May Mga Araw Na Minsan Walang Ulan, Walang Ideya

tula ni Roger B Rueda

May mga araw na minsan walang ulan, walang ideya
Na pumapatak kahit gusto ko pang sumulat ng tula.

May mga araw namang hindi ko inaasahang
Uulan - nakasulat tuloy ako ng tula.

May mga araw, o kahit buong panahon namang
Walang ulan, walang ideya na pumapatak.

El Niño siguro. Ngunit may mga araw,
O buong panahon namang parang walang hinto

Ang pag-ulan. La Niña siguro.
Ngunit minsan kahit hindi ko gustong sumulat

Ng tula pinipilit kong sumulat nito.
Parang rain seeding na ito siguro.

First saw print in Mantala: An Anthology of Philippine Literature 3

In the Garden

a poem by Roger B Rueda

For Janette and Roque

The bougainvillaeas bloom

all through the summer,

their inflorescences huge,

sharing oodles of splendour.

The roses are in bud,

all set to spread out their blazes

of colour, the sun blazing down,

some leaves turning yellow.

The hibiscuses are wilting,

a mound of withered leaves beneath.

The Mangroves All Along the Iloilo River

a poem by Roger B Rueda

Under the leaden sky, the mangroves are often
full of gloom and despair,
their existence wrapped in mystery,
the riverwater as silent as the grave,
the eerie noise
of the wind howling through the leaves,
my eyes filled with dread
as I gaze them,
me feeling numb on a Mandurriao jeepney
on the way to my house towards SM City.
Funny ha-ha!
Behind the mangroves, I’ve been there.
The once-empty site
is now covered with buildings.
At a great distance,
I crossed the street over
quite a while and
went shopping at Gaisano City
and bought a pair of wash pants
in a midnight sale.
There, the street is wedged solid
with the near-constant traffic gridlock.

Summer at CPU

a poem by Roger B Rueda

The acacias are swaying in the wind,
the hibiscus aflame
with colour,
the bougainvillea, too.
Ripples of laughter run
through the children
talking in the gazebos,
watching a flock of birds
fly over the football field,
and Facebooking on their
iPhone or Samsung.
Palm fronds hanging down
loosely to their trunks.
Children walking by
put their umbrellas up
as they traverse the university street,
almost all carrying a cone
of ice cream or a paper tumbler
of frappes or a bottle of iced tea.
The chirps of
the small garden birds
sound distant.
Kites in the blue sky are flying in the breeze.

Come Home to Barotac Nuevo

a poem by Roger B Rueda

for Dida, Jade, Ruby, Gemma, Bernadette, Marissa, Valnie, May Mart, Judy Anne, Rachel, Phoebe, Sylvia, Giegie, Keith, Sharon, Andrew,  Lawrence, Francis, and Maricel

Revel in the land where Tamasak gazing

wistfully at the sky,

the field where you walked

together bringing back memories

of salad days.

Reminisce about the footballs

rolling across

the greenish carpet

of carabao grass,

the fishponds

where telescope shells

scuttle along the sludge,

the fiddler crabs

peep up from their holes,

and the eels slither into the water,

and the shrimps

skipping out

of the bamboo winnowers

as you, having a runny nose,

peddled bushels of them

at schools.

Move on through wet grass

soaking your legs

as you pinch the leaves

of the manyfruit primrosewillow

for your mung bean

porridge with prawn

in pink, curved body.

Savour the essence of each mouthful,

and bite on your linaga

with libas leaves well, or

your seabass stew.

Commune with wholeness

as you bring back a piece

of Barotac Nuevo

in you that has been travelling

from New York to Dubai,

from Ottawa to Istanbul,

from LA to Oslo,

solitary and longing,

and kiss the faces you left

slowly vanishing, yet still

with big smiles as you hand down

to the self you’ve left the children of your fate.





'Manyfruit primrosewillow' means 'lupo.'

Cate

A Short Story for Children by Roger B Rueda

Cate was at a dumping ground looking out for her food. Running hastily, she stumbled on a log and fell on a foetus partly rotting on the ground. It must be a baby, she thought. How come it has no life?How come a baby is thrown here like a sort of rubbish? She shivered as she looked at it in astonishment. All of a sudden, she brought her past life back into the mind. Then she ran off in fright. Someone grabbed hold of her neck to stop her from running into the highway. Put in cage, she suffered amnesia again.

***

When Cate became a small animal with fur, four legs, a tail, and claws fifteen years ago, her eyes rolled gleefully innocently. She suddenly remembered her mother while chatting away on the road that runs through their golden mansion under the silvery stars. After that, she suffered from loss of memory. A queen cat carried Cate by the neck and brought her to her nest of brown leaves and tatters of clothing in a bush next to a dumping ground. Cate felt a little incongruous, but she couldn’t understand her feeling.

Cate was weaned at five weeks of age. Cate the cat liked to hunt mice and birds and ate some leftover chicken inside paper boxes printed with a happy bee mascot or two golden arches which looked like the letter ‘M.’ But often some ragged beggars would shoo her away before she could open the dustbin bag.

***

Cate’s sadness at her coming back to the golden mansion was obvious. It frustrated her that she was not able to put her dream into life. She seemed to have a face like thunder.

She would sit quietly for hours staring into the distance, thinking of what might have been. Might there be intelligent life on other planets? But anything to do with the earth and living there fascinated her. She wanted to know how her not being a cherub could shape her destiny.

She'd go now given half a chance. If she insisted on coming back to the world, however, there was still an outside chance of living there again. But her mother seemed unable to agree whether living in the world was good for her.

For one thing, her mother knew she was taking a gamble when she would agree to let her daughter go. If Cate died of unnatural death, she would vanish into thin air, but if she lived to the ripe old age, she could have the key to eternity.  It's the golden mansion’s rule that all cherubs must follow.

Her mother always caught her talking to Malakas and Maganda or staring out of the window in which they’d got some wonderful plants from earth and could hear her crying in the next room. Cate had a pitiful story to tell, so she managed to convince her mother of living out the rest of her days on earth.

***

Cate was a beautiful, fat, naked child with small silvery wings. It'd always been her dream to live on earth. For one thing, humans are so precious to Bathala, their god, so she always had a burning ambition to be a human being. She always watched with envy as some of her cherub and angel friends set off for the world, her chin resting in her hands.

Her mother and Bathala talked her living on earth. Cate, too, had spoken to him to make a request.

‘Cate, I've got some good news for you. You’re living on earth.’ Her mother was so happy that everything was working out for her daughter. She winked and gave the little cherub a smile.

Cate smiled the smile of a cherub who knew victory was within reach.  Then she ran up to her, weeping for joy. ‘I can't believe my ears, Mum.’

She laid her on the smooth-textured silvery bed. Then, she fell into a deep sleep.  One moment she was sleeping, the next she had vanished in a puff of smoke. The old cherub cast a quick look in the mirror, but she was worried sick when she saw that there had been a problem getting to the world. A lot of mortal mothers would decide to get an abortion.

She felt a desire to know what the future held for Cate on earth. She knelt and prayed silently.

***

Cate had to be borne by a young mother all of eighteen. She was getting excited about her new life. Living on earth was her idea of sheer bliss, so she would kick excitedly inside her mother as if she was pedalling down the road.

She was sadly missed by all who knew her in the golden mansion especially her mother, but becoming a human was a dream come true. There was nothing she'd done in her life that she regretted. She seemed fairly content with her life now like birds in the treetops.

She curled her fingers round her umbilical cord. It was too dark for her to see properly as her eyelids were still fused like petals of a rosebud. Sometimes, she would scratch or pat her face, smile, cry, hiccough, and suck her smallest toes and gradually move on to suck a bigger and better toe. These had amazed her greatly.

She was absolutely delighted that she would be a human as she’d have a taste of life on earth before long.

Sometimes, her mother would put on some music. She listened in silence as her mother sang up.  Her mother sang her to sleep every night.

One evening, however, she woke up with a pain in the head.

‘There's no need to shout, I can hear perfectly well.’ Her mother was arguing with her father over which film to go and see. Both parents had juvenile behaviour.

The next day, her parents were arguing over money, which was tight at the moment.

She soon learned that her father didn't have any plans to marry her mother. Then, her mother broke up with her boyfriend and got really angry with him and looked at him like a lazy devil. He left her and since then her mother’s situation became desperate and her mother seemed rather forlorn. She was sad to hear that they'd split up, but she was a feeble, helpless foetus.

Her mother had been as silent as the grave since then. Always, her mother was overcome with emotion and burst into tears.

One day, a cocktail of pills like bombs fell on her tummy and Cate seemed to break up into pieces of stars violently. She fainted dead away. When she woke up she saw the same stars, but they were real stars staring sympathetically at her helplessness. Her body was taken to the rubbish dump and was covered with swarms of flies and red ants. Her soul was now at peace at a dumping ground.

She kissed her dead body goodbye and gave a rather sad smile as an angel was fetching her.  She knew her attempt to live on earth ended in failure.

***

Fifteen years ago, Mercedes Catalan, an ailurophile and renowned for her advocacy of cat interests, mounted a salvage operation for outdoor cats. These cats faced danger from traffic, from being attacked by other animals and ran increased risk of being accidentally poisoned by pesticides or deliberately poisoned by cruel humans.

***

Her hand on Cate’s shoulder, chumping a bar of chocolate or toffee, Mercedes would wake her out of a dream, and she would look straight at Mercedes with her piercing blue eyes. Cate would lick the chocolate or toffee off the old woman’s fingers.

Her tail was fascinating because it never seemed to rest. Its movements were motionless or extreme lashing as well as puffing up and it looked like a bristle brush. Mercedes enjoyed seeing it wave to and fro.

Mercedes would feed Cate homemade diets such as chicken, sardine, bone, and vegetables.

Cate, a tabby with patches of red, completely forgot about her being a cherub.

Every afternoon, she used to ‘help’ Mercedes in the garden by digging and rolling in the mud. Luckily, she didn't mind having a bath afterwards. She learned from kittenhood to accept water, shampoo, and drier as part of the routine.

***

Cate lived to the ripe old age of 15. Now, she spends a blissful time together with other cherubs who once became cats. But she is sad some cherubs have never returned. They disappeared without trace.

Mercedes, an octogenarian, is lucky. She loves Cate and many other cats, so she’s going to have a favourable life in the golden mansion under the silvery stars. Every day, Cate and the other cherubs ask Bathala’s blessing on Mercedes. They always remember her to him.

Cate has decorated Mercedes’s room with ribbons and flowers. It has been got ready for the new resident’s coming. Cate is so excited to meet Mercedes and see her a bit surprised to see that she is a cherub and not a cat as Mercedes knows of her.

After wearing their ruched satin dresses, all the cats in Mercedes’s house purr as the old woman and her eleven grandchildren stroke their soft fur as they usually have a siesta.