A REVIEW OF “ANG MANUNULAT KAG ANG PENDULUM”

by Roger B. Rueda, PhD

If you have not yet been haunted by a poem, then you have not yet been properly alive. Alain Russ Dimzon’s “Ang Manunulat kag ang Pendulum” is not merely read—it is endured, like a fever that prays. It is a confession both disguised as a typewriter. Here, the writer is both saint and heretic, both Che Guevarra and Santa Maria, and the pendulum—the eternal metronome of conscience—swings not just between left and right, but between damnation and deliverance.

Dimzon begins with a writer imprisoned not by iron bars, but by glass—transparent yet unbreakable, reflective yet suffocating. This is not merely architecture; this is psychology. It is the writer’s mind turned inside out—self-aware to the point of paralysis. The typewriter yearns for the touch of the hand, yet it is touched only by the eyes. What irony! We see but do not write, we write but do not see.

In ancient Ilonggo cosmology, mirrors were portals—salaming nga nagaako sang kalag. To gaze too long into one’s reflection is to risk being devoured by it. Dimzon’s first stanza, then, is not about writing—it is about surviving one’s own reflection.

The pendulum here becomes the heart’s pulse—steady, judicial, merciless. It does not stop. It testifies to time’s cruelty: the writer must keep writing, or the glass becomes his grave.

Then, the poem flares into political delirium. “Che Guevarra, kaslon ko ikaw kay Santa Maria!” The image is absurd and divine—a Marxist saint’s wedding in a cathedral of smoke. Dimzon’s genius is this: he understands that anger, like faith, demands ritual.

The red flag becomes the trahe de boda—the bridal gown of rebellion. The masses, mga maninoy, become witnesses to a blasphemous union between revolution and prayer. Here, Dimzon performs what the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard would call “the leap of paradox”—to unite faith and fury, sacred and profane.

But in Ilonggo wisdom, we recall the diwata sang pagbalos—the spirit of justice who punishes those who pray too prettily while doing nothing. Thus, when the writer hangs a bullet on the crucifix, he is not desecrating it; he is purifying it with reality. The pendulum stops swinging because judgment has paused to listen.

The third section is where the poem starts trembling—literally and metaphysically. The writer lies on a steel bed, wrapped in a tattered curtain. The hospital room becomes both tomb and confession box. He talks to the pendulum—his only god now—but it does not reply.

This is psychological collapse, but also spiritual metamorphosis. In ancient Panayanon belief, when a babaylan nears death, she trembles before transformation. The trembling writer, counting his “ikanapulo kag tatlo nga kamatayon,” echoes the babaylan’s ritual death before becoming one with the divine.

Left. Right. Left. Right. The pendulum swings like the moral universe—terrible, repetitive, exact. Dimzon suggests that the writer’s sanity is not lost but measured—his madness is rhythmic, his despair symmetrical.

By the fourth part, the writer has ceased dreaming—he is walking on marble, the cold floor of eternity. His hands are bound to “the disciple of treachery and silver,” an allusion to Judas and every writer who ever sold truth for comfort.

And yet, from the ashes, prophecy is born. His “child is a prophet who can speak to the creator of the pendulum.” In Ilonggo mysticism, fire is both purifier and messenger—kalayo nga nagadala sang pamati sang kalag sa langit. The fire that blazes in this stanza is not destruction—it is remembrance. The writer becomes an ancestor, a storyteller beyond flesh.

Notice: the sky has no stars, no sun. The illumination comes only from within—the perpetual flame of writing itself.

Finally, the poem returns to its first setting—the glass room, now shattered by time. “Aside from Che Guevarra and St. Mary, the writer has no past.” This is both tragic and liberating. The writer has survived his thirteenth death. He remembers nothing—not even fragments—because he has become what the pendulum always promised: continuity.

Tik. Tik. Tik. Tik. Ding. Dong. Ding. Dong. That is not merely sound—it is philosophy. It is Heraclitus whispering that time flows, even when meaning halts. It is the Ilonggo proverb, “Ang kalayo indi magtulog samtang may tawo nga nagahulat sang adlaw.” The fire will not rest while someone still waits for morning.

Dimzon’s poem is not a narrative—it is a pendulum itself. It swings between solitude and rebellion, sanity and prophecy, despair and creation. The writer becomes both subject and witness, both god and ghost.

And what of the pendulum? It is not merely time—it is truth itself, unrelenting and uncorrupted. It is the universe’s metronome of justice, saying: You may stop writing, but meaning will not stop swinging.

If you ask me, this poem is an autopsy of the Filipino soul. The writer is every citizen who has been blinded by bureaucracy, seduced by religion, betrayed by memory—and yet, still insists on writing, on thinking, on existing.

The pendulum? It is our collective conscience. It swings through history, unmindful of our excuses. And when it stops, it is not because time has ended—it is because we, the readers, have refused to move.

So to Alain Russ Dimzon, I say: congratulations. You have built a mirror and forced us to look—not at our faces, but at the machinery of our faith. And to the rest of us, may the pendulum never stop.

Tik. Tik. Tik. Tik. Ding. Dong. Ding. Dong. That, my friends, is the sound of truth—refusing to die.

*****

ANG MANUNULAT KAG ANG PENDULUM 
ni Alain Russ Dimzon
 
1.
Isa ka manunulat
Ang ginbulag
Sa iya kwarto
Nga nangin
Salaming nga
Tuman kadamul.
 
Ang iya makinilya
Ginahandum
Sang iya mga tudlo,
Apang ginatandug ini
Sang iya mga mata.
 
Ang iya daan nga libro
Ginahandum
Sang iya mga mata,
Apang ginatandug ini
Sang iya mga tudlo.
 
Dapat mangin isa
Ang manunulat kag
Ang iya makinilya.
 
Ang manunulat
Indi sumalayo.
Ang sumalayo
Amo ang kandado.
 
“Buksan ko
Ang pwertahan!
 
Akon ini kwarto!
Saksi pa ang pendulum!”
 
2.
Akig ang manunulat.
 
“Bulawan nga estrelya
Daw makunol ka
Batuk sa mga tinaga
Sang mga nobena!
 
Che Guevarra,
Kaslon ko ikaw
Kay Santa Maria!
 
Pula nga bandera
Ang trahe de boda!
 
Mga maninoy ang masa!”
 
Nagaalsa ang aso
Sa gabuk nga terasa.
 
Akig ang manunulat.
 
Sa punta sang rosarito
Ginpakabitan niya
Ang krus sang bala.
 
Ginkasal niya sila
Sa iya ngalan nga
Wala sing amay
Kag wala sing anak.
 
Nagkulpa ang aso.
Wala nagahabyog
Ang pendulum.
 
Ang naakig nga manunulat
Nagtukis sang pahina.
 
3.
Nagakurog ang karon ginatublag nga manunulat.
 
Nagahigda sia sa katre nga salsalon
Kag naputos sia sa kurtina nga gision.
 
Ginasugilanon niya ang pendulum
Nga wala nagasabat sa iya mga palamangkutanon.
 
Madamu ang mga lapaklapak sa pasilyo
Kag may katingil sang mga kariton.
 
Nagagwa kag nagapasulog ang mga trabahador
Nga may tabon ang mga nawong.
 
Makita sang manunulat ang iya kaugalingon
Sa pihak nga katre kag nagaugayong.
 
Nagaibwal ang kalayo sa pagpangamuyo
Kag pagpanulod sang mga sinsilyo sa mga puyo.
 
Ginabinagbinag sang nagakurog nga manunulat
Ang iya ikanapulo kag tatlo nga kamatayon.
 
Gintawag niya ang tagtuga sang pendulum.
 
Ang nagakurog nga manunulat indi makapiyong
Nagaibwal nga nagaibwal ang kalayo.
 
Wala. Tuo. Wala. Tuo. Wala. Tuo. Wala. Tuo.
Ang paghabyog sang pendyulum nagapadayon.
 
 
4.
Wala nagadamgo ang manunulat.
Nagatapak sya sa batobusilak.
 
Nahigot ang iya mga kamot
Sa mga kamut sang disipulo
Sang pagluib kag pilak.
 
Ang manunulat nangin anak sang mga kandila.
Ang iya anak isa ka manununda
Nga mahimo makasugilanon
Sa tagtuga sa pendulum.
 
Wala nagadamgo ang manunulat
Nagapuyu sia karon sa balay nga bato
Nga may mga dingding nga nagalunay
Sa kalayo sang iya ginikanan.
 
Wala ginabutahan ang manunulat..
Wala nagayuhum ang tagbalay.
Gikan sa mga bintana,
Ang langit wala mga bituon
Kag wala man sing adlaw.
 
Nagaibwal naman ang kalayo.
Pahanumdumdum ini sang pendulum.
 
5.
Ang kwarto nga salaming
Ginbuka sang dekada.
 
Luwas kay
Che Guevarra
Kag Santa Maria,
Ang manunulat
Wala sing
Nagligad.
 
“Wala na ako
Sing may madumduman.
Bisan mga tinipik lang.”
 
Paglagatik.
Makinilya.
 
Pagtukis.
Pahina.
 
Wala magluya
Ang makinilya.
Wala maglubad
Ang mga daan
Nga pahina.
 
Tik.
Tik.
Tik.
Tik.
 
Ding.
 
Dong.
 
Ding.
 
Dong.
 
Padayon ang pendyulum.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WHEN PARADISE IS PAVED WITH MARBLE

 by Roger B. Rueda, PhD

There is a poem haunting me this morning, like the ghost of a revolution that refuses to shut up. Its name is “Ang Paraiso ni Amado.” The Ilonggo poet Alain Russ Dimzon offers us not paradise but paralysis. And the protagonist, Amado—whose name ironically means “beloved”—returns home not as a hero, but as a man nailed by his own memory to a marble floor. When creating names for characters, I recall Dr. Leoncio Deriada being the grand master of irony. He understood that a name is not a tag but destiny waiting to happen; whether or not someone takes it as their own depends on who they are and what they want out from life. In Deriada's stories, names are not just adornments but triggers, each syllable packed with intentions that tell us who or where someone is going to be born. A name is in Deriada's moral universe both an omen and a sentence. It tells not only what you are but also what disaster is inevitable approaching for you. And like his literary forebear, Alain Russ Dimzon names his "Amado" with no trace of feeling but a most exquisite irony: the "beloved one" who is anything but what he claims to be. With that single paradox, Dimzon proves to be the real disciple of Deriada's school—skillfully molding one word into an entire religion of fate, faith, and failure.

Ah, marble. The favorite flooring of the rich, the corrupt, and the dead. It is the surface upon which history slips and holiness pretends to stand upright. The poet writes: “Daw ginlansang ang iya mga tuhod sa batobusilak nga salog.” His knees are nailed, not by Roman soldiers, but by conscience and colonization.

In the Philippines, we are experts in kneeling, aren’t we? We kneel before crosses, before bosses, before politicians who distribute spaghetti during campaign season. Amado kneels before a cross—but his mind betrays him. He tries to erase the flag imprinted with the sickle and hammer. Imagine that: even in worship, ideology stalks him like an unpaid debt.

What exquisite irony. We are a country that loves revolution, as long as it is safely contained within poetry. Once it demands real sacrifice, we run to the church and confess our subversion away.

The poem stages a wrestling match between Karl Marx and the Miraculous Medal. Amado dips his hand in holy water, yet still feels his finger curve around a trigger. The body remembers what the soul denies. In psychology, that’s called trauma retention. In politics, that’s called post-revolution fatigue. In the Philippines, we simply call it Tuesday.

His vision of “golden stars in vast redness” is pure cognitive dissonance—faith filtered through ideology. He sees heaven through a red flag. The poem turns his gaze into a battlefield—between belief that consoles and belief that commands. What he beholds is not just the night sky, but the lingering afterglow of a dream that promised paradise and delivered penance.

Then the question comes: “San-o pa madula ang kadena kag latigo? San-o ang duta mangin paraiso?” When will the chain and whip go? When will the earth become paradise?

That is the same question every Filipino asks while waiting in line at the Bureau of Immigration. The poet’s genius lies in his simplicity. He does not preach. He prays. But his prayer trembles with protest. The repetition of kneeling and returning mirrors our national cycle: faith, failure, forgiveness, repeat.

Nietzsche once said that eternal recurrence is the greatest burden of existence. The Ilonggo version is simpler: Kon indi ka kabalo magtindog, pirmi ka gid magluhod. (If you don’t know how to stand, you will always be on your knees.)

Our ancestors would have laughed at Amado’s marble piety. The old babaylan prayed on earth, not on tile. They knew that divinity lives in dirt, not in imported polish. Duta is sacred, because it remembers the sweat of laborers and the blood of ancestors.

But here we are, worshipping on marble. We have traded the fertility of the soil for the sterility of status. Our temples are cold, our gods imported, our revolutions rehearsed. The poem reminds us that paradise is not a reward; it is a responsibility we’ve neglected—like unpaid taxes and unfiled graft cases.

In the olden days, the Panayanon believed that when a man lost his connection to the earth, his spirit wandered. Amado is that spirit. He bows to a cross yet dreams of a hammer. He is torn between Diyos kag Duta—God and soil, salvation and struggle. The poet does not condemn him. Instead, he makes him the mirror of our collective confusion: pious but powerless, faithful but famished, revolutionary but retired.

If I were to give my judgment, this poem is worthy not only of a standing ovation -, it should be resurrected at the national level. After all, it needs to be read aloud in temples and in classes, in the vast marble corridors of the Capitol, where faith is proclaimed, and honesty is forgotten. The task of this poem is what few others dare: its verse lets the Filipino conscience in its own contradictions. “Ang Paraiso ni Amado” is not its author loudly flattery but condemnation. So quiet that condemnation feels like a revelation. The voice of the poet is not it preaches and not its protests. The poet’s voice is poetic. His pen does not shout loudly, but pierces. His verse is soft bullets in the hands prick rather than body. This is not a poem for relaxing. This is a spiritual rebellion that has received the guise of prayer. The image is cold but the highest quality. The line is naked nerve, no rhetoric or excuse. It’s a lean, knife-clean truth. “Daw ginlansang ang iya mga tuhod sa batobusilak nga salog.” No adjective to protect, no multiplying elements to distract emphasis – the poet believes only in the weight of the image he applies, the surrounding silence. It’s already shown here that he’s a professional. This is the highest compression poetry – the art of counter-play when meaning is not added; it is removed. That’s how a sculptor carves or how a surgeon operates: remove the unnecessary to see the vitality that is left. Each pause is calculated, every echo is bloody. The structure is slow and sensual; it mimics the act of penance, as though each line is a whispered mea culpa, each quote a genuflection.

The gift is rare that can make language at once austere and alive, simplicity throb with spirit.

Its repetition is not redundancy, but ritual—an incantation for a country that no longer knows the difference between prayer and paralysis.

The lines repeat like the chime of a bell in too self-mourning of a church. Every return to the cross is therefore a return to the marble floor, and to the nailed knees; both memory and meditation. It teaches that history, unexpurgated, becomes liturgy—that the greatest sinners aren’t those who act wrongly once but those who rehearse evil over and over in ceremonies of devotion.

But the brilliance of the poem is that it salvages this repetition. It turns circularity into conscience. The reader does not become tired; the reader comes awake. As with all great liturgical work, it cleanses through repetition. The poet turns memory into an act of resistance.

What that this poem accomplishes is nothing less than theological surgery. It tears open the body of Filipino faith and exposes the cancer of fear growing within.

And yet it is no parody of religion; it is the consecration of heroism. The poet understands as the faith that wont question is submission clothed in rosary beads. By making Amado kneel and remember the hammer and sickle, the poem stages its most sacred struggle of all: that between conscience and comfort, God and government, redemption and restraint.

In its hushed rebellion, “Ang Paraiso ni Amado” assumes the role of scripture for the thinking believer. It tells us prayer is not obedience—it does more, it is conversation. This faith that is not on guard is not holiness: it is hypnotism.

Oh, yes, this poem deserves a standing ovation, all right; if only we could still stand. But... may I humbly suggest we the audience all stand up? We rise not to applaud but to acknowledge our deepest, most innermost nature. For we stand not simply to honor this poem but to bow our heads in reverence before it. The poem is constitutional in its fairness, a speech that condemns the Senate to silence. It is a compact of conscience, wholly jurisprudential in nature. For what does the poem court the artist otherwise but moral and aesthetic courage? And that is what is sufficient about it. Today’s verse belies the flag-waving and plays to the nation. Today’s poetry escapes the suffering that so scalds us; it invites its in and asks it to be seated and explain itself. That is where his greatness lies. So yes, I say: it is not ordinary honor I have given this poem I know, if only we knew the verb to stand I may then sit just like that, that hushed quiet available for that art alone who can settle our souls. For “Ang Paraiso ni Amado” does not just read. It is satisfied like in incense that reeks in your nose after a mass, or if even more and guilt that you cannot finally wash away.

And to those who still ask, “When will the earth become paradise?” my answer is simple: When Filipinos stop kneeling on marble and start standing on soil.

Because paradise is not up there, nor in ideology, nor in the illusion of imported whiteness—it is beneath our feet, in the duta nga ginpas-an naton pero wala naton ginhawiran. The earth we carry but never hold.

So rise, Amado. The cross does not need another kneeler. It needs a farmer, a fighter, a believer who knows that even paradise requires work.

*****

ANG PARAISO NI AMADO

ni Alain Russ Dimzon

Nagbalik

Si Amado

Daw ginlansang

Ang iya mga tuhod

Sa batobusilak

Nga salog.

Nagaduko sia

Sa atubang

Sang krus.

Ginapilit niya

Nga panason

Sa iya panghunahuna

Ang hayahay

Nga may imprinta

Nga garab

Kag martilyo.

Gintusmaw niya

Ang iya tuo

Nga kamut

Sa balaan

Nga tubig.

Sa iya pamatyag,

Ginasangit pa

Sang iya tudlo

Ang gatilyo.

Mga bituon

Nga bulawan

Sa malapad

Nga kapula

Ang iya panan-aw

Sa mga bituon

Sa maitum na

Nga kalangitan.

“San-o pa

Madula

Ang kadena

Kag latigo?

San-o ang duta

Mangin paraiso?”

Daw ginlansang

Ang iya mga tuhod

Sa batobusilak

Nga salog.

Angakok sia

Sa atubang

Sang krus.

Sa iya panghunahuna,

Nagalupadlupad karon

Ang hayahay

Nga may imprinta

Nga garab

Kag martilyo.