TL;DR
My top four poems are:
Mi Primer Adios (My First Farewell). 70 lines.
My Flick. A parody of a movie theme song. 68 lines.
The Green Hills of North Ryde. A tribute to uni life. 76 lines
Musings (2025 version). Published in our high school yearbook, remastered this year. The titular poem in my collection. 72 lines.
Four poems. Three unpublished and forthcoming. All of them around seventy lines and to be included in Musings: Poems Selected and New. So far, I’ve written about 300 pages of poesy. Good for three full-length collections. I’ve shared some of them on this site. The other weekend, I contacted Apple tech support. Lou, a Pinay, asked about my battery usage. I retorted, ‘Pages, 69%’.
‘69%? You must be doing something IMPORTANT.’
‘Yes, I’m editing my first poetry book. Have you heard of Mi Ultimo Adios by Jose Rizal?’
(Thinking) ‘Yes.’
‘My lead poem is Mi Primer Adios. My First Farewell.’
She seemed impressed. She told me that she was excited to read it. I stressed that I haven’t released it yet.
Allow me to discuss my top four, with some excerpts.
Mi Primer Adios. Rizalesque in style and scope, this will anchor my poetry debut. Hands down, my most impressive piece. The best verses appear on the back cover. Some of the lines mobilise an abacc rhyme scheme. I mostly followed Rizal’s technique. If it was read in the US Congress, as Adios was, then that’s good enough for me. I’ll go with what works.
‘My desperate yearnings as a schoolboy
My true fantasy, a dreamer full to the brim
Were clocking you, beauteous, radiant but coy
Your dreary eyes wide open, angelic face held nigh
Ready for the next decade, prepped to fly’
My Flick. A parody of My Dick, the theme song of Harold and Kumar: Escape from Guantanamo Bay. A catchy and comic tune, it plays on the end credits. The most entertaining poem I’ve written, verse for verse. Its lightheartedness left an impact on me. This inspired me to pen my own version. My Flick is the only parody of the quartet. The last written of my top four poems. I had a blast drafting this piece. In classic couplet style, minimal editing was required. Last year, a classmate asked me how long it took to produce these poems.
I’m used to writing couplets, so not that long.
Wow intelligent, she typed.
Smiling emoji.
‘My flick size of Titanic
Your flick downright Satanic
My flick got every dawg lovin’
Your flick left the crowd fumin’
My flick made Tourette’s stop
Your flick saw girlfriends slap
My flick too darn weepy
Your flick so bad it’s scary
My flick hotter than fish grease
Your flick rioters from Greenpeace
My flick fit for a royal
Your flick botched buccal
The Green Hills of North Ryde. The title is taken from a Hemingway read on Africa. As per above, it’s an ode to my university. There I gained a Bachelor’s and an Honours degree. Green Hills is built like Musings. I used the reverse consonance rhyming. Popularised by my ‘friend’, Jose Garcia Villa. This involves inverting the first and last consonants of the last word. Like Harry Potter and expelliarmus, I’m getting good at it. A fair amount of poems in my collection utilise this method.
‘Inferno’s, gari ngaya impierno’ (Inferno’s it’s like hell)
Auntie’s sentiments at the restaurant after my honours graduation nom nom nom
She told the waiter that Heineken is German he said it was Dutch
The brown leather seats not impressing Auntie pleasing her was hard
Musings. I’ve come a long way since this was featured unedited on my high school yearbook’s final page. At sixteen, I was making waves. Like Green Hills, I used an acronym for my Alma mater. Four lines to each stanza. Making it 72 verses in total. With an alternate rhyme, it’s the only shoo-in across my drafts. The collection wouldn’t be Musings without the titular poem.
Since day one on her age old scene
I found my promise and heard the colours
My intensity never dies so sounds were seen
An incendiary sight inspiring hollers
So, that’s it, a teaser of my current project. All passionate and a joy to read. The rhyme scheme may differ. The themes are dissimilar. His ingenuity remains.
