Ang mga nalulong

ang mga nalulong
tiyak makukulong
habang ang buryong
ay bubulong-bulong

piniit ng batas
kumapit sa rehas
anang talipandas:
"paano pupulas?"

"anong sakit damhin
nitong palad namin?
sentensya'y babathin
upang laya'y kamtin?"

dama ng sugapa
habang lumuluha
sa pamilya'y awa
sa sarili'y sumpa

- gregbituinjr.

Ang pana ni Kupido

humahaginit yaong pana patungo sa puso
bagong pag-ibig ang pinupuntirya ng palaso
para sa magandang dilag na tigib ng siphayo
upang dalhin sa daigdig na puno ng pagsuyo

- gregbituinjr.

Panahon ngayon ng berdugong ulol

PANAHON NGAYON NG BERDUGONG ULOL

I

panahon ngayon ng berdugong ulol
na buhay ng tao'y inuulaol

paslang agad ang inakalang adik
walang proseso't lagim ang hinasik

dugo'y nagsitilamsikan sa lupa
habang ang pamilya'y nagsipagluha

buhay ng anak na inalagaan
sa isang iglap nawalang tuluyan

ganito na ba ang hustisya ngayon?
karapatan ng tao'y nilululon?

buhay ng kapwa'y tinulad sa ipis
na titirisin lang kapag ninais

II

panahon ngayon ng mga berdugo
na uhaw sa dugo ng kapwa tao

batas nila'y pumatay nang pumatay
malinis na lipunan daw ang pakay

ngunit bakit walang batas, proseso?
bakit ba paslang doon, paslang dito?

kahit matino ka'y dapat mag-ingat
sa kalsada'y huwag pakalat-kalat

ang batas ay nasa kanilang kamay
kaya walang tao sa mga lamay

buhay ng tao sa kanila'y barya
kahit pa ang mga ina'y magdusa

- gregbituinjr.

Dyenosidyo sa bayan ko

DYENOSIDYO SA BAYAN KO

libu-libo na ang pinaslang sa bayan ko
nakakapangamba na't isang dyenosidyo
pawang tilamsik ng dugo ang bumabagyo
sa masang dinaluhong ng utak-barbaro

dyenosidyo ba'y paano mapipigilan
lalo't mga tingga na ang pinapaulan
laksang dugo na'y pinabaha sa lansangan
di na rin iginagalang ang karapatan

pupulbusing matindi ang uring sugapa
sa droga't dugo'y lilipuling parang linta
ang pinadadaluyong na'y mapulang sigwa
tila baga lugar na ito'y isinumpa

sa dyenosidyong iyon sinong mananagot
sa dagat na pula ba'y makapapalaot
paano harapin ang mukhang nakamurot
kung hinarap ng namatayan ay hilakbot

- gregbituinjr.

Nang maduterte si Kian

NANG MADUTERTE SI KIAN

huwag nating payagang muling maduterte
ang ating kabataan ng mga salbahe
oplan tokbang ang dahilan ng pangyayari
si Kian na dapat iyang pinakahuli

kayrami nang naduterte ang mga halang
si Kian ay isa lang sa mga tinokbang
pag naduterte ka'y kawawa kang nilalang
aba'y dapat nang pigilan iyang pagpaslang

di dapat maduterte sinuman sa atin
dapat tiyaking due process ay pairalin
iyang pagduterte'y labag sa batas natin
pagkat gawain iyan ng mga salarin

sinumang manduterte'y dapat parusahan
litisin at ikulong pag napatunayan
ipakita rin nating dito sa lipunan
iginagalang natin bawat karapatan

- gregbituinjr.

Talasalitaan: 
* maduterte = mapaslang ang isang tao nang walang due process at walang paglilitis
* tokbang = mula sa "toktok! bangbang!"; operasyong pagkatok sa bahay saka babarilin ang puntirya

Bilin sa kabataan ngayon

BILIN SA KABATAAN NGAYON

bilin sa kabataan ngayon, huwag magpagabi
baka mabiktima ka ng tokbang o maduterte
huwag ipagwalang-bahala ang payo't sinabi
ika nga ng awit, "baka humandusay sa tabi"

libu-libo na ang naduterte sa ating bansa
ang gera sa droga'y bakit naging gera sa dukha
bakit pawang pinupuntirya'y mga walang-wala
napaslang ay maralita, kabataan, at bata

dagdag na bilin, huwag magpupunta sa madilim
pagkat pag napagkamalan ka'y dahasin ng lagim
kayraming pagala-galang ang budhi'y kulay itim
mag-ingat nang di danasin ang karima-rimarim

kabataan ngayon ay di na dapat magpagabi
kahit pa umaakyat ng ligaw sa binibini

- gregbituinjr.

Di dapat ginugutom ang mga makata

DI DAPAT GINUGUTOM ANG MGA MAKATA

dahil di dapat ginugutom ang mga makata
subalit ayaw naming mabusog sa pera't muta
takot silang isama namin ang gutom sa katha
at baka kapangyariha'y mabusisi sa tula

kung makata'y gutom, di lalo na ang laksang dukha
itong maykapangyarihan, wala palang magawa
aba'y kung sila'y walang silbi, dapat lang bumaba
kaysa ang mamamayan nila'y gutom at tulala

ang pagiging komunista ba'y nasaan ang diwa
di ba't gumanda ang lagay ng masa't manggagawa
tinatamasa ng lahat ang asam na ginhawa
walang sinumang maiiwan kahit isang dukha

kaya pag ginutom nila kaming mga makata
ang ginugutom nila'y mga kapatid na dukha
mabuting busugin namin sila sa tula't sumpa
bakasakaling may pagbabago silang magawa

- gregbituinjr.

- tugon sa pamagat ng artikulong: "Red poets' society: Why did powerful Russian Communists fear the work of impoverished poets?" na nasa kawing na http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/red-poets-society-why-did-powerful-russian-communists-fear-the-work-of-impoverished-poets-2342599.html

Red poets' society: Why did powerful Russian Communists fear the work of impoverished poets?

Andy McSmith @andymcsmith Tuesday 23 August 2011 23:00 BST

People who call themselves Guido are invariably trouble. One tried to blow up Parliament, another writes a right wing libertarian blog and a third, little known to the British public, led a rampaging gang of anarchists in Moscow 90 years ago.

It is sometimes thought that the civil war in Russia in 1918-20 was a straight fight between the Red Army and the monarchist White Army. Actually, there was a variety of armed bands fighting to overthrow communism without bringing back the Tsar. Guido's band was an example.

There were also bohemian artists for whom the revolution was principally a chance for wild self-expression, who congregated at the Poets' Café in Moscow, where Sergei Prokofiev occasionally took to the piano. Though most of its patrons identified with the left, in July 1921, a poet named Nikolai Gumilev, an out and out monarchist, was a guest performer.

Gumilev is a popular poet in Russia once again. His work is now on sale in Russian bookshops, which it never was in the Soviet era. Translations of his better know poems, such as The Giraffe are on the web. Meanwhile, Guido's band included a man who considered that his talent as a cabaret singer had not received due recognition. One evening, the gang turned up at the Poets Café, armed to the teeth and led by Guido, a handsome, dark-haired character in a black velvet tunic, bedecked with jewels around his neck and rings on his fingers, probably obtained by looting. The anarchists insisted that their singer comrade be heard.

He staggered on stage, drunk, and gave off a cacophony so offensively tuneless that the poet Mayakovsky leapt on stage to push him out of the way. Guido then jumped on stage waving a loaded pistol.

Fortunately for all concerned, there was a group of Red Guards in the audience, who cocked their rifles and chased the anarchists out of the café. There, disappointingly, Guido then vanished from the historical record.

It was a curious place for Nikolai Gumilev to be giving a poetry recital. He was comfortable enough, because he enjoyed the company of anyone who was artistically gifted or who appreciated poetry. On a visit to France, he had struck up an instant friendship with the writer Victor Serge, one of whose relatives was hanged for his part in the assassination of the Tsar Alexander II and who had just spent five years in French prisons for his alleged involvement in anarchist outrages. Gumilev told him: "Mine is the true Russian nature, as formed by Orthodox Christianity. You also have the true Russian nature, but at its extreme opposite, that of spontaneous anarchy, primitive violence and unruly beliefs. I love all Russia."

But not all Russia loved him. There was an obvious risk in allowing someone who had been an officer in the Tsar's cavalry to make any kind of appearance in post-revolutionary Moscow. Yet he was heard with respect by people who loved his verses, regardless of his politics. As he finished, another voice in the audience struck up, reciting Gumilev's verses from memory. But the speaker was not the typical poetry lover. He was a fierce looking young man with a striking black beard. It was Jacob Blyumkin, an officer of the feared communist police, the Cheka, and a former terrorist, who in 1918 shot dead Count von Mirbach, the German Ambassador to Russia. Later, he would achieve the unwanted distinction of being the first person executed on Stalin's orders for being a Trotsky sympathiser. He also loved poetry and these two men from opposite political extremes shook hands and bonded. A few days late, in the city we now call St Petersburg, other Cheka officers paid Gumilev a visit, to take him away and charge him with conspiracy to overthrow the state, an offence routinely dealt with by a firing squad.

Gumilev had taken a risk by making public appearances so soon after the end of the civil war, but he evidently thought that if he confined himself to writing and reciting poetry, the vast prestige that poetry had among educated Russians would protect him.

This was not as mad an idea as it seems. Those early Russian poets, like everyone else in the country, weren't free from the political disruption and the absence of free speech, but they were extraordinarily lucky to have the audiences they had. The best of them were revered like rock stars. They became famous without the aid of publicity, because poetry lovers listened to their recitals, learned their stanzas and passed them on.

Gumilev had been part of a mini cultural renaissance that swept St Petersburg and Moscow in 1912. He was pivotal in a group called the Acmeists, two of whom, Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam, are reckoned to be among the greatest Russian poets of the century. Gumilev and Akhmatova were briefly married. He was serially unfaithful to her, but unstinting in acknowledging her talent. He was also almost right in assuming that a poet was bulletproof, even under Bolshevik rule. Many of the early Bolshevik leaders had an almost superstitious reverence for the power of poetry. In Trotsky's autobiography, he paid tribute to a brave Bolshevik agent named Larisa Reisner, who operated for the Red Army behind enemy lines. Trotsky will have known that Reisner was also a poetry addict. He probably did not know she was one of the women with whom Gumilev had cheated on his wife.

Even Stalin, who once cynically asked "how many divisions has the Pope", showed more respect for great poetry than for the Pontiff. There is a famous story that in the 1930s Mandelstam was arrested because he had been reciting to his friends a short poem denouncing Stalin as a mass murderer with fat greasy fingers. This was at a time when people were shot for writing critically about the leader in their diary.

Mandelstam's poetry had not been published for years, but when he was picked up, the chief of police knew they had a major case on their hands and took the trouble of committing the entire poem to memory before reporting upwards for a decision. Stalin put in a telephone call to Boris Pasternak, as one of the few people from whom he could expect a truthful answer, to check if Mandelstam was a great poet. The outcome? Temporarily, Mandelstam was saved and he got away with being exiled from Moscow for three years.

In the 1940s, the authorities became so alarmed by the influence of Anna Akhmatova, a widow living in poverty in a third storey flat – whose works had been effectively banned since 1925 – that the Central Committee passed a resolution which had to be studied as part of the school syllabus, denouncing her as "half whore, half nun". But she was not arrested. Instead, they arrested her son, Lev Gumilev, to intimidate her.

After Nikolai Gumilev's arrest on 3 August 1921, there seems to have been an absence of urgency in the reaction it provoked. Akhmatova first learned that he was arrested on 10 August. Various people made appeals, apparently unaware of how dangerous the situation was. Maxim Gorky is reputed to have extracted a promise from Lenin that Gumilev would not be harmed, but too late.

In St Petersburg, some very officious Cheka officers were determined to show that their work was an important as ever, although the civil war was over.

They claimed to have uncovered a very large conspiracy involving academics and former Tsarist officers, including Gumilev. The Cheka then had the power to pass death sentences, with the defendants having no right of appeal. On 24 August – 90 years ago today – Gumilev was sentenced to be shot, as part of a mass execution. The sentence was carried out without delay.

It was a shocking end to the adventures of a gifted young man and yet there is a school of thought which says that, for all the dangers and hardships these people faced, they were luckier than the poets whose work has no real meaning, because it lacks an audience that appreciates great art.

Once, when Mandelstam's wife Nadezha was complaining about their poverty stricken, itinerant life, he told her: "Why complain? Poetry is respected only in this country – people are killed for it. There's no place where more people are killed for it."

Sariling Wika: Isapuso, Isadiwa, Isabuhay

SARILING WIKA: ISAPUSO, ISADIWA, ISABUHAY

paano gagamitin ang sariling wika
kung nariyan ang globalisasyon, banyaga
kung naninibasik sa lipuna'y kuhila
sariling wika ba'y salita lang ng dukha?

halina't aralin natin ang kasaysayan
sa sariling wika'y sinong nakipaglaban
gurong si Asedillo'y nangunguna riyan
ipinagtanggol niya ang wika ng bayan

at makalipas ang ilang dekada't taon
naging Ama ng Wikang Pambansa si Quezon
si Asedillo'y nalimot ng henerasyon
nasaan na ba ang sariling wika ngayon

aral ni Asedillo'y huwag lilimutin
sariling wika'y dangal na dapat mahalin
kung kailangan buhay ay ialay natin
upang sariling wika'y sadyang patampukin

- gregbituinjr.
- ang tulang ito'y inihanda at binasa sa Rizal Park Open Air Auditorium noong ika-18 ng Agosto, 2017 sa programang "Sariling Wika Ang Siyang Magpapalaya"

Walang mabuting tanikala

WALANG MABUTING TANIKALA

walang mabuting tanikala
pagkat akibat nito'y sumpa
di wasto ang laging pagluha
buti pang gulok mo'y ihasa

walang mabuting tanikala
kung tulad mo'y inaalila
bawat tanikala'y masama
lalo't karapatan'y nawala

walang mabuting tanikala
kung ang turing sa dukha'y daga
dapat lumaban ang dalita
kumilos at di lang salita

ang tanikala'y tanikala
pakintabin man ng kuhila
dapat itong putuling sadya
kung ayaw mong nakakawawa

walang mabuting tanikala
maiging lumaban ka, dukha
kung nasa'y ganap na paglaya
mabuting walang tanikala

- gregbituinjr.

Tula kina Heber at Florante

TULA KINA HEBER AT FLORANTE
ni Gregorio V. Bituin Jr.

i

may mga awit silang para sa sariling wika
dalawang awiting tunay na kadaki-dakila

may kantang "Ako'y Isang Pinoy" itong si Florante
at may "Tayo'y Mga Pinoy" si Heber Bartolome

pawang mga mang-aawit na sadyang magagaling
tagapagtanggol ng wika't tunay na magigiting

kalayaan sa kanilang awitin makakatas
animo sa globalisasyon ay matinding lunas

ii

sa inyong dalawa'y taas-kamaong pagpupugay
nawa'y manatiling malusog, humaba ang buhay

tulad nyo, sariling wika'y itataguyod namin
pagkat tulad ng anghel, ito'y identidad natin

salamat sa awitin ninyong walang kamatayan
na tunay ninyong pamana sa buong sambayanan

ngayong Buwan ng Wika'y dapat lang kayong itanghal
mang-aawit na dapat lang gawaran ng parangal

A ispor Atis

A ispor Atis

A ispor Atis, ituro sa mga bata
B ispor Batis, gamit ang sariling wika
Aba'y kayrami nating magandang salita
Bakit nahuhumaling sa wikang banyaga

A ispor Atis, ito ang sariling atin
B ispor Batis, sariling wika'y gamitin
Aba'y di tayo lahi ng mga alipin
Kundi lahing bayaning pawang magigiting

A ispor Apol daw, aba'y huwag magmintis
Sariling wika'y huwag payagang matiris
Ng sinumang nangangayupapa sa Ingles
Padaluyin natin ito tulad ng batis

A ispor Atis, ituro sa paaralan
At lalaki silang kaagapay ng bayan

- gregbituinjr.

Basted sa tsiks

BASTED SA TSIKS

"Bakin ga ika'y nakamurot?" anang aking mamay
habang sa tubuhan kasama akong nangungumpay
suliraning are'y bakit di ko matagong tunay
lihim ng puso'y nadaramang nagkagutay-gutay

nakilala ko sa tuklong ang kaygandang dalaga
tila ba kabuuan niya'y kahali-halina
ngiti pa lang, aba'y parang ako'y nasa langit na
ako'y tila inuugoy sa duyan ng pagsinta

ang inaasam kong diwata'y kaysarap kausap
lambing niya animo'y tangay ka sa alapaap
ngunit aking mutya'y ano’t may ibang hinahanap
di ako ang kabagay, iba ang kanyang kaganap

sa salitang lungsod nga'y "basted", iwing puso'y sawi
at ang mamay, habang pinatutuka ang tinali
payo'y humanap ng iba't sakit ay mapapawi
habang ang tandang sa dumalaga'y panay ang giri

- gregbituinjr.

nakamurot = nakasimangot
nangungumpay = nangunguha ng pagkain ng kalabaw
mamay = lolo
tuklong = tagalog ng kastilang "kapilya"

Si Lean at si Gandalf

SI LEAN AT SI GANDALF
ni Gregorio V. Bituin Jr.
15 pantig bawat taludtod

"The Company has just lost Gandalf in Moria. And there is still such a long, long way to go." ~ Lean Alejandro, sa kanyang liham sa kanyang guro nang siya'y nakapiit.

tulad ni Lean, na dinaluhong at nabilanggo
si Gandalf nang mapalaban ay tuluyang naglaho
maraming sapalaran, panganib ay napipinto
subalit nagbabalik din mula sa abo't guho

dalawang buwang singkad din si Lean sa piitan
nakamit ang paglaya sa tulong ng mamamayan
nakaligtas si Gandalf sa tiyak na kamatayan
at napaslang ang kalabang Balrug sa kalaliman

nakabalik si Gandalf upang tapusin ang misyon
nakalaya si Lean na pagbabago ang hamon
pawang kagalingan ng kapwa ang kanilang layon
pangarap yaong kaytayog na di maikakahon

malupit ang kanilang kalaban, O, anong lupit!
pinagdaanan man nila'y samutsaring pasakit
ngunit pag-asa't kabutihan ang kanilang bitbit
upang kamtin ng bayan ang tagumpay na kayrikit

Pagbati sa pagtatapos ng pamangkin

PAGBATI SA PAGTATAPOS NG PAMANGKIN

nailatag nang muli ang isang bagong umaga
dahil sa nakamit mong pagtatapos sa eskwela
sa iyong magulang isa kang tunay na biyaya
na dapat ipagmalaki ng bawat ama't ina

pagtatapos mo'y patunay nang tiyaga mo't sipag
upang magandang kinabukasan ay maaninag
sa haharaping buhay ay dapat magpakatatag
dahil gubat na susuungin ay napakadawag

turo ng eskwela sa pagkatao'y mababakas
maging matalino sa tatahaking bagong landas
pagkat ikaw lamang ang uugit sa iyong bukas
pagsikapan mo ang buhay na prinsipyado't patas

namumukod-tangi kang tala sa laksang bituin
maligayang pagtatapos, o, mahal kong pamangkin

- gregbituinjr.

(*Ang tulang ito'y hiniling ng isang kasama na gawan ko ng tula ang pagtatapos ng kanyang pamangkin.)