Sunset, Cebu, Nicholas Sparks, and Poetry

by Raymund Tamayo

When someone asks me how long it took me to write a particular poem, like, for one, this "sunset" poem, I ask what is the date indicated below the poem. And even if I used up only minutes to commit the words to paper, I add the life I've lived to the point of writing and give that as my answer.

I say that my poems of ten years ago are very different from the ones I write today. The work I do tomorrow will be miles apart from that done yesterday. My feelings when I wrote a particular poem may not be the same feelings that I feel today. But I'll be happy to share these poems with you.

But I have to warn you... you cannot judge my poem. My poetry cannot be judged against those poets who have gone before me or even my contemporaries. Because I am the poem. The poem is me. No one can judge what I really felt that day. No one can safely tell me what my poems should be or should have been, because I lived in them... they are my feelings and my experiences and must stand as such.

If you read a poem of mine and identify with it, then the poem becomes your experience. You will live it your own way - read into it something I probably never meant to say. That's how it should be.


SUNSET, CEBU, NICHOLAS SPARKS AND POETRY

this is a september sunset
but grey clouds are cheating us of the stars

I mark this spot on my calendar
this 28th day of september that you’re not around
like days in roadway inn
like nights on madelaine’s place

I circle it in red
so next year I can remember
laugh and say I over-dramatized your absence

I am alone in this stormy island
hundreds of miles away from anything
I can call home

do you know what cebu means?
it means “change everything… but us”
I know it’s corny, yeah, it is

but as corny as it sounds
you know it’s true
and longing hearts were always
like that

sitting here at the airport
felt like I’m the best-selling author
of nights in rodanthe

just thinking, wishing, just that
wanting to write, but like you
absent were paper and pens

if I could tell you one thing
this lonesome september night
I’ll say it as loving as I can

don’t wait for love
but do attend to it when it comes

(September 2007)