Tag: Fritz Gerald M. Melodi

Most Things

Poetry by | February 27, 2011

Among other things that fill my day is poetry
But among most things in poetry; it is love
Many speak of emptiness, brokenness, tears and hate
While some dripping with lust; conjuring contours of bodies in friction
And many, long for the distant lover
Some, lovers in the distance
Like a bargain sale of love poems
Pick your choice, match your experience, hurt yourself
So you take a breath, you step back

And all around, it is like Love, littered.

—-
Fritz is a graduate of AdDU with BA in Psychology and minor in Philosophy.

All Souls

Nonfiction by | November 21, 2010

A week after November first, my family visited my grandfather’s, uncle’s, and my mother’s graves. We decided not to go with the heavy flow of human traffic during the holiday, so we went a week after.

At the grave, my aunt and a few family members gathered around the graves to wipe clean a few smudges on the tombstone and took away some clutter along the sides. After which, they lighted candles, and as my other oriental tradition would suggest (Japanese). As all this was happening, I stood from afar, watching.

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Why We Write

Poetry by | October 3, 2010

We write to reclaim a part of ourselves about to be lost in time. To put in cryostasis, a part, a moment of our lives so heavy, so important, so significant we cannot trust our memory to keep it. So we write. To capture a fleeting nest of emotions that wrapped an experience, to nurture an imagination of what could have been. It is to craft into things that can be understood what your being has expressed not in human terms understandable. It may be a flight of the spirit into worlds known only to your universe. Or a profoundest experience so mundane as a clock or a sunbeam. We write to allow the public a glimpse of the private with the risk of being understood or maligned or both. It is to bare oneself, but still with clothes on, words, words as clothes.

—-
Fritz Gerald M. Melodi finished BA Psychology with minors in Philosophy from Ateneo de Davao University.

Saying Goodbye

Nonfiction by | July 18, 2010

I think I was the last person she saw before she went into coma. Her vitals dropped earlier that morning and so we gathered by her bedside at two in the morning. A few of her friends were there, family members, me and my sister, while she took deep heaves for elusive oxygen. Our pastor friend was there and by the looks of it, I could guess, he suffered a momentary distress as to what to pray for. What could we pray for? Plaster all the punctures in the heart? Revive the collapsed left lung? Scrape off all the cancer from the liver? In one miraculous swoop? I’m sure God could do all that, but I’m quite content that God was just there in the love of the people she spent her life with.

So the pastor, finally asked us: “What do you want to pray for?” Nobody answered. It was as if it was all too much to ask. But someone had to answer. “If she’s going, I pray she does so painlessly,” I replied. Almost everyone bowed their heads. Was that too rash? Heartless? Too fast?

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Venerations

Poetry by | May 30, 2010

I hold them in open palms
Clipped with my thumb
I cradle them, as one cradles something sacred
I watch as they burn a fire short-lived
I watch them
Glow, ghostly in this heavy darkness
Bringing silence to those who gaze
They leave white smoke trails
Trailing off to unknown planes
Carrying with them prayers I have not uttered
As they strip their way down
They leave ashes in their wake
Filling the air with sweet pungent fragrance
Enough to wake the dead

—-
Fritz Gerald M. Melodi finished BA Psychology from Ateneo de Davao University.