ALBERT B. CASUGA: HAPPINESS GRAFFITI

Thursday, July 7, 2011

HAPPINESS GRAFFITI

HAPPINESS GRAFFITI

“Sleep then work/work then sleep/I am free.” ---Graffiti on Wal-Mart’s Wall, 07-07-11

Must have been a dead-beat father,

Must have been a cheating mother,

Must have been their runaway kid,

Must have been a homeless tramp:

Who would scrawl a happy graffiti

Like that? A stock boy at Wal Mart?

His mom who just quit and found

A lover working nights, asleep days?

Or his sleep-deprived old man gone

Berserk with new found freedom

Having been thrown out of wedlock

And mocked as sans prowess in bed?

Is this all they need to be happy?

Work then sleep. Sleep then work.

I am free. A new union mantra? Are

You happy? But are they really free?

---Albert B. Casuga

07-07-11

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The Blogger's Books

Summer Suns (short story collection with Cirilo F. Bautista, Manila, UST Press, 1962); Narra Poems and Others (poetry collection, San Beda College Publications, Manila, 1968); Still Points (poetry collection, Flores & Associates, Manila, 1972); In a Sparrow's Time (poetry collection, Infocom, Canada, 1990); Songs For My Children (poetry collection, Infocom, Canada, 1996); The Aesthetics of Literature (Literary Theory and Criticism, De La Salle University, Manila, 1972); Editor: Man in Search of Meaning: Literature (Humanities Series, Asia Foundation & DLSU Textbook Committee, Manila, 1970); Man and His Literary Past: The Classical Tradition (Asia Foundation & DLSU Textbook Committee, Manila, 1971); A Theory of Echoes and Other Poems (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, Manila, 2009). The author's prose and poetry are anthologized in books published in the Philippines, Canada, United States, Australia, and Indonesia.