Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

Sentiments from Eros’ royal house

Here it lies within my being.

A chasm it shall try to bridge

And warm up your cold heart a-glow.

It will grow, it will merge

From the shadows of the iceberg’s underneath.

It will seek its proper moorings

In your heart it is wont

To nestle; only in your heart or nevermore.

[Writ. 24 July 1988, Proj. 8, Quezon City, M.Manila.] 

Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

Wish for me O! Coconut Tree!

Of benign Filipinas that She comes in beauty

Her luggage filled to the brims

With love and tenderness. Let her caress

My longing heart. I shall meet her

Under your secure shade O! Coconut Tree!

Where we shall pledge the vow

Of eternal sharing of trust and care;

A bnd you’ll judge with favors

One stroke like a million devoted caretakers’.

[Writ. 19 June 1988, Proj. 8, Quezon City, M.Manila]

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

I am but the emblem of the dust

Blown smoothly away by the wind.

Born from out of the dust

Where rests the cosmic elements

Over a century known in all;

Nurtured within the womb of Terra

Mother of all Mothers;

Delivered as seed by Firmament’s demiurgos

The ultima pater noster;

So was I born, a dust.

Chartered was my life through sojourns

By my Self

Betwixt worlds

Of shadows and sunlit dales

I the dust, I the crafter.

Molded was I so exquisitely humane

Betwixt cast of the hardest metals

Harder than Bernardo Carpio’s will

Was I nurtured out extruded

I am my own furnace, my dust I am.

Founded was I a warrior

Crafted in the trade of the blade

Whose countenance is blanketed with Courage

A most scarce diadem;

Bear I the Will to thrust the majestic sword

Unto the fleshy morsels of obstacles

Conceived by Existence, Uncertainty, Death

That I rise, am I arisen

I a dust, yet a Warrior.

Blown forth am I the dust

Blown forth by my own Will

Astride winds sunbeams waters

Ne’er fixed and transfixed neither

By mischievous forces of diabolical climes

Now dust am I, my Will wind

‘Tis my starship to galactic

Worlds of humans.

What has come to pass in my biographic trails?

My Past and Future, of what constructs made of?

They I’ve myself made

I the baker who’s always been attending

To chores of my oven’s commands

I’ve had my whereabouts made

Even as Future and Past cancel out

In the nothingness of the Omnipresent Present:

Time is but non-Time altogether

A leaf that has crumpled in its own face

‘Tis but a premise of one who’s never lived

So is it a pest that distracts awhile

And later fornicates in its death traps.

What’s the most illustriously true

But that I the dust was ever present

In time as time to me was spent a-non

I therefore live forever.

I’d gazed at the celestial mirror

And glanced at Eternal Thou

Or was it? Eternal Thou? What’s it?

A chimera derived from my own image?

An extract from the prurient I?

Or is it the whole Kosmos focused

In the magnificent galactic lens so said?

O! Kosmos! O! Nature! You are Eternal!

Am I Thou?

Please whisper the answer softly

In my ear

Amid the hypnotic melodies

Of the celestial music…

I so earnestly await thy response!

Wherefore the dust shall have gone forth

In the tapestries and gourdian knots of Nature

To be a part of and yet not

Of elements among whom it had immersed

As the Ego does to the countless Alters

It “Is” now and yet “Is Not”

A concrete now and yet a phantom as well

The moving and the rested wedded together

It is, it is such, it is

For and only for it to scale altitudes

To where it fuses with the bounds of its source

It is the changeling, the changeling

That dons the matterly cloak: the Kosmos

Of which it Is:

The Iota and the Whole are One.

Henceforth shall it have known

The All and the Self

Finale regal of its sacred mission.

That I am: the dust

Caringly blown away by the wind.

[Writ. 19 Feb. ‘92, Cubao, Quezon City, M.Manila]

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

Sleeping while inner rage brews

Inside one’s cognitive vat does not make

A sleep the fulfillment of a day’s toil.

Not for Juan  the unlettered and dispossessed

Whose wretchedness is a correlate of wealth

Amassed by his other brothers whose

Purses and stocks do bulge ad infinitum.

Not for Juan. Reserved inner rage

Sooner unfolds into a thousand nightmares:

Spoiled is the timeless joy of dream’s utopia.

[Writ. 19 June 1988, Proj. 8, Quezon City, M.Manila]

Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

History is Judge and Witness

to the truth that my heart is ne’er

A nest of

                                Resentment

for you o! deceased kin

                                You were never a

Creator of terror and trouble

nor villain are you for the anguish

you’d upon me outpoured from time to time

                                No resentment!

Be in peace as the Dove that is now

your fulfilled state.

                                Farewell!

 [Writ. 11 June 1988, Proj. 8, Quezon City, M.Manila]

Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

Welcome your forthcoming glory, Rizalandia!

‘Tis coming out from shadows in repose:

From the navel of the earth’s core

It rides astride hot magmas

To be spilled in abundance;

From the bottom of the ocean

Surface twill on waves thru currents

Rides on tsunamis, lands ashore;

From the belly of the Sun beyond

Twas salvoed on borealis’ blasts

To heat up Terra searingly.

‘Tis coming out with passions full:

As passions of a zillion eager gods

Out to feret their mindframes on the dusts

Build awesome worlds from nothingness

For which trees are all out to bow

In full regards obeisance vow

The rising done amid lasting Now

No groaning pain shall have been heard

But laughter of a happy bard

The Wind evoke as sways its beard

Not rampaging waters one ought see

But cleansing drops bless head and knee

From festive stream, lake, ocean, sea

Not lethal blows spring from the mouths

Of Vulcan’s sons that we ought loath

‘Tis trumpeted joy from North and South.

Command them all the herds and birds and winds

Sound their tambulis forth on mountains high

That echo messages of purest notes

To all the commonwealths on Terra’s face

Command! Command! That you have come at last

To gain your lush estate that breeds all zest

O! Rizalandia! Take our Wills as one

With you the tale of glory now is done.

[Writ. 10 March 92, Cubao, Quezon City, M.Manila]

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

vermin upon vermin gather in mounds

undistinguished from the morsel

felled by it’s ego’s date with Grim Ripper

                                                25, 50, 100, etc

are found without names in named or unnamed

cemeteries

                                uncelebrated figures

are puzzles that are delightful to civil

libertarians’ appetites for enigmas

                                –shadows without tales

or felled bodies do have sagas of pain

or joy unaffected by the Roman slaughter

of holy and unholy souls on Golgotha’s foot

[Writ. 11 June 1988, Proj. 8, Quezon City, M.Manila]      

Erle Argonza y Delago

When hawks and other living flyers

Set foot on swampy fields for feeding

Tis a marvelous sight that glows the eyes

As mark of platonic appreciation

Where muddy waters used to fill

The air with constant foul-smelling vapors

And gift the neighboring men and women

With malaria and ailments and more

And leave no space that’s fertile enough

For crops and edible greens

And there vehicles run agog

When torrents bring oceanic floods

No more is this worthy of anyone’s esteem

Than to ignore it for its fecal state

Melons and fruits and rice now abound

In this once noxious forbidden land

No more is Hope rekindled the better

Than on the marshes of Candaba

Fly! Fly! Beloved Eagle to the peasant’s nest!

And laud him with your hymns of joy

For his victorious heartwarming travails on swamps

Indeed make him a true human champion.

[Writ. 06 June 1988, Proj. 8, Quezon City, M.Manila]

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

Policeman! Throngs of multitudes are

Waiting for your return to civility!

On account of the erosion of your image

As a reliable enforcer of statutes

By your recalcitrant engagements in

Extortions and rackets and every condemnable

Act that are well perceived by the periscopic oculars

Of the consummate public;

Come home, policeman! Come home

To the moral niche of civility!

For to extract money from laboring motorists

Traders and pedlars who may no more

Be better than the poorest fellows

Of yours whose every cent that you

Embezzle will accrue to the rupture

Of the noblest dignity;

Come home, policeman! Come home

To the powerhouse of civility!

For to bust striking workingment or to

Train guns on dissenting marchers or to

Equate to criminal acts those that are

Worthy of appreciation as they are

Motivated by desires for justice

Will cost you your sweet acceptance

By the same people whom you ought to protect;

Come home, policeman! Come home to

The sanctuary of civility!

People are surely waiting for you

Not excluding the gunslinging predators

Who are out to snatch your life

For your treachery and malevolence.

[Writ. 06 June, AUF, Angeles City, Pampanga]

Erle Frayne Argonza y Delago

If you’ve gone through a commotion

Or an accident of sorts

And you feel the urge to summon

Newsreporters to the scripts

Ah! Don’t ever waste your sweat

On thick layered phone directories

To call on foreign newsmen to the fore

For these souls today are hounded

On cryptic suspicions of support

They give to rebels on the hills

You might as well call up the hounders

Who are craftsmen of psywar ars

Who don’t matter if 1,000 differs from 10,000

Or whether Mr X didn’t or did commit Action Y

For as long as reports serve the purpose

Of fueling more wars and battle gores

And inflate the raison d’etre

Of brave regimentation and war mania

[Writ. 06 June 1988, AUF, Angeles City, Pampanga]