Slip of the Pen

Earlier this day, I got the chance to guest in a radio show along with two of my LIRA co-fellows, Pau Hernando and Guia de Leon. Nothing grand an event — there are thousands of people hosting a radio show around the globe at this very second, for example — but still a notable experience. Well, every first-time experience should be.

We came into the PIA Building expecting to zip in for around 15 minutes, promote our upcoming LIRA Fellows’ Night (more on that later), rattle off a few poems, and zip out. Instead, we found ourselves being the ‘main guests’ (is there such a term?) for today’s Youthlinks program at DZSR (918 Khz; the online streaming version can be found here). We stayed for the show’s full hour-long duration.

We felt at ease with the show’s great staff, which includes co-hosts Allan Elman, Rommel Brillantes, and Jacky Chan (yes that’s his first name; I failed to catch his surname). After talking a bit about our personal backgrounds, the LIRA fellowship process, and workshop details, each of us three was given the time to read two poems. I chose two “battle tested” (pinalihan, or dumaan sa palihan in LIRA-speak) works, namely Talà (”Star”) and Fast Food.

(more…)

(For S.)

Countless are the women likened to the stars. Stars who are adored, stars who tingle and tickle the being, stars who are courted, stars who become lovers and better halves. Ah, such bitter pairings! A beautiful star is aloof, without a care in the world, isolated by a dark vastness oft-minisculed as a greatest ocean to cross or a highest mountain to climb, and if and when I conquer the cold void between me and the star after a journey that took forever, I will just be swiftly and mercilessly consumed by the blinding and unsurpassed heat of her fire without her even blinking. In the company of a star, two indeed become one and only one.

You, you are not a woman comparable nor should be compared to a star. You are dust, as I am who came from dust and will return to dust. You and I are mere specks in the cosmos, but in our world that is only ours, we are valuable and are valued the same. There is no darkness nor oceans nor mountains in between us. Together, we are free to tumble in the grass, to slide down the waterfall, to dance to the tune of the wind. Together, we are two yet we are one.

But you are dust unlike I, dust of the earth. You — and you might not realize this — you are dust of the stars. I know this because when we are together, you make our surroundings scintillate like a firefly does in a moonless night, and a ring of gentle fire — fire that does not consume life but nurtures it — caresses and embraces our joined bodies.


Happy 22nd birthday, Ia! More October 24 goodness at last year’s She, I. This was translated from the original in Tagalog.