advertisements about pig vitamins and stuff. Well, it happens that I did come across one, an ad with talking pigs rendered ala Squaresoft/Pixar (albeit a lot lot uglier).

One pig was being fed the ‘ordinary’ brand of vitamins, while another was pigging out (pun intended) on the ’superior’ brand of supplements. Here’s a snippet of the conversation between them, with the oinks discarded (they had female voice-overs):

Forsaken Pig: You’re nothing but a trying hard pig. No one will even think of buying you and your piglets! [munches on dirty food]

Blessed Pig: With the [insert brand name here] vitamins our owner has been giving us, I’ll be fatter than ever and they’ll buy me, not you. [smiles ridiculously]

Forsaken Pig: Tse!

Next scene: the Blessed Pig is aboard a truck, jeering at her less fortunate rival, who is understandably upset. The advertisement ends here, but we can presume that the truck will deliver the Blessed Pig to the vicious, unregulated slaughterhouses dotting the Philippines’ animal-rights-violations map.*

And she’s blessed. How’s that!

Will someone please knock some sense into the ad designer’s noggin?

*in this country, dogs are eaten and pigs are mercilessly, inhumanely whacked on the head until they die. Hm. Let me post my pro-animal rights essay in the future.

**************

The Two Cents Poem:

[It's in Tagalog. You can also find it in the Expressions section of the respected INQ7.net website. It's dear to me -- it's the first poem I've submitted to a reputable institution, and also the first to be published (on the said site, a week after I turned it in).]

Barya
ni Phillip Kimpo Jr.

Habulin,
habulin!

ang baryang gumugulong
patungo sa kanal
na kanina’y nadulas
mula sa munting palad,
ang baryang limos
ng mga nagdaraang tao
na sana’y iaabot
sa mamang fishball sa kanto.
Kalam ng sikmura’y
sasagutin ng gumugulong na barya,
habulin…

at panooring mahulog sa estero.

02:46 NH
Agosto 26, 2004
Lungsod Quezon

**************

It’s three in the morning, and I’m taking a break. Tune in next time for more of this incoherent talk.