Soon it will be like us. Eighty-year-old men
Being refused another round of beers
Waiters eager to go home to their wives.
Assuming we reach old age
With the way we drink our sorrows,
The way we drink our longings
The way we order buckets of pain,
We strive to be out of clichés
Like old men drinking at home.
The buko juice vendor will pass by
In a few minutes
At this hour I am still awake
Craving for sleep
We couldn’t even say goodnight
Because it’s several hours past
Midnight. People will drink
Because that’s what they got to do.
Prayers won’t work
Though they do pray sometimes
When growing old is not what it should be
When growing old is not being old.
Totel V. de Jesus
Totel V. de Jesus has contributed two poems in the inaugural year of the Philippines Graphic Reader monthly magazine. One for its November 2022 issue and another for February 2023. In the 1990s, a few of his earlier poems were published when Nick Joaquin edited the literary section of the then weekly Graphic magazine. De Jesus has been working for two-and-a-half decades in the media industry, and now edits for the central news desk of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. He looks forward to spending the rest of his life reading and writing more poems and other literary works, while taking care of six cats at home with his occasionally sleep-deprived wife.
