by Jose Martin V. Singh
On Monday, the sky fell
like matracas. San Pedro slammed
a globe on the rack
of thunder balls.
This myth’s been passed down
from mouths with tongues of fire.
I know where
it did not emerge: homes.
San Pedro’s footsteps broke
the alley of clouds
where pins of light
collapsed to their neighbor
clouds and
surged towards
land.
Rain slid past molds.
Its broken edges hid
underground to find
a way back to the sky.
The clouds turned to San Pedro’s beard.
They’d turned colossal vapor, hiding
from their own
face. They’d blackened
yet were grey all over.
The narra brushed limp air
waves. Its branches
opened up to the ground, insisted
to let go of the sky’s raging
intolerance
for its own.
Apocryphal Notes on Thunder (II)
Outside the gates
eleven Apostles scramble.
They walk in twos, one’s alone,
back and forth across
the sidewalk. They seem to be
searching for the one
responsible
for light.
The sky grumbles
at the urban fields of quiet.
It rains noise but not
water. This preview has brought
this fusion of heaven with sky,
of myths with news
from outside
your window.
You don’t see the Apostles.
But you hear them buzzing
among themselves.
Far away the edges
of an absent key, frozen
for a too quick instant, zaps the distant
ground.
The Sons of Zebedee bang
on the doors of every house
at once. Call this Apocrypha.
Jose Martin V. Singh: “Nagbobowling si San Pedro.” The elderly always said this upon hearing thunder. It is an appeasement and an approximation of explanation, among other things. The expression varies in that it can be a passing utterance or an indicator of the caprices of heaven such as, “Nagbobowling nanaman si San Pedro”. San Pedro is bowling again. It can also be a lack of interest in what heaven is doing: “Nagbobowling lang si San Pedro”. San Pedro is just bowling. This is a kasabihan, a traditional saying that may vary depending on an individual’s subjective and circumstantial usage.
There has been friction between such seemingly disconnected concepts as a holy persona and bowling in this attempt to take note of what happens when there is a storm. As the saying is instinctively uttered, I had taken it to be a natural, if not accidental, composite of a larger hybrid experience such as that of the Philippine socio-political landscape reeling in the remnants of colonial experience. While it is difficult to trace its conception, the idiomatic utterance, I think, has inhabited myth because of its attempt to explain the origins of the sound of thunder.
I have taken this verbally shared tradition for a spin in these poems and tried to look at certain connotations of heaven and contestations with power. These are, of course, borne out of my own limited subjectivities as someone in the midst of a larger experience of disquiet.
The second portion rides on this stream of reference to a holy persona and hinges on the biblical Sons of Thunder, who were originally fishermen like San Pedro. While there are no traditions where they officiate stormy weather, their being Apostles give them an air of traditional authority and got me thinking of thunder as a powerful entity. The imagined responsibility of San Pedro for thunder has here been carried over to the other eleven Apostles, who, when once faced with a storm at sea, panicked whereas Jesus, their master, calmly slept.
I suppose much happens when the sky makes its magnanimous presence known through thunder.
Published: Sunday 12 September 2021[RETURN TO AUDITORY CORTEX 2021]
Jose Martin V. Singh is an undergraduate student of Creative Writing at the University of the Philippines Diliman. He formerly wrote news for the Philippine Collegian. Some of his essays have appeared in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Inquirer.net, and & (Ampersand). His poetry is forthcoming in Points of Contact: A Literary Anthology of the Philippine Collegian and Revista Filipina’s Cuaderno Palmiano. Born and raised in the Philippines, he lives with his family in Marikina City.