Norman Santos (Nov.19,1990 / Philippines)

In a quadrille of his flimsy fingers
He lambently imposed tranquility
In between the brunt of his calloused soldiers
That the phalanges strangulated in a knot
And trudged and snapped and broke
With the heart of the widow pianist
Whistling his vapid tune from weaker towers

With the streets teeming of faceless strangers
He played the elude of his phantasmagoria
And groveled with a bleeding sonata
With shambling notes of empty words
That singed brusquely in a queue
Among their empty swollen ears
The schmaltz plea died with the violins

He sedated himself with the picture
Of familiar peoples crammed in a rotogravure
And the melancholy disembogued of verve
When the pictures pranced with deluded scherzos
And the listening thawed unto their toes
As he gnawed upon a drunken smile
The pianist's elegy strode a thousand mile

The widow pianist crooned to bargain
For an audience to the unfurling morsels
Of his slivered mind and its elegy
And ferry the silver euphonic melody
In a place divorced of harsh veracity,
Where triviality would be unwelcomed,
And benediction is in a saccharine orchestra.