hi-density

Poet: Lourd de Veyra

Source: "One Hundred Love Poems"

Year Created: 2003

Year Published: 2004

Publisher: The University of the Philippines Press

hi-density

baby tonight I'm trying to watch television and outside the moon

seems to have stopped breathing - a pool of flat radiance and the

only image in my mind is that of the black and white siamese kitty

cat tattooed on the small of your back because I hardly understood

the true nature of cats until you silently tiptoed into my life and I

entered you with the smoothness of hot knife through butter and

smoldering like the tip of a syringe and because the memory of your

skin still haunts me burning more savagely than this moon so boring

the television appears to hum with more life and baby I am sorry I

had met with apathy the concern for your real true siamese kitty cat

because I am in a state of consciousness that receives neither the

eleven o' clock news nor the lunar manifestation of truth and love

and whatever strange music it is hanging outside these unreal windows

and baby I hope you are not thinking it is the cat you keep between

your legs I think about all the time with an egyptian's impious

devotion to bast and baby I hope you are still alive and you too are

watching television this very moment with only the real virtue of

understanding beaming on your ghostly face more beautiful than

moonlight more beautiful than death and imagining what might have

happened had you come over to let that feline tattoo curl up cozily

on my bed tonight baby now I begin to understand the true nature

of absence and hunger in the sudden keening of a cat

_________________

From the famous Lourd de Veyra of Radioactive Sago Project, "hi-density" is a poem that tackles a man's longing for a dead lover. It is almost midnight and despite the hour, he still feels so awake because of his strong imagination working to almost resurrect his beloved.

In the last lines of the poem you will observe that he becomes sensual. Perhaps he is thinking of intimate moments with the woman. And it is confirmed when he wished for the woman to be there watching television too.

Well, I tried hard to retain the form of the poem here but failed (GRRR Blogger!). The form is important because sometimes it also expresses the persona's mood. Now, you should start checking the form of this one. Very continuous and with a slight opening or space in the last line. If you ask me, the poem as a whole, sure does look something else. And, I think it only justifies the poem's sensuality.