Different Versions

I wonder why it comes as a surprise: It's difficult to write when you've just come from a workshop.

I guess the critic's voice is still too loud in your head, or you hear your poem crying everytime you try to touch it. (Oh god. That did NOT sound right.)

But still. You did something wrong the first time (or even on the seventh, eighth version...) and you need to take a step back before you can get a handle on it again. Or so this is my excuse.

I've been re-writing, kind of. But only those poems that were not tackled during the workshop! Haha. So here's a couple: I think the older versions are buried somewhere in this blog.

*****

Forgetting is an Erosion

So here, now, let me paint you
a picture: There is a fountain.
The girl, her head bowed
as the coin flips in the air,
is in the middle of a wish.

The morning is blue and gold,
and a slight breeze is stirring
the leaves of the trees.
On the corner, the baker’s
wife sweeps their storefront.

With this picture, know:
I am the unseen baker,
as I am the wife.
I am the girl; I am the breeze;
I am the fountain and its eternal flow.

Yourself, re-paint this picture
in your head, in your heart
for I leave all this to the rain.
But as the colors wash
and bleed to nothingness,

picture the coin, that glimmer
of promise suspended,
the wish spoken, though yet unfulfilled.
This is for you, what you want most
to last forever.


How to be Cold

How cold begins: a mass
in contact with a hotter entity.

How at a touch, at an instant
heat is transferred, absorbed, sucked
into the frigid body
desperate for equilibrium.

How my fingers steal
the warmth from your cheeks.

How, at that touch
you flinch
and register nothing else
but the difference in temperature.

*****

There you go. One good thing about the end of the workshop, though, is that for a moment, you can call a timeout to all the criticizing. If only you could get the voice in your head to shut up, too.


PS. This is the ultimate cop-out. I had a poem called Different Versions which got butchered in Dumaguete (I was called a culprit for this one! I think its earlier self was published as Stories or something in this blog). Both need a major overhaul. Instead, I re-write these other two poems which were never tackled, and had the nerve to title this post "Different Versions." Haha. Sometimes I kill myself. Somebody slap me!