I move chairs at midnight,
Adjusting my wife’s preference
Which one is facing which.
The cats are doing football
Banging on tables and walls.
All six of them,
Siamese versus Persian
All team High Maintenance.
My angry wife wakes up,
Reminding us she needs to sleep.
I’d pay for this in the morning,
When I am the one
Struggling to doze off,
Bury my head under
Mountains. She’d raise hell
And transform into a monster.
The furniture won’t vouch
For my innocence
The walls meek, sleeping
As deep as the cats,
Now like curled dry towels
On the floor, while my wife’s
Torture lecture lasts
Until eternity.
Only when the door
Closes and the tick tock
Of heels disappear
Fading into purgatory,
Only then there’s peace.
I’ll dream of growing old,
White bearded, long-haired man
Wise not to say anything,
Sleep as peaceful as a humming
Antique, metallic electric fan.
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.
