Poem share
I ate four meals today, which is quite unusual. Anyway, a friend joined me on my third, and some time during the conversation over chicken and palabok, he recited very familiar lines from a poem I initially encountered back in college. It was written by Ophelia Dimalanta, who eventually became my professor in creative writing (of course, she is not to be blamed for my lousy pieces).
A Kind of Burning
it is perhaps because
one way or the other
we keep this distance
closeness will tug as apart
in many directions
in absolute din
how we love the same
trivial pursuits and
insignificant gewgaws
spoken or inert
claw at the same straws
pore over the same jigsaws
trying to make heads or tails
you take the edges
i take the center
keeping fancy guard
loving beyond what is there
you sling at the stars
i bedeck the weeds
straining in song or
profanities towards some
fabled meeting apart
from what dreams read
and suns dismantle
we have been all the hapless
lovers in this wayward world
in almost all kinds of ways
except we never really meet
but for this kind of burning.
***
Sometimes people just stay for a certain kind of burning. The lack of diversity, for what it is worth, makes the whole thing a sad encounter.
