nameabledays Archive One

Events interrupted our series on the poems and paintings, and the poets who read their pieces at the perhaps groundbreaking Pictura Poiesis poetry event at Mag:Net. (Groundbreaking at least in relation to the freestyle manner that Joel Toledo had always so ably conducted the Happy Mondays poetry nights, in terms of structure and the sharing the poetic experience.) Before we could resume the series, writer friend Rene Villanueva passed away (though ailing he was in the prime of his life and career as one of our best playwrights) and I was compelled to write my personal memories about him in a “memorial” blog. And to counterbalance the grieving for that loss (and finally let go of him from our earthbound lives), I had to post about a happier event, another Mag:Netic night of gregarious and bibulous writers. (Confronted with the tragic, our instinct is to assert life, our will to survive, mostly by laughter and song and you-know-what…) So we resume our explorations in poetry contemplating its sister arts, Erato conversing and singing with the other Muses.

Nude Sketch, Araceli Dans

Ways of Seeing

by Ida Anita del Mundo


She lies,
Her face turned from you
The boldness of skin
Against fragile white lace webs.
Your eyes caress her endless expanse of skin,
But she will not stir,
She will not turn to you,
She will not let you into her world.
For her, you do not exist.
She is alone
Alone in her own universe,
Alone on her calado cloud.
Later, without as much as a glance,
She will rise and leave this room
The delicate lace pattern
Tattooed on her back.




Ida Anita del Mundo graduated cum laude with a degree in Literature from De La Salle University-Manila. She also received the Cultural Development Award, Gold Medal for Outstanding Contribution to the Literature Department, and Gold Medal for Outstanding Thesis for her creative writing thesis on ekphrastic poetry. Ida also plays the violin for the Manila Symphony Orchestra and is part of the rock band, Hymn of Siren. She currently writes for the Philippine Star.

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The Kiss, Gustav Klimt (1907-08), oil & gold on canvas, 180x180cm. Österreichische Galerie, Belvedere, Vienna

On The Kiss by Klimt

by Christian Abe Dalao


No doubt he’s given up on the idea: the perfect time, place, kiss. No wonder his robe’s aglow like a moment before a blowup, kindling her dress swollen with florid circles, diffusing glitters on the walls that used to be stained only by day & night & longing.

No doubt she’s caught unawares. No wonder her right hand’s too frail against the tension of his neck, of his wreathed head like she sees in her dreams, her left hand too slow, too hesitant to place itself on one of the dark patches of his robe & leave it there to burn.

No use for the rest of the bed. Leave the flowers be. Leave what other patterns, shapes, colors, nuances, scents stuck in shoulders, violets in tresses, smoldering laces hanging over bare frozen feet—leave what other complexities, distractions other than her lips, be.

No use for comfort. No room for other positions than the one closest to that of prayer, to that of supplication to be with the other soonest, to be finally entwined in the other’s fever, to be right at that moment of waking, just somewhere right before giving in.





Kristian Abe Dalao was a fellow in the 2007 National Writers Workshop in Dumaguete City and is currently a student in the MFA Creative Writing program of De La Salle University. His poetry won in the Transition Literary journal contest of Far Eastern University where he finished his bachelor’s degree in English.

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Two Poems on the Romantic Sentiment

(On two paintings by Caspar David Friedrich)

by Noelle Leslie de la Cruz

I. The Wanderer Above The Sea of Mists

“I must remain alone and know that I am alone, in order to see and feel nature completely; I must surrender myself to my surroundings, unite myself with my clouds and rocks, in order to be what I am.”
—Caspar David Friedrich




I wonder what you see, standing there
your back to me, a pyramid of sharp rocks
under your feet. The solid mass of earth gives way
to the infinity of space, exactly on the spot
where you stand: one foot forward, knee slightly bent,
one arm resting on a walking stick.
The wind ruffles your Teutonic hair.
You mustn’t feel the cold; your black overcoat
fits you well, contains the manly awe inside.

Mist unfurls beneath your feet. Here and there,
mountaintops and trees peek through the wisps.
In the farthest limits of vision, there are heights to scale
where the hidden sun bleeds pink into the blue.

I think I might know how it feels,
sometimes anyway, the vertigo that awaits
at the dead center of your life: Where the wind blows
relentlessly and the abyss calls to your own depths.
A place to forget the world, and the human ties we spin
to form the cocoon of self. You see now
this possibility. You have the choice to jump
(or not), to tear the heart’s artificial swaddling,

and fly.

II. On The Sailing Boat

“It’s a droll business, when a fellow has a wife.... Everything I do now is always done, and must be done, with my wife in mind. If I but knock a nail into the wall, it mustn’t be as high as I can reach but only as high as my wife can reach in comfort. In short, since I became a We, many things have changed....”
—Caspar David Friedrich



Nothing disturbs us here
even the gentle seesaw of our ship
making love to the water
barely registers. We look at the gray city
silenced by the distance, the black
blue expanse of ocean
marooning us. In the corner of my eye
the great white sail rises
reassuringly, a stabilizing triangle
reminding us of something solid
that will always be behind us.

I pray that there will always be
enough air for the two of us,
that your grave presence will not
drain my space. Other than that,
I am fond of the weight
of your bent leg against my knee,
how you assume
the equanimity of a mermaid
staking your claim on a rock
in the middle of the ocean, making
the only sound I can hear—
inviting me to drown.

I pray that I (no, we) be saved.




Noelle Leslie de la Cruz is associate professor at De La Salle University where she received her Ph.D. in Philosophy. She received a gold medal for Best Thesis in Philosophy at her graduation in 2006. She is an experienced writer from her various stints as a student journalist, online book reviewer, and blog publisher. Currently she is a student in the MFA Creative Writing Program of DLSU.

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Notes on the Poems:
Pastel Calado, Pigments Mixed with Gold
& Sea Crashing against Cliffs

Ida’s “Ways of Seeing” preserves as much as possible the delicacy for which Araceli Dans’ paintings are known, especially Dans’ choice of objects of Filipino craft—the fine lace-like calado embroidery that figures much in formal clothing such as the Barong Tagalog, the panuelo and overskirts of native dresses, and even table covers, runners, doilies. It is this usually white, filigreed cloth that compliments the similarly diaphanous lines of Dans’ nudes with their exquisite brown Filipino skin. Ida’s lines hew close to them: the calado “cloud” makes the nude almost angelic if it were not also tactilely erotic, imagined for us in the last lines of the poem, the intimacy we cannot ignore of the “lace pattern / Tattooed on her back.”

Kristian’s Klimt. Gustav Klimt was supposed to have married Symbolism and Art Noveau, especially in his famous The Kiss, using both mythic element and decorative artifice (I sense something Middle Eastern or Islamic in The Kiss, looking at the color of the man and imagining the woman to be an odalisque). Kristian was right to provide museum info on the piece that tells us Klimt used gold with his pigments, giving it that luminescence and sparkle. Kristian’s Kiss uses four paragraphs pretending to be prose, emulating the almost spontaneous flow of feeling. Thus it celebrates the desperate ecstasy of erotic love about to be consumed, finding itself in the textures—her dress “swollen with florid circles,” the “smoldering laces,” the two bodies that must be “with the other soonest,” but only in a position “closest to that of prayer.”

Leslie’s Friedrich embodies the poet’s persona identifying (with much poetic empathy) with the visual subject that is in turn a classic manifesto of the Romantic vision—the wondrous sweeps of land- and seascapes of Turner and Delacroix, the soaring orchestral crescendos of Wagner and Schubert, the requiems of Liszt, the mystical meditations of Wordsworth and Blake—and man, tiny man, enamored of his own potential annihilation in the midst of all the vastness. But there is something personal and modern (contemporary) embedded in these poems: the rather unconvincing options the poet gives to the wanderer in the sea of mists, “to jump / (or not), to tear the heart’s artificial swaddling…,” or how she amid the seesaw of the ship is “fond of the weight / of your bent leg against my knee…” that reminds us of our human, flesh-and-blood world.

I am aware that these poems (and the others read in Pictura Poiesis) were parts of assignments and exercises in ekphrastic poetry for Marj Evascos’ graduate literature class at La Salle, but the way they have been carefully, conscientiously, and literately executed give me an encouraging sign of the amount and quality of attention our new poets give to their maturing art.

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