Isang tula para kina Stella at Fidel
As soon as I got home from watching 100 Tula Para Kay Stella, top-grosser (earning P95M to date and counting) among the 12 entries in the extended Pista
Ng Pelikulang Pilipino (PPP), I struggled to write one hundred poems just as JC Santos as Fidel does for Bela Padilla’s Stella, the girl of his dreams in the movie directed by Jason Paul Laxamana (Magkakabaung, the indie that won awards for Allen Dizon as a coffinmaker) for Viva Films.
I had a feeling that I was “possessed” by Fidel, a perfect name for a speech-challenged boy faithful to a stellar girl who has eyes and ears for another boy, as I (along with a friend) rooted for him to go ahead, speak now or be silent forever, in the darkness of the theater filled with hopeless romantics.
Anybody who could only stutter out his pure affection for a girl would also, if he has the talent for it, better express his feelings in rhymes, never mind if it took a hundred (or more) poems to put in words the, to quote Edgar Allan Poe, “overpowering feelings recollected in tranquility.”
Oh well, if the girl is as ravishingly beautiful as Bela (so mesmerizing in close-ups and as seemingly ephemeral as Cherry Blossoms), you, too, would become an instant poet pining for “a thing of beauty is a joy forever,” so within touch and yet so untouchable, so near yet so far away…so impossibly real that she makes you feel like, as the song goes, “reaching for the unreachable star.”
And so in the dead of the night while the whole world was lost in sweet slumber, I wrote a poem, isang tulang buong-puso kong inihahandog kina Stella at Fidel. Heto: #tula 101: walang pamagat Naiyak ako sa ending ng matamis na estorya Dahil hindi nagkatuluyan sina Fidel at Stella Natuwa din ako nang si Fidel ay may bagong nakilala Na pihadong ikakatha din niya ng isang daang tula pa