My Kind, from My Fair Maladies

I bought the book a long time ago (well, not so long ago), but before I got married and had to scrimp on every penny (hindi naman ako bitter???). Well in short, I bought the book and there it rested on the bookshelf, untouched until the day of the typhoon when we became refugees from our own home. Well, sosyal na refugees naman kami, kasi naka-tambay kami sa ChowKing at Jollibee habang nagbabasa ng kung ano-ano pampalipas ng oras.

So, in short, this is a terrible intro to a poem I read from the collection of essays called "My Fair Maladies", subtitled "Funny Essays and Poems on Various Ailments and Afflictions", edited by Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo, and published in 2005.

It's a book filled with essays and poems by different authors describing their ailments in a funny light. One of the poems there (the last paragraph made me chuckle deep deep inside)

My Kind
by Ralph Semino Galan

I have no oven large enough,
Dear Sylvia, to roast
my head like a lamb for dinner.

Not a brand-new car parked
in a garage, Dear Anne,
to etherize my soul.

Nor stones heavy with sin,
Dear Virginia, and a river deep
as forgetting to drown myself in.

Nor do I live in a building,
high like the bluest
of skies, Dearest Maningning.

Sisters in rhyme, in crime,
how then shall I make my quick
and extraordinary exit?

Or shall I kill myself slowly
with beer and cigarettes,
bit by bit?