Panayanon Literature 🪞

Which gaze is reflected in this stanza?

THIS AFTERNOON the Museum’s all mine to claim

As once I did your smile one noon-time

As together we gazed from a window

At the terrace of an old mansion in Silay City.

Which gaze is reflected in this stanza?

Joyous fragrance glow in the colors

Of Anita Magsaysay Ho’s flowers.

Inside me however, dead flowers rot

In the rain-drenched garden of heart.

I am waiting for the glass door to open

And you coming in, your chinky eyes

Crinkling with your smile.

Which gaze is reflected in this stanza?

You’d graduated last trimester, I know,

You’ve found a job in that giant of a building

Along Ayala Avenue, you’re off now to a good start,

Chase your dreams according to the capitalist way of life,

No time now to write those stories, those poems,

These wild flowers bursting out of your being that I

May claim as mine over and over.

Which gaze is reflected in this stanza?

Last week, we were together

In a videoke joint across the street

We toasted the fact of our being writers.

Once you got soaked, you couldn’t stop singing

About a woman you’ve loved who jilted you.

A good thing you forced

Three bottles of beer on me.

Which gaze is reflected in this stanza?

I had them to blame for the bitter taste

In my throat, inside my heart.

The next morning, you texted me to laud

The tragedy I wrote of two men

In love with each other.

Bitter beer rose to my tongue again.

Which gaze is reflected in this stanza?

I texted you back,

“Then this is the end, and I thank you.”

No reply from you. I deleted you

From my cellphone’s memory.

Which gaze is reflected in this stanza?Freezing in this museum.

A normal thing for all museums

To be frigid, so as to preserve

The masterpieces of such sculptors and painters

As Anita Magsaysay Ho,

Saving the last glory of flowers

Dying slowly in their pails and baskets,

Eking the last bit of life somehow

From the cold and fetid water.