The Imp Fantisising to be a Cherub

a poem by Roger B Rueda

The imp is sensitive about itself –
be it like anything else:
never be a looking glass or
an echo of what it is like,
for the imp is miffed.
Gaga!
It might shriek
in wrath.
Its minions love the imp
a whole heap until their undoing,
their souls won’t be scorched –
they are covered in dosh,
of rites perceived by the Lord
of the Flies,
the god the imp keeps on
repudiating, yet its heart
belongs to him.
The god of its paradox.
The god that blesses it.
The god that smiles at what
it does.
Let the imp read the Bible.
Let it sing all the praises
for the Christ.
Let it cry without remorse.
Let it be.
The imp knows
what it is doing.
The imp knows where
it is going.
The imp is a pitiful piece
fantasising
to be a UFO, in the clear
and beatific.
Let God cast it into its sett, the hellhole.

On the Title of This Blog

Creativity, an elusive something that triggers me to articulate the truth as I see and imagine it, is like water I dredge up from my complexity and profundity, from my emptiness and oblivion, from my feebleness and softness, from my ephemerality and monotony. Sometimes I am plunged in the realm of it, so a rippler myself, I ripple it on the way to the shore of www.rogerbrueda.blogspot.com, the shore of my generosity and liberality. Hence, this blog is titled Creatpler. Creativity + Rippler. For one, all I want is contribute all the doings of my mind to the spiritual culture of humanity and consequently to my own immortality. My writings are a struggle against silence, against thoughtlessness, against superficiality and banality.

The Fiend in the Dreamland

a poem by Roger B Rueda

The fiend’s tongue seems to have magic –
its odium and wicked yearning
are shrouded in its bitter soul.
It’s more illusive than a serpent,
a turncoat, an absconder,
its firmness desolation of others,
of its foes, of its conflicts.
When it speaks, it only spews
charismatic vocalisations,
saintly and fragrant,
its goodness much better
than any other saints.
It buries itself in the holy book –
what a devotion, indeed.
It sings alleluia – unknowingly,
to Old Nick, its nameless god
as its impishness is its celebration
of its second death
in the vermillion water.
All the while, it denies its god,
illusionary and select
perhaps in its fate.
When they meet, only then
will it become wide-awake in truth.

Ang Yawa Nga Nabanhaw sa Tunga Naton

binalaybay ni Roger B Rueda

Ang tinaga nga nagakawas sa baba

sang yawa maamion, daw

kan-on nga bag-o hakid

sa banyado –

ang iya amorokpok

daw balunasan

nga wala kaagi mala,

mangito-ngito

kag marigna.

Ang nagalabay

daw madigwa,

daw mapilo ang kasudlan.

Ang iya kalantahon

kag ang iya pangamuyo

linangitnon

kag mala-anghel.

Nagahibi-hibi man sia

sa kruz, sa bibliya.

Sa adlaw sang Domingo

naga-uwang-uwang man sia

amba sang kalantahon

sang iya pagtuo

apang sa iya dughan

ang iya kinaiya –

kadulom, yinawan-on nga pagkaduna.

Irony

a poem by Roger B Rueda

I scrutinised the closed, clever face
of the mischievous sprite
for any hint
of irony, but found none.
No, it wasn’t a dream –
it was real.
Its actions were harsh
and loud, but its words
so fair like
the falling cottons
from auburn kapok pods,
light and at leisure.
Its soul was rancid,
its words sweet-scented.
Its thoughts were bursting
with expletives,
suspicions, spites –
what it said was ‘I love you!’

The Devil

a poem by Roger B Rueda

It's green with envy, its life a confusion,
a denunciation –
it doesn’t want others to be jubilant.
All it wants is misery of others,
its dream devastation,
its mind disloyal to its god, its creator.
It smiles like an angel,
its words dignified,
its swarthy heart
filthy & faithless.
It takes in everyone.
It doesn’t want to see the truth –
All it wants is its lies had faith in
to be real, to be unspoiled.
Its pride brims over,
its horns so sharp & pointed.
It is ready to ram anyone
against it, bitter & cross.
It tells of untruths –
its flesh is redeemed,
free from pain, and its soul
put on the rack, every piece
of it will be squashed & turned
to piranhas looking ravenously
hungry in the conflagration of vermilion water.

hahahahaha

Goldfishhood

a poem by Roger B Rueda

You’ve turned red, orange, white, black, blue,
chocolate brown, yellow, red and white,
black and red, black red and white, calico –
your skin’s  hardened.
Your back is gently arched, until it
reaches the caudal peduncle,
when it sharply angles downward
and meets your tail,
your eyes fluid-filled sacs
forming on each side of your face.
Your tail tends to flare out
and looks fuller than
that of the comet.
Now, you love playing all day
and exploring your aquarium,
your everlasting,
swimming with the nose down
and tail fin up.
You relax and let yourselves rise up.
You hide behind a plant
or in a cave when you feel in danger.
We’ve had a good feed for you:
I want to tell you something,
but I know
goldfish live inanely –
I think it’s nice if I let you be, lovely pets.

Mangoes

a poem by Roger B Rueda

Don’t pluck a stalk of green mangoes
from the tree –
then I was only ill once
and that came
of eating unripe mangoes.
They were acrid
even with honey.
Always choose
firm, but ripe mangoes.
Wait about –
they’ll fall when they become fully grown.

The Box

a poem by Roger B Rueda

has stiff sides, it is too dark inside to see much.
Yes, your imagination is vivid, like a kite
flown in the air, with a long string attached
which you hold while it is flying.
You dandle every sheet of veneers,
every crevice and every chasm
of life and your whole fantasy.
You hypothesise and speak
words of great wisdom.
You surmise when there is so little
to go on, to live on.
You believe you’re telling –
an immortal, a god (with death).
You speak of adages and dictums,
your mouth sharp and quick-witted,
your words fire to the shivering depth.
Outside, the box is a presence wrapped
in a pink SM gift wrap, its ribbon
a roseate satin strip, likeable and secret.
By it are a Galaxy S3 and my bag.
After a while, the birthday party begins.

Saccharum officinarum

a poem by Roger B Rueda

as the day breaks they are cutting the cane the slave cane

whose nightflowers of rubicund and rosy

are hiding their revelries from rays and view,

that rears over its cutters cracking and whizzing

with the immobilised vigour of a hungry peasantry;

that is a nightmarish crowd of androids, a ferocious

thick inflow of spikes and flapping buntings,

surging recalcitrantly and unable to rush onward,

checked by centuries of slavery that have bred it almost

seedless and sterile, needing man for

each new generation that's grown from the speartips

of those cut and crushed

by cohorts of men who are barely more free:

and where the cleared ground ends

they antagonise each other

the cane that is slave to its planter and cutter,

the cutter near slave to the owner of cane

in the dizzy heat of midday they are cutting the cane

bottles of water and white rum lie in the shade of slashed branches

with white rum and red wrath they are cutting the cane

hewing the thin skeletons for the marrows melodiousness

with cutlasses that live in contempt of bone

the bone of the neighbour who looks at your wife

the bone of your wife who's run back to her mother

the bone of your friend who's been seen with your boyfriend

every livid grievance can be cut out with a cutlass

but not the protest of cutting the cane for a pittance:

both cane and cutter carry leaf blades for the owner

in the calm of the evening they are cutting the cane

the infinite cane, the cane they make infinite,

the cane like themselves, like the arms of the starving,

the sweet cane that leaves an acerbic taste in the mouths of its reapers

The Other Night

a poem by Roger B Rueda

On the side, my mate lighted
a candle.
Fireflies balled
beside the fire,
pricking the black
about us.
From each end
of the shrubbery,
crickets whirred the warm,
slick air.
I thought of those who have
loved me,
gone like summer drupes
plumped from leaves;
their shadows
followed me
into the house. Now,
by the moon, a fading star.

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Product Details
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Language: American English
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Mother

a poem by Roger B Rueda

She still minces it in little bites, the pith of a banana,

mung bean sprouts slick and shiny, lumpia wrap

blooming  from the pads  of her fingers,

until each seam gleams from her mother’s touch.

She tweaks sticky rice, each grain

twice-rinsed, to free the starch,

to feed this son, strengthen the march

of those suckling’s legs she recalls, the thump

and pull as he swam up from

the hollow sway beneath her ribs.

Her hand cupped on her middle, back

then she imagined him a sharp-tailed prawn,

fizzing pink curl of flesh,

anemone in a sweetened sea.

He belongs to me, she had held,

hollowing mangoes with the bowl of her spoon.

Giving she knows: to live. So even now,

Molo balls grow fat and rich in broth,

gabi, bangos, radish, string beans,

tamarind leaves  for soup. He will always

want sinigang, when he comes.

She’ll boil water later, sauté aubergine with eggs,

as good as that wife might wish

she could make, that wife who keeps

him, so distant, for years now,

in a country she’s never seen,

where she knows, just knows,

the bangos is never fresh,  the sinigang

so saline or  bland from lack of tamarind sap.

Tiwi

an essay by Roger B Rueda

A tricycle-ride away (60.42 metres) from the town proper of Barotac Nuevo, Tiwi is seat of the Iloilo State College of Fisheries (ISCOF) main campus. Tradition-bearers recount that then a dark cloud of tiwis would come swarming out of their nests and the mangrove swamps all over the ponds or rice-fields. Since then, the place has been called Tiwi by the local folks, who were originally fishermen, who were dab hands at culturing bangos and oysters along the coast. (The cluster of shacks and shanties, grey and weatherbeaten, covered in faded bamboo shingles, was then a scene to see in this peaceful village.)

The bird inhabits the marshland of the place, at the ponds. They have reclusive nature. Cautious and well camouflaged, the tiwi is hardly ever seen these days. They must have gone off somewhere very far in a sulk.

A wading bird, the tiwi eats a variety of bugs, earthworms, small molluscs, shrimps, and some vegetal matter as well as occasional seeds and berries. Its beak is long and flexible, able to find food by feel alone. When I was a young boy all of nine or ten, I saw some tiwis while slogging around swamped bottomlands. When startled, the birds would fly off in a zigzag pattern while emitting a high-pitched call. For one, not confident in its camouflage, being the same colour as dried grass, the tiwi can not stand still when it feels danger.

Their nests are dry grasses put together in a grass tussock at the edge of slushy areas. Usually, the hen lays four blotched eggs. Then, after an incubation of 18-20 days (shared by both parents), the eggs hatch. Like other ground-nesting birds, the young leave the nest almost immediately after hatching and are able to follow the mother in search of food. Within a couple of months, the small tiwi can fly well enough to fend for themselves.

The tiwi measures about 10 1/2 inches long and weighs about 4 1/2 ounces. It is most comfortable in shallow, freshwater marshy ranges. The tiwi’s brown, black, and grey feathering makes for superb camouflage in brambles and low-growing grasses. Its legs are shorter than most wading birds' legs.

I'm afraid that someday the bird will vanish without trace. Most Tiwinians must have not seen this bird. Conservation projects are the only hope of the bird to be kept for future generations. Locals should take pictures of the bird they happen to spot - to capture life that is transient and elusive. For one, the bird stands for the barangay and its people.

Tiwi is the most populated barangay in Barotac Nuevo. In the world of magic and myth, they must be tiwis incarnate, quick-witted and sprightly. And these days, most Tiwinians are no longer fishermen. There are some who are and most of their fishing effort and harvest is focussed on five species: bangos, tilapia, seabass, prawns, and mud crabs. Each morning, you can still see local fishermen unload their catch and an early get up is rewarded by the most spectacular sun rise.

[Did you know? The first settlers of Tiwi were the Bayogoses, the Baitos, the Belgas, the Benbans, the Barsaleses, and the Bondads.]

The Adjective

an essay by Roger B Rueda

The adjective delimits (or limits) the noun or varies its meaning. A simple denotation can be deepened or changed or confined by an adjective.  We can grasp everything - from concepts to images - considerably or unmistakeably through the adjective.

Personally, the adjective helps me enchant my readers to slope into my imaginings, my ideas. It builds a tone for them, it generates a frame of mind, and it shows rigidity. It enlivens my writing to them, translating an experience or idea into written words that let them visualise the situation.

The art of playing with the most fitting adjectives is the key for making a writing work well with the reader, I believe. Using a wide array of adjectives in a writing is indeed effective in the sense that it does not only drive away the readers’ encumbrance but also kindles their curiosity, to scour the whole texts for clues, for its drift.

That’s why as a writing teacher, when I teach sentence stylistics, my efforts are centred on the adjective – essentially, on the noun phrase, whose other component is the adjective. A writing can be well organised for one thing but can be rather dull without the sense of balance in the noun phrase. The adjective colours a writing and divulges the true nature of the writer. It gives anything we say some kind of configuration and piquancy and impression. It spices a writing up quite a bit or further, or somewhat. It calibrates the abstracts and feelings by helping the noun to be more perceptible and discernible. 

I’ve pored through the volumes of documents – novels, poetry books, journals, dictionaries, grammars – to get my hands on the adjective sequence, something that is widely held and shared. Demonstrably, I’ve incorporated it in a grammar I wrote in 2009, in APPLE [A Plain & Practically Lucid English] Grammar (CentralBooks). One thing I've wanted is to simplify the difficult task of teaching writing to beginners or foreign students. The sequence logical or practical as it may appear gives the noun phrase an element of structure, and that is important to a learner who is following a broad trail of dubiety and unfamiliarity, the trail where he seems to scrabble for ideas or methods. For one, a learner needs a thoughtful, penetrating mind, which he doesn't have yet, on the whole. A beginner learner in English might feel quite peculiar for the strangeness of language not their own. 

Indeed, I have come up with something to follow. Here is the list, a catalogue of a series, in turn; then a catalogue of examples – a sort of vade mecum for beginning writers:

(1) determiner-a, an, the, some, many, much, little, a little, a few, few, one, two, three, ten, fifty, this, these, that, those, first, second, third, my, his, her, their, our, your, Celine’s, any, several, every, a quantity of, a number of, a small number of

(2) opinion- amusing, anxious, beautiful, boring, comical, confident, crazy, delicious, droll, edgy, elegant, entertaining, exciting, fluent, funny, gorgeous, inferior, intelligent, happy, high- humorous, interesting, low-grade, mad, mediocre, nervous, passionate, poor, pretty, quality, rich, sad, sexy, serious, striking, stunning, substandard, tired, tedious, ugly, uneasy, witty

(3) size-big, large, small, thin, fat, tall, short, long, enormous, colossal, humongous, giant, king-sized, medium-sized, long-sized, short-sized, family-sized, plump, oversize

(4) weight-bulky, chunky, bantam-weight, heavy, light, hefty, thick

(5) participle-(-ing) cooking, playing, baking, dancing, swimming, writing, reading, singing (p.p.) fallen, hidden, broken, iced, baked, written, burnt, mixed, cut, sold, frozen

(6) temperature- cold, fiery, frosty, hot, lukewarm, temperate, tepid, wintry

(7) humidity-dry, wet, misty, soppy, watery, hazy, foggy, murky, cloudy, soaked, damp, soaking, drenched, sodden, soggy

(8) shape-round, triangular, rectangular, oval, elongated, circular, heart-shaped, pear-shaped, egg-shaped, spherical, rounded, globular, rotund

(9) age-old, young, new, vintage, antique, primeval, contemporary, current, previous, former, obsolete, medieval, traditional, long-established, time-honoured

(10) colour-pink, white, black, yellow, magenta, green, red, purple, blue, brown, grey, orange, sky blue, navy blue, yellow green, beige, taupe, mauve, lavender, auburn, colourless, fair-skinned, pale-skinned,

(11) origin-South Korean, North Korean, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, American, Australian, Chilean, Argentinean, Italian, Peruvian, Canadian, New Zealander, Russian, Swiss, Roman, lunar, solar, Mongolian, Philippine (culture/government/history), Philippines (news, crime, business, company)/Filipino (person)

(12) material- bamboo, cotton, crystal, egg, emerald, fibre, jade, gold, leather, metal, paper, plastic, fabric, apple, banana, beef, pork, fish, mushroom, mango, tomato, steel, carbon, coal, vinyl, porcelain, pearl, diamond, ruby, plywood, silver, rock, hydrogen, flour, ivory, wooden

(13) purpose- (-ing) , baking, cooking, , dancing playing, reading, singing, swimming, writing/ (noun) body, computer, eye, hand, pencil, school, street, table

By the way, number 5 is either the present participial adjective or the past participial adjective. The present participial adjective is used to refer to an action (perhaps developing or functional). Number 13 is the gerundival adjective. It is used to refer to a purpose. Determining the two adjectives is contextual, so the use of the two adjectives has to be executed with meticulous attention to detail and background. There are some dictionaries that incorporate these adjectives, but of course its description and definition are confined to few sentences, or worse there is nothing at all. 

Of course, the adjective has its own inflexion, but not much in English. A good memory retention is enough. There are some exceptional rules, but, well, a good grammar or a usage book is enough, to blaze a trail for you lest you are at sea. There are a lot of online sites, too, to turn to.

We can curiously intertwine our thoughts and the adjective as we draw in our bookworms to our words, as if by magic – as we quantify and limit a noun. An understanding of the adjective categorically makes anyone a better writer as well as a better speaker of English, in general, possibly - for one thing. This is because our life, every stratum of it, I think, should be pervaded by adjectives, since our life is nounlike, theoretical and more tangled than ever, yet it seems rather humdrum, you know. 

Streetchildren at Jaro Park

a video by Roger B Rueda

When I grow up, I want to work at a department store [like SM City or Gaisano] as a saleslady because I want to get an ATM card and save money in the bank. But first I need Php 60 to have my photo of me taken for me to apply for an ATM card.

I’m happy if my mum is happy and if she doesn't get sick. And I'll be happy if my father gets out of gaol.

I want to help my mum earn money - she's the only one who does that in our family. She works very hard to support us. I also have to sell candles. I always look for money to buy these accessories and sell them, to help her.

Charity: Clothes and Shoes

an essay by Roger B Rueda

Of late, Roh Eunhye, a Korean ESL student in Iloilo City, handed out pre-used clothes to some indigents in Lapuz District. 

All of nineteen and from Sangju, Roh Eunhye is very energetic, and her motives are entirely altruistic. Giving (time, money, and energy) to her is a central way that she strives to find meaning. She feels a closeness to other people, and generally appreciates life, when she shares.

She says she feels good to give and finds it fulfilling. 

The locals were hospitable and welcoming to her. When we arrived at the place, some jumped for joy when Roh Eunhye announced to them that she was going to give them some pre-used clothes and shoes. They were happy and posed for photographs, with their donator. They thankfully helped the Korean woman bring her luggage towards the street. 

This week she is planning to hand out food in the inner-city slums. The rewards of helping a community through charity last longer than money, she believes, for one thing. Roh Eunhye has already decided to work for charity to keep her eyes open wide to the vast genuine needs of the poor in the community where she lives.

For me, this young woman is a source of inspirations for the community as we must realise that charity works also give us an understanding that there is something larger than ourselves. 

A Read for Breakfast

an essay by Roger B Rueda

‘Breakfast’ is a poem, which has in a way enkindled me to write more poems, something that is tangible and lifelike but whose effect is analytical and unbounded. I happened to read the poem in Philippine Panorama and later in Mantala, an anthology of Philippine Literature edited by Dr Leoncio Deriada, where my two poems appear, too. It is by the Ilonggo poet Alain Russ Dimzon, a friend of mine since 1997 when I was a sophomore mass comm student. His brand of writing is one of the best so far amongst the Filipino poets I’ve ever read.  An influence to me, he leaves the door open to secretive experiences of a mystical, existential nature. The characters he creates sometimes enter imaginary worlds of equal importance to the real world. He combines ingenuousness and sharp intellect with great understanding of the importance of the imaginings. And I think ‘Breakfast’ is one – a fiction poem.

Dimzon is a realist, and perhaps a feminist. His poems are in the vein of the poems published in The New Yorker.  They are integrational, wisdom-oriented, and improvisational beyond concepts of settlements in ever-changing situational simulacrum. (The other poems of Dimzon, which I like, are ‘The Timekeeper’ and ‘A Rain Scene,’ which won him First Prize in a Home Life Poetry Contest.)

‘Breakfast’ is so simple, but its effects are very multifaceted to a mind – to my mind then, even till now, I’ve realised. The utterance is easy, so lucid at first.  It is a subtle poem, yet it contains an elusive level of contradiction. It is the compression of intensely felt experience into the sound waves of poetry and the decompression of intense experience through the catharsis of poetry by a son who grew up deprived of a father and still longing perhaps to be with his father.

Breakfast here is very figurative, as it is eaten in the early part of the day.  It offers a timeline, an inception. It is like his childhood, untimely and wet behind the ears. I think the reading of this poem is inexpressibly poignant. A cry inside me broke from me, as the poem starts soft and melancholy.

There is an intellectual energy and daring in this work, as the faint misery of his mother is the main point of the poem. Her virtue confined to her being a Christian, perhaps, and a natural monogamous, is hidden starting from that very first breakfast and at every breakfast that comes next.

His telling the father that he still owns the seat at the table tells of his and his mother’s deep sense of humility – a signal to the father to forget about his pride and shame.

The grandson in the crib lets slip how so kind a son he is. Being a good son to his mother is his first priority, as he is still hoping to keep the family his mother has set her heart on.  It is saving the matrimony and the family both his mother and he himself are keen on to hold their fire. Thus, perhaps, he can’t leave his mother though he has a younger brother to take care of her.  And it shows how everlasting fatherhood is.

The poem is given space to take breaths, and the small details – the tiny symbols, the deft word choices, and the slenderness of the lines – give the poem a quality of care and taste that is enviable. Its narrow lines, too, are enough to make the reading discoveries fresh as readers plough through the entire poem.

Anyway, here is the poem:

Breakfast

for Father

One morning

when the family

ate breakfast

you were not there

on your seat

at the table

The night before

through my blanket

I saw you

slap Mother

She was sobbing now

as she drank

her glass of milk

and bottlefed

my youngest brother

I hurried

on my boiled egg

to be in time

for my Grade Two Class

(The years

doused our anger

in the pool

of our tears)

You may come

and eat breakfast

with us again

You still own

your seat

at the table

You can sip

your black coffee

and read

your newspaper

while my son

your first grandchild

is babbling

in his crib

Barotac Nuevo

an essay by Roger B Rueda

In Barotac Nuevo, football is a religion to a lot of people. It is so profoundly, so fervently entwined into the fabric of Barotacnon culture that the two entities are intricately linked – they define each other and share an intrinsic uniqueness, an instantly recognisable image. Being the Football Capital of the Philippines, Barotac Nuevo has transformed football an expressionistic art form and an effective tool for social cohesion. It has hordes of incredibly gifted players who have made their way to the national shores over the last few decades. Amongst them are Ian Araneta, Yanti Barsales, and Chieffy Caligdong –

all are on the Philippine ‘Azkals,’ our national football team.

Barotacnon youngsters play football on the streets, on waste ground, concrete; any available surface. Most of the teenagers have no boots, so they play unshod, further promoting an ability to strike the ball properly. They love dancing and partying aside from playing football. They also work hard and are very creative. They use their mornings to help their families in household errands and use their afternoons to play football. The beautiful game keeps them exultant even though their families couldn't meet the expense of sending them to school. In a word, Barotacnon children always treasure each moment whenever they play football.

Barotacnons are gentle, kind, and fascinating. They are friendly and talkative people. They are law-abiding, fond of food, concerned with their religion, familiar with agriculture, and expert at fishing.

Barotac Nuevo is seat of the Iloilo State College of Fisheries (ISCOF), the Western Visayas College of Science and Technology (WVCST), and St Paul’s School.  Thus, they earn it the title as the Educational Centre of the Fourth District of Iloilo. (The institutions have created and expanded the town's elite.) Further, it has a hospital run by Western Visayas Medical Centre and a radio station in ISCOF at Tiwi. 

Sandwiched between Dumangas and Pototan, the town has developed a unique version of Hiligaynon with some hint of Kinaray-a. It can be called perhaps as Hiniray-a. It is spoken by about 51,867 locals.

It’s famous for baye-baye, sweet delicacy made from coconut water, grated scraped young coconut meat, sugar, and toasted pinipig (crushed rice grains). It is believed that the first  baye-baye was made of ground roasted corn and was cooked by a farmer's wife in Sohoton. It’s sold at bus stops or on a bus itself as some hawkers climb on it.

History

Capitan Simon Protacio, the recognised head (chair) and the wealthiest denizen of the place, established the town of Malutac in 1811 in the Spanish time. The town was renamed Barotac Nuevo in March 1812. The name Barotac is a portmanteau of the Spanish word baro which means mud, and the Hiligaynon word malutac, which means muddy; (for one, the ground here smells of rain in June and people muddy their feet or slippers when they walk. The soil here is smooth to the touch. When moistened, it’s soapy slick. When you roll it between your fingers, dirt is left on your skin.) Nuevo, which means new, was added to classify it from the town 19 miles up north named Barotac, which was later called Barotac Viejo, to distinguish the two Barotacs from each other, perhaps to make it clearer.

On the word of the traditional stories narrated by tradition-bearers, Barotac Nuevo in the 1600's was legendary far afield with its purebred horse ranches, and Tamasac, a tireless white mount was the strongest, fastest, and finest in the neighbourhood. It was quick thinking, agile, and sure footed. The horse was meant to be Barotac Nuevo’s emblem - of strength and courage, and perhaps uniqueness of its own experience: then, someone bestowed a good-looking horse from India on the Governor-General Manuel Gonzalez de Aguilar (4 March 1810 - 4 September 1813), but they couldn't find any horse in Manila, which they could use as a pair of the horse to draw the Governor-General’s carromata, a light, two-wheeled, boxlike vehicle. De Aguilar’s servants rambled through the islands in search of another horse until they got to the town of Dumangas in Iloilo. Malutac then was only a ward (a barangay) of Dumangas. They spotted Tamasac, a lovely slender looking horse that had great endurance qualities and was very spirited, as he whinnied. They hankered after the horse at a price the rancher wanted, but Capitan Protacio would not sell it even though he was agreeable to give it without charge on condition that Malutac should be made a pueblo, a Spanish settlement. (By the way, tamasac means splash, the sound made when something hits water or falls into it.)

The men hurried back to Manila and passed on the Governor-General what Capitan Protacio wanted in exchange for his horse. In all seriousness, the Governor-General didn't turn him down. He rather wrote a letter to the Gobernadorcillo of Iloilo to grant Malutac autonomy from the town of Dumangas and declare its township as soon as possible. Thus now, Capitan Simon Protacio and Tamasac loom in the plaza of Barotac Nuevo, after the late mayor Bernardo Siaotong put up the statue as a symbol of gratitude of the Barotacnons and commemorated the two icons by inscribing their names on the headstone, in 1926.

The country had been at war for years, so the latter long part of the life of Barotacnons was spent in obscurity and terror, and those years were a nightmare to some.

On 13 June 1944, a Tuesday, Barotac Nuevo celebrated its first fiesta since the beginning of the the Second World War, to honour the death of St Anthony of Padua, the patron saint of lost and stolen articles. 

Since then, the town of Barotac Nuevo, appropriately bustling and energised, has been considered a flourishing rural town in Iloilo with countryside that offers a more peaceful and less congested living environment. Its growth is ascribed to its abundant natural resources – agriculturally and aquaculturally. 

Griffins in Tiwi

a poem by Roger B Rueda

We took a stroll round Tiwi. The night was

pure with cold air and lit with stars.

The boys were nattering away
towards the street –

they had been boozing all night.

We lurked in the dark.

We lay on our back at the stand,

listening to the sound of the wind

sighing in the trees.

We looked like griffins.

No, we were griffins –

we beguiled them

into choosing to linger;

we sank our venomous fangs

into their necks.

When they let out a sigh of relief,

it was over.

We leaned up and kissed them

on the cheek.

We began a slow saunter

towards the waiting shed.

Our joints ached,

and the memory shattered our pain.