"Si Eman", a collaborative project of DIKLAP multimedia and College Editors Guild of the Philippines (CEGP) to commemorate the late warrior poet, Emman Lacaba and to be used for the up-coming, 10th Gawad Eman Lacaba, which will be held at Angeles, Pampanga. Lunduyan 2014, 15th Luzon-wide student press convention and 10th Gawad Eman Lacaba Gawad Emmanuel Lacaba is the annual Literary Contest of the College Editors Guild of the Philippines-Luzon. CONTACT INFORMATION: Iggie Espinoza, head of GEL Awards, 0926.871.2025 or email at terimalicot.cegp@gmail.com LUNDUYAN 2014 details: http://www.cegp.org/online-registration-for-lunduyan-2014-15th-luzon-wide-student-press-convention/ ONLINE REGISTRATION FOR LUNDUYAN 2014: 15th Luzon-wide Student Press Convention and 10th Gawad... www.cegp.org Emmanuel Agapito Flores Lacaba, popularly known as Eman Lacaba, was a Filipino writer, poet, essayist, playwright, fictionist, scriptwriter, songwriter and activist and he is considered as the only poet warrior of the Philippines. An open call to Filipino Artists by Emmanuel Lacaba A poet must also learn how to lead an attack - Ho Chi Minh I Invisible the mountain routes to strangers: For rushing toes an inch-wide strip on boulders And for the hand that's free a twig to grasp, Or else we headlong fall below to rocks And waterfalls of death so instant that Too soon they're red with skulls of carabaos. But patient guides and teachers are the masses: Of forty mountains and a hundred rivers; Of plowing, planting, weeding, and the harvest; And of a dozen dialects that dwarf This foreign tongue we write each other in Who must transcend our bourgeois origins. South Cotabato May 1,1975 II You want to know, companions of my youth How much has changed the wild but shy young poet Forever writing last poem after last poem; You hear he's dark as earth, barefoot, A turban round his head, a bolo at his side, His ballpen blown up to a long-barreled gun: Deeper still the struggling change inside. Like husks of coconut he tears away The billion layers of his selfishness. Or learns to cage his longing like the bird Of legend, fire, and song within his chest. Now of consequence is his anemia From lack of sleep: no longer for Bohemia, The lumpen culturati, but for the people, yes. He mixes metaphors but values more A holographic and geometric memory For mountains: not because they are there But because the masses are there where Routes are jigsaw puzzles he must piece together. Though he has been called a brown Rimbaud, He is no bandit but a people's warrior. South Cotabato and Davao del Norte November 1975 III We are tribeless and all tribes are ours. We are homeless and all homes are ours. We are nameless and all names are ours. To the fascists we are the faceless enemy Who come like thieves in the night, angels of death: The ever moving, shining, secret eye of the storm. The road less traveled by we've taken- And that has made all the difference: The barefoot army of the wilderness We all should be in time. Awakened, the masses are Messiah. Here among workers and peasants our lost Generation has found its true, its only home. Davao del Norte January 1976

• published: 06 Oct 2014
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