No meat.

After almost eight months, I finally found time to unpack my books and files from their dusty boxes. My room, finally, looks like a room.  When we moved to our new address, I simply didn’t care. I was excited for the “new beginning” - I was in a couple of forced beginnings (read: break up and in between jobs) - but I simply didn’t care about how my room looked like. It was small compared to my room at our previous house but it was okay. But I didn’t have the time and/or energy to unpack memories. And books, of course. 

What made the process of cleaning and clearing up the room too difficult to finish was finding files of old, some unfinished, poems. Below are two of them. The first one wasn’t given a title, not even an indication of the date but I am guessing it’s somewhere between 1995 and 1998, judging on the paper that was used. I remember that legal pad I used to write my attempts at poetry.

I won’t give too much introduction except to say that I have not edited them. The handwritten poem had minor corrections  and I am guessing I wrote this in just a few minutes as there were no effort to edit it. So, respecting the mood I was in at that time, I will also refrain from making any revisions below.

Here goes:

The crooked circle, closed
as it is, captures the
anonymous facade
each drunkard presents
to the stranger before him.
And though three or more
shares common life-spaces,
it is nevertheless Greek to
the other three or more
gathered near.

As the meat, pierced
and marinated, lies above
the scorching embers,
one or two would laugh
unmindful of the others,
one picked his nose, a
decadent social conduct
the shouts indifference
to anyone and everything but
his own discomfort.

The cleansing started half
past eleven with the master
of ceremony swigging first then
distributing the liquid
proportionate to the squirm
one performs after
a previous shot.

The facade came rolling
down, volunteering courteous
smiles & greetings to the
oddest one -
a marriage between a cocktail
and a carnival ensues.

Kindred souls and like minded
navigated towards each other;
waxing poetic, i marinated myself;
mouthing philosophy, I
barbecued myself;
and didn’t you wonder I was
meaty?
The first bite proved harmless
but succeeding ones
consumed me and left nothing
but a wooden stick
not even good for recycling
till the next barbecue.
One by one, the spawn of Bacchus
fell…
And I ask, “What? No more
barbecue to chew on?”

Picking nose is a social conduct?! Ha ha ha! Leaving the poem as it is. No editing. Found your favorite gramm-errs? LOL

I don’t exactly recall what I was trying to say here but it seems I was describing a drinking session. I know I was out drinking  a lot at that time.

Here’s another one written around that time, too. It’s an embarrasing attempt to be “profound”. Because of that, I am posting it for laughter’s sake. I must be hallucinating when I was writing this. (When I found this earlier, I kept asking myself this question: What was the point again?)

The title should make you start laughing!!!

The Burden of Being Rational

There exist an unwritten
territory of the right
and the wrong,
made sovereign by the
reward for the former
and the punishment for
the other. Both mandated
by feeling good either
way a decision may trek.
The burden lies not so much
on the choice one makes
using criteria such as
the lesser evil or the moral
choice; but with the knowledge
of the tremendous responsibility
of knowing what’s right
and being right, and
the boundless enclave of what
is wrong, and the freedom
in which it operates on.

I think this is unfinished. I probably gave up when I realized I was running in circles. That second poem? I remember my state of mind at that time. And I am never, ever going back there! LOL