Contributor: Jun Lit

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Sometimes I hate sad songs.
They make me feel the nights are colder
when you’re away –
in fields of endless greens
or islands of pollen-laden winds
smelling sweet nectary yellows
as you chase mimics of monarchs
regal in their black-lined orange capes.
Those dainty fairies never visit me here.
These sheets aren’t warm enough
to keep them flying
to sprinkle dusts for dream-weaving
into these greying strands thinning
on this stubborn head tirelessly waiting.

As Bruno hits the consummated notes,
I reach the empty pages of a companion book of quotes
but nobody close enough to hear soft murmurs
like one Adele begging for love
in one last night together in some distant abode.
The youthful pitch leaves me envious
and squeezes a pinch as my heart argues
for those wasted chances of holding those hands
or missed opportunities of touching your hair
as I pass the now cobweb-covered chair.
The red velvet cover’s long gone and bald
but the hint of Victoria’s still there

The Old Band wails of our yesterday
when our woes were simpler and far away
as adventures in the jungles of our life of awe
become frames in a passing slide show
of demented mementoes – an array
- this bed is the only place to hide away
and the linens cover reverberating questions
of unceasing why’s and what if’s of illusions
but the care-giving pillows have only mute answers.
For all things and persons come, warm wine and verse,
then most will go frozen into long winters
and only a loving heart remembers
and hums the last sweet song of dying embers,
caring not for the ghosts of lyrics that each beat enters
into that long list of departed love letters
now entombed in graveyards of their volcanic cinders.

Fantasies bloomed
as countless Blue Moons guided
the ylang-ylang scented paths
Tales of you, the Beauty inside,
and I, one Beast on the outside,
blossomed
The rich pink petals have now dropped
But the fruits are golden
and the sprouting of seeds
have never stopped.

Tomorrows may come –
near where Yellow Brick Roads
lead to dead Ends of missed Rainbows,
no pots of gold to find or mend
Yet as a distant Old Harmonica – a rusting friend
I am – blows and gasps struggling for asthmatic tunes,
those still familiar lines – mine’s not a Wooden Heart –
when the now creaking knees had once danced
cha-chas, boogies, swings
but promised the Last Waltz with you, tarried
but not tired. The acid-washed jeans are now faded,
but the double-stitched Love we have
endures
And again
I am Always – Right Here Waiting . . .
For You.


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Jun Lit (or Ireneo L. Lit, Jr.) teaches biology in the University of the Philippines Los Baños. He also writes poems about nature, people and society.