performative

Since elementary school, I've believed in degrees of friendship: best friends, close friends, acquaintances. I don't know the category to which my relationships with former colleagues in Collegian belong- there were times when we even got sick of and stopped talking to each other. Today however I feel I am most myself around them. Having written, debated, eaten, and semi-lived with each other for many years, we know each other's core humanity and divinity very well.

Some of us had the chance to have a mini-reunion recently in Mag:Net for the launch of Mads Bajarias' first self-published collection of poetry.

The poetry reading was especially memorable because of the readers' choices and interpretation of Mads' poems: the most daring one suddenly shot cream of mushroom on everyone's faces, giving a totally different dimension to the fellatic/ cunnilingual, one-line poem, "creamish." Like Roland Barthes said- or did not say- the reader replaces the writer: "The death of the writer is the birth of the reader."

Taking my cue from the readers/writers before me, I interpreted two poems. The first, "the future is shaped like a pinata," is about the most universal form of the triangle:

My girlfriend
Says
That I'd probably die
With the sound
Of your name on my lips

That I'm obsessed
With you. This is what she tells me...

The second poem, "watching you fast asleep," is about a less pointed triangle:

This is how happiness happens:
next to your sleeping form I am a crumpled stone...

Both advocates and critics of the paradigm-shifting Reproductive Health Bill that Congress is about to pass would do well to read Mads' poems that brim with honesty. To buy copies of the book, write to madsbajarias@gmail.com. Thanks to Boojie Basilio for the above photo.