My Theme Analysis of Some of Gémino H. Abad’s Poems

"HOW OUR TOWNS DROWN"

The theme of Gémino H. Abad’s How Our Towns Drown is centered on flooding, and because I have personally experienced severe, deep floods during the rainy season every year, from 1995- 2001, in Las Pinas City where we used to reside, I could very well relate the most in the lines below, because I actually saw some neighbors’ pigs in procession, as the flood waters drifted them away, as the rains fell down, with thunder and lightning, to boot:

How in the downpour our towns drown,
downstream of doom to sea we are returned,
houses and pigs in ceaseless procession
as skies boom and fall thundering spears
to beat down all curses and tears to tide

"CHILDREN'S PARTY"

Where they would have to dance if bidden,
The children claim their balloons and candy
bars,
Then retreat from the music that threatens;
And soon lose interest in the enforced
celebration,
Missing their paper boats in the ditch,
The familiar backyard, the deserted alley,
Where, though there are no balloons,
Except sometimes a yellow moon caught
by the narra tree,
Time passes in the whirring of crickets
And seems to end too soon,
Their novel games not quite played out
Even in their sleep.

No, they did not look forward to this,
Even to wear a new pair of shoes;
They could not imagine the empty space
Which, till now, has not hurt them;
A hurt stranger than any fall
From a tree or in a dream,
Since they fall on nothing solid,
With sudden knowledge of their bodies’
weight,
But only keep falling and falling
Through something that smiles at them,
Then looks away, still smiling,
Yet not with half of the moon’s light.

Their papas and mamas sit and talk
of endless shocks,
Revelations of things they did not know
They had forgotten,
Yet only make merry for the occasion;
Their thoughts apart travel far inland
of mind
Toward a merrymaking on a moonlit night,
And the antique moon they kept
Till their hearts ached in its light;
O, but they will not acquiesce to its
rising
Nor acknowledge the late access of its
Tale,
Since one must not think too precisely
On what has already passed.

The theme above is on being a guest or the host of a children's party. The persona here closely observes what transpires during one.

In "The Difficulty of Belief", the theme is focused on Christianity... As a Christian, my faith in God and His teachings is strong. But there times that I wonder why the priest during mass actually drinks Jesus’ blood and eat His flesh. I am most struck by the lines

A thousand or more years                                                    
Is too long
For the intimacy of his communion,
The scripture of memory
Too weak for a link
To hold us fast even to truth
Or to desire.

--ARV