I know I don't usually post whole poems or works written by other people on my blog, primarily because of intellectual property issues, but really, because I feel that my blog should mind its own business. However, this time, I think I will make an exception.

A friend recently loaned me a copy of else it was purely girls, a collection of poetry by twenty year old Angelo V. Suárez. I was immediately drawn to the vividness of his imagery and the unique rhythm of his alliterations. Observe:

"of the pen, this pointless vocation,
Volition be your guide, erudition

on craft the raft that sails you thru [. . .]"
(from "Nameless Beerhouse Elegy")

Ernest de Veyra puts it more eloquently when he says that "Suárez also knows how to make his syllables sing, in that manner that makes poetry-reading audiences momentarily postpone that short trip to the buffet table and listen up."

Incidentally, the collection won third place in the Don Carlos Palanca Awards for Literature in 2004. It is, I believe, his second book, the first being entitled, The Nymph of MTV. I don't know about the first one, but I think purchasing this second will be worth your while.

And so, as an exception to my rule (and because it can be justified as Fair Use under our IP laws), I post katrains for quit, a poem for his girlfriend Kit (the title is a play on the name!). Read the poem aloud, and listen to the sonority of the words. I'm sure that like Kit, you too will fall in love.

katrains for quit

there are no shadows when it comes to you—

only nightscapes. or should i say: it is night in that part

of the world where your shadow falls obliquely like a shroud,

your shadow whose weight is the absence of thought,

all thoughlessness and wingflutter, whose surface

is smoother than the edges of night, each finger a wingless

butterfly sharper than shoulder blades where caterpillars

blossom into song. your shadow whose forehead

is the biblical wilderness the messiah prayed in

for forty days and forty nights, adorned with thickets

and traitors, deer and despair. whose mouth dismantles

planetary systems and detonates stellar clusters,

whose breath is submerged in ethereal moonlight,

whose breath is moonlight, whose face is moon with lips

of moonrock. night falls when you close your eyes,

my love, and nothing stirrs except my heart.