A PROSE POETRY ON DASANG (Hey Poem)

I promised you a sample of a Hey Poem (Dasang) to be posted this weekend. However, I decided to post this prose poetry, instead, to give you more information about it.

THE WORLD NEEDS A "DASANG" (Yell)
(c) e.industan 2007

I entered the jungle of concretes and brains. Then, I hopped in a cave full of bound papers and shelves. I went to a corner and fiddled some keys to find my way in the maze.

The cave is primeval, but houses all species from living to the dead. Only a cave, but I walked around the globe and onto someone's grave.

I strutted through the brown condos of famous and the sage. I gazed up, then down, while slightly touching the numbers of those in my reach: storages of Dickinson, Lowell, Sigourney, Whitman, and the rest.

Unnoticed at first, a mountain began to grow. As I rested, my mind wandered away from those tomes that caught me in awe. I whispered,'...but something's missing. I still am not convinced. There were lots of gentle...subtle voices in verses, but didn't hit me hard, as a hammer, in my head.'

I folded my elbow, thumped my forehead to rest. Eyes closed; mind zapped beyond the shelves. I heard from afar the yell of a speech-song by a tribe, the Higa-onon. A tribe in the Philippines, the speech is a "Dasang".

A hortatory used mainly by the chiefs...to admonish, advice, argue, implore, and scold the mischief's. They used flowery and sweets to numb the pain, while they hurled fiery arrows to those wolves among men.

The vision seemed so real as I listened to the rhythm: da-da-DAT-da-da-DAT on line after they said, "Git". After the "Git" the speech was sometimes flat...sometimes contoured with rhythmic patterns, but not strict at all. I'm conviced this is "it" that would fill the void in the caves.

Revived, I took a quill from my coat tail. I started stringing flowery words about our world. I hope to lift reality to its next level... that the world could see poetry, not just artsy, but as an active part of society.

Soon, I'll post the seed that I want to germinate. I hope the poets and the non-poets will stop by in some caves to see and savor the goodness of this ethnopoetic.

(Note: This prose poetry is included in my upcoming book: 150+1 Poems on THE EXPERIMENTAL DASANG (Hey Poem) and 45 OTHER POETRY FORMS: An Anthology.