Poem

I once wrote it like how I drop a stone on still water. The first word would splash and the lines thereafter ripple in and out of paper going back to the first words and out again to the margins, through the fibers and on the four corners on this thin crust of a paper, now shivering on the creases, waves rolling, tsunamis mounting, swallowing monuments and mountains, roaring and marching in and out the field, multiplying liquid soldiers, one ripple clashing against the other, creating more splashes and little spheres up on the air.

But when I almost got the excitement I want then it suddenly goes quiet: the water rests, the storm calms, the stone has reached the bottom. The surface shines and glitters once more, diamond on smooth transparent fabric, leaving a high resonating note, sending chills on my spine, hard and crackling, like how cold electricity on water can be on, and now the ripple vanishes but I know the echo goes on and on under the surface, beneath the tension where mathematical equations create their own wars, the x’s and y’s and z’s magnifying the invisible curve, the elliptical orbits, expanding the universe, never ending, never dying, creating more worlds.

The stone remains motionless down there. Until I drop the next one and it creates another splash.

I once wrote like I could contain eternity in a red plastic drum.

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Jeffrey Blasabas-Javier is a Creative Writing student in UP Mindanao