Genuine Feeling is not a Trend in Poetry Today

 German Villanueva Gervacio’s “Crayola” 

Nasa loob ang pagluha

 habang pasulyap-sulyap 

sa kabubukas na kahon na 

wawaluhin hanggang aanimnapu’t apating

 pangkorol ng mga kaklase.

 Pinipilit kong patingkarin

 ang kulay ng palayan,

 puno,

 bundok, 

Araw at nagliliparang ibon 

Gamit ang pudpod at putol-putol 

ng pangkulay 

Na pamana ng mga kapatid

Lumuha nang lihim. 

Iyan ang una kong leksyon sa sining.

My translation: 

 I am in-depth hidden tears 

                     while trying to glimpse 

                               the ajar box of 8 to 16 

                                   crayons of my classmates.

 I tried to create brilliant color

                            of the rice field,

                                                tree,

                                                     mountain --- 

                                                        the Sun and the birds in flight 

using the dilapidated broken crayons 

inherited by my siblings 

I cried a tear secretly. 

That’s my first art lesson.

I chose G. V. Gervacio’s “Krayola” because I can relate to his feeling of owning a crayon. How I pitifully love to have one, sometimes I gaze at my classmate's hands and that I am using them.

In Grade 4, I won a painting contest by using tints from different flowers. The price I got was a box of eight crayons which I used until I graduated from the primary grades.

 

P.S.

My obsession with having art materials is until today. I collect different art mediums that I can explore with my hands. Maybe a sickness because of the little girl that was deprived of no crayons at school. (I live with my grandmother in Bohol until my fourth grade, that even papers and notebooks I hardly get.)

I do not know how to explain those ideas that judges can easily apprehend. What I have is a genuine feeling. It seems that feeling is not a trend in poetry today. So the academe will thrive, and the poets will be gone forever.