Guest Blogger: Poem by Ralph Semino Galán

Many thanks to Ralph Semino Galán for being my Guest Blogger.  He shares a poem he wrote for World Poetry Day.  ~ Cecilia Brainard

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Photo grabbed from the internet

Lamentation
by 
Ralph Semino Galán

Could he palliate our sores, 

swat dead the gadflies of our

quotidian miserableness...

-Ophelia A. Dimalanta, “Perhaps a Few Poets”

There are too many poets in my tropical
country. Metaphors compete with one another
thickening the polluted air with imagery.

Things are transformed into symbols, events
are interpreted as signs. Look, that lone
coconut tree withering in the midsummer sun

is the personification of grief, or survival.
The periodic hissing of a passing elevated train
provides rhythm to the daily commuter,

the revving of engines rhyming with the honking
of horns. How can one manage in the metro
where food costs an arm and a leg, and each life

worthless as a cliché? How can we redeem
the mangled parts of a body riddled with bullets
but through the howling implicit in an elegy?

~~

About Ralph Semino Galán

Sui generis!

Teaches literature, humanities and creative writing subjects at the UST Faculty of Arts and Letters and the UST Graduate School.

Graduated magna cum laude with a Literature degree from MSU-IIT.

Fellow to the national writers' workshops (Silliman [1995], U.P.[1996] and Iligan[1997]), and to the 2nd ASEAN Writers' Conference on Poetry.

Poems in English and Filipino have won prizes from the Philippine Panorama (1993) and Home Life Magazine (1998).

Has an M.A. in Creative Writing from UP-Diliman.

Finishing Ph.D. in Literature in the UST Graduate School.

Writes book reviews for the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

First chapbook "The Southern Cross and Other Poems" was launched December 2005 by the NCCA as part of its UBOD New Authors Series. Subsequent books: "Discernments: Literary Essays, Cultural Critiques, and Books Reviews" (UST Publishing House, 2013) and the poetry collection "From the Major Arcana" (UST Publishing House, 2014).  Latest book of poetry translation... "Sa Mga Pagitan ng Buhay at Iba Pang Pagtutulay" (2018)

Juror since its inaugural year of the Gawad Buhay! the PHILSTAGE Awards for the Performing Arts.

Lifetime member of the Council of Department Chairs of English (CDCE) and the College English Teachers Association (CETA) and the Philippine Association of Language Teachers (PALT).

Board member of the Mindanao Creative Writers Group, Inc.

Active member of the Philippine Center of International PEN (Poets, Playwrights, Essayists, Novelists), and UMPIL (Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas)

Faculty co-adviser of the university-wide Teatro Tomasino and adviser of the college-based Literary Society.

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