cariño brutal

If, as psychologist David Niven says, we are every age we've ever been, I think the teen years are among the best to adopt this Saturday. That's the time of life when love is most exciting- the rush of emotions is so new and the steps of the courtship dance so unfamiliar that our nerve endings become sensitive to the world around us. By the time I reach college, I am already predictable... I prevent planes from taking off in the airport to proclaim my feelings. Yawn! (This maneuver's cliché-status is confirmed soon enough in the climax of the 2003 British film Love Actually.)

Just for fun, I ask my virtual assistant (VA) to recommend five activities to do on Valentine's Day and here's the list that she emails me:

• Aroma vitality massage with a geographic vegetarian tour of Italy in Shangri-La
• Kuh Ledesma's "The Voice, The Violin" concert in Captain's Bar
• Peter Cetera's concert with a 42-piece orchestra in the Big Dome
• Joanna Ampil's "I Love" concert in Music Museum
• Lisa Macuja's "The Swan, The Fairy, and the Princess" ballet in Star Theater.

Post-teen, people tend to spend more resources to reawaken the senses and induce that blessed madness called love.

One of my favorite love poems is by a 15- or 16-year-old named Lourdes. She asks me to find a way to give it to a kid of Irish descent in our high school, which I do surreptitiously... but not before I photocopy it! (And, yes, to those who are curious: her spell does work on the boy she calls "Leprechaun Man"- for a season or a semester.)

The Irish are the best conversationalists. Like Filipinos, most are Catholic, humorous and self-deprecating. For many of my Irish friends, however, words are as playful and elusive as quicksilver- so essential to their vaunted wit (a word with no exact Filipino translation). Many Filipinos, in contrast, are open and sincere almost to a fault: when we're madly in love, we like to mean what we say. Words in these isles aren't just admired like the tip of Cupid's arrow glittering in the sun: after shooting one through the heart, we rotate the shaft again and again.

The following poem combines the Irish love of words with the Filipino brand of romance. Ladies and gentlemen, the Sappho of ISM:

To Jake: My Delightfully,
Despicably Simple-Minded Fool
by Lourdes Tagao

How did I come to like you
When you put yourself in disgrace
By presenting yourself ridiculously
And contorting your "treasured" face?
Then again your voice could never
Belong to some Romeo of old...
Squeaky, and high, and frankly,
Frequently out of control.
Your nose was not well-chiselled
By the sculptor up above,
So how could
females throw you
Meaningful looks of love?!
Your chin juts out expressly
Like an overhang of a cliff.
You, too, proffer a friend of yours
Your armpit for a whiff.
The way you dress would put
Not you, but your clothes, to shame.
So given all these absurdities,
Why do I like you just the same?
Your glasses would've looked great
Had you worn them three decades ago.
You venture to dance, but instead,
I wish I possessed tomatoes to throw.
Then again, you're vain to insanity
About your coiffure of auburn deep;
And you tend to it ever so often,
I wonder if you do so in your sleep.
You can be such a tease,
But you think you're some ladies' man!
You play such childish games-
To call you mature would be a sham!
Your laughter would scare birds
Away from their perch up in the trees.
Really, it reminds me
Of a flock of honking geese.
You try to sound intellectual,
But insolent fits you nicely.
You start out prim and proper,
Then you end up becoming unruly.
Your mind can be so perverted,
Your hand an indecent instrument-
As you draw such revolting things
As- dare I say it?- canine excrement!
But I like you... well, somewhat-
I must be out of my mind
To invest so much time and effort
In such a demented, degenerate find!
But for all your simple-minded
Mannerisms I see in school-
I think I like you for some reason,
My delightful, despicable fool.

Kahit Maputi Na Ang Buhok Ko - Rico J. Puno