Ars Poetica
Rodelen Paccial
Halfway through Cirilo Bautista, I felt
a knife plunge into my heart. It was
a tiny thing, not a foot long, black. And white
and bony man clutched at my thumb that pressed
page 18 where Bautista spoke of
Just another ordinary day, in the life of a
poet. The street lamp threw a thin sheen of light
on his beard. “… A poet, after all, has no right to live/
except as a metaphor/ in a tyrant’s dream;
The blade encounters dried blood;/
And reopens/ the wound./ How sweet/ suffering can be/”
Felt, because he twisted it after it has sunk deep
Which he thought was fun, and when he has done enough
Dropped the knife on the printed words; felt the warm rise
Of blood from my abdomen, the struggling air
I exhaled, the space the knife carved between my eyes
And the book, this deadly blade
Which came from nowhere to offer me tyrant’s love.
I crawled and agonizingly reached for the book,
Page 5 was all smothered with red ink except a few,
“This sonofabitch poet/ is gonna croak.”
