An entertainment journalist dedicates a poem as b-day gift to NA for Literature nominee

by Boy Villasanta

Choosing between buying a gift and writing poetry as a birthday present to a celebrator is one of the easiest choices to make.

Especially if the person is an artist, the most precious thing one can send to a celebrant is a creative pursuit—a poem.

When Epitacio Tongohan—also known as Doc Pen Pen (he’s indeed a real medical doctor), a visual artist who is known as the Father of Visual Poetry where he mixes poetic texts and images—celebrates his natal day on November 19, 2024 in Lanai Restaurant in Sampalok, Tanay, Rizal, most of his guest will offer a poem—written or spoken—dedicated to him on the occasion.

Here’s my two-cent worth of verses to pay homage to his special day:

Shades

Torn between meeting a poet

And sleepless nights, days of machine weaving doc to beat a film fete

Like an interplaying chiaroscuro.

An invite to a tete-a-tete in a hazy twelve noon

In a singing chicken of a country crooner

Roasting, burning in a bustling shop watch-tower

By Pasig River anchoring Bay of Manila.

While hours of sights and sounds

Deferred in an idiot box bursting with threats

Of waterworld Kaliwa.

Still revealing half-truths, white lies and cacophonies. 

Seeing and echoing a tapestry of IPs along your rivers and highways,

Living in byways

In protest as your poesis

Germinal autopoietic

Of brown aborigines

Trying to bolt out from anguish.

Docu makers lunch over mushy rice, sunken fish and coconut oiled jackfruit  

While looking at the clock…

One…

Two…

Three…

I chose inroads of equilibrium

Between scrabbled games block and hues black ethnicity from seas and mountains.

I walked briskly to the chick pantry party

In the hour of the Divine Mercy.

Aside from a confidante and a wordsmith

Poet was nowhere to be found.

Wandering, reading, storytelling and painting the town red in the tiled jungle

Titled mall.

Like Iliad of epical ennui, the poet killed time.

Suddenly, the millennial Homer alter-ego brought in Dionysius appearing in a banquet for six.

A discourse bloomed sweetly over newspapers on the table 

An empty coffee cup pleaded mercilessly

Hanging around  

To be filled with words from Prufrock and amaranth.

Picking metaphors and similes

To pour in the glass of centuries of waiting

To hang on the wall of verses of wanting.

Casting vignettes.

Splashing visuals of colorful texts

That went on deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper into the abyss.

Like your hidden eyes digging into eternity.

You and your shades

Prisms of dimensions.

Shades of truths.

Shades of unlies.

-Boy  Villasanta