Patterns

Merlita Lorena Tariman
By Merlita Lorena Tariman
Poem2

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The chisel as creator

Lends shape to wood, to stone.

Shape being the truth of character,

Reality of body and bone,

Sculpted fact of form,

The confidence of matter.

The paintbrush as creator

Draws maps of rainbows,

Contours of celebrations,

Then blends faithful colors

With their reserved spaces.

Spaces being the measure of possibilities

That can curtail the guiles of prisms.

The pen as creator

Carves the word, clips the line,

Sets limits, distance or depth of being language;

Language being either the sense of anecdotes

Or the dialectics of rumors,

Where words intersect at certain

Attempts in proclaiming a name for the void

Between ground and sky,

Gorge and crater, craft and art.

Each one seeking to explain the blunders of terms.

Merlita Lorena Tariman
Merlita Lorena Tariman
Merlita Lorena Tariman writes poetry in three languages: English, Filipino, and Bikol. Some of her previous work appeared in various periodicals—Focus, Sunday Times magazine, Inquirer magazine, Woman Today, Filmag, Diyaryo Filipino—and in three anthologies: Ang Silid na Mahiwaga by Soledad S.Reyes (1994), Hagkus by Paz Verdades M. Santos (2003), and Sagurong by Paz Verdades M. Santos and Kristian Sendon Cordero (2011). Her first Bikol-Filipino poetry collection, Pinatubo At Iba Pang Tula, was published in 2014, through a grant from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts. Most of her poems were published under two by-lines, M.M. Lorena Tariman and Merlita Lorena Tariman.

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