Being added to a blogroll always gives a thrill. Thrilling to find this blog on Womb :) Thanks Michelle Detorie for adding my blog to your blogroll. What an honor to be called a poet, when I have always only aspired to the form and loved the word and the work for what it is.

Even more procrastination to add to my procrastinated days . Surfing more blogs and click-click-clicking on all those lovely links.

I find Blackbird an absorbing read. That from clicking on links leading to Michelle's poetry.

Some people gripe about literary being boring. Maybe I've read so much literary stuff, but I haven't been bored by anything written well. I always find myself fascinated by how minds and minds work, the creative mind especially -- that fascinates me.

I think this is a fascination readers/bookworms all share.

Here's this lovely hay(na)ku from The First Hay(na)ku Anthology

I love this one
written by Ivy Alvarez

Poets
are good
to eat, as

they
are more
tender and juicy

than
any other
human. Any cannibal

worth
his/her
salt knows this.

****

I know what Ivy means when she writes this. Everytime I read this I go...yum, yum .

****

I stumbled on a link leading to portraits. One of them, Retrato de la Abuela, awakened memories of my grandmother. Not that they look alike, but it reminded me too of how my grandmother used to lapse into Spanish every now and then. My own Abuela.

I am working on this impulsive poem I wrote on My Varo Notebook which is probably the truest and the closest I have gotten to my grandmother since she passed away. Now wondering what my father will say when he reads this rough version. Last time I attempted to write about my grandmother, he laughed . Could be because I was much younger and didn't really remember my grandma as well as I now remember her? I haven't written anything tagalog in a long time either, but that portrait drew it out of me.

So, I ask, this connection between emotion and language where does it come from? I didn't learn to speak Tagalog until I was in highschool. In the mountains, we only spoke English or Ilocano or Ifugao. So, how come at certain moments, nothing seems to do except a certain language?

How come I tend to grieve for loved ones passed away, mostly a year, a week, or a century too late? Why is time never enough to know the people we love the most?