Prometheus Rebound

At long last a blog of mine!!! it's been a life long dream! Kahit walang magbasa, okay lang basta malabas ko lahat ng mga "disposables" ko sa katawan! I have long been constipated (blogspot=Loperamide)

Here comes my attempt to create my own political line of poetry, nakakapanibago nga e... its actually based on a well renowned poem by no less than the brilliant Jose Lacaba: Prometheus Unbound... i know very well that great poems need no explanations but for purposes of interpreting it correctly an explanation will follow =)


1 Dangling chains caress thy unknowing wrists
2 Rendering forth billows from putrid pits
3 Outward flays sought by the unkindred mind
4 When has it transformed to be so unkind?
5 Never recognizing dints of sorrow
6 Ending the liberty of tomorrow
7 Decapitating all fists of today
8 Intolerant of sickening dismay
9 Nights repeatedly stumble at thy feet
10 Hollowing the high heavens’ rustic sheet
11 Encased contaminated reveries
12 Down-casted a desire to cross the seas
13 Owning none but a tainted form of love
14 Never allowed freedom from the dregs of-
15 Instantaneous pleasure so fair and white
16 Siphoned in an innocence so contrite
17 Tenderly, daggers drew blood from thy neck
18 Incongruous to such thoughts of unwreck
19 Covering none of what should be despised
20 Obsolescence woken though unsurprised
21 By way of dissonant docility
22 Liverworts thrive in thy servility
23 Incest’s antithesis broth forth to life
24 Vindicating all suffering and strife
25 Into deep oblivion all these shall go
26 Opulence and eternity swung fro
27 Nefariously struck with a final blow

The reason why the title of this poem is as such, is because it was inspired by the brilliant composition of Jose Lacaba entitled Prometheus Unbound (MARCOS HITLER DIKTADOR TUTA!) In order for one to understand the analogy more clearly perhaps one should know first who Prometheus is:
PROMETHEUS In Greek Mythology, he is a Titan who steals fire from heaven for the benefit of mankind: in punishment, Zeus chains him to a rock where a vulture comes to eat his liver, which grows back each night. Thus he suffers eternal punishment for a supposed good intention/deed that he did. In a contemporary context, to be described as “Promethean” means life bringing, creative or courageously original.
How I interpret it to be, Prometheus in Lacaba’s poem is a personification of the Filipinos suffering under the martial law. Their suffering was compared and aptly given a parallelism to the innocent torment experienced by Prometheus. He was a god who dared to resist Zeus, by giving fire, which would be of great help to the mortals. This picture on the other hand can be likened to the heroes during that time who dared to contradict the suppressive manipulation of the reigning government.
As I have mentioned earlier my poem was inspired by this and so I remain faithful to the symbolisms that were used. What I held constant was the idea that the Philippines and it people is like the god Prometheus in that their freedoms are not theirs. As for my title “Prometheus Rebound”- this means that the country was once free but held captive again by a different set of captors. I know that good works of art neither need explanation nor justification but for purposes of proper interpretation I will provide for it.
DROWNED IN HEDONISTIC OBLIVION is my tagline, if you have not noticed it by now. I am referring to the Philippines’ voluntary enslavement under the neocolonial influence of the U.S. As I see it, it seems that the Filipinos are actually happy being manipulated and are already being forgetful and indifferent to their own rich culture.
In the 7th line, what I wished to impart here is that the protesters and street parliamentarists of the present are being silenced because majority would rather wallow in the trail that our neocolonizers have paved for us.
In the 13th line, this tainted form of love that we have, the kind of nationalism that we feel is very much substituted to colonial mentality. It is as if our indigenous roots are now alien to us (unkindred = without kin, we have sought to disassociate ourselves from what our identity should supposed to be)
(15) “Instantaneous pleasure so fair and white” –we find all our answers from those who are fair skinned that as if they would give us salvation. The next line talks of how, these gods that we look up to has taken advantage of our vulnerability and disguised their manipulative acts into benevolent ones. Slowly, we are being killed (figuratively and literally) without our knowledge because most of us believe that everything is fine and nothing is wrong (state of unwreck). Our nationalism and identity is rapidly becoming obsolete, molds (liverworts =amag/ lumot); what should have been an ardent desire to serve our people has been transformed into a drive to please our supposed benefactors. This in effect, causes confusion and people tend to hate their countrymen (predisposing us to civil war)
I don’t know how else to explain without spoon feeding the reader, perhaps its better for me to leave some of the lines “unraveled” to leave room for critical thinking and scrutiny. I hope to come up with more of this in the near future… for any comment/ questions and well… violent reactions feel free to say so…