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| Ernesto Santiago |
Moth, Lamp, and Poet
Gloriously dark
and gripping the night
that I know.
Burrowing under
the skin of dead words,
I reach for the light.
The burning time to unclaim,
burning time
starving time.
Of the midnight hour
a moth finding resolution too
before the virgin lamp,
and the short
verse that I will
to its flame—
“Don't die in silence,
we are not too old
to leave this world, oh poet!”
--
Love To Me
I don't know who needs to hear this,
but as loud as sun I am
and I like to embrace summer,
long and full of light and warmth.
Love to me!
It’s been a long time coming!
My heart is barren,
I think that complicates things.
I who raised my spirits at home can learn
and learn to hope for love.
My blood knows how to read,
speak and write fluently
the emotions I have visited.
I live a Zen life, so I think pretty much.
But how much of a life is a man
that was born and raised in his tongue?
Ah, if I feel love
then I am love,
and I am waiting all the same
whether you come or not, O fate divine!
©®Ernesto Santiago
-- .
To Nestor
When my heart is head of days that bring joy
to my nights there will never be any
acceptance of love that lust can employ,
whether in secret or for all to see.
No other play in my bed or in yours,
whether deliberately planned or not.
In the presence of now there is no course
available for any other plot.
All lovers whom I have loved will appear
in the history of my mere mortal,
and each one is to be made a heart peer
on one manual by love as principal.
By sending wine and water you agree
to be praised if your taste is accepted.
Ownership rights to your lips you are free
to resume, once we breathe all things unsaid.
And if you breed someone elsewhere later,
I no longer be over the long haul.
I tend to listen well when you cater
for my fervour that is almost anal.
Ah! Admiration and man always meet
to dress with flair the soul of limerence
who keenly knows it feverishly feels it,
maybe I no longer live in silence.
Each piece of my inner peace is a must
to adroitness, where timeless time is bold—
holds no grudges for slights from old and past,
but life that lives a price far above gold.
©®Ernesto Santiago
Ernesto Santiago spends all his free time between here and there, trying to learn something. He is fully confident in his identity with a Filipino heart. He lives in Athens, Greece, and is inspired daily by the myth of his poetic senses.
