In my late twenties, when my first real office boss was resigning and about to move on to another job, I wrote him a long thank you poem. He found the old poem today while cleaning up, probably inserted in some pages of one of his many diaries. When I saw a photo-reproduction of my mid 90s poem, I am struck by my self-confidence then, how brave I was to send away a mere colleague with a heartfelt poem! The twelve-stanza rhyming quatrains appears quaint and amateurish to me now. I wouldn’t dare show it to any netizen on Facebook. On hindsight, giving him a poem was boasting about my ability to craft melodic lines. Back then, confident about my skill in Balagtasismo, I gave this fan of my amateur poetry at least three more poems.
Today, an acquaintance from Batangas City gifted her husband with a beautiful poem for their 8th anniversary. The poem in free verse juxtaposes her happiness and fear in loving someone so near, a tribute to their intimate and committed union. Her piercing Tagalog lines is from the voice of someone safely anchored on poetry’s shores. After reading her poetry, I was tempted to upload one poem from my unpublished collection – Hugos. Unfortunately, I lack the courage to exhibit my poems on social media.
The last poems I posted on facebook in 2010 were a series of verses for Inay. As a freelancer managing a website, I occasionally blogged some poems. Since I revised more than I finalized, my poems are never finished. Often when I was done revising, I could hardly recognize the original intention of the poem. I thought that poetry was what I could write best. But I have not published a poem since my mid thirties.
Hugos is a collection of my more than thirty poems recovered and revised from past crafting. Hopefully, they will be bound, stand with a spine, and become a book.
