GRAMMELOT

Further proof that Catholicism makes Filipinos stupid: the Lady Gaga edition

A Batangas bishop: watching the Lady Gaga concert is like “joining devil worship.”

Manila Representative Amado Bagatsing: Lady Gaga “flaunts her lifestyle as though this was normal behavior. We need to shield our people from being exposed to artists who destroy our culture, our beliefs and our values. She poses a dangerous source of corruption to our youth.” (Bagatsing has asked the House of Representatives to broaden the powers of the board of censors to enable it “to cover live concerts with lewd acts.”)

Batangas Archbishop Ramon Arguelles: fans of Lady Gaga “are in danger of falling into the clutches of Satan unless they are already there…Avoid all enticements of the devil…This Gaga has been banned in Indonesia and in Korea. Why not here? She also does not deserve the title of ‘lady,’ a title given to inimitable and decent women, like the Mother of God.”

Senator Ralph Recto: “I am watching [the concert] to provide some parental guidance to my young sons, nieces and nephews.”

Christian groups complaining about Lady Gaga: “Born This Way” encourages homosexuality, “Judas,” mocks Christians’ “religious beliefs and moral fiber.”

Monsignor Sabino Vengco, Jr.: Lady Gaga “would be making a mockery of the Christian religion and the Blessed Virgin.”

Fr. Gabriel Delfino: Lady Gaga is “the wrong role model who should be prevented from staging her concert in the country.”

Fr. Robert Reyes: “The devil is more sophisticated than Lady Gaga. I’m not at all thrilled about having her in Manila but we should just watch Jessica Sanchez instead. Lady Gaga might even be happy with all of this. Perhaps she might even be deliberately baiting us.”

All quotes taken from the Philippine Daily Inquirer (yes, they are real).

The History of the Passions

Let others write the history of events that are apparent: the battles and the treaties, the hereditary conflicts, the amassing and dispersion of authority, the struggles among the estates, the territorial ambition that continues to link us to animality; you, the friend of fables, you must write the history of the passions, without which the history of money, labor, and power is incomprehensible.” — Carlos Fuentes, Terra Nostra

A Poem, Lost & Found

South

Something is bound

to hold things together

Dark energy Net gain Universal sympathy A big lie

When I listen closely

I am not here

something has been lost

in transit

And so I make up this story about us

You are as far as Australia

is south

and the deep sea trench is at arm’s length

And the universe folds over

the Himalayas in one beautiful blizzard

of emptiness

I never said happiness

these minuscule losses

these insignificant deaths

connect me like veins

to the big burning heart

of something

I can never explain

……

Something is bound

to hold the world together

Next door is Paris

upstairs is Utica

and two flights down is the frozen river of the Aztecs

In the past there were catapults

in the future a single virus will eat a village

of truculent souls

and the polished thieves will steal our identity

and you and I will be nothing more

than you

and I

In the past the volcanic corridors led from bread shops to bordellos

and nobody looked the other way

In the future the past is

anybody’s guess

and what if everybody got it wrong

between don’t remember and Pompeii

the winged phalluses

the ancient women all in black

offering them in their soiled and wrinkled hands

in this part of the story

there is no end to mourning

……

Something is bound

to hold us together

This poem forms a trinity

the haunting conundrum of religion, philosophy and mathematics

is not present here

I am trying to pull out of words

their most wretched simplicity

I am not afraid of finding

nothing there

In the past there was Sweet Briar and your hair

wet with rain

In the future all continents will break

until there is no more room to move

and the world has come full circle

and the angels are tired of holding us up

then we will say it’s all up to us

then we will conquer the deep recession

and our bankrupt innermost insolvent

something

will crawl out of the words

like Adam leaving the garden

his human heart finally broken