REMEMBERING FPJ

Today, December 14th, the Philippine movie industry is remembering Fernando Poe Jr.,  also called Da King, on his eighth death anniversary.  I just heard they are opening a statue of FPJ somewhere in Roxas Blvd. where, if memory serves me right, some scenes in a number of FPJ films had been location-shot.

I am proud to say that since my early childhood days, FPJ has been my movie idol.  I say "has,' not "had," because up to now, I haven't missed a picture of FPJ in TV, even as most of them I have seen for many, many times already.  Well, unless I didn't know one is showing.    Truth is, at this very moment, as I begin writing this piece, I have just finished watching one of his early movies: - the one  titled "One Day, Isang Araw," which he did with then still child star, Matet de Leon, newly blooming Dawn Zulueta, his now-deceased favorite side kick in nearly all his movies, Dencio Padilla, and his equally favorite kontra-bida, Paquito Diaz, also now resting in peace.  Indeed, as of now, my apos or our housemaid, would receive a  long tongue-lashing from me if I missed watching an FPJ film because they did not tell me there's one scheduled in TV. 

I hope my blog-viewers won't get peeved if, on this special occasion, I share with them a short poem in sonnet form, which I wrote eight years ago, soon after FPJ lost to GMA in the 2004 presidential elections, as my silent tribute to my lost idol.  It was farthest from my imagination, then, that in less than six months after I wrote this poem, exactly eight years to the day today, FPJ would meet his final fate on earth.  May he rest in peace.

ODE TO A LOST MESSIAH

Trafficked behind the spell of summer's long travail
A rainbow casts at last its long cascading trail
Of polychromes that, arched in full-blown piebald band
Across the dome , out-beams a fairy's magic wand.

Nearby, the stand-by clouds in ochreous shrouds evolve
To prophesy that rain would soon the drought dissolve;.
Below, the barren earth's wide-fissured mouths look up
Agape for one good gasp of moistured air to sup.

Upon its bosoms bleat brown paddies parched and pall,
Earnestly entreating a fleeting manna' fall..
But woe! The fogs fly far from thawing down the plain,
Alas, great gulfs divide the rainbow and the rain!

Somewhere, in a forlorn and long forsaken shed,
Near yellowed heaps of hay, hungry horses lie dead.