Back in high school we would get these required monthly subscriptions of magazines and comic books our parents paid for at the start of the year. One such thing is Gospel Komiks, with stories on how the gospels for that month can be applied in real life. The stories in Gospel are fun, except that the conflicts are always resolved the same way: the kontrabida would overhear the bida praying out loud how the kontrabida is making her miserable and asking for providence and guidance on how to deal with this nefarious bitch, making the kontrabida feel kunsensya eventually change her evil evil ways. This never worked in real life. I once prayed out loud for a Mitsubishi Family Computer for my parents to overhear, and come Christmas time they got me a pair of Hanford briefs.

There was this another monthly religious magazine which we did not read as much, and Namtab Pots and I would always skip to the poetry column of someone named Tito Leo. In his column he publishes a couple of poems sent by his readers. He then critiques each poem, more often than not ripping them to shreds. The religious theme and touchy-feely feel of the entire magazine did not stop him from being the critic from hell. It was the only fun portion of that magazine.

Sort of inspired by that column, and having edited the school paper (being able to publish a record-breaking… 4 issues in my editorship), I tried my hand in poetry. In college I would write a lot, scribbling them in a sort of journal, which makes me want to vomeeeeet now. After that short stint in college I’ve reverted back to prose writing, and since there were no blogs then I only had one reader other than myself: Mrs. Therese. Her comments are usually funnier than my actual stories, but I think my prose have aged well as I can still read them and not cringe. I’ve recently tried reading one of my college poems, and it made me want to dunk my head in the toilet bowl in pure infernal kahihiyan.

Recently our oncology chair in PGH has decided to put together a sort of literary publication, with the over-arching theme, of course, being… cancer. She asked me to write one, and not having written a poem since 1998 I had my reservations–do I want to put out yet another evidence of juvenile cheesiness with which I could be blackmailed ten years hence? I’ve relented, so here… in its poet-poetan glory (yes you’ve been reading one long segue)… is my poem called “The Rarest”.

How about that.

O di ba. I’ve wanted to end on a positive/cheery note, but all I could think of was to write a perfunctory “AHOY!” as the last line, which did not exactly fit. Wow, how much more cultured could I get, I’ve watched a fantastic musical AND attempted to write poetry in the same month! AHAHAHAHAHAH!

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