Who links to me? the journal of a semi-insane man: Ars Poetica (ala Cirilo Bautista)

Monday, January 29, 2007

Ars Poetica (ala Cirilo Bautista)

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.”

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