Letters

By Kimee E. Santiago
May 14, 2008
Hey.

I got your e-mail.

They’re more like notices

Getting shorter as they come

Like I am a transaction.

I’m sorry it took me a day

To respond.

Had to go through the letters

You used to send me. I keep them in a

Bundle, Dear, by my pillow.

Tied loosely with the rosepoint sash

Of my night gown unwashed

Since you left.

How much do stamps cost now?

I knew you better when

Your illegible cursives would

Stroke me gently and

Then I would feel how you went

Through your day as your

Loops and tittles sigh with

The release of your pen.

And I would lean back, relieved

With pages consumed by your presence.

Before resealing your letters

I’d taste you in the flap.

Hair in my Skirt

By Kimee E. Santiago
May 14, 2008

I tug at a stray thread

Dangling from my skirt hem.

It stretches, as the cloth

Ripples with resistance.

It breaks to coil into a frizzed

Ringlet and announce

It is hair, not thread.

For a year of wears-and-washes

My skirt kept a secret:

It has life stitched in it

Peeking into me, into a spot

Most honest and pure.

Saturday

By Kimee E. Santiago

So it’s another Saturday when hanging on to your bag

As your most accessible companion you

Pore over bestsellers only to put titles down

Denouncing bookstores for selling rubbish

Bound, reviewed and shamelessly called books that

Shuffling through racks of clothing

is a better mind-feed of tasteless effects magnified

by snobbish brands branding you nameless

no more, hiding subordination under skirt

tucking fucking bills and bosses into belt loops with

your fingers like one hooks index and thumb

on a cup of coffee and company, where you wish these

bills bosses boredom would all go swirling and

dying in dilution but hell no---

your coffee has more water than coffee

your table for two is table for you

alone after another Saturday of fruitlessly shopping

for good conversation.

On "Gollum's Song"

From Robert Vladimir Odeneza:

Hi blogfellows! Sorry to have been away for quite a while, but now I’m back with another song interpretation, and this time, “Gollum’s Song” sung by Emiliana Torrini, written by Fran Walsh, and music composed by Howard Shore. You can hear this on the credits part of your “Lord of the Rings the Two Towers” DVD. Here’s a copy for you:

Where once was light
Now darkness falls
Where once was love
Love is no more
Don't say goodbye
Don't say I didn't try

These tears we cry
Are falling rain
For all the lies you told us
The hurt, the blame!
And we will weep to be so alone
We are lost
We can never go home

So in the end
I'll be what I will be
No loyal friend
Was ever there for me

Now we say goodbye
We say you didn't try

These tears you cry
Have come too late
Take back the lies
The hurt, the blame!

And you will weep
When you face the end alone
You are lost
You can never go home
You are lost
You can never go home

The song has no word too deep to comprehend. The language is even colloquial. What makes it difficult to process though is its confusing point of view or narrative; it makes use of the pronouns I (first person singular), We (first person plural) and You (second person.) Now, just whom is this persona talking to? Or, do we just have one speaker here?

Perhaps a little review of who Gollum is would help. Those of us who have (at least) watched the LOTR trilogy would know that Gollum is the meaner side of Sméagol. They live together in one body, and what’s amazing is that they talk to each other secretly as if unaware that they are just one. They normally get to do this when Sam and Frodo are asleep.

I believe that the inconsistent point of view in this poem (or song) is rightfully reflective of Gollum and Sméagol’s dual personality. It is also an expression of the misery that Sméagol has gotten himself into after possessing that “precious” ring; thus, Gollum says “Where once was light, Now darkness falls. Where once was love, Love is no more.” And Gollum seemingly blames Sméagol to be solely responsible for their wretchedness – “These tears we cry Are falling rain For all the lies you told us…”

The last part of Gollum’s song would suggest that he is already bereft of hope for Sméagol to get his old life back – “These tears you cry Have come too late…You are lost, you can never go home.”

The entire song, to me, is an expression of Gollum’s disappointment of Sméagol or (actually) of himself, but since he never wants to admit that, he used “You” instead of “I” or “We” in the lines, “The lies you told us...” and “You are lost, you can never go home” among others.

I would humbly accept any corrections or suggestions from Tolkien readers regarding this interpretation. Thank you for reading!

As Dali Puts It

I've been aching to write this art-inspired poetry after being charmed by the Spanish painter Salvador Dali's surrealist painting called The Persistence of Memory. This painting has been haunting me for years like an obsessed ghost. - Suri Nahunte


As Dali Puts It

a still life of

jell-o - like clocks

spread

randomly

against a

psychedelic landscape.

It blows your mind --


like Prozac and poetry


on canvas;


like the lost love, which


Time cannot find;


like a bitterness, which


tears cannot wash away;


like this indelible


Memory of Memories, which


as Dali puts it, is




Persistent.





[Author's Note: Well, this is just about the best way I could verbalize Dali's work here. I'm not sure, though, if "like Prozac and poetry on canvas" works here as a metaphor...or simile. What do you think, blogfellows?]

To Achilles, in the Afterlife

This allusion to Achilles is inspired by two poems: Louise Gluck's The Triumph of Achilles and William Carlos Williams' To Mark Antony, in Heaven. But while Gluck's poetic thesis focuses on the human or carnal side of Achilles, mine is on his ultimate defeat brought about by his inevitable and absolute separation from Patroclus, who has drunk from the river of forgetfulness, the river Lethe. - H.P. Atilano

To Achilles, in the Afterlife

"You can keep your wrath while your countrymen go down in ruin, I cannot.
Give me your armour. If they think I am you... We might yet drive back the
enemy." - Patroclus to Achilles, The Iliad by Homer


By the River Lethe you must have passed and wept --
Wept long and hard over those footprints on the banks;
Remembering the friend you loved, your mortal half;
Remembering how he smelt of the Aegean Sea when he sweats;
Remembering how many times he cheated death
As if he, like you, is blest by Styx.

But immortal he was not; foolhardy was he --
By donning your armour, to Hades he fled.

And here you come, Achilles -- a lifetime too late!
So by the River Lethe you must have passed and wept.

Jailbird

here's a poem i wrote one night when i could no longer ignore the cramped chicken coops sitting right beside our jeepney terminal. i've since chosen to ride jeepneys on another terminal, far away from all the unsettling sights such coops held inside their bars.

- vincent pido

Jailbird

Once again, like every other cold night,
she peeps through the rusty steel bars
hoping to escape the now barren fright
within her old heart that has seen much too many wars.

She feels that her time is drawing near,
and is saddened that she has not been free.
Almost all her life she was a captive in fear
while the rest of the world was blind to her plea.

Her instincts tell her of a distant memory
that beckons her to run, flap her wings and fly,
pursue the life she was born to live, flee
from the lustful hands of those who watch her nearby.

Wrongfully sentenced to a cruel imprisonment
for a crime that was never thought, never done,
her days crawl on, but she never forgets she is innocent
although those before her, she knew, found death in this unjust condemnation.

As the night grew darker and her inner stirrings deeper,
a loud conversation of sorts is overheard, a negotiation.
The gates to the crowded cell is opened to the buyer,
that he may select the one to suffer execution.

It was her, she was not wrong.
She struggled and clucked and cackled and pecked,
until she found her way back into the safety of the throng
only to be once more seen and grabbed by her feathery neck.

If only they understood her worry.
If only they understood her cries
that told the horrible story
of a chicken that was soon to be fried.