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My First Rhymes

Mary had a little lamb,
little lamb, little lamb,
Mary had a little lamb,
whose fleece was white as snow.
And everywhere that Mary went,
Mary went, Mary went,
and everywhere that Mary went,
the lamb was sure to go.

***

This is one of the nursery rhymes I liked the most which I even had as my last song syndrome. It was used to be played in our old karaoke with a child’s voice echoing around the living room. Now, the cassette tape is still kept intact inside my drawer.

***

I would want to share my first ‘real’ poem I wrote in my creative writing subject. These are my first rhymes, ever.

In Her Father’s Jewel Shop

Stretched between two acacia trees
was my grandpa’s knitted duyan.

When the sun hears the cackle of the cock
he sits on it and swings,
and watches the busy wheats warming up.
And when the sun begins its siesta
the two trees nearly kiss
My grandpa’s belly reaches for them
and his spine then kisses the ground.
He was the soulmate of the sun
and this I never knew
Until his wife sat with me,

On that bench, my grandma’s old bangko.
We were wedding rings perched on the softest cushion
Her voice spoke of her life –
a diamond polished by the greatest jeweller.

Each night in her father’s jewel shop
she sits by the coffee cup whose steam
sinks before reaching her topmost book pile,
My grandpa would knock and ask for a plate.
His hand, as my grandma tells,
feels like the empty plate keeping her awake all night.

One morning in her father’s jewel shop
she sits by the coffee cup whose steam
was the only sound heard at breakfast
My grandpa knocks and returns the plate.
And in his hand is a letter
of the first voice she heard all her life.

The voice bent her father’s rigid cane.
It broke his eyeglass lens
and burned his pipe into ashes.
The sound was a spoon tapping an empty plate.
It glittered like diamonds fresh from the quarry hill.

The sun now savours its merienda
The criss-cross of the cradle
is now on my grandpa’s back.

***

The poem above is actually my first draft and I like it more than the final one. The following poem however is written as my final draft, ‘coz I felt it more than the first.

***

To Write a Poem

To write a poem
is a master’s call
that awakens the queen
from her dead blank dream.

She hears the music
of the maple leaves prickled with dew
drops between lips –
the velvet blue sky
and the dark humus soil.

Lips whispering words.

She goes by the king’s quarters
and swabs the blood
on his sword
with her bare sleek hands.

In her gown she rides on a white mare,
and brings the king to the darkest forest bed
covered in a silk satin sheet
blocking a patch of light.

Owls hoot and silent the night
blanket the canopy
to keep the crease of the bonfire flame.

Cold wind blows.

My First Paragraphs

I want a real new life!

One semester down, and a lot more to go. But at least, I was able to survive my first five months in UP Diliman as what my dietician told me. I wished to write various topics here on my site but I simply can't find a time. I would sleep late at night sometimes even reaching two in the morning because of some bogglers in my mind. I don't know what it is but I think it was me getting accustomed to sleeping that time of the night during the last weeks of the semester. I just enjoy myself in revolutionizing Facebook with a chatroom-slash-photo comment boxes-slash-conversation with my high school friends in our class shot posted by one of my classmates. If you're curious and would want to see it, I think it always appears on my wall and in your homepage as well. The comments there have reached to almost 400! All about our college life and plans for an early reunion. That's how we miss each other. College is far much different from high school.

The past semester has left me loaded with jobs that I did for the first time. Our Kas 1 (Phil. History) professor has tasked us to write a 'formal' research paper - a kind of work that I have never done before. High school academic papers are best for babies seeing its difficulty in my first year in college. I could remember our group scanning every inch of the World Wide Web to look for sources, and in one click it appears in our paper, we call it the 'copy-paste' technique. I could even think of doing that HS paper in one day but I didn't like rushes. Well of course we're gonna write down our sources but, in a classy style originally made by secondary students. On the white sheet of the MS Word, we type in "Sources" plus a colon, and paste the URL of the website. However long it is, we didn't care (that's what the URL says, with those equal signs, several slashes, numbers, and words jumbled together -- computer languages, arrgggh). We didn't because we had a secret ingredient to spice up our works, like the Maggi Magic Sarap on TV. We wrap them up with colorful designs, state-of-the-art papers printed on state-of-the-art printers, and bring out the 'wow factor' in our teachers. Mission accomplished.

Until I knew of the MLA style for academic papers as taught by our HS Filipino teacher. To people inclined to artistic papers, they call it a bore.

My first college paper was about the contributions of the Communist Party of the Philippines to the agricultural status of the Philippines. It has to be specific, my professor would say. We stayed awake during the late hours of the night for a week just to finish this paper. Copy-paste style? That's a big horrible no. We read sources from the internet from top to bottom, scanned old books from the university's main library, and conduct surveys that we needed to analyse.

We were also governed by a woman named Kate Turabian in the course of our study. Turabian is the well-known author of a guide in writing papers. In her book, a.k.a. the writing bible, contained rules that we strictly followed including margin sizes, footnote formats, spacing, indentation, sections, and many others. We even had to read to whole book added to our list of readings for us to be familiar with the style. She says NO to own graphic designs, NO to border arts, NO to the ever-famous 'Comic Sans' font style and other fancy ones, and NO to creative gimmicks to bring color to your work. Truly new to me.

Making a formal and full-fledged research paper isn't an easy as A-B-C, click-copy-click-paste. I had to stay with my laptop computer aided by the friendly Microsoft Word program for the whole day to write my 'first' paragraphs. I had to read a couple of pages and be as assertive as I can to formulate a strong stand and a good conclusion. It's more about making inferences based on your sources, and working with your mind to arrive at the best words.

As we stepped on our last task, to encode page numbers that in themselves are confusing. Page numbers on 'main section' pages of the paper must be placed below, and the rest of the paper's page numbers to be placed above. Getting boggled? We too did working on it for half an hour.

Hearing the rhythmic sounds of our printer puking out the pages of our paper, I knew I was able to write my first paragraphs, my first phrases, my first words.

Krabby Patty's Secret Formula

Just this afternoon, I was able to catch an episode of Spongebob Squarepants from TV5, well, an addition to my favourite episodes list after the one where Patrick Star mistakenly recognized his parents (this is insane) I just don't like the way the voice actor dubbed the scenes. Anyway, it was about an instructional video for trainees in the Krusty Krabb and the episode was inredibly fun. It got me stuck on the TV for about 15 minutes while I stopped working on our paper for a while.

The essence of the video was actually to reveal the much-awaited secret formula to the audiences. But before that, the episode went a long way through. It started with the history of the restaurant, the duties of the crew, hygienic procedures, comparing a a responsible staff in the image of Spongebob and a nasty and stupid one, as in Squidward. The last one minute (?) of the show were the enticing words of the narrator as prior to revealing the secret formula. There was a funny voiced music as the krabby patty went nearer and nearer the screen.

And the narrator spoke, "And the secret formula is..."

Suddenly, it was the rundown of credits. It left my mouth-opened after all of it! What a waste!

But what made me post this thing over here? Remember my previous ones were about the typhoon, personal experiences, and a lot more sensible things but why I chose this? Simple. There is something within that episode that penetrates your subconscious.

C-U-R-I-O-S-I-T-Y. The presence of the unrevealed secret formula throughout all episodes of the show just influences the mind of a child fond of watching it. Even I was astounded by the style used by the makers of the show! Young viewers are Sheldon Plankton themselves, always wanting to know the secret formula. Isn't to mysterious? Movies that leave a story, a line, or a thing hanging would make the audiences think for the reason behind it, and lead him into gasping for the goal of finding it. This is the 'secret' of filmmaking and TV production. They do more than just to give entertainment. They do more than just to give pleasure. They touch the inner mind of the viewers -- their subconsciousness.

Okay, I'll be admitting it. After watching it and of course, finishing our research paper, I did not let the day pass without searching for the secret formula over the net. And luckily I found it! Well of course, I'm gonna be sharing it here, although it's not surprising at all.

(Whew, after all those guesses of what 'explosive' material that is in there, it's just a way of making a burger patty?!)

Yes. You can even try it at home. :D

LSS

The crescent moon was misted by the dark clouds, fresh from the bad storm that has hit the country the second time around. It was a rather peaceful night, everyone was able to breath calm after being part of another plot. The government channel calling for understanding and consideration for their failures, was back to its actual job. Back to the political arena, back to the battle for power. How many months yet before another wave of elections?

I was on our car, travelling back home, and looking out of the window seeing rows of houses in our village that appeared to be empty and deserted. People have already learned. They're not gonna come out of their nests unless very necessary. The voice of the radio host echoed in our car. We were silent, as we were all sleepy in a day of shopping.

Her voice was just as high and strong as a boar being pinched by a thousand needles. And a song that caught my ears played. I thought it was just like the others, talking about nonsense things on relationships, the nasal voice of Willie Revillame, K-Pop, and love songs. It was so mellow and simple but subtle enough to be voice out a sound reaching mountains.

You Wished For It, and You Got It!

Four days after the bad storm, people start rebuilding, recovering, and remodelling their affected lives. Thanks to the bright sun who welcomed the day with a soothing smile, patting everybody on the streets, encouraging them to move on.

It was another hot and humid Tuesday once again, as if Ondoy never really appeared. Temperatures rose in different parts of the country. Yet, nobody complained on this surging heat unlike how I saw it in the past few weeks.

"Grabe ang init! Sana umulan naman!" A lady tired or lifting a heavy basket from the public market cried as she rode the jeepney. Now, not a single word of complaint came out of the people, fearful of what may the storm be once again. They just resisted what heat gave them, it was better than the downpour of the heavy unending rain.

But faces looked so long and gloomy, unmoved by the smile coming from the sun. One man whose shirt was so dusty and seemed to be his last one held the jeepney's rails staring at a distant. What could he be thinking of? His family? His job? Or savoring the sun's rays?

Langhap-sarap. This has been Jollibee's ever-enticing line to attract food-goers with the picture of a newly-cooked Chicken Barbeque, its juices sprouting from its skin. Now, Jollibee's langhap-sarap's face is now simply a langhap. Stocks are down when some of their meals such as the Burger Steak, the Chickenjoy, the legendary Crispy Fries, and Shanghai Rolls went down to the last drop. "Not Available", it says. Customers who might want to try their new products just had a cup of vanilla ice cream, a softdrink I never knew if still fresh from the bottle, and a piece of pie.

Jollibee still has to find another sack of honey.

The Answer To All Questions

As I post this blog, Kris Aquino's shrieky voice echoes within our living from, now speaking of gratitudes and pleading for volunteers and sympathy from the Filipinos who might want to hold out a hand, I could hear them announcing a long-list of victims still suffering from the last bad storm whom until now shriver atop their roof, waiting for anybody to help, from which famous TV personalities are part of.

For years now, the long-talked issue of global warming resembled around the world, films and documentaries have been shown to raise the awareness of people around the world, but their voice becomes mute as nobody seemed to listen. We tend to shrug and keep our ears shut with this impeding issue. "That's nonsense," some tend to say.

But shrug not, and awaken when lots of families were shocked with the heavy downpour of the typhoon named "Ondoy" last Saturday, September 26. Floods were everywhere, along the roads of urban Metro Manila, and farmlands devastated in provinces only in a span of about 8 hours. PAG-ASA Weather Bureau Chief Nathaniel Cruz spoke of it as the worst typhoon that has hit Metro Manila and gave a strong impact for the last 100 years. Ondoy threw an average rainfall reaching to 420, equivalent to the average rainfall per month. Milenyo's eye, years ago, even passed through NCR but never raised anything like this but Ondoy whose core never really got here caused twice, or maybe even, quadrupled, the disaster.

One question: Is this what we fear? The product of all our actions, the consequence of the long-fought battle on global warming. Hands advocating for environmental protection seemed not enough, all has to participate.

This catastrophe never chooses whose lives to spare or not. TV personalities are part of the list, people we know are being aired on TV asking for help. We never expected this happen, or maybe we might have if we just listened to the voices.

I am just as delighted hearing the combined efforts of private companies extending a hand for help, sending donations of their products, and wealthy families who were only affected a little who share sympathy by sending amounts of money. This is a test -- for the whole nation, and for every Filipino -- a test of unity, good heart, and cooperation. Government effors aren't enough, their rubber boats so weak that they couldn't resist the surge of the flood in some areas. Each of us has something to do for us to get through this big trouble.

This, I hope, will be for the last time. The next events shall leave us not numb and dead but well- informed and knowledgeable enough to lessen what nature's evil side could give us.