Ode To A Dead Poet Poem by Edmundo Farolan

I.

…When the trees asked me why they were in chalked green blackboards, why there were faces drawn in them, why they were philosophical such as “the essence of trees is their being”, or “A tree has both essence and existence.” And trees can also weep because they too have tears inside their leaves, and when they thirst, they suck the earth of its juices from rains that fall and nurture poems, poems as poetic as the green indifference of trees…

And innocent. Yes, innocent and leafless in winter.
And they shed tears in autumn. To die for a while in winter. So that poems, sad poems can be created by people who search God in the most meaningless verses possible. Yet they do not find what they’re searching.
But they continue to search.
And search.
And Spring comes, friendships end, eyes turn willowy, and trees die once again, they die with their indifferent green, like the green of Spring that colors the earth.
Conspiracy of the season? Perhaps the change, the constant change of life, monotony, and the threads of eternity spinning like fire.
Sweet fire. Frightened fire. No, you’re not afraid. You’re neither lonely nor bored. You’re just resting for a while from your tireless restlessness. And again, you’ll relieve the sun of its daylight restlessness; at night when you watch the stars and sigh cold smoke, like a hand that loses life.
Trivial like an X mark.
My studies are not sweet enoughto retain the bitterness of this cold against my cracked lips.
Slip away, perhaps slip away….

II.

The wine spilled. The days give way to love. And the cold winter gathers loyalty. The night searches for that friend who flew away on wings of black and fat cats, or brown and friendly dogs that convert themselves into laughing, human hyenas.

Feet are cold. The house has no lights in Christmas and most of all, the pigeon comes back to bite my gloved hand, my inexpressive hand that beckons sunset.
Were you reflecting when you walked?
No, but I smiled.
Why?
Because you were silent.

III.

The torn pieces must be gathered together to collect dry moss in summer. Did you tell me how summer was?
Warm.
Like love?
What’s love?
Love is a…feeling? No…you…

IV.

Don’t be silly. The tides have changed. The seas have converted into mountains. The mountains, the seas, humans, animals, lions, men, cats, women; and the earth has dried from white and icy and wet snow, to the warm and blue sky of Africa. And Canada no longer belongs to white animals, but to black cannibals.
Did you say…?
Yes I said…
I beg your pardon?
Not at all.
You’re so kind.
And cannibals say goodbye to tigers; tigers to cats; and the sky no longer changes its green, indifferent color. It remains smiling, looking up into the earth.

V.

And transparent eyes, like seven times seven, or two times two, or multiply me with the things you see around me and you’ll see me floating happily, innocently in an eternity you will never have imagined I would be.

VI.

A cough.
Love.

VII.

Letters…Once there was a man who was a fraid of death’ so, he committed suicide; dialog 68; and the Montreal affair. Odeon? Yes, I miss Montreal. Do you?

The mountain wasn’t high. I went up. And its softness dies sometimes with the relics of the mind: wind, snow, slit and forsaken desires. The car, a 68 Chevy. Toronto waits for me. But the thought of weeks turning to months only bores me more.
However, I’m not frightened. I’m just a bit indifferent. And melancholy. Miserable sighs. Suggestions? Yes. Do…
What?
Mention letters in your dreams.
Do…!
Spring. No, Fall. The leaves were yellow. The afternoon, poetic. The pictures, smiling. And the walk, trite, boring, affectatious, and sometimes, I recall, sickly.
Talk…!
And so the days when kisses resounded with jealousy. When you never cared and I tired easily of your touch. When age crept, not verily, but steadily. And not very much like the subtleness, no, the impulsiveness of buying a…Greek record? Obviously not. It was Americanized.
Emily.
Sentimental.
Never learn to love that way. Brings you misery.
Bing.
Swindle.
Ning.
Accident.
Banlag. Blonde albino. To hell with memories!

VIII.

Jackets. Stories of dreams. And the ordinary bitterness of having to write simple words against the bearded sounds of a university. Against a steepled silence of pine trees that root deep into the freezing cold. And most of all, against the days of thoughts, of books that write untruths mixed in one, silly upright American bundle. Everything is propaganda.
Even Vietnam.
No opinions please. There are just oo many comments. Another is bound to cause a hot shooting world war culminating in a nervous breakdown for this planet called Earth.
And the planeteers from other places?
Mystery.
And God?
Man-made mystery.
And gods?
They belong to dreams. Dreams. Yes, I can only offer dreams. One, there was a green dream. Two, a god who saw, who knew why there were children who grew poetically into orange or yellow adults. Sick. Maybe the sickness of life conferred upon the righteousness of love. Of virginity. Of a painting in yellow and black. Sick love. A dry tear that can never be dry again. And the steak was hard like a shoe’s sole. And your lauighs were resounding and half-hysterical. And you were pale; no, no longer half a tomato. No longer a bitterness. Just a sigh, a sigh that awaits a dream, many dreams, like sordid love affairs. Like the tension that touches squarely with your sighs. Yes, another poem, another night. Maybe a restful sleep tonight, or a paragraph that might end sincerely with quotation marks. Maybe a kind of happiness, a real and sincere happiness that is misunderstood. Or a silence that reflects the many possibilities of life. Jumping boards of life, yes, that’s the expression, jumping into sweet oblivion, the nothingness of death, and the censored afterlife.
Who knows?
No one. Only the dead.
But they’re dead.
They no longer exist; they’re forgotten.
Or remembered.
Superstition? The dead coming back to life?
Possibly.
Afraid. A bit, I am, of the dead who haunt the living and defy them to spiritual duels.
Who wins?
The dead.
Don’t mock me.
But I must. Because my paleness does not act anymore, nor is it silent and cold like today was silent and cold; and then this night, conscience, if I must have one, no, they’re no longer the end-all of things.
You are nothing. Nothing. And I crave for something.
Within.
Explain to me the meaning of indifference.
Once I loved. Now I don’t.
I’m indifferent. That’s what it means.
But love?
Does it matter?
No. Only dedicated love. This love stops you from breathing. It stops you from thinking. It is considerate of oblivion. It does not care for death. It is life.
Then, are you happy?
Yes.
What is happiness?
Happiness is…just another feeling.