pilipinapoems

Angela Martinez Dy

Contents

Approaching Paradise: Manila Memories Submerged in Seattle (1999) 4

tao natin: a poem for my peoples (2001) 8

Paradise Revisited (2004) 14

Tribu (2006) 16

Holiday (2007) 20

Manila, My Manila (2009) 24

About the Author 27

For my mother, aunties, and grandmothers

who refused to settle

© 2012 Angela C. Martinez Dy

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i am sorry how can i help you i am sorry... the same feeling i got when that lady came up to my father downtown and asked for fifty cents for coffee so she could sit in a Denny’s all night because she was cold but what do you do when the same evening there is an exposé on Hard Copy or was it Inside Edition about a professional panhandler who put three daughters through college and who has a house bigger than ours my dad says for waking up every morning at eight and sitting on a street corner holding out a paper cup to passers-by or when my tita tells me that we might not want to give very much money to the old lady with the emaciated cheeks and skin hanging off her bones because she could have possibly rented that baby for the day in order to incite more pity and therefore collect more pera...it’s all about those benjamins baby...which is what Puff Daddy told us right when he got famous right when all those people were worshiping him as a god and i bought his CD not because i liked it but because i figured it would add prestige to my collection and i kept thinking that i should at least try to sell it or something seeing as how i never listened to it but at least i got it in Manila so i saved a few bucks on total cost...

and i’ll bet you an eternity that our paradise was not mine not even yours just a tropical island jungle paradise lost which happy couples browse through in a myriad of travel brochures but they choose instead to go to Acapulco or Hawaii because those places don’t induce as much guilt...but i want to stay here because i drink coffee and love the rain though coffee has been compacted for my convenience into corner stands and giant bookstores where the employees all smile the same manufactured grin as they ask how i am doing today even when i know that they don’t really care and i wonder why they have nametags when no customer ever seems to call them by their first names...sort of like those salesgirls in Manila who appear out of nowhere and surround you like vultures circling, waiting for their next victim...i mean customer…it’s just as well, i suppose.

and now they have a chain of Starbucks Cafés in Makati Metro Manila and we pass them and i feel empty inside waiting for August 22nd to come so i can climb aboard and fly back to the city where Starbucks and grunge and i was born...and as i think of grunge i remember a time when a girl from Kansas asked me why i didn’t wear flannel shirts and carry a picture of Kurt Cobain in my wallet...and i told her that grunge died in ‘94 along with Nirvana’s lead singer and i was only eleven years old, not mature enough to appreciate the angst expressed in HERE WE ARE NOW... ENTERTAINERS...which was the only Nirvana song i ever knew anyways

Approaching Paradise: Manila Memories Submerged in Seattle (1999)

i struggle as i search in vain for paradise lost a confusing wave of endless conversation merging and molding, molding and moaning assimilating and obscuring after melting in that famed black pot filled with the stars like the ones i used to see in your eyes filled with the stripes like the ones that used to shelter only the imprisoned only the unfortunate whose words became liquid and spilled out of their mouths onto my paper as i, an impressionable youth, absorbed them all until i came to the conclusion that i only had to hear what i wanted to hear even though you pleaded with me to listen to the undistinguishable sounds made by the praying chanters - no, wait - chanting prayers holding their heads and rocking slowly to themselves while the ragged homeless sleep undisturbed in the church at Baclaran where i go to buy scapulars because my friends asked me for pasalubongs and i being eager to please readily agreed because i could spare a mere ten pesos apiece

i reminisce on this as i think about the cancellation of A.S.A.P. my Filipino variety show that linked me to the islands every Saturday at midnight and whenever i watched it i felt sick to my stomach as my heart told me i want to go home i want to go home but my brain contradicted you were just there in the summer and when you were there you still complained of wanting to go home you wanted to go home well here you are and now you want back to the tropics back to your jungle roots back to another type of paradise lost

and this is your home my mind said to me as i could not establish what it was that i wanted either the red, white, and blue of an American flag or the red, white, and blue of a Filipino one there is no placewith the best of both worlds tied in a knot of contradiction when a beggar stands outside the car window carrying the type of baby for which you see Sally Struthers ask for donations on channel 7...only twelve cents a day can save the life of a poor child in the Philippines...

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i struggle as i search for paradise lost in the midst of rambling mp3s and my sister’s laughter i cannot concentrate i cannot see how do you expect me to listen to you when i cannot even hear myself let alone remember the pain or learn the history...? you act shocked and gasp in disbelief when you are informed of my blend of colors but you try to cover your surprise when all i wanted was to be able to respect you as i sat in a pew every Sunday morning making paypay as the priest preached to me in Taglish which i didn’t always understand because he was too close to the microphone and his words came out muffled like those of my Chinese grandfather who interrupted my daily silence with phone calls containing only an inquiry of how i was...that’s all...and of course i couldn’t tell him how two months was too long in a place that i loved but was not my home...not my home...though it has its own benefits i missed my mother i missed my father i missed my friends i missed being able to walk down the street and not be stared at as a cultural oddity, a sideshow freak whom the lalakes in Megamall automatically thought was easy because they could tell i was American...so they’d ask me for my phone number while one of their cohorts slipped behind and tried to feel me...not like “can y’all feel me...” but you know... and it was then that i decided i would never go back to the mall alone. because inside at four in the morning i’d curl up in my grandfather’s chair in the only airconditioned room in the house at that time of night and write to release my anger write to release my pain write to release my frustration write to hide my loneliness from the world words that i hoped would sustain me until the end of the summer. words that in no way expressed how ecstatic i felt when i finally understood that Johnson and Johnson commercial or how grateful i was when my aunt gave me her tagalog-ingles ingles-tagalog dictionary from the seventh grade or the satisfaction that came on the night of the father-daughter dance when my dad asked me what was wrong and i could tell him sasabihin ko sa iyo mamaya po because i didn’t want the girl next to me to understand...and if that’s hiding behind a culture then i am sorry because it was something i needed to do, though it gave me an odd sense of breaking the laws of life and then needing someone to post my bail i am sorry how can i help me now i am sorry... for not knowing exactly who to blame just as you lay the blame on me i can lay the blame on myself even though i am not sure if it is entirely my fault or maybe partly yours for giving me the notion that it is a peaches and cream world and then i come to find out that it is really more like seaweed and gravel it hits me like a head-on collision, an impact of full force that almost hurts physically but not as bad as running around in circles and

slipping and tripping and falling and hearing the snap that came when i broke my leg and i had to be carried as a helpless baby and i cried and cried because they couldn’t get a hold of my nanay and my daddy was in Hawaii on business and i felt so lost, so lost...and when they finally gave me the anesthesia i remember feeling like i was falling onto a bed of clouds and floating down the hall into a huge sterile white room with a cold metal table and being too drugged to be scared...to out of it to feel fear...at least not from the emptiness of medicine. when it rains when i cry the tears fall down and i make no move to stop the barrage of imagery the figurative language that comes so easily with every essay but no one ever asks me to write about conflict so i had to make it up for myself so i could write and do it by hand so you have more time to think about what comes next in this lifetime

in my search for paradise lost swimming in the crystal clear blue waters at Matabungkay the fish swirl around me and i can see all the way to the bottom of the ocean all the way to the bottom of the ocean which is something that could never happen here because the water in our man-made lakes is dirty very dirty but walking around Greenlake when you are three years old you don’t notice the filth your only goal is to feed the ducks for tuppence a bag and if Mary Poppins is practically perfect in every way why can’t i be too like the citizens of Argentina thought of Evita the opposite of what citizens thought of Imelda the lady with the electric dancing shoes as i took a tour of Malacañang Palace i didn’t get it it didn’t hit me i didn’t get it i didn’t understand i wanted to stay there yet i wanted to come home come back to cheeseburgers and milkshakes from a land of rice and toyu that stinks up the house on a Sunday morning but tastes uy sarap naman for Sunday dinner. i struggle as i search for paradise lost not today but tomorrow not tomorrow but today or was it yesterday when i couldn’t figure out what it was that i was missing as songs ran through a jukebox in my head i just wanted comfort all i wanted was a peace place a paradise where quiet could produce energy and the energy could change the world

tao natin: a poem for my peoples

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(2001)

tao natin our people

in the back of my mind i know you.no introduction necessarywith near perfect clarityi hear voices passing knowledgeof your long forgotten storiesi feel your outstretched handsbent in offeringknow lowered eyelids becoming minelike yours oncecast in shame

the seas between us are burning.

i feel the heat of your lifebloodpulsing behind my eyelidsyet my vision is blurredyet i have not heardthe syllables of a forgotten freedom tonguewind themselves into my consciousnesswhen they doi will breathe you all too soon.

tao natinin the depth of my heart i know you.your emotions bridge these oceansthat stand as walls between your peoplethe waters are not calm but all enraged with the stages in which you found usthere is much cause for you to be angryand your anger, like your energycan be neither created nor destroyedonly transferredfrom your own state of mindthrough the years and time

so that i

feel it myself nowhow the seas between us are burning.

i could not tell you the exact time when we became dividedi know once long agowe were bound by our roots to the islandswe were one people isang taoand even though there existed many tonguesour young still loved each othereach one knew the otherinherentlyfor the fibers of our muscles were tied tightly to our brothersand never cutbut when “seasons change i guess mad things rearrange” (L. Boog)and the strings that wove our fabricthey changed from strings to chainsmigrated to our brainsmoved from our muscles to our wristsfrom our marrow to our lipswe were bound and we were gaggedand our family is missed

with words unspoken our bond was brokenby centuries of may-i-help-you-pleasemethodologydivide and conquer strategybuilt man-made burning seas of jealousy between our families“To make it in this countryyou have learn to get ahead.” so we decapitate our values and act American instead

i could not tell you the exact timeor place when unannounced forcesbegan dividing my racein the guise of organized religion or of aid to impoverished nations

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or of need for a naval station or of subduing savage natives

savagery is a learned behaviorhow we were taught to climb the walls like animalssurvival of the fittest made applicableour days numbered intangibleour kinship made invisiblewe could no longer sound outour similaritiesturned us against each otherlearned to divide and conquer tested the inherent strengthof our ancestryyet one people still were wenot one whole but still people

oceans away and decades ago

through my veinsthicker than water …your sons and daughters flowdistended members of your familythey will know youand how we share this one bodycome timewhen they decideto ask for changethey too will count the stars they too will count the stars they too will count the starsand find in them your faces.

tao natini am sorry we divided youyou are stronger as onelike the one sun with eight rayswe are a blessed people in many ways yet we choose to build barriers

instead of blaze new terrainsi will change this for you.

i have found that if i rename past injuries in my own wordsthey become minei am not theirsthese blank pages staring me evenly in the facethey challenge each letter i put into placeto become a new hope for your memorychallenge eachsinglel e t t e rto evolve into a savior for our historythen deem it worthydeem it holy

for then trulymaybeeach will find pagefresh and innocent

too many murders not enough micsleaving paper void of accounts of self-revolution and of self-revelationlacking words needed for progress in nationseach page still left blank not yet filled with the historiesof a marginalized societyno evidence of the existence of a peoplewho though often burned and brokenwould not leave behind a life with a story yet unspoken

once beyond your timethese words must be inscribedonto blank, bland pages

i pray,with your blessing, we may salt them to taste.grind words into the space

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from where we cameto heal past injuries we must only rename themif we rename them we will claim them our ownif we rename them these pains pressed like thornsinto the palms of our consciousnesswill no longer own us

oncewe were called weakthey tore us apartand told us not to speakfrom the cores of our hearts

tao natin,you showed us you showed us you showed ushow to disobey. in the core of my being i know you were strongand in the end you are still this wayfor on this day i sense how you have sent words down to carefully relace the fibers of your people’s muscles and empower the marrow of our bonescreate in us a homefor your energy so we mayknow of the night when the seas between us bled lightablaze with the brightnessthat is the flame of your voicesfor fear of disappearingwe lit the seas on firewith the passion of our rice dreamsand the oil of desire

it has been rumoredthat we are not even people.

all along, tao natin

only you knew the truth

that we carry the wordsand each one that we spit evolves into a saviorfor one more piece of our culture

to make us heal againto make us real again

but we are real, you say

at tao pa rin tayoand we are still people

like youtao din pa rin tayowe too are still people

at mahal ko pa rin kayong lahat …and i still love all of youin spite of outside forcesfor centuriestelling us otherwiseto hate each otherdivide and conquerin spite of this

isang tao pa rin tayowe are still one peopleat mahal ko pa rin kayong lahat.

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Paradise Revisited (2004) here in manila they’ve worked hard to keep the poverty from your eyes C-5 to EDSA, shantytowns adorn outskirts of town by water sons and daughters of this country long to be whiter a city park to camouflage corrugated steel villages alongside Pasig river where families have rusting heaps of processing plants for next door neighbors. excrement both human and mechanical fouls river, source of life, and foundation of this metropolitan capital. i ask questions not meant to be rhetorical but they end up this way, left / right / unanswered, they only take me in full circle what is the problem with a country whose main export is its people?kahit na, wala kung perakahit na, butas aking bulsa until now, i have no moneymy pockets full of holes the tighter we close our collective fist around this land the faster grains of sand will dribble out why is it really that my country’s daughters still long to be whiter bleach their skin, straighten hairnever wonder why western beauty standards are standard fareit’s been years since theories emerged on the colonial mentality seems to me we should be over it by now seems to me we should be over this by now seems to me that it’s been taking forever for self-love or reciprocity or forward movement and/or unity all political parties seem to do is foster hate another byproduct, just more waste polluting Manila Bay makes me gasp for i cannot grasp it -- economic laizzez faire standing in the way of what is fair with the pains of growing promoted in the guise of “development” but is a Starbucks coffee shop on every block a marking-stone of progress when little children in the street still sell culture hanging from young fingers do i believe her when she tells me that the smell of life still lingers to make you whiter by day the city slides into the water by night when she thinks that no one’s looking her shorelines quietly eroding

like schools of fish swept up in the capitalism net the Filipino people are principal and life but a cycle of supply and demand that must be met so the poorest of the fish are bottled, canned, and exported while the upper middle is a little more literal about it.

it’s fitting and appropriate that fish exist in schools so they pack the universities --- dumping fresh grads en masse into the corporate swimming pool

each year their numbers grow but the number of jobs does not to be corporate’s catch of the day is your only shot at success so we float belly-up by the millions and call it progress

but i’ll pause here to spare you the pitiful details the entrails of my adolescent body spilling before me on the ground in the sounds of everything entailed when at fifteen years old all you know is the division of human community in the form of third world poverty versus first world conundrums such as whether to put nirvana or puff daddy in your walkman and just walk off the excess consumption

and just walk off the excess consumption

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Tribu (2006)

There is a pulse in my veins that throbs with the story of my homeland. If I wait too long, it will split me open for now it’s just a hairline fracture

I. Gutom - Hunger

We met on the roadsidea band of homeless Filipinosroaming the earthsearching for its centerand our own as well

We called out our emptinessheard a faraway answer in our native tongues“Nakikinig ka ba sa akin”? YesTao Natin -- Our People -- Yes I am listening

I know my people by their hunger.

We met on the roadside, caught by the look in each others’ eye -- the look that said “I was meant for more than this”

I know you by the sound your stomach makeswhen you are given a plateful of riceIt looks like a dreamy cloud for you to rest your cares upon

I know, too, that your cares are heavyThey begin with the weight of your distance from home

Home: an island nation across a growing oceanwhere the income levels of neighbors be disparate as everwhere desperate poor construct for themselves villages of cardboard and of metaleverything like Hoovervilles – only – Filipino style:naked toddlers playing in the heat of an afternoon sun, beating down on the brows of brown bodies. tsinelas slap on the ground, sandos float on clotheslines, ragged and thin.Old men sit in the mornings, drinking in doorways framed with cardboard and steel. The weight of the world bears down on their shoulders, though they’ve never been able to name it distinctly.

I inhale the weighted air.

II. Diaspora - The Growl of a Ghost

I have heard my people groanunder the third world’s weightseen us running hard for last place in Southeast Asia’s Western-made rat racemany brown women’s bodies become foddera bit of cash to bare skin by the skin of their teeth -- they are gleaming

in foreign lands more female seeds slowly cook in the heat of cleaning millionaire’s homesand powdering rich babies’ bottoms while their own young broods cry for mama

A diaspora sounds like the growl of a ghostIt looks like trade windsscattering seeds. It smellslike sorrow, spilling over -- it tastes like metal, the steel of a gun or a sword pulled from its sheath sadly, late -- too late to defend from the splitting / open

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our cavities guttedand gutturallike the ancestral rage that rises in my throatsometimes a groan but low, lower now

the growl of a ghost

we’re making money off our skin by the skin of our teethwe are gleaming

and then there’s mea distended, pale lower branch of the family treewith Amerikan luxury running laps around me

I will not rest herebut I will dream

III. Tribu

our tribe is no barren field or human cogs for a machine.our tribe is warm and sun-brownedorganic, not organized, grown and fertilized with sweat and tears -- never futile --

our tribe is in the thick mixed skinthat is distinctly Filipina in it is the seat of humanity

our tribe is no barren field or human cogs for a machine

we are loud and laughingwe want to make room for you as you pass us on the street but we take up the whole damn sidewalkthe whole damn walkall the walk

my tribe is all walk (tho we like the talk)

our tribe is made of small concentric circles circles joined at the hipour tribe is hipour tribe is hungryour tribe is restless and wandering, just like the rest of us,more or less

I am hungry and wondering (lest the rest of us wander)when we may happen upon

our homeland

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Holiday (2007)

I.

the crowds at the Landmark department store in Makati, Metro Manila, Philippinesseem to eschew poverty.i choke up on the humid airit clings to my facelike shame or pityor my amerikan skin

my smile is sheepishand not enough to break the walls between us i am more confident nowand your stares do not break me your stares no longer break mebut your longingdoesseventy million fish in a clogged up sea

my mind is cloudy and the sky is clearManila’s landscape shifts towards the seaone day we will all be underwaterand we will be swimming for our livesbut for right noware we in the same boat?are we netted and roped and brought on boardto dry?the world is laid out like washingand we are burningyour stares no longer scorch mebut your longing doesseventy million fish in a clogged up sea

what more is there to say to a country, a people who outwardly seem to have decided their own fate? the decision was not of our makinghow might one cause a people trampled by class and foreign ideas of cultureto see their own beauty?What more is there to say?

the Philippine sea is clogged with trash and transportationthe air, heavy with pollution and the colonial burden, is humid and clings to my face like shameand privilegei am ashamed of my privilegeand my helplessness hereit is a bent bladea poet’s pen an unaimed arrow or native spear

II.

to fill pages with poems in the near-dark countryyou have seen so muchand have been praying for salvationas long as you can remember

it has not yet come

i see no salvation dwelling in the thick blanket of grey-white cloudsin your skies, in your eyes,in the front yards and forevermorein the lines that spill when i dream of you,is this but a dream, you, country mine, where my blood runs thick beneathyour surface and rises, red with blushingand the ancient newness of the sun,sometimes nothing makes sense here,more often than not, more or less,what the people here have, either more or lessand the dreamy cloud upon which you restedyour cares is broken, each well formed grainingrained upon our memory

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the motorbikes shout in the distanceand dogs announce the coming of day.

sometimes i don’t make sense hereand i struggle to pullmyself together, bite my lip or stabmy tongue with a razor incisor whenall I want to do is make a scene, any scene,cause my country to pay attention to anythinggreater than amerikan trends and greed,greed being the greatest amerikan trend andthe lowest common human denominator. my emotions are a bowl of vinegarpeppered with garlic and shaken incessantly;you ask why i am bitter. i tell youit’s because the sun rises on my people still dyinga little bit each day.

lately this land confuses me.you ask why I am shaking and I tell you it’s been decadessince anyone told the truth here.this is not fiction - but some make like it is.

poverty permeates the air,even on the Greenbelt where upper-class shoppers (in heels, with chemically straightened hair) graze and pretend they are somewhere in Europe, anywherebut here; though you’d never guess itfrom the sheer number of people who spend their days shopping, my country’s poverty permeates the air and i feel it bearing down like a woman, pregnant, many days overdue. an unbearable weight

yet the people still are walking,the loads upon them piling,bare feet splashing through the puddlesof A-class appreciationthe poor, pulled from the train tracksby city officials, retreat deeper into the city.seventy million fish packed tightlyand too soon. the first worlddoes not recognize you.

Filipinas are quick to pronounce you prettyto your face or denounce you uglybehind your back

country i am quick to tell youi love you in your ugliness

to echo Stein: look at me and here i am, poor fil-am poet, journaling in my notebook to document all that i have seen,commit to memory what i hear.there are no bombs here in Manila.we leave that to the southern islandswhere religious wars are fought --a microcosm. people pray in silent devotion.to echo Hughes: “it just sags, like a heavy load.”so when does this explode?

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Manila, My Manila (2009)

the river Pasig pushes sand and silt into the delta to make Manilaa city claimed from the sealand where once was oceanone day it will not remain

the sea was not consulted in this agreementsays she made no such promiseand knew of no such negotiationshe seeks back the ground gained by foreign bodiessending floodwaters rising to reclaim it

excavations in Makati turn up seashellsevidence of her stake in the neighborhoodknown as barangay, now gentrified and shady but we do not forget it was also the name of the rowboatsthat brought nomadic Malay people to these shoreswith the stars their only guides

I was Taga-ilog – of the river;you Pampanga – of the riverbank.upon taking leave of Indonesia, we were neighborsmet again in the harbor of Manila Bay.by the shade of mangrove trees we built our homes on stilts, villages called barangays because without each other we knew we would not stay afloatwould not make it to the nearest shores we dreamt of reaching

but when we fought it was bloodyas only a war between siblings can beeven Balagtas, one of your people and mine could not bring us togethercould not overcome our desire to divide instead of uniteme, of the river and you, of the bank

born of the same soil but cursed with a wandering soul

our middle ground exists where floodwaters riseto meet sinking shores

one day this will not remain

Manila, my Manilabeneath your banyan trees I have been longingto rest; calling the rest of our family back to your bosom, away from dili ingon nato, things not like us,across this green earth we have spreadlike wildfire but we are a people of oceanfighting our true natures for a shot at survival

we are the contradictions inherent in a mountain range long ago invaded by tidesthe boondocks what American soldiers heard when my peopleshowed them mountainsbundukin Pacquiao’s sweet countenanceand the sting of his fistimmigrant mothers and left behind childrenbabies in river-baskets with only blessings to see them safely to the other side

we bear barangays on our backsand seek out a land, any land, that can support all that weight

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not this feeble island nation of silt ebbing swiftly back to the seawho said she didn’t agree to be used like this

when the traders and conquistadors came our divided dialects spoke the future for usforetold mass conversions and migration patterns along the route of Manila Galleon

imploding Iraq, we are cousins sons of Shem condemned by legend to make cadavers of those who look like ussmell like usmake music like usSunni and Shia, Tagalog, Ilocano, Filipino and Mestizo carry out our fateas history dictatesthese labels lend themselves to unrest till the ends of our daysthe face of the enemy still changingshape shift ing but somehowI always see them in us

we speak English so well military bases blemish our coasts our mothers and aunties nurse their babies and old folkwhile American companies build call centers in our citiesit is our lilting accents answering their 800 numbers and all their questionsbut Manila, your voice is muted and there is too much statictelephone lines are submerged below endless acres of oceanand there is no satellite strong enough to reach us in the boondocksI listen closely, hoping onlyto hear you breathing to be assured that for now

you remain

About the Author

Angela “El Dia” Martinez Dy is a poet, spoken word artist, educator and hip-hop emcee. pilipinapoems is her third collection of poetry. A finalist in the 2007- 2008 Seattle Poetry Slams and 2007 Seattle Poet Populist competition, Angela was recognized by New World Theatre in 2002 as one of the “Best Emerging Artists Under 25”.

A performance poet since her early teens, she was an original member of the isangmahal arts kollective, seminal organization of the contemporary Asian-American poetry and spoken word movement. As a founding mentor and Program Director for Youth Speaks Seattle, she was instrumental in the development of a generation of Seattle poets, bringing youth and especially young women’s voices to the forefront of the local and national artistic scene.

Of Filipina, Spanish and Chinese heritage, Angela was born and raised in Seattle, USA with her heart in Manila, Philippines. Her poems offer a window into the lived experience of a 2nd-gen queer femmenist of color immigrant/emigrant at the juncture of the hip-hop generation, neoliberal globalization and the digital age. A spoken word artist, hip-hop femmecee and co-founder of the anti-imperialist, pro-vegan radical feminist grime and hip-hop blog Sisters of Resistance (www.sistersofresistance.org), she is working on a PhD in transnational feminism and technoscience in the United Kingdom. For more information, visit www.eldiadia.com.

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