Borlagdan Manifesto

The poet sent me this manifesto. There is no need to introduce as the text speaks for itself with such compelling sincerity. Jimple Borlagdan is a poet, a very good poet, with a heart and mind for rhythm and the tenderest of pains.

How is a poem made?

It usually starts with a blank paper, a space, a white wondering.  Also a vast field where dreams, agony or joy are the seed, the words are the fruit.

There are times when like a machinist, only tools for tightening matter; and there are also times when like drunkards one's voice is just out of the full moon's generosity. Whichever of these, war or sweetness starts at the first springing of words, either in strings or in solitude.  What's certain is it will start.  It is possible that in the first step the poem will surge like rice running through a hole in the sack, or like the peeing of men who bed with diseased women.

Tedious or smooth, the poem will face the world without a trace of remorse. Its being here isn't out of force or rash action, but it was already complete, before in a previous place.

A poem so to speak is our manner of healing the shattered beauty inside us. Each sufferance is a shard, big or small, in one broken truth. Thus, poetry is sometimes described as a birthing.

The act of poetry, the creation of beauty, reminds us that we are fragments of God who created all beauty. We are little gods who can make little beauties. Out of nothing, comes something. Or to follow it strictly, there is already something, but in a state where a name cannot reach it, then through perseverance or natural creativity we are able to call each fragment, until the words are made as calls or names.

A poem is made out of our desire to create beauty. From the world, the poem professes the universe using the tongue of a child and of a viper. A child's tongue seep through walls, while that of a viper curls, its bite is laced with sweetness.

A mirror. A poem is also a mirror where the world praises itself. And because it possesses the world's likeness, has it become the world?

The poem is the desire of the nameless world for an encompassing name. The poem is the yet unfinished name of the world uttered not in the name of truth but of love. The poem is what we call the world, but the world does not know this name.  This is the name we have given it-a name we have uttered in wonder, joy, terror in the presence of the beauty of the world, a name that can never touch the one being named. The poem is the ringing of our soul in front of an inexplicable beauty. The poem is our desperation to convict, to keep from fading, in our memories a nameless beauty.