2 Poems – Joel M. Toledo (Philippines)

Heart

I don’t anymore want melody
with its want for pleasing and pattern
and why should I have it lilting in the background
when consoling relatives? My heart
is forged for frailty and failure.
I am accepting this now: its many vessels
leading to sorrow, its southpaw stance. I pin
a right hand over it at times, out of duty or
earnestness or just to check if it’s still there. Yes,
there is always some grand grief in its capacity
to quiet everything, eventually. And I do not cherish
such knowledge. So every day I work it,
this heart, pacing it because I hate syncopation.
Skip that. I want complete monotone. I prefer
the metronome, cadence. I insist on heart.

Currency

I don’t anymore get impressed by sudden things
like thunderclaps or surprise birthday parties.
What I had wanted to say that September,

increments of sunlight bursting open
the hearts of surrounding children, is that
I wish instead I have grown old knowing

how to fish, for example, or to swim.
I walk into bookstores and feel
so much ache in their finish

and in distant starts and forgotten
narratives, or a light put out because
there is so much sadness in darkness.

I should have begun with something like
How to begin? A brittle din of rain begins
on the rooftop and it’s supposed to be

a good thing. The kids are asleep
and the commonplace bed waits
like all consolations, things we do not

question: the inconsistency of seasons,
politics, or the meaning of a poem.
Like I am still roaming another

country, encountering sentiment
all over again, meeting new faces
and the sadness that blossoms

in all the wrong places because
I simply want to remain
caught in rain, drunk within it,

running away to far-off shelters
and swapping the present with gifts
of what I simply have to let go –

the simple past, older windows
looking out to the same scenery:
strange signs in airports, rain in Manila,

and that Autumn that I have exchanged
for the fallen Peso, foreign pictures
of snow, and better news about

the weather, come whenever.

Joel M. Toledo holds a Masters degree in English Studies (Poetry) from the University of the Philippines Diliman, where he likewise finished two undergraduate degrees (Journalism and Creative Writing). He has authored three books (Pedro and the Lifeforce, Giraffe Books 1997; Chiaroscuro, UST Press 2008; and The Long Lost Startle, UP Press 2009). He was the recipient of the 2006 NCCA Literary Prize, a grant for the publication of his first book of poems. He has won several literary awards for his poetry in English, including two Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards, The Philippines Free Press Literary Award, The Meritage Press Poetry Prize (San Francisco, USA), and was the first Asian to win the Bridport Prize in the United Kingdom for his poem, “The Same Old Figurative”. He organizes and hosts Happy Mondays Poetry Nights, the longest-running, bi-weekly poetry reading series in the Philippines. He teaches literature at Miriam College.

Send article as PDF to