To say goodbye to this year
of our yearning is to experience
this holding on to our hope,
timeless and endless.
This has been a year of surprises
like those eternal early morning hours
with their rainbow in the light
rain and balmy sunlight.
It is passing by the hurdles
as the world watches
with its conscience intact.
How it registered
its protest
about elections
about wars
about the seasons of strife
about the dire desires.
How it commandeered
our cargo of cares
to see this multitude of pain
in the way it should be seen
in the hearts of mankind
as each man, woman, child
reeled from the torments
of sufferings
from believing in the lies of life
from lying in the beliefs about life
from living in the belief about beliefs.
The sufferings came about
wearing suits of various kinds
like the success on the sleeves,
the self-serving statements
about offering our prayers for the dead
our tender mercies for merciful murderers
and all those that justified our sad act
of inflicting pain on those who had always known
how is it to survive.
The world watched with its
conscience intact, not a crack,
not yet, as it said in cannot go on
with killing to kill all the obstacles
to life.
This is a moral imperative,
this announcement
of good manners
and right conduct
in this last day of saying
goodbye to the year
of our yearning
even if we are
the mightiest and
the strongest,
even if we own
half of the world
and its kingdoms as the devil promised
us.
This is the best way, and no other better
way, to say goodbye to this year of our lost hopes.
With the wars and terrors, in our words as in our deeds,
we start a new year right with this goodbye
to our irredeemable acts of sparing lies
to tell our truths, to free us of our fears at last.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Dec. 31, 2004
Sayangguseng ti Sabangan
1.
Awagantay iti sayangguseng ti sabangan
daytoy a didigra iti tartaraudi ti tawen.
Adu a sarsarita ti panagtutuok ti partuaten
dagiti agpakpakada a dalluyon kadatayo,
ipakadadada dagiti dagensen nga anak
dagiti didigra ti nadawel a danum,
daytay rungsot ken ranggas a nangitabon
dagiti malmalday a sagawisiw ken nakigtot a riaw
dagiti ubbing ken kaippasngay a ragsaragsak
iti paskua dagiti naumbi nga ayat iti taaw
iti malem a mangiyin-inaw kadagiti dungngo
iti sardam a mangisiksikog kadagiti rugso
iti ligsay a mangipasngay kadagiti supapak
dagiti sangsangit dagiti balo a gargarakgak.
2.
Dumuko kadatayo ita ti ladawan ti Ormoc
iti bukod a pagilian. Mangal-alia ti dati a buya
dagiti dung-aw a mailudon iti panagpakada
dagiti lungon ken dagiti maitabon nga igaaw
kadagiti bakras dagiti bambantay
kadagiti saklot dagiti kasamekan
kadagiti ules a naimeng a sorpresa dagiti darikmat
a panaggiinnala ti asi, dandaniw, ken pammakawan.
3.
Kastoy met laeng ti buya a mangbibbibi kadatayo amin ita
iti panagpakada ti tawen. Mamutbuteng ti sayangguseng
ti sabangan a maigamer it nadakiwas nga angin,
mailaok iti nariper a tudo kalpasan ti kaudian
a ginggined dagiti gagar a maitamen kadagiti saem,
dagitay guratayo iti baybay, iti napino a kadaratan
dagitay panangilunodtayo kadagiti lunod ti naarsab a panawen
dagitay panagsalsaludsodtayo iti inggana dagiti gibus a di aggibus
a pamunganayan dagiti awanan sungbat a palimed
dagiti anting-anting dagiti allon ken kigaw a rugso
dagiti makaaligagget nga awanan bain a layus
dagiti sugat iti taotao a agpadpadara a panunot.
4.
Didigra daytoy a sayangguseng ti sabangan,
didigra a sayangguseng, mangiyaw-awan.
Ikisapna dagiti anges a maikisap
Iwalinna dagiti pia a maiwalin
Idatonna dagiti karadkad a maidaton
Iwalangna dagiti biag a maiwalang
Sananto ket irugi ti diram-os dagiti kailian
a testigo iti didigra, dagiti makaidalan
iti umuna a binatog dagiti aliaw
kadagiti sao dagiti nagawan,
dagiti makaibaga iti rugsot dagiti buteng
dagiti nakarikna iti rugsot ti sayangguseng.
5.
Agpayso ti sayangguseng ti sabangan.
Ditay met maliklikan ti unget ti layus.
Kas iti di pannakaliklik kadagiti peggad a sagpaminsan.
Ngem kas iti alinuno, maliklikantay ti pangta ti sabangan,
ti gunay ken galad dagiti danum a mangitayok kadatayo
iti pantok sadatayonto ipisok iti libbuot dagiti rekkang
ti mangigaggagara a dawel. Masapultay ita
ti pammasingked dagiti patigmaan, daytay
di parparato a leksiontay iti peggad.
Ikebesatayo dagitoy, itibnok iti kape
A pangpabang-ar iti nakem iti agsapa dagiti rikrikor,
daytay buribor iti panes dagiti napadso a panaggagar.
Tiliwentayonto dagiti sayangguseng ti sabangan,
Ipupuktayo iti karsel ti naturtured itan a sellang.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Dis. 31, 2004
Awagantay iti sayangguseng ti sabangan
daytoy a didigra iti tartaraudi ti tawen.
Adu a sarsarita ti panagtutuok ti partuaten
dagiti agpakpakada a dalluyon kadatayo,
ipakadadada dagiti dagensen nga anak
dagiti didigra ti nadawel a danum,
daytay rungsot ken ranggas a nangitabon
dagiti malmalday a sagawisiw ken nakigtot a riaw
dagiti ubbing ken kaippasngay a ragsaragsak
iti paskua dagiti naumbi nga ayat iti taaw
iti malem a mangiyin-inaw kadagiti dungngo
iti sardam a mangisiksikog kadagiti rugso
iti ligsay a mangipasngay kadagiti supapak
dagiti sangsangit dagiti balo a gargarakgak.
2.
Dumuko kadatayo ita ti ladawan ti Ormoc
iti bukod a pagilian. Mangal-alia ti dati a buya
dagiti dung-aw a mailudon iti panagpakada
dagiti lungon ken dagiti maitabon nga igaaw
kadagiti bakras dagiti bambantay
kadagiti saklot dagiti kasamekan
kadagiti ules a naimeng a sorpresa dagiti darikmat
a panaggiinnala ti asi, dandaniw, ken pammakawan.
3.
Kastoy met laeng ti buya a mangbibbibi kadatayo amin ita
iti panagpakada ti tawen. Mamutbuteng ti sayangguseng
ti sabangan a maigamer it nadakiwas nga angin,
mailaok iti nariper a tudo kalpasan ti kaudian
a ginggined dagiti gagar a maitamen kadagiti saem,
dagitay guratayo iti baybay, iti napino a kadaratan
dagitay panangilunodtayo kadagiti lunod ti naarsab a panawen
dagitay panagsalsaludsodtayo iti inggana dagiti gibus a di aggibus
a pamunganayan dagiti awanan sungbat a palimed
dagiti anting-anting dagiti allon ken kigaw a rugso
dagiti makaaligagget nga awanan bain a layus
dagiti sugat iti taotao a agpadpadara a panunot.
4.
Didigra daytoy a sayangguseng ti sabangan,
didigra a sayangguseng, mangiyaw-awan.
Ikisapna dagiti anges a maikisap
Iwalinna dagiti pia a maiwalin
Idatonna dagiti karadkad a maidaton
Iwalangna dagiti biag a maiwalang
Sananto ket irugi ti diram-os dagiti kailian
a testigo iti didigra, dagiti makaidalan
iti umuna a binatog dagiti aliaw
kadagiti sao dagiti nagawan,
dagiti makaibaga iti rugsot dagiti buteng
dagiti nakarikna iti rugsot ti sayangguseng.
5.
Agpayso ti sayangguseng ti sabangan.
Ditay met maliklikan ti unget ti layus.
Kas iti di pannakaliklik kadagiti peggad a sagpaminsan.
Ngem kas iti alinuno, maliklikantay ti pangta ti sabangan,
ti gunay ken galad dagiti danum a mangitayok kadatayo
iti pantok sadatayonto ipisok iti libbuot dagiti rekkang
ti mangigaggagara a dawel. Masapultay ita
ti pammasingked dagiti patigmaan, daytay
di parparato a leksiontay iti peggad.
Ikebesatayo dagitoy, itibnok iti kape
A pangpabang-ar iti nakem iti agsapa dagiti rikrikor,
daytay buribor iti panes dagiti napadso a panaggagar.
Tiliwentayonto dagiti sayangguseng ti sabangan,
Ipupuktayo iti karsel ti naturtured itan a sellang.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Dis. 31, 2004
To Invoke the Memory that Matters
We are in the middle of a storm
in this season of profit & phony fun
& to invoke the memory that matters is what matters
at this time. We need to call the witches who will invoke
this memory, our memory, us who need to remember.
There is the sucker of a storm that visits our land
& shore & sand each morning. This havoc of a visit
may last till the next season of sadnesses.
It comes to accompany our worst news,
this loss of lives & livelihoods in a split second,
in Colombo & elsewhere in Aceh,
all these islands in this season of storms
all these islands in this season of typhoons & terror,
in our Manila as well as in Phuket
while a priest, gracefully & with much studied
convent poise, takes his morning meal
of abundance & prayers & indifference.
He did not know, he said, of the coming of the raging waters,
this wall of water wreaking all that can be wrecked,
buildings & bodies
fate & faith
the poor people & their prayers,
all, in substance as well as in its absence.
In all these tragic stories, in our homeland
& in many others, the rest of the world frolics
in the sun in these holidays,
in these demented days of giving gifts courtesy of profiteers of death,
those who invest on imagination & images,
those who play on our small sickly hearts,
those who offer us the seductions
of multiple meanings
of lousy loving & lusting
after lousy loves, like the priest's,
those who believe in the images
of sin when you can no longer
believe in the obese santa claus with his bulging bag
of empty ecstasies from a beribboned box of grief.
We have gone haywire in our hybrid lives,
we who can afford to watch from the sidelines.
We pick up some news from the spirit of the aborted christmasses
like some news from aborted poems & aborted lives,
turn this news into truth, evangelize on behalf of this truth
we create out of repeated lies,
& there,
& there, we import the lies,
we export the lies, we do not call them lies
no more but take them as some kind of a gospel,
& then
we begin to speak in its name
we begin to teach of the new truth in its name
we begin to announce the new salvation in its name,
all of us,
rich & poor alike
the oppressed & the oppressor alike
the commerce-men & consumers alike
the colonizers & the colonized alike
the neocolonizers & neocolonized alike
the emperors & their subjects alike.
It does not matter no more
where we are in this space where we no longer
go figure where we are.
The time does not matter either.
To go through the motions of living,
just the motions, is all that matters
in this tsunami season &
in this season of storms.
As if we all are alive.
As if we all are kicking.
As if we all are breathing.
As if we all are in the world of truth.
As if we all are in this universe saving us from
recollecting what comes with meaning & blessing.
The as if & our belief
is all that matters in the end.
The enchantment of the false kind.
The magic in the fantasy like when we take pride
in our belief in the coup of corpses, whether
from this tsumani of our tears or from church wakes,
the coming again to life of cadavers paraded
or interred in mass graves that promised us the greatness
of greed couched in words wrought in prophesies
of new mornings
of new dawn breaks
of a new redemption from the silly speeches of actors
acting on behalf of dead kings and their queens,
of behalf of ousted presidents who lied to us
in evenings as well as
in daytimes, their lies packaged as the fulfillment of a promise
in the plots of third rate films as well as in imprisoned lives.
These people do not know how to stop.
They have forgotten that some of us,
the poor as well as the enlightened,
have come to know how to spell the beginnings of tall tales
have come to know how to spell the middle of tall tales
have come to know how to put an end to the spell of tall tales.
There is a whole withcraft to all these
& there are witches among us,
the poor & the enlightened,
those who have learned to summon the strong winds,
those who have learned to call again the fierce waters
those who have learned to invoke the memories
of a fecund land for all the landless
of a full meal for all the hungry
of a warm home for all the homeless
of a just job for all the jobless.
This invoking of memory will matter.
It is the only thing that matters now.
This invoking of memory will break the spell.
It is the only one that can break the spell now.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Dec. 29, 2004
in this season of profit & phony fun
& to invoke the memory that matters is what matters
at this time. We need to call the witches who will invoke
this memory, our memory, us who need to remember.
There is the sucker of a storm that visits our land
& shore & sand each morning. This havoc of a visit
may last till the next season of sadnesses.
It comes to accompany our worst news,
this loss of lives & livelihoods in a split second,
in Colombo & elsewhere in Aceh,
all these islands in this season of storms
all these islands in this season of typhoons & terror,
in our Manila as well as in Phuket
while a priest, gracefully & with much studied
convent poise, takes his morning meal
of abundance & prayers & indifference.
He did not know, he said, of the coming of the raging waters,
this wall of water wreaking all that can be wrecked,
buildings & bodies
fate & faith
the poor people & their prayers,
all, in substance as well as in its absence.
In all these tragic stories, in our homeland
& in many others, the rest of the world frolics
in the sun in these holidays,
in these demented days of giving gifts courtesy of profiteers of death,
those who invest on imagination & images,
those who play on our small sickly hearts,
those who offer us the seductions
of multiple meanings
of lousy loving & lusting
after lousy loves, like the priest's,
those who believe in the images
of sin when you can no longer
believe in the obese santa claus with his bulging bag
of empty ecstasies from a beribboned box of grief.
We have gone haywire in our hybrid lives,
we who can afford to watch from the sidelines.
We pick up some news from the spirit of the aborted christmasses
like some news from aborted poems & aborted lives,
turn this news into truth, evangelize on behalf of this truth
we create out of repeated lies,
& there,
& there, we import the lies,
we export the lies, we do not call them lies
no more but take them as some kind of a gospel,
& then
we begin to speak in its name
we begin to teach of the new truth in its name
we begin to announce the new salvation in its name,
all of us,
rich & poor alike
the oppressed & the oppressor alike
the commerce-men & consumers alike
the colonizers & the colonized alike
the neocolonizers & neocolonized alike
the emperors & their subjects alike.
It does not matter no more
where we are in this space where we no longer
go figure where we are.
The time does not matter either.
To go through the motions of living,
just the motions, is all that matters
in this tsunami season &
in this season of storms.
As if we all are alive.
As if we all are kicking.
As if we all are breathing.
As if we all are in the world of truth.
As if we all are in this universe saving us from
recollecting what comes with meaning & blessing.
The as if & our belief
is all that matters in the end.
The enchantment of the false kind.
The magic in the fantasy like when we take pride
in our belief in the coup of corpses, whether
from this tsumani of our tears or from church wakes,
the coming again to life of cadavers paraded
or interred in mass graves that promised us the greatness
of greed couched in words wrought in prophesies
of new mornings
of new dawn breaks
of a new redemption from the silly speeches of actors
acting on behalf of dead kings and their queens,
of behalf of ousted presidents who lied to us
in evenings as well as
in daytimes, their lies packaged as the fulfillment of a promise
in the plots of third rate films as well as in imprisoned lives.
These people do not know how to stop.
They have forgotten that some of us,
the poor as well as the enlightened,
have come to know how to spell the beginnings of tall tales
have come to know how to spell the middle of tall tales
have come to know how to put an end to the spell of tall tales.
There is a whole withcraft to all these
& there are witches among us,
the poor & the enlightened,
those who have learned to summon the strong winds,
those who have learned to call again the fierce waters
those who have learned to invoke the memories
of a fecund land for all the landless
of a full meal for all the hungry
of a warm home for all the homeless
of a just job for all the jobless.
This invoking of memory will matter.
It is the only thing that matters now.
This invoking of memory will break the spell.
It is the only one that can break the spell now.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Dec. 29, 2004
Ang Numero ng Magandang Kapalaran
1.
Papataas ang numero ng taong darating
pagkatapos ng mga hunos & tsunami
ng mga takot natin. Magbabalik
ang kapangyarihan ng hiwaga sa ating piling,
makikisalo sa ating muling pagpipiging.
Sa pamamagitan ng sugatang
hintuturo at nagnanaknak na isip
ay iguguhit natin,
sabay-sabay
buong-puso
buong tapang
ang buntot
ng papataas na numero
sa dulo ng ating hinagpis.
Pagmamasdan natin ang guhit
sa malabulak na ulap
at sa nagtatangis na langit,
amarilyo
matingkad na amarilyo
nagmumurang pula,
langit na kambas ng ating pighati
sa isang mahabang taon na tinatapos natin.
Labing-tatlong buwan ng mga lungkot at halakhak
ng mga rumaragasang ulan
ng mga nababaliw na buhawi
sa ating araw-araw na pamumuhay sa bayang mahal
subalit hindi marunong magmahal sa atin.
Limang linggo sa bawat buwan na pagkasabik
ng mga gubat sa paglalandi ng mga bituin
sa gabi ng ating panimdim,
sa gabing dasal ang tugon sa silakbo ng tiyan.
Walong araw sa isang linggo
ng pakikibaka ng mga nasang salarin,
nasa sa katapatan ng mga pangako sa atin
ng mga politikong damdamin
para sa pagkakaisa
para sa kaunlaran
para sa katotohanan
para sa kaaya-ayang buhay
para sa kabutihan ng lahat
mamamayan man o hindi na kapiling natin
mamamayan man o hindi na kasa-kasama natin
sa paggising sa iisang umagang tiyakan ang pagdating.
Kuwadrado ang dulo ng taon
ng ating pag-iisa sa kalungkutan at lumbay.
Parisukat ito ng ating selda
o karsel ng ating ibig marating
na napakaordinaryo lang naman
tulad ng kalayaang magmahal
tulad ng kalayaang magsabi ng katotohanan
tulad ng kalayaang masaksihan ang kagandahan
tulad ng kalayaang umiral na may kabuluhan,
umiral sa mga saknong ng katarungang laan sa atin
at dahil laan ay di na kailangan ang pagbubuwis
ng buhay sa mga walang kapararakang baha
at bagyo, daluyong at dilim.
At sapagkat papaakyat ang numero
sa langit ng ating panalangin,
kailangan nating ipagdiwang ito
kasabay ng pagpapasabog sa nakatagong sama ng loob,
sa siphayo sa dibdib na dinamita ng pag-ibig
sa pagmamahal sa isa't isa
sa pagmamalasakit sa mga kapwa naghihikakos
sa pakikiisa sa mga kapwa inaapi
sa pakikipagtunggali na kasama ang mga pinagkakaitan
ng mga ligaw at nanliligaw na tadhana.
Maghahanda tayo ng mga paputok
& tutuluyan na nating takutin ang lahat na kamalasan
sa bayan man o sa sarili, tutuluyan na nating
palayasin ang lahat ng demonyo
sa mga singit ng gunita ng kawalan ng ganang huminga.
Isasama ang mga ito
sa ingay ng kuwitis,
sa singaw ng supot na lusis
sa malutong na halakhak ng bawang
sa bilis na pag-akyat ng raket sa kalawakan
at doon, doon makikiisa ang lahat ng di magandang kuwentong
likha at dulot ng mahabang panahon ng lungkot.
Magsasabit din tayo ng mga papel na pera,
yung luntian o biyoleta, ano mang kulay,
lahat ng kulay, itali sa bintana,
sa pintuan, sa rehas, sa pasamano,
gawing dekorasyon sa mga dingding
at hayaang laruin ng liwanag mula sa mga butuin,
liwanag na sumusulyap-sulyap mula sa dilim.
Magandang kapalaran ang pahiwatig
ng taong darating, ang dulo nito
ay nakaturo sa hanging patas kung humagupit,
nangangako ng katuparan ng nais:
pagkain sa mesang matagal nang gutom
trabaho sa mga isip na matagal nang tambay
bukirin sa mga kamay na nangangarap magbungkal
kalayaan sa bayang sinasakal.
2.
Papataas ang numero ng taong darating,
magbabalik ang hiwaga sa buhay natin.
Makikisalo sa ating pagpipiging,
ang magandang kapalarang dulot
ng numero ng taong darating.
Sapagkat lalo nating pag-iibayuhin
ang pagkamit sa katarungang atin.
Sapagkat lalabanan natin
ang takot & pagluluksang kinikimkim.
Sapagkat tatapusin natin
ang pagtitiwala sa wala,
sa wakas ay lalayuan na tayo ng malas &
sapagkat palalayasin natin ang malas
sa ating matagal nang nakatikom na palad.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Dis. 27, 2004
Papataas ang numero ng taong darating
pagkatapos ng mga hunos & tsunami
ng mga takot natin. Magbabalik
ang kapangyarihan ng hiwaga sa ating piling,
makikisalo sa ating muling pagpipiging.
Sa pamamagitan ng sugatang
hintuturo at nagnanaknak na isip
ay iguguhit natin,
sabay-sabay
buong-puso
buong tapang
ang buntot
ng papataas na numero
sa dulo ng ating hinagpis.
Pagmamasdan natin ang guhit
sa malabulak na ulap
at sa nagtatangis na langit,
amarilyo
matingkad na amarilyo
nagmumurang pula,
langit na kambas ng ating pighati
sa isang mahabang taon na tinatapos natin.
Labing-tatlong buwan ng mga lungkot at halakhak
ng mga rumaragasang ulan
ng mga nababaliw na buhawi
sa ating araw-araw na pamumuhay sa bayang mahal
subalit hindi marunong magmahal sa atin.
Limang linggo sa bawat buwan na pagkasabik
ng mga gubat sa paglalandi ng mga bituin
sa gabi ng ating panimdim,
sa gabing dasal ang tugon sa silakbo ng tiyan.
Walong araw sa isang linggo
ng pakikibaka ng mga nasang salarin,
nasa sa katapatan ng mga pangako sa atin
ng mga politikong damdamin
para sa pagkakaisa
para sa kaunlaran
para sa katotohanan
para sa kaaya-ayang buhay
para sa kabutihan ng lahat
mamamayan man o hindi na kapiling natin
mamamayan man o hindi na kasa-kasama natin
sa paggising sa iisang umagang tiyakan ang pagdating.
Kuwadrado ang dulo ng taon
ng ating pag-iisa sa kalungkutan at lumbay.
Parisukat ito ng ating selda
o karsel ng ating ibig marating
na napakaordinaryo lang naman
tulad ng kalayaang magmahal
tulad ng kalayaang magsabi ng katotohanan
tulad ng kalayaang masaksihan ang kagandahan
tulad ng kalayaang umiral na may kabuluhan,
umiral sa mga saknong ng katarungang laan sa atin
at dahil laan ay di na kailangan ang pagbubuwis
ng buhay sa mga walang kapararakang baha
at bagyo, daluyong at dilim.
At sapagkat papaakyat ang numero
sa langit ng ating panalangin,
kailangan nating ipagdiwang ito
kasabay ng pagpapasabog sa nakatagong sama ng loob,
sa siphayo sa dibdib na dinamita ng pag-ibig
sa pagmamahal sa isa't isa
sa pagmamalasakit sa mga kapwa naghihikakos
sa pakikiisa sa mga kapwa inaapi
sa pakikipagtunggali na kasama ang mga pinagkakaitan
ng mga ligaw at nanliligaw na tadhana.
Maghahanda tayo ng mga paputok
& tutuluyan na nating takutin ang lahat na kamalasan
sa bayan man o sa sarili, tutuluyan na nating
palayasin ang lahat ng demonyo
sa mga singit ng gunita ng kawalan ng ganang huminga.
Isasama ang mga ito
sa ingay ng kuwitis,
sa singaw ng supot na lusis
sa malutong na halakhak ng bawang
sa bilis na pag-akyat ng raket sa kalawakan
at doon, doon makikiisa ang lahat ng di magandang kuwentong
likha at dulot ng mahabang panahon ng lungkot.
Magsasabit din tayo ng mga papel na pera,
yung luntian o biyoleta, ano mang kulay,
lahat ng kulay, itali sa bintana,
sa pintuan, sa rehas, sa pasamano,
gawing dekorasyon sa mga dingding
at hayaang laruin ng liwanag mula sa mga butuin,
liwanag na sumusulyap-sulyap mula sa dilim.
Magandang kapalaran ang pahiwatig
ng taong darating, ang dulo nito
ay nakaturo sa hanging patas kung humagupit,
nangangako ng katuparan ng nais:
pagkain sa mesang matagal nang gutom
trabaho sa mga isip na matagal nang tambay
bukirin sa mga kamay na nangangarap magbungkal
kalayaan sa bayang sinasakal.
2.
Papataas ang numero ng taong darating,
magbabalik ang hiwaga sa buhay natin.
Makikisalo sa ating pagpipiging,
ang magandang kapalarang dulot
ng numero ng taong darating.
Sapagkat lalo nating pag-iibayuhin
ang pagkamit sa katarungang atin.
Sapagkat lalabanan natin
ang takot & pagluluksang kinikimkim.
Sapagkat tatapusin natin
ang pagtitiwala sa wala,
sa wakas ay lalayuan na tayo ng malas &
sapagkat palalayasin natin ang malas
sa ating matagal nang nakatikom na palad.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Dis. 27, 2004
We Can Never Call it Quits, This Loving of a Heartland Promised
We can never call it quits,
this loving of a heartland
promised a long time ago
by the eternal earth that gives grace,
by the solemn skies that give hope
by the feisty fire that warms our hearts,
in this winter cold as in the sunny days
in the colder climates in the old country.
Baguio comes to mind with its quiet
peace after its share of earthquakes
and its terrrors, its poetry of silence
shattered by the scene, just the mere scene,
of a summer city of regrets & ruins.
Or Baggao as well, in San Jose, for certain.
There the memory comes frolicking,
its tragedy one for the record of firsts & pains.
We see the young child now on that road to
an afterglow of speech to the young,
the speech about some rotten love for others
the speech about some kind of a calling to neglect.
The orange rays of the early morning sun
streak through the foliage serving as cover
from the punishment of the night
that saw both the dead man and his son.
The murderers told the son, perhaps grown
now in years and yearning for the father
who is gone, to start that vigil for the father
sleeping. He was four or five, innocent
as innocence was in these parts.
Yes, I will watch over him,
the child said, the tone final,
the promise faithful.
I will watch over him
and I do not mind the hole
in his head, the blood spurting from his
sides and neck. You see, apo a natuturay,
you see, apo a nabibileg, the rains have come
rampaging from the mountains
and the murky and dirty waters
have washed my tears
have swallowed up my fears
have cleaned the blood on my father's wounds &
have drowned my tears.
I can only watch over him now
with the love that I know,
the knowing love of a child
that has yet to know.
I will grow up to be one
like you, with the bullets encircling you
tough chest, perhaps hardened
by your presiding over punishments
like this one.
I know my father is alive,
will rise from the dead
when the morning comes.
So I will watch over him
& sing to him the lullabyes
I have kept in heart, some of them
he sang to me when I was younger,
about two when this martial law
came to sabotage our sorrowful life.
And the scene comes full circle:
we found the man dead for a day
and a night, his body washed clean
by the furious rains that came with the fierce winds.
Siberian breeze, we called, this coming of chill in the fields
this coming of age of children in dictatorial times
this coming of age for reciting the oath of allegiance
to him and his cohorts, this cabal of megalomaniacs
loving their mirror images in mirrorless mirages.
The times were interesting
& indeed they were so. Priests & nuns
from empty convents & seminaries
in Rome came to talk about redeeming our stories
of disgrace, this fallenness, a people vowing
to a promise that was never there in the first place
except to write it in a false verse of freedom
to mean a decade or two of deliberate deception
and an epiphany of manifold mistakes:
the raising of our hands to respect the heartland
the eradication of rumor to honor the family
the writing of decrees to violate us in thought
the putting up of barricades to exclude us from discourse
the speaking of English to make our mind lesser than an idiot's.
How can we ever call it quits, this loving
of this unruly land of our public selves & lives,
the questions from our emotions raw and fresh
each time we recollect the ages that have come to pass?
Even from our perch, we who have gone away
to exist like exiles elsewhere, in fiction & in fact,
we cannot call it quits. The redundant reminders haunt us:
the coup attempts that are a daily fare
the staging of a funeral to fulfill a fantasy courtesy of the dead
the announcing of corruption in dollars to test the waters of truth
the entitlements of officials' sons & daughters to privileges
the continuing accent on the perks and pelf of greed.
No, we can never ever call it quits.
The payaos are calling us into action even as the ritual
of birthing and dying continues to enchant us.
The payaos are there for the rice farmers to work on,
for the coaxing to yield to the promises of needs
being met, the faithful promises of the elements,
in Kalinga as well as in Dumalneg,
down the sloping terrains of Adams & Carasi,
there we dream of not quitting, we dream of endless
dancing with the soothing winds from calm seas
and gurgling rivulets of our homing hearts.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Dec. 27, 2004
this loving of a heartland
promised a long time ago
by the eternal earth that gives grace,
by the solemn skies that give hope
by the feisty fire that warms our hearts,
in this winter cold as in the sunny days
in the colder climates in the old country.
Baguio comes to mind with its quiet
peace after its share of earthquakes
and its terrrors, its poetry of silence
shattered by the scene, just the mere scene,
of a summer city of regrets & ruins.
Or Baggao as well, in San Jose, for certain.
There the memory comes frolicking,
its tragedy one for the record of firsts & pains.
We see the young child now on that road to
an afterglow of speech to the young,
the speech about some rotten love for others
the speech about some kind of a calling to neglect.
The orange rays of the early morning sun
streak through the foliage serving as cover
from the punishment of the night
that saw both the dead man and his son.
The murderers told the son, perhaps grown
now in years and yearning for the father
who is gone, to start that vigil for the father
sleeping. He was four or five, innocent
as innocence was in these parts.
Yes, I will watch over him,
the child said, the tone final,
the promise faithful.
I will watch over him
and I do not mind the hole
in his head, the blood spurting from his
sides and neck. You see, apo a natuturay,
you see, apo a nabibileg, the rains have come
rampaging from the mountains
and the murky and dirty waters
have washed my tears
have swallowed up my fears
have cleaned the blood on my father's wounds &
have drowned my tears.
I can only watch over him now
with the love that I know,
the knowing love of a child
that has yet to know.
I will grow up to be one
like you, with the bullets encircling you
tough chest, perhaps hardened
by your presiding over punishments
like this one.
I know my father is alive,
will rise from the dead
when the morning comes.
So I will watch over him
& sing to him the lullabyes
I have kept in heart, some of them
he sang to me when I was younger,
about two when this martial law
came to sabotage our sorrowful life.
And the scene comes full circle:
we found the man dead for a day
and a night, his body washed clean
by the furious rains that came with the fierce winds.
Siberian breeze, we called, this coming of chill in the fields
this coming of age of children in dictatorial times
this coming of age for reciting the oath of allegiance
to him and his cohorts, this cabal of megalomaniacs
loving their mirror images in mirrorless mirages.
The times were interesting
& indeed they were so. Priests & nuns
from empty convents & seminaries
in Rome came to talk about redeeming our stories
of disgrace, this fallenness, a people vowing
to a promise that was never there in the first place
except to write it in a false verse of freedom
to mean a decade or two of deliberate deception
and an epiphany of manifold mistakes:
the raising of our hands to respect the heartland
the eradication of rumor to honor the family
the writing of decrees to violate us in thought
the putting up of barricades to exclude us from discourse
the speaking of English to make our mind lesser than an idiot's.
How can we ever call it quits, this loving
of this unruly land of our public selves & lives,
the questions from our emotions raw and fresh
each time we recollect the ages that have come to pass?
Even from our perch, we who have gone away
to exist like exiles elsewhere, in fiction & in fact,
we cannot call it quits. The redundant reminders haunt us:
the coup attempts that are a daily fare
the staging of a funeral to fulfill a fantasy courtesy of the dead
the announcing of corruption in dollars to test the waters of truth
the entitlements of officials' sons & daughters to privileges
the continuing accent on the perks and pelf of greed.
No, we can never ever call it quits.
The payaos are calling us into action even as the ritual
of birthing and dying continues to enchant us.
The payaos are there for the rice farmers to work on,
for the coaxing to yield to the promises of needs
being met, the faithful promises of the elements,
in Kalinga as well as in Dumalneg,
down the sloping terrains of Adams & Carasi,
there we dream of not quitting, we dream of endless
dancing with the soothing winds from calm seas
and gurgling rivulets of our homing hearts.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Dec. 27, 2004
Saan a Nakabakasion ti Kritiko nga adda iti Ballasiw-Taaw
(Para ken ni Derick Galam)
Saan a nakabakasion ti kritiko
nga adda iti ballasiw-taaw.
Agsisiim ta agsisiim kadagiti mannaniw
a sitsitik, dagitay man pada nga agiyibbet
kadagiti paliiw ken panirigan a di man
lang napulagidan iti uyokan nga insalog
dagiti bangolan ken baglan kadagiti bantay
dagiti rikna ken sao ken paidam,
kas kadagiti rikna ti agrekrekkang
a kataltalonan, no di agtudo,
di madanuman,
di mabisibisan
ket kadarrato nga agulaw
gapu ti bara ti init
gapu iti karubukob a maparkagan
kas kadagiti sao manipud
kadagiti nasungalngalan
a lusod ken paratong,
pagalaan kadagiti aros-aros ken abal-abal
nga ikirog santo mantekaan,
yasmang iti kilabban a ladawan
dagiti ittip ken kalluto a bayag
kas kadagiti paidam dagiti amin
a linteg dagiti kinikillo a wagas
ni ayat para iti ili ken kakailian,
sipud pay idi aginggana ita,
linteg dagiti kuraddaddeng a ragsak,
no agpasugnod ket agdalupisak
iti tapok nga inisbuan dagiti artek
isuda a mangibabaet kadagiti amin
a di mapnek
ket gapu ta dida maipeksa ti anek-ek
iti presidente ken konggreso dagiti tagainep,
ayna, kaka, adi, barok, kabagis, uliteg
itaray-buagitda metten ti mangikurimes
iti bir wenno basi wenno arak ti basi,
sioktong wenno gin dagiti agimpapadi no adda
uray no alkohol a perresanda iti dalayap
wenno kalamansi nga agbugbugsot
imbag lang a lumansad iti boksit,
sadiay nga ulawenna ti ulaw iti pannakabisin
iti man hustisia wenno maikammet a maipauneg
iti man ayat a nainsapasapan wenno mangilaslasin
iti man lagip iti igado wenno kaldo a kalding,
ayna, ania met ngaminen
dagiti pada a sitsitik a mannaniw
ta maysada met a pada nga ulaw,
agidaniwda iti ayat a natarnaw
ngem dida met idaniw dagiti aglaladut
nga igaaw wenno dagiti alikuno kadagiti karayan
a sippayuten dagiti madaydayaw a mannanakaw,
itayokda ti ere sadanto ipasurot iti angin.
force majeure, kunando, iti lengguahe
a ditay maawatan, datayo a di pay nakapagtakaw
iti man dignidad wenno respeto wenno kinatakneng
iti man parparawpaw a dayaw
iti man pammarang a kinabaknang ti isip,
ta di kadi uray ayat ti idaniw
ket masapul met nga igamer ditoy
dagiti estoria ti daraan a sulisog
dagiti estoria ti patingga ti rugso
dagiti estoria ti panaginnala dagiti rikna
no kasta
nga awan mataog
nga awan mayabraw
nga awan maisagpaw iti agdadata a saluyot
nga awan masagat a bugguong ti makilnawan a garrapon
nga awan ti maaramid ti pusa no di agkukot iti dalikan
nga awan ti kakatawaan ti beggang a maarunan
gapu ta
adda sansilmo a mangyaw-awan iti presidensia
adda baknang a suitik a residente iti kapitolio
adda manglimlimo a natakneng iti konggreso
adda singguarding a presidente iti palasio
isuda, isuda amin dagitoy ti makaigapu
no apay nga iti panagrasuk ti daratayo
iti man rabii wenno kadagiti oras ti kannag
ket ditay marikna dagiti riknatayo
ket ditay ammo dagiti ammotayo
ket ditay maidaniw dagiti daniwtayo.
Ayna, apo, saan a nakabakasion ti kritiko
dagiti parmatatayo. Agsipsiput ta agsipsiput
iti madusagna a sungo. Agpadpadaan
iti panakpakennna a sinsinansao,
partuat dagiti pada a sitsitik a mannaniwtayo.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Dis. 26, 2004
Saan a nakabakasion ti kritiko
nga adda iti ballasiw-taaw.
Agsisiim ta agsisiim kadagiti mannaniw
a sitsitik, dagitay man pada nga agiyibbet
kadagiti paliiw ken panirigan a di man
lang napulagidan iti uyokan nga insalog
dagiti bangolan ken baglan kadagiti bantay
dagiti rikna ken sao ken paidam,
kas kadagiti rikna ti agrekrekkang
a kataltalonan, no di agtudo,
di madanuman,
di mabisibisan
ket kadarrato nga agulaw
gapu ti bara ti init
gapu iti karubukob a maparkagan
kas kadagiti sao manipud
kadagiti nasungalngalan
a lusod ken paratong,
pagalaan kadagiti aros-aros ken abal-abal
nga ikirog santo mantekaan,
yasmang iti kilabban a ladawan
dagiti ittip ken kalluto a bayag
kas kadagiti paidam dagiti amin
a linteg dagiti kinikillo a wagas
ni ayat para iti ili ken kakailian,
sipud pay idi aginggana ita,
linteg dagiti kuraddaddeng a ragsak,
no agpasugnod ket agdalupisak
iti tapok nga inisbuan dagiti artek
isuda a mangibabaet kadagiti amin
a di mapnek
ket gapu ta dida maipeksa ti anek-ek
iti presidente ken konggreso dagiti tagainep,
ayna, kaka, adi, barok, kabagis, uliteg
itaray-buagitda metten ti mangikurimes
iti bir wenno basi wenno arak ti basi,
sioktong wenno gin dagiti agimpapadi no adda
uray no alkohol a perresanda iti dalayap
wenno kalamansi nga agbugbugsot
imbag lang a lumansad iti boksit,
sadiay nga ulawenna ti ulaw iti pannakabisin
iti man hustisia wenno maikammet a maipauneg
iti man ayat a nainsapasapan wenno mangilaslasin
iti man lagip iti igado wenno kaldo a kalding,
ayna, ania met ngaminen
dagiti pada a sitsitik a mannaniw
ta maysada met a pada nga ulaw,
agidaniwda iti ayat a natarnaw
ngem dida met idaniw dagiti aglaladut
nga igaaw wenno dagiti alikuno kadagiti karayan
a sippayuten dagiti madaydayaw a mannanakaw,
itayokda ti ere sadanto ipasurot iti angin.
force majeure, kunando, iti lengguahe
a ditay maawatan, datayo a di pay nakapagtakaw
iti man dignidad wenno respeto wenno kinatakneng
iti man parparawpaw a dayaw
iti man pammarang a kinabaknang ti isip,
ta di kadi uray ayat ti idaniw
ket masapul met nga igamer ditoy
dagiti estoria ti daraan a sulisog
dagiti estoria ti patingga ti rugso
dagiti estoria ti panaginnala dagiti rikna
no kasta
nga awan mataog
nga awan mayabraw
nga awan maisagpaw iti agdadata a saluyot
nga awan masagat a bugguong ti makilnawan a garrapon
nga awan ti maaramid ti pusa no di agkukot iti dalikan
nga awan ti kakatawaan ti beggang a maarunan
gapu ta
adda sansilmo a mangyaw-awan iti presidensia
adda baknang a suitik a residente iti kapitolio
adda manglimlimo a natakneng iti konggreso
adda singguarding a presidente iti palasio
isuda, isuda amin dagitoy ti makaigapu
no apay nga iti panagrasuk ti daratayo
iti man rabii wenno kadagiti oras ti kannag
ket ditay marikna dagiti riknatayo
ket ditay ammo dagiti ammotayo
ket ditay maidaniw dagiti daniwtayo.
Ayna, apo, saan a nakabakasion ti kritiko
dagiti parmatatayo. Agsipsiput ta agsipsiput
iti madusagna a sungo. Agpadpadaan
iti panakpakennna a sinsinansao,
partuat dagiti pada a sitsitik a mannaniwtayo.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Dis. 26, 2004
Stilling the Young Spirit, Your Gift
In our twenties
we begin
to dream real
and big
and grand.
The dreams
are beyond us,
past our names
and memories
of a world familiar
and certain,
our city
without walls
without borders
without contours
without trajectories
as you root now
in the vast
land of loves
coming up too soon,
relations springing up
like spring flowers
bursting in colors,
always in full bloom
as our stories needing
defining,
stilling too
like our own storms within
and out.
Out you go into the world,
young man,
and see the promises
of fall and summer
in the city of your mind.
There is the bright
dawn coming up,
its glow the orange
and red of life
made whole by
your loving soul.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
2004
we begin
to dream real
and big
and grand.
The dreams
are beyond us,
past our names
and memories
of a world familiar
and certain,
our city
without walls
without borders
without contours
without trajectories
as you root now
in the vast
land of loves
coming up too soon,
relations springing up
like spring flowers
bursting in colors,
always in full bloom
as our stories needing
defining,
stilling too
like our own storms within
and out.
Out you go into the world,
young man,
and see the promises
of fall and summer
in the city of your mind.
There is the bright
dawn coming up,
its glow the orange
and red of life
made whole by
your loving soul.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
2004
Ti Bannawag Iti Banna Ni Ayat
(Para ken Joel Manuel, maestro ti ili)
Patgen a maestro dagiti an-anek-ektayo amin,
datayo a naparaburan iti talugading a mangikissiim
no ania ti sukog dagiti ayat kadagiti dadapilan
kas met kadagiti balitang iti Banna wenno iti amin
a purpurok dagiti kararuatayo a makasimsimsim
la unay iti naidumduma nga ayat dagiti kannag:
Umuna unay, pagyamanak ti panangilalaemmo
kadagiti titulo dagiti ayat nga adda kadagiti daniwko.
Kunam a maysaakon a makipagili iti lubong.
Ninanamko dagiti balikas, maestro. Inimasko man
ti panaglabay kadagiti nalimed a timek kadagiti insawang,
inggaok iti pinggan a ganggang a nakipaggarampang
iti garakgak dagiti beggang. Ruburob, kunadan sa
iti kasta, kas iti panagruburob met ti nakem
nga agkawili no pumanaw. Kasta, kasta
ti panunotko, maestro.
Nagtalakias ti bagi a sumuko kadagiti poder
ti panawen. Ngem siririing a kankanayon ti lasag
a linukag dagiti espiritu ni ayat, ti bannawag
iti Banna ni ayat, amin a Banna, ti Banna iti panunotmo
wenno ti Banna iti ginnasanggasat kadagiti makabiag
a balikas,
daytay awanan timek wenno rima,
awanan iti alpabeto wenno alibata,
daytay balikas kadagiti imas ti tupig
a maidiaya kadagiti sibibiag ken
kadagiti napanen
iti sabali a biag,
daytay balikas nga agindeg
kadagiti sardam ti panagrugso dagiti rikna
a managdakiwas,
daytay balikas dagiti ayat iti takiag
a maidiaya iti agdudungsa a malem,
wenno nasapa pay laeng a rabii iti lenned,
wenno tay agsapa iti allawig a narungsot
ket iddepenna ti agbambantay a temtem,
daytay balikas ti lagip ti ubing
kadagiti sinublan wenno panagtambotambong
wenno panagparadusdos wenno tay makapnek
nga angot ti kaad-adaw a tagapulot
nga iputipot ti tamudo a pangikur-it
iti man pitak wenno iti tapok ti kuaresma
ti maipapan ti adu nga ipupusay ken panagungar
ti ili a nagnakman wenno
ti ili a nakakugitan ti rikna
ti ili a pinanawan ngem kadarrato a suksuknalan
kas iti isusuknal iti templo dagiti titulo ni ayat
kas iti isusuknal iti sakramento dagiti sasainnek
kas iti isusuknal iti bagnos dagiti bannawag
a partuaten iti panid dagiti tawen
a panaglangan ti rikna wenno
dagiti daniw a gumawgawawa
a maikur-itkur-it,
daytay balikas
iti panagbunniag kadatao, maestro,
a maysaakon a makipagili iti lubong.
Nagimnas a balikas, ket pagyamanak
ti nakalemmeng a pammati kadagiti di mangar-artiok
nga ayat. Dokumentado dagitoy, maestro,
ket dimo kadi itan ibabawi. Aglapunos ti puso
kadagitoy a ganggannaet a rikna,
sappuyotendak nga ilili
iti angin a makapabang-ar ditoy adayo a lugar,
milia-milia a panagaskaw ken panagagpang
kadagiti mangliwengliweng a taaw
dagiti bambanag a babantot met laeng,
kas iti daniw a di maisurat
kas iti lagip a di makaidna
kas iti panagyaman a naladaw a nayebkas.
Makipagiliakto man iti lubong,
adda met lubong iti ili a naggapuan, maestro.
Daytoy ti lubong dagiti agalla-alla nga isip,
agbirbirok iti inana kadagiti sangsangit ti ili,
iti kappia kadagiti kanalbuong dagiti adu a peggad
kadagiti layus, dawel, ken panagbaybay-a.
Anian!
Daytoy tay lubong dagiti balikas
a makaagas, mangisagut iti imbag
kadagiti sugat iti biag ken lasag ken anasaas
ni rangranggas, iti isip wenno iti pagilian.
Ditoy nga agwerret, maestro, ti pluma.
Ditoy a mangiputot ti kambas
kadagiti adu pay a saem a naganan
kadagiti adu nga eksena nga iladawan
kadagiti adu a lubong a mabukatan
kas iti panangbukat kadagiti baro nga uma
kadagiti turturod tapno
agbiag dagiti rangkis
agkanta dagiti tumaytayab
agsagawisiw dagiti masikog a pagay
agsala dagiti bugbugian a dalag iti waig
agulang dagiti desdes iti kapanagan
agpadaya dagiti amin nga agkanaganan.
Ala, leppasekon, maestro, ta makaaduakon.
Iti sumuno a surat manipud iti partuatek
a bannawag ditoy adayo a nakaipalladawan,
ibunannagkonto ti kapay-an dagiti exilo
a kas kaniak, dakami nga intalawataw
dagiti bituen a madi met nga agrimatrimat.
Siraraem ken sidadayaw,
Kabsat nga agsursurat iti daniw
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance/Palos Verdes/Redondo, CA
Dis. 26, 2004
Patgen a maestro dagiti an-anek-ektayo amin,
datayo a naparaburan iti talugading a mangikissiim
no ania ti sukog dagiti ayat kadagiti dadapilan
kas met kadagiti balitang iti Banna wenno iti amin
a purpurok dagiti kararuatayo a makasimsimsim
la unay iti naidumduma nga ayat dagiti kannag:
Umuna unay, pagyamanak ti panangilalaemmo
kadagiti titulo dagiti ayat nga adda kadagiti daniwko.
Kunam a maysaakon a makipagili iti lubong.
Ninanamko dagiti balikas, maestro. Inimasko man
ti panaglabay kadagiti nalimed a timek kadagiti insawang,
inggaok iti pinggan a ganggang a nakipaggarampang
iti garakgak dagiti beggang. Ruburob, kunadan sa
iti kasta, kas iti panagruburob met ti nakem
nga agkawili no pumanaw. Kasta, kasta
ti panunotko, maestro.
Nagtalakias ti bagi a sumuko kadagiti poder
ti panawen. Ngem siririing a kankanayon ti lasag
a linukag dagiti espiritu ni ayat, ti bannawag
iti Banna ni ayat, amin a Banna, ti Banna iti panunotmo
wenno ti Banna iti ginnasanggasat kadagiti makabiag
a balikas,
daytay awanan timek wenno rima,
awanan iti alpabeto wenno alibata,
daytay balikas kadagiti imas ti tupig
a maidiaya kadagiti sibibiag ken
kadagiti napanen
iti sabali a biag,
daytay balikas nga agindeg
kadagiti sardam ti panagrugso dagiti rikna
a managdakiwas,
daytay balikas dagiti ayat iti takiag
a maidiaya iti agdudungsa a malem,
wenno nasapa pay laeng a rabii iti lenned,
wenno tay agsapa iti allawig a narungsot
ket iddepenna ti agbambantay a temtem,
daytay balikas ti lagip ti ubing
kadagiti sinublan wenno panagtambotambong
wenno panagparadusdos wenno tay makapnek
nga angot ti kaad-adaw a tagapulot
nga iputipot ti tamudo a pangikur-it
iti man pitak wenno iti tapok ti kuaresma
ti maipapan ti adu nga ipupusay ken panagungar
ti ili a nagnakman wenno
ti ili a nakakugitan ti rikna
ti ili a pinanawan ngem kadarrato a suksuknalan
kas iti isusuknal iti templo dagiti titulo ni ayat
kas iti isusuknal iti sakramento dagiti sasainnek
kas iti isusuknal iti bagnos dagiti bannawag
a partuaten iti panid dagiti tawen
a panaglangan ti rikna wenno
dagiti daniw a gumawgawawa
a maikur-itkur-it,
daytay balikas
iti panagbunniag kadatao, maestro,
a maysaakon a makipagili iti lubong.
Nagimnas a balikas, ket pagyamanak
ti nakalemmeng a pammati kadagiti di mangar-artiok
nga ayat. Dokumentado dagitoy, maestro,
ket dimo kadi itan ibabawi. Aglapunos ti puso
kadagitoy a ganggannaet a rikna,
sappuyotendak nga ilili
iti angin a makapabang-ar ditoy adayo a lugar,
milia-milia a panagaskaw ken panagagpang
kadagiti mangliwengliweng a taaw
dagiti bambanag a babantot met laeng,
kas iti daniw a di maisurat
kas iti lagip a di makaidna
kas iti panagyaman a naladaw a nayebkas.
Makipagiliakto man iti lubong,
adda met lubong iti ili a naggapuan, maestro.
Daytoy ti lubong dagiti agalla-alla nga isip,
agbirbirok iti inana kadagiti sangsangit ti ili,
iti kappia kadagiti kanalbuong dagiti adu a peggad
kadagiti layus, dawel, ken panagbaybay-a.
Anian!
Daytoy tay lubong dagiti balikas
a makaagas, mangisagut iti imbag
kadagiti sugat iti biag ken lasag ken anasaas
ni rangranggas, iti isip wenno iti pagilian.
Ditoy nga agwerret, maestro, ti pluma.
Ditoy a mangiputot ti kambas
kadagiti adu pay a saem a naganan
kadagiti adu nga eksena nga iladawan
kadagiti adu a lubong a mabukatan
kas iti panangbukat kadagiti baro nga uma
kadagiti turturod tapno
agbiag dagiti rangkis
agkanta dagiti tumaytayab
agsagawisiw dagiti masikog a pagay
agsala dagiti bugbugian a dalag iti waig
agulang dagiti desdes iti kapanagan
agpadaya dagiti amin nga agkanaganan.
Ala, leppasekon, maestro, ta makaaduakon.
Iti sumuno a surat manipud iti partuatek
a bannawag ditoy adayo a nakaipalladawan,
ibunannagkonto ti kapay-an dagiti exilo
a kas kaniak, dakami nga intalawataw
dagiti bituen a madi met nga agrimatrimat.
Siraraem ken sidadayaw,
Kabsat nga agsursurat iti daniw
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance/Palos Verdes/Redondo, CA
Dis. 26, 2004
Spirit Hungering for Colors
It comes so easy, this sadness in black.
It is summer here & the heat rises
to remind us all of the lies of spring,
the ruses of fall & the sins of man,
women and those who pray for glory
who pray for gold.
There are many of these kinds
in Los Angeles, down towards
the Wilshire boulevard of the capitalists
and spirit brokers,
those who know how to spell
God's name in reverse,
their utterance real,
their action more than so.
There have been a number of us
who have come to believe
in Monday miracles, blessings too
all year round even
as they empty our pockets
as they mortgage our name.
How much longer we say, how much?
The spirit hungers for the bread
that comes from our trying to be kind.
It comes not so easy, this joy in blue.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Los Angeles, CA
2004
It is summer here & the heat rises
to remind us all of the lies of spring,
the ruses of fall & the sins of man,
women and those who pray for glory
who pray for gold.
There are many of these kinds
in Los Angeles, down towards
the Wilshire boulevard of the capitalists
and spirit brokers,
those who know how to spell
God's name in reverse,
their utterance real,
their action more than so.
There have been a number of us
who have come to believe
in Monday miracles, blessings too
all year round even
as they empty our pockets
as they mortgage our name.
How much longer we say, how much?
The spirit hungers for the bread
that comes from our trying to be kind.
It comes not so easy, this joy in blue.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Los Angeles, CA
2004
On Waiting as a Virtue or Vice
It is really like this, amigo,
this willful awaiting the coming
of clear clouds from
the cold days when providence
does not come on cue.
We take the free lunch at Virgie's as usual,
order the same half-and-half meal
to save on precious dough and desire
as we live our daily lives,
deep & dark as the Redondo nights
that we count against the days
of numbering what is left of dinners and breakfasts
that will never be reserved for us.
Like the prosaic in the hunger,
there is poetry in writing up of our pain
we now know, the same pain we
have given a name lately.
There is hope in the grey clouds,
still & calm, the hope cool & collected
like the way we all are all the time.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Artesia, CA
2004
this willful awaiting the coming
of clear clouds from
the cold days when providence
does not come on cue.
We take the free lunch at Virgie's as usual,
order the same half-and-half meal
to save on precious dough and desire
as we live our daily lives,
deep & dark as the Redondo nights
that we count against the days
of numbering what is left of dinners and breakfasts
that will never be reserved for us.
Like the prosaic in the hunger,
there is poetry in writing up of our pain
we now know, the same pain we
have given a name lately.
There is hope in the grey clouds,
still & calm, the hope cool & collected
like the way we all are all the time.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Artesia, CA
2004
The Children Remember The Anniversary Of Our Loves
(For Leah, Ayi, Camille & Nasudi Francine)
The children remember
the 20th anniversary
of our loves multiplied.
There is algebra here,
the abstraction of emotions
going linear & then circuitous,
curving beyond
the boundaries of blase despair
& desires.
It is our 20th, past many
years after we buried
a leader coming home
from self-exile, his widow in tow,
the bubby daughter delivering
a dramatized eulogy of her father's
opposition to that which does not matter
to loving a land,
to giving up your life for a people
as grateful as the cold waters of seas
sacred and all-giving
in these tortured and tormented islands.
The purging waters are there,
have always been there,
surrounding us and reminding us
of our intractable solitudes
to wash away the impurities
of sacrificing less for
the purpose of a nation of lies & liars,
the purpose perhaps destined or denied.
A year after we married ourselves,
just the two of us, with our mutual cares
for our witness, our covenant sealed
by the streets becoming hungrier
& angrier as the months went by.
That was the year preluding a first
people power of self-redemption.
It was the postlude to producing paradise,
a grandiose one as befitted
a people long deprived.
The hunger was more
because we were starting life anew,
because we were starting a new life
from the old ones, investing on our
memory of new society money
that was never in our hands
but in the pockets of robbers
& those who we voted to bleed us dry.
The anger was more for allowing
ourselves to forget to grieve for our
incalculable loss of lives & laughters
as we saw the dissenters to the dictator
& his agents inaugurate a salvaging spree,
one at a time initially,
two at a time gradually,
&
the eventual massacre
of the dissenters' dreams
of the best breakfast of dried fish,
fried rice with a generous sprinkling
of garlic to ward off the evil in the thought
of meals & many more lives crucified in the sun,
or in the palate that savors & remembers
the truth of a hemorrhaging homeland,
gone crazy
gone mad
its blood curdling
its own healing word
gone astray with the strong winds
coming from all directions,
the winds tempting us to declare
a moratorium of deaths & despair
in order to get to our feet to fight the foe
in our hearts,
the emotions expressing themselves
in raw forms & shapes & language,
killing us softly even as we partake
of new promises for a new dawn,
the breaking
of a new day from the deep & dark night.
The dictator, sick & losing sanity with his
bloated bluff & the blunder of a wife's
blackmailing him
& his promised greatness of a land,
showed himself off,
his dictator's exhibit number one,
the chest of a carinoso primero,
the decaying muscle of a madman,
& capricious self-importance entwined.
To prove my loyalty to his oath, he said.
So he showed the carcass of his mind,
once genuine
once pristine
once eloquent
now the epitaph of a murderous love
of land and lust
of people and their power.
& so we kept on, the young wife
& the young man,
their dream of home & hearth blessed
forever by the stars and skies
in the sidestreets of their loves, ours,
in Palawan in Sta. Mesa
& then moving to Maria Payo
& then moving to the days
of extreme need & want
even as the funeral of a hero
gathered millions to see him go,
blessed him more & more for the courage
blessed him more & more for the energy
that rebuilt us in this infinity of extreme sacrifice
the angered hungry land called us to offer.
We witnessed all even as we dreamed:
the snap elections that electrified us
with its newly-minted 20-peso bills
that made the rounds of slums
& squatters colonies
& guilt-stricken minds.
We remember there was this family fight,
the daughter & the father,
the daughter the young wife.
Did the father say
do not take it, the freshly & crisp
bills with the blabbing boast
of a dying god
do not
take it & put it into the pockets of fate
& our direst destinies.
Do not be practical.
Do not be pragmatic.
Do not be w-i-s-e. As wise as the traitors of a land.
But more. & more transcending.
The young wife said
she was taking the bribe to buy milk for the son,
born before his time, always in a hurry
like all the babies in those dimmest of days,
coming before the early hours
had the chance to peep
into the window of our new love,
this young one who did not see the fear
in us but was there just the same,
his presence the cause of his mother's fear,
her challenge to his young man to get real
& get lost
& scram
& drop all his willingness to fight,
hand-in-hand with the rest, the clerics
as well as those who despised them,
the nuns as well as those who think
of them as the capitalists of our charities,
the seminarians who dream of sex with sirens
from tabloid centerfolds they insert
in their breviaries & bible commentaries,
the socialites with their fake standard English
& their military security men as drivers
moonlighting as their lovers,
the party leaders of both hands & in-between
who dream of raking it all,
the resources & respect,
the wealth & wisdom,
the dignity & decency
they could buy in four-gives or five-six
or in appending on their names the flat word,
"honorable" as an honorable man can be
with his delusions of grandeur and devilish ways,
one act for the public to consume,
another for the private world to keep
such as: the giving of varnished coffins for the dead
& accepting commissions from a relief project
for victims of truth and meaning
for victims of fellow victims
for victims of the impotency to name our pains
& call it quits, this lie that was always poised
to resurrect, always poised to resurrect.
We saw it all, the young wife & the young man,
& those were the days of doom & gloom
& the social cancer kept on spreading
& the social cancer could not be arrested
& the social cancer got bigger & bigger
& the social cancer became a behemoth
& the social cancer became a bad phantasm
for a young couple and their first born
trying to grow in years with grace.
The young man with the young wife
& the young child said: I go.
I go & you cannot tell me I cannot.
& so he went to the Mendiola of his fears,
climbed over the iron fortress
of a palace of booby traps,
& brought home a piece of a barb wire
for the memories.
He saw the anger & he told this to his son
who knew from his silence and the clapping
of his chubby hands, a less than a year-old
listener of narratives of collective aches.
The royal picture
had been ransacked, stepped on,
with a thousand
heavily-burdened steps & soiled footmarks
marking the smiles of daughters,
a son, & a pair of parents
that forgot how to reign in their strange lives.
We moved on from here.
We moved on from the stories of selling
books for a bargain in Recto to buy
the medically prescribed milk
& the hopes for the better for the uncharted universe
of young parents with its countless challenges.
Or buy the medicine.
Or pay off the hospital money
for the two weeks of incubating a first born
& make him ready to face the world
of adults cheating us of our beautiful dreams.
Between them, the young wife & the young man
are 20 years. Among the children, the stories,
solemn & sanctifying, are twenty years
& will be told forever beyond the ages.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Dec. 26, 2005
The children remember
the 20th anniversary
of our loves multiplied.
There is algebra here,
the abstraction of emotions
going linear & then circuitous,
curving beyond
the boundaries of blase despair
& desires.
It is our 20th, past many
years after we buried
a leader coming home
from self-exile, his widow in tow,
the bubby daughter delivering
a dramatized eulogy of her father's
opposition to that which does not matter
to loving a land,
to giving up your life for a people
as grateful as the cold waters of seas
sacred and all-giving
in these tortured and tormented islands.
The purging waters are there,
have always been there,
surrounding us and reminding us
of our intractable solitudes
to wash away the impurities
of sacrificing less for
the purpose of a nation of lies & liars,
the purpose perhaps destined or denied.
A year after we married ourselves,
just the two of us, with our mutual cares
for our witness, our covenant sealed
by the streets becoming hungrier
& angrier as the months went by.
That was the year preluding a first
people power of self-redemption.
It was the postlude to producing paradise,
a grandiose one as befitted
a people long deprived.
The hunger was more
because we were starting life anew,
because we were starting a new life
from the old ones, investing on our
memory of new society money
that was never in our hands
but in the pockets of robbers
& those who we voted to bleed us dry.
The anger was more for allowing
ourselves to forget to grieve for our
incalculable loss of lives & laughters
as we saw the dissenters to the dictator
& his agents inaugurate a salvaging spree,
one at a time initially,
two at a time gradually,
&
the eventual massacre
of the dissenters' dreams
of the best breakfast of dried fish,
fried rice with a generous sprinkling
of garlic to ward off the evil in the thought
of meals & many more lives crucified in the sun,
or in the palate that savors & remembers
the truth of a hemorrhaging homeland,
gone crazy
gone mad
its blood curdling
its own healing word
gone astray with the strong winds
coming from all directions,
the winds tempting us to declare
a moratorium of deaths & despair
in order to get to our feet to fight the foe
in our hearts,
the emotions expressing themselves
in raw forms & shapes & language,
killing us softly even as we partake
of new promises for a new dawn,
the breaking
of a new day from the deep & dark night.
The dictator, sick & losing sanity with his
bloated bluff & the blunder of a wife's
blackmailing him
& his promised greatness of a land,
showed himself off,
his dictator's exhibit number one,
the chest of a carinoso primero,
the decaying muscle of a madman,
& capricious self-importance entwined.
To prove my loyalty to his oath, he said.
So he showed the carcass of his mind,
once genuine
once pristine
once eloquent
now the epitaph of a murderous love
of land and lust
of people and their power.
& so we kept on, the young wife
& the young man,
their dream of home & hearth blessed
forever by the stars and skies
in the sidestreets of their loves, ours,
in Palawan in Sta. Mesa
& then moving to Maria Payo
& then moving to the days
of extreme need & want
even as the funeral of a hero
gathered millions to see him go,
blessed him more & more for the courage
blessed him more & more for the energy
that rebuilt us in this infinity of extreme sacrifice
the angered hungry land called us to offer.
We witnessed all even as we dreamed:
the snap elections that electrified us
with its newly-minted 20-peso bills
that made the rounds of slums
& squatters colonies
& guilt-stricken minds.
We remember there was this family fight,
the daughter & the father,
the daughter the young wife.
Did the father say
do not take it, the freshly & crisp
bills with the blabbing boast
of a dying god
do not
take it & put it into the pockets of fate
& our direst destinies.
Do not be practical.
Do not be pragmatic.
Do not be w-i-s-e. As wise as the traitors of a land.
But more. & more transcending.
The young wife said
she was taking the bribe to buy milk for the son,
born before his time, always in a hurry
like all the babies in those dimmest of days,
coming before the early hours
had the chance to peep
into the window of our new love,
this young one who did not see the fear
in us but was there just the same,
his presence the cause of his mother's fear,
her challenge to his young man to get real
& get lost
& scram
& drop all his willingness to fight,
hand-in-hand with the rest, the clerics
as well as those who despised them,
the nuns as well as those who think
of them as the capitalists of our charities,
the seminarians who dream of sex with sirens
from tabloid centerfolds they insert
in their breviaries & bible commentaries,
the socialites with their fake standard English
& their military security men as drivers
moonlighting as their lovers,
the party leaders of both hands & in-between
who dream of raking it all,
the resources & respect,
the wealth & wisdom,
the dignity & decency
they could buy in four-gives or five-six
or in appending on their names the flat word,
"honorable" as an honorable man can be
with his delusions of grandeur and devilish ways,
one act for the public to consume,
another for the private world to keep
such as: the giving of varnished coffins for the dead
& accepting commissions from a relief project
for victims of truth and meaning
for victims of fellow victims
for victims of the impotency to name our pains
& call it quits, this lie that was always poised
to resurrect, always poised to resurrect.
We saw it all, the young wife & the young man,
& those were the days of doom & gloom
& the social cancer kept on spreading
& the social cancer could not be arrested
& the social cancer got bigger & bigger
& the social cancer became a behemoth
& the social cancer became a bad phantasm
for a young couple and their first born
trying to grow in years with grace.
The young man with the young wife
& the young child said: I go.
I go & you cannot tell me I cannot.
& so he went to the Mendiola of his fears,
climbed over the iron fortress
of a palace of booby traps,
& brought home a piece of a barb wire
for the memories.
He saw the anger & he told this to his son
who knew from his silence and the clapping
of his chubby hands, a less than a year-old
listener of narratives of collective aches.
The royal picture
had been ransacked, stepped on,
with a thousand
heavily-burdened steps & soiled footmarks
marking the smiles of daughters,
a son, & a pair of parents
that forgot how to reign in their strange lives.
We moved on from here.
We moved on from the stories of selling
books for a bargain in Recto to buy
the medically prescribed milk
& the hopes for the better for the uncharted universe
of young parents with its countless challenges.
Or buy the medicine.
Or pay off the hospital money
for the two weeks of incubating a first born
& make him ready to face the world
of adults cheating us of our beautiful dreams.
Between them, the young wife & the young man
are 20 years. Among the children, the stories,
solemn & sanctifying, are twenty years
& will be told forever beyond the ages.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Dec. 26, 2005
On Loving Purely, Simply
(For Ralph Besijos, because you wanted this poem for Glenna)
Loves go on in circles
like games
we play, in childhood
as in our adult cares.
We come and go
into this abyss
of passion coming alive,
entrenched in cracked
conceits we define
in songs we hide
in the pockets of evenings
when we lose
and find the same
absences that matter so.
We think thoughts
visiting us
as we seek and do not find
as we find but do seek.
Today is the first day
of our birth
in these new-found loves.
Redeemed we are,
we look for the faces
that haunt us in twilights,
some regrets residing
in our broken hearts.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Artesia, CA
2004
On Long Distance Loving
We learn the lessons right smack
into this free lunch. We think
we know some truths
we never imagined they are.
As if to survive in a new land
is a song's seething line, we trust
and love, give kindness each time,
charity, faith too, minus the cymbals,
clanging with the emptiness we divine,
the good graces we miss for missing
the grey clouds, codes for our
expectations long overdue, many times
long done. Long distances they are,
these hoping and believing
and struggling. There are oracles
in the sun and season
in the wind and rain and cold moon.
In the meantime, we keep hanging on,
just keep hanging on, hanging on.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Artesia, CA
2004
into this free lunch. We think
we know some truths
we never imagined they are.
As if to survive in a new land
is a song's seething line, we trust
and love, give kindness each time,
charity, faith too, minus the cymbals,
clanging with the emptiness we divine,
the good graces we miss for missing
the grey clouds, codes for our
expectations long overdue, many times
long done. Long distances they are,
these hoping and believing
and struggling. There are oracles
in the sun and season
in the wind and rain and cold moon.
In the meantime, we keep hanging on,
just keep hanging on, hanging on.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Artesia, CA
2004
Mass at St Philomena, Sunday
(For momsy, because you help me pray)
Today you go to mass
a twin grace, one promised
another a perk
for forgiving.
The absolution is
for the suffering
for the thousand sorrows
for the thousand penitences
that never end.
You savor the autumn
afternoon guarding
the church door
filled with missteps,
human and priestly.
The incense fills
you and the days
in your dream
become as heady
as spring awakening
even if the flowers
have yet to christen
the red rites
of resurrecting remembering,
making the act a covenant
for believing.
The altar birds
in this late fall
do not sing,
the tabernacle plants
die a little,
the buds wither
in the wet weather,
you are late
for the early laughter.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
2004
Today you go to mass
a twin grace, one promised
another a perk
for forgiving.
The absolution is
for the suffering
for the thousand sorrows
for the thousand penitences
that never end.
You savor the autumn
afternoon guarding
the church door
filled with missteps,
human and priestly.
The incense fills
you and the days
in your dream
become as heady
as spring awakening
even if the flowers
have yet to christen
the red rites
of resurrecting remembering,
making the act a covenant
for believing.
The altar birds
in this late fall
do not sing,
the tabernacle plants
die a little,
the buds wither
in the wet weather,
you are late
for the early laughter.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
2004
Pagniniig ng mga Panaginip sa Pag-ibig
(Para sa kabiyak at mga supling--at sa ika-20ng
anibersaryo ng pag-iisang dibdib)
Nagniniig din ang mga panaginip
Natin sa pag-ibig,
Pawang mga sukat at tugma
Ng ating dalawampung taong pag-iisang dibdib.
Di natin akalain na ang malawak na tubig
At ang di maabot na langit ang sasaksi
Sa ating anibersaryo sa diwa at sa isip.
Ngayon at bukas at sa lahat ng panahon
Sa ating puso, tayong dalawang nagmahal
At patuloy na nagmamahal,
Ay dadami at dadami at ang dalawang
Tayo noon ay magiging isang bayan,
Isang malaking bayan na magluluwal
Ng mga bagong bayan tulad
Ng sa atin: mga supling na marunong
Magmahal sa sarili, mga supling na
Marunong magmahal sa iba.
Dadalawa tayo noon.
Pero ngayon ay kasali na
Ang mga anak na nanggaling sa ating
Mga lino at unan at sa pagsabog ng ulan
Sa mga tuyot na tuyot na mga pilapil
Sa mga talata ng ating mga nasa,
Sa sabik ng mga gabing ayaw matulog,
Sa lambing ng mga disoras sa dilim
Na ayaw maantok.
Lumarga tayo sa buhay
At pumalaot sa dagat
Ng pagbabakasakali.
Isang taon,
Nasa tuktok tayo ng mga alon.
Isang taon ay sa ilalim tayo
Ng mga agos.
Isang taon ay kasama
Natin ang bagyo at hunos
At daluyong, kasama ang bahang
Umanod sa ating pangamba at takot.
Sa bawat taon, muli at muli
Nating binigkas ang panunumpa
Sa pagniniig ng mga panaginip
Sa pag-ibig na para sa atin
Sa pag-ibig na para sa iba.
At napagtanto natin
Ang mga kabanata ng panahon,
Ang walang katapusang sukat
Ng ating panahon, tayong dalawa,
Tayong dalawang naging bayan,
Tayong naging bayan na magiging bayan.
Dugtong-dugtong ang mga araw,
Linggo, buwan, taon, dekada,
Tag-ulan, tag-araw, at pagbangon.
At ang ngayon ang tagapagdugtong.
Sapagkat ang ngayon
Ang puso ng paulit-ulit na panunumpa.
Ngayon ay isama na natin
Sa panunumpa ang mga anak na di atin.
Nananahan sila sa tahanan ng lahat
Ng mga alalahanin ngunit di nanggaling
Sa ating mga kumot, gabi, at ligaw na balakin.
Ngayon ay kakabit silang
Lahat sa ating anibersaryo,
Tayong kapwa guro sa silid-aralan
ng mga siphayo at pakikibaka,
Tayong kapwa mag-aaral sa maraming aralin
sa pagdarahop at paghahabol ng mailuluto,
Tayong kapwa magulang ng mga anak ng bayang
Magmamahal sa mga kapwa anak ng bayan.
Malayo man tayo sa isa't isa
Ay kaylapit din natin.
Iisa ang layon,
Isa din lamang ang pakay
Sa paglayo:
Ang pagbabalik sa isa't isa,
Saksi ang mga gabi at araw dito man
Sa tahanang wala ang mga halakhak
Ng mga anak na dumidiskarte sa buhay
Ng mga anak na dumisdiskobre kung ano ang bukas
Ng mga anak na di atin na kasama natin
Sa lungkot at galak
Sa hirap at pananagumpay
Sa pakikibaka at pagpapalakas ng loob
Sa pakikipagtunggali at pagpapatibay ng hanay.
Bukas, sa kaarawan ng ating anibersaryo,
Mamimitas tayo ng sariwang pag-asa
Sa mga punong-kahoy sa ating bakuran,
Sa mga bulaklak sa ating halamanan
Sa mga dingding at pintuang tagapagtala
Ng ating nakikipagdimang kasaysayan.
Isama nating pagdiskursuhin ang mga anak,
Atin man o sa bayan.
Isa-isa silang magtestimonya
Sa ating tagumpay
At kabiguan, sasabihin nila ang ating
Walang katapusang pagpapanibagong-buhay.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Dis. 26, 2004
anibersaryo ng pag-iisang dibdib)
Nagniniig din ang mga panaginip
Natin sa pag-ibig,
Pawang mga sukat at tugma
Ng ating dalawampung taong pag-iisang dibdib.
Di natin akalain na ang malawak na tubig
At ang di maabot na langit ang sasaksi
Sa ating anibersaryo sa diwa at sa isip.
Ngayon at bukas at sa lahat ng panahon
Sa ating puso, tayong dalawang nagmahal
At patuloy na nagmamahal,
Ay dadami at dadami at ang dalawang
Tayo noon ay magiging isang bayan,
Isang malaking bayan na magluluwal
Ng mga bagong bayan tulad
Ng sa atin: mga supling na marunong
Magmahal sa sarili, mga supling na
Marunong magmahal sa iba.
Dadalawa tayo noon.
Pero ngayon ay kasali na
Ang mga anak na nanggaling sa ating
Mga lino at unan at sa pagsabog ng ulan
Sa mga tuyot na tuyot na mga pilapil
Sa mga talata ng ating mga nasa,
Sa sabik ng mga gabing ayaw matulog,
Sa lambing ng mga disoras sa dilim
Na ayaw maantok.
Lumarga tayo sa buhay
At pumalaot sa dagat
Ng pagbabakasakali.
Isang taon,
Nasa tuktok tayo ng mga alon.
Isang taon ay sa ilalim tayo
Ng mga agos.
Isang taon ay kasama
Natin ang bagyo at hunos
At daluyong, kasama ang bahang
Umanod sa ating pangamba at takot.
Sa bawat taon, muli at muli
Nating binigkas ang panunumpa
Sa pagniniig ng mga panaginip
Sa pag-ibig na para sa atin
Sa pag-ibig na para sa iba.
At napagtanto natin
Ang mga kabanata ng panahon,
Ang walang katapusang sukat
Ng ating panahon, tayong dalawa,
Tayong dalawang naging bayan,
Tayong naging bayan na magiging bayan.
Dugtong-dugtong ang mga araw,
Linggo, buwan, taon, dekada,
Tag-ulan, tag-araw, at pagbangon.
At ang ngayon ang tagapagdugtong.
Sapagkat ang ngayon
Ang puso ng paulit-ulit na panunumpa.
Ngayon ay isama na natin
Sa panunumpa ang mga anak na di atin.
Nananahan sila sa tahanan ng lahat
Ng mga alalahanin ngunit di nanggaling
Sa ating mga kumot, gabi, at ligaw na balakin.
Ngayon ay kakabit silang
Lahat sa ating anibersaryo,
Tayong kapwa guro sa silid-aralan
ng mga siphayo at pakikibaka,
Tayong kapwa mag-aaral sa maraming aralin
sa pagdarahop at paghahabol ng mailuluto,
Tayong kapwa magulang ng mga anak ng bayang
Magmamahal sa mga kapwa anak ng bayan.
Malayo man tayo sa isa't isa
Ay kaylapit din natin.
Iisa ang layon,
Isa din lamang ang pakay
Sa paglayo:
Ang pagbabalik sa isa't isa,
Saksi ang mga gabi at araw dito man
Sa tahanang wala ang mga halakhak
Ng mga anak na dumidiskarte sa buhay
Ng mga anak na dumisdiskobre kung ano ang bukas
Ng mga anak na di atin na kasama natin
Sa lungkot at galak
Sa hirap at pananagumpay
Sa pakikibaka at pagpapalakas ng loob
Sa pakikipagtunggali at pagpapatibay ng hanay.
Bukas, sa kaarawan ng ating anibersaryo,
Mamimitas tayo ng sariwang pag-asa
Sa mga punong-kahoy sa ating bakuran,
Sa mga bulaklak sa ating halamanan
Sa mga dingding at pintuang tagapagtala
Ng ating nakikipagdimang kasaysayan.
Isama nating pagdiskursuhin ang mga anak,
Atin man o sa bayan.
Isa-isa silang magtestimonya
Sa ating tagumpay
At kabiguan, sasabihin nila ang ating
Walang katapusang pagpapanibagong-buhay.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Dis. 26, 2004
Coup Country
It has become natural now,
this news about coup plots
and the overthrow of the past.
They do it each time,
every time, this exercise
in inverted exclamation point,
for effect and insight.
Before this coup became
a fad, we lived on fear
each time we heard about power
being grabbed by some
well-meaning soldiers
of our rights and regrets.
Once they were young, these
protectors of our decent dreams,
with their energy and exuberance,
some qualities they never lacked
but always had in excess
the way the daylights always
were in excess in the summers
of our happy lives.
Now this talk about coup
in the country is normal.
We think differently now
when the powerholders
cannot exhibit some specs
about who will take over,
who will become the guardian
of morals even as the protector
& preserver of righteousness
presides over the drawing
of the lucky lots
in the numbers game
of life in these islands.
One morning, as a big shot
was about to be buried,
a nation's daughter
is laid to rest in an urn,
the angels dancing with her remains
even as her spirit smiles back.
The early hours were quick
and they came with the break
of dawn and danger.
A coup was supposed to be had,
with the junta to oversee
all, with the junta managing
our grief for the downtrodden,
the destitute, the dead,
the dying. It is for a show,
this seizing of the seconds,
an instant in the time of tantrums
for those who think well of the country
but have only the guns and gold.
No glory there, not at this time,
but the opportunity to amend
the way things are to be said
the way the saying is to be said
the way the said is to be un-said.
We will always be in this coup
country. Coup after coup
of the memory as well as the mind,
we will rise up. The ashes of the dead
will be called back from the urns
and from the graves. The elements
will call the ashes back,
the earth to offer the sacrament of matter
the air to offer the sacrament of the unseen
the water to offer the purging
of purses and pockets
of coup plotters and their accomplices &
the fire to make our counter-plot
better & best.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Dec. 22, 2004
this news about coup plots
and the overthrow of the past.
They do it each time,
every time, this exercise
in inverted exclamation point,
for effect and insight.
Before this coup became
a fad, we lived on fear
each time we heard about power
being grabbed by some
well-meaning soldiers
of our rights and regrets.
Once they were young, these
protectors of our decent dreams,
with their energy and exuberance,
some qualities they never lacked
but always had in excess
the way the daylights always
were in excess in the summers
of our happy lives.
Now this talk about coup
in the country is normal.
We think differently now
when the powerholders
cannot exhibit some specs
about who will take over,
who will become the guardian
of morals even as the protector
& preserver of righteousness
presides over the drawing
of the lucky lots
in the numbers game
of life in these islands.
One morning, as a big shot
was about to be buried,
a nation's daughter
is laid to rest in an urn,
the angels dancing with her remains
even as her spirit smiles back.
The early hours were quick
and they came with the break
of dawn and danger.
A coup was supposed to be had,
with the junta to oversee
all, with the junta managing
our grief for the downtrodden,
the destitute, the dead,
the dying. It is for a show,
this seizing of the seconds,
an instant in the time of tantrums
for those who think well of the country
but have only the guns and gold.
No glory there, not at this time,
but the opportunity to amend
the way things are to be said
the way the saying is to be said
the way the said is to be un-said.
We will always be in this coup
country. Coup after coup
of the memory as well as the mind,
we will rise up. The ashes of the dead
will be called back from the urns
and from the graves. The elements
will call the ashes back,
the earth to offer the sacrament of matter
the air to offer the sacrament of the unseen
the water to offer the purging
of purses and pockets
of coup plotters and their accomplices &
the fire to make our counter-plot
better & best.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Dec. 22, 2004
Ti Panagungarto ti Panday
No madanon ti maikatlo nga aldaw
Iti kinaitatta dagiti ar-araraw
Agungarto ti naitabon a tellaay
Makipagungar iti agungar a panday.
Kastoy ti ebanghelio dagiti mannanao,
Dagiti tarabit a komersiante iti sao,
Dagiti suitik a merkader rigrigattayo,
Dagiti mangay-ayam kinaawanan gawaytayo.
Maysa nga eksena ti tularamid daytoy,
Daytay panangiwaragawag karit a kastoy,
'Tay panangisaklang kadagiti dadaulo,
'Tay panangikorte iti gagem a sekreto.
Planuenda dagitoy a gagem iti rabii,
Iti katengngaan ridep a manangngaasi,
Dagiti agbambantay nga oras iti idda,
Dagiti mangbenbendision a panagatipapa.
Ta ania ngarud ti maaramidan dagiti kailian,
Ta ania ngarud ti bileg dagiti agsarsaraawan,
No di agtainep iti padaya a pagraragsakan,
Panagpunsion dagiti boksit a mabisbisinan?
Isu nga iti agmatuon dagiti liday ken ladingit,
Simmangparagsit met dagiti lallaki a natangsit,
Balabalaenda dagiti wagas ti sabali a sangsangit,
Patalappuagawenda agmangmangisit nga ansisit.
Sinnubot daytoy, kunada, sinnubot agingga't inggana,
Panangisalakan pannakapadso dagiti sapasap a lulua,
Sinnubbot a panangiprusision iti bangkay ti panday,
Sinnubbot a pangtubay iti rikna nakariing a nagabay.
Ay-ayamenda nga awan patinggana, ay-ayamenda latta,
Ti ladawan ti malalaki iti muging dagiti parmata,
Daytay ladawan ti malalaki a taklin dagiti pobre,
Daytoy maitabon a ladawan iti kamposanto ti kari.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Dis. 23, 2004
Iti kinaitatta dagiti ar-araraw
Agungarto ti naitabon a tellaay
Makipagungar iti agungar a panday.
Kastoy ti ebanghelio dagiti mannanao,
Dagiti tarabit a komersiante iti sao,
Dagiti suitik a merkader rigrigattayo,
Dagiti mangay-ayam kinaawanan gawaytayo.
Maysa nga eksena ti tularamid daytoy,
Daytay panangiwaragawag karit a kastoy,
'Tay panangisaklang kadagiti dadaulo,
'Tay panangikorte iti gagem a sekreto.
Planuenda dagitoy a gagem iti rabii,
Iti katengngaan ridep a manangngaasi,
Dagiti agbambantay nga oras iti idda,
Dagiti mangbenbendision a panagatipapa.
Ta ania ngarud ti maaramidan dagiti kailian,
Ta ania ngarud ti bileg dagiti agsarsaraawan,
No di agtainep iti padaya a pagraragsakan,
Panagpunsion dagiti boksit a mabisbisinan?
Isu nga iti agmatuon dagiti liday ken ladingit,
Simmangparagsit met dagiti lallaki a natangsit,
Balabalaenda dagiti wagas ti sabali a sangsangit,
Patalappuagawenda agmangmangisit nga ansisit.
Sinnubot daytoy, kunada, sinnubot agingga't inggana,
Panangisalakan pannakapadso dagiti sapasap a lulua,
Sinnubbot a panangiprusision iti bangkay ti panday,
Sinnubbot a pangtubay iti rikna nakariing a nagabay.
Ay-ayamenda nga awan patinggana, ay-ayamenda latta,
Ti ladawan ti malalaki iti muging dagiti parmata,
Daytay ladawan ti malalaki a taklin dagiti pobre,
Daytoy maitabon a ladawan iti kamposanto ti kari.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Dis. 23, 2004
The Gospel According to a Work Authorization
This is a timeless
trick, an eternal exile's
redeeming grace from all
that which ails the wandering spirit
as you search and seek
from one sea to another
from one door to another
from one street to another
from one country to another
as it has always been,
this quest for new ways
this looking for new roots
if at all this is possible
when mornings have migraines
when the days are dull and dark
& appear but just briefly
& the nights
come right after a late lunch
at a Starbucks corner,
a cup of the cheapest
capuccino and carrot cake,
one slice, just one slice
to make do with the budget
to put an end to that hunger pang
you would not want to bring home
in the night, let it sleep
in your double dream of bounty
and bad vibes.
The gospel according
to a work authorization
is so simple and not.
It is born of purple verses
sometimes seedy and cloudy and sad.
The formula for good and evil
is all there: say the wise word,
the sincere speech, and you are finished.
Say the truth and your truthfulness
comes under fire for saying
something about kindness,
good intentioned, yes, indeed,
but does not produce the desired effects.
It is a contradiction, this.
A bundle of blunders
you do not want to get into
nor commit if you have got
that modicum of self-respect.
You need to think
of the rice money, you say.
Survive and the imperatives
of urgent ethics
will come and visit you.
It is life, the jungle's joke.
But then you say,
we need to sip the aroma
of each cheap hot coffee
even if we down all the dregs,
caffeine and all
to perk up our days.
And so you listen
to other concocted tales,
jugular and jazzy
dazed and dazzling,
the same old tales about promises
for progress and prosperity
by all the presidents you have known
whether here or elsewhere
in the homeland or the heartland
in lands familiar or foreign.
It is about the magic
of myths, the authorization
to work under the tables
of the rich and the not-yet
this last the compatriots'
collecting the sum
of your tears and fears
& calculating the profits
& giving you some morsels
to taste the bitterness of your days.
It is also working side by side
with kitchen sinks,
or above them.
You pray for tips on how to remove
the dirt on your fingertips
not so much because
you do not want others to know
but because others do no care to know
that in a land so far away
you have to work the sewers
you have to work the edges
of hope and losing it
like helplessly watching
the gathering dusk
& not being able to summon the light.
Some stories tell of other things:
a quick divorce without love
in a chapel in the dessert
now the haven of sinners
and saints, traitorous thieves
and decent workers on the furlough
those who labor day-after-day to gamble
with the hours and fate,
to tease the chips and the slot machine
so you can call out, "Come on, big money,
come on, big money!"
or
in the name of a card that
tells you you can now cheat
to your heart's content,
& all of a sudden you remember
all the dark days when
the sugarcane cutters
of Oahu and Maui
save up on calories
to calm down their hunger.
It is still the same
after all these years,
from Allos' stories
to the Stockton scenes of shame,
that episode about dogs
not being allowed to get in
where food and abundance were served
about Filipinos with pug noses
and the look of famine
in their faces
not permitted to imagine
how food was laid out on dainty tables
for effect, the warning on the wall
with its fake pretenses for politeness.
So today, as you get to open
the envelope containing
all your wishes to work and work,
you remember all, the tragedies
and terrible takes
on what is it to be an alien
in a universe of everything english,
loving and living like they do
from dawn to daybreak
from the long a to the short a
from the idiom to the contraction
of both your language and your lips.
With the work authorization
in your hand, you leave for work,
you begin to live to work,
you begin to work to live.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Dec. 22, 2004
trick, an eternal exile's
redeeming grace from all
that which ails the wandering spirit
as you search and seek
from one sea to another
from one door to another
from one street to another
from one country to another
as it has always been,
this quest for new ways
this looking for new roots
if at all this is possible
when mornings have migraines
when the days are dull and dark
& appear but just briefly
& the nights
come right after a late lunch
at a Starbucks corner,
a cup of the cheapest
capuccino and carrot cake,
one slice, just one slice
to make do with the budget
to put an end to that hunger pang
you would not want to bring home
in the night, let it sleep
in your double dream of bounty
and bad vibes.
The gospel according
to a work authorization
is so simple and not.
It is born of purple verses
sometimes seedy and cloudy and sad.
The formula for good and evil
is all there: say the wise word,
the sincere speech, and you are finished.
Say the truth and your truthfulness
comes under fire for saying
something about kindness,
good intentioned, yes, indeed,
but does not produce the desired effects.
It is a contradiction, this.
A bundle of blunders
you do not want to get into
nor commit if you have got
that modicum of self-respect.
You need to think
of the rice money, you say.
Survive and the imperatives
of urgent ethics
will come and visit you.
It is life, the jungle's joke.
But then you say,
we need to sip the aroma
of each cheap hot coffee
even if we down all the dregs,
caffeine and all
to perk up our days.
And so you listen
to other concocted tales,
jugular and jazzy
dazed and dazzling,
the same old tales about promises
for progress and prosperity
by all the presidents you have known
whether here or elsewhere
in the homeland or the heartland
in lands familiar or foreign.
It is about the magic
of myths, the authorization
to work under the tables
of the rich and the not-yet
this last the compatriots'
collecting the sum
of your tears and fears
& calculating the profits
& giving you some morsels
to taste the bitterness of your days.
It is also working side by side
with kitchen sinks,
or above them.
You pray for tips on how to remove
the dirt on your fingertips
not so much because
you do not want others to know
but because others do no care to know
that in a land so far away
you have to work the sewers
you have to work the edges
of hope and losing it
like helplessly watching
the gathering dusk
& not being able to summon the light.
Some stories tell of other things:
a quick divorce without love
in a chapel in the dessert
now the haven of sinners
and saints, traitorous thieves
and decent workers on the furlough
those who labor day-after-day to gamble
with the hours and fate,
to tease the chips and the slot machine
so you can call out, "Come on, big money,
come on, big money!"
or
in the name of a card that
tells you you can now cheat
to your heart's content,
& all of a sudden you remember
all the dark days when
the sugarcane cutters
of Oahu and Maui
save up on calories
to calm down their hunger.
It is still the same
after all these years,
from Allos' stories
to the Stockton scenes of shame,
that episode about dogs
not being allowed to get in
where food and abundance were served
about Filipinos with pug noses
and the look of famine
in their faces
not permitted to imagine
how food was laid out on dainty tables
for effect, the warning on the wall
with its fake pretenses for politeness.
So today, as you get to open
the envelope containing
all your wishes to work and work,
you remember all, the tragedies
and terrible takes
on what is it to be an alien
in a universe of everything english,
loving and living like they do
from dawn to daybreak
from the long a to the short a
from the idiom to the contraction
of both your language and your lips.
With the work authorization
in your hand, you leave for work,
you begin to live to work,
you begin to work to live.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Dec. 22, 2004
This is a Day of Mourning in Two Time Zones
This is a long day of mourning in two time zones,
One a nowness in the manner of accounting the dead
Another in a people's presence from church to crypt.
It is a season beyond borders where sorrows start.
In a war-torn country of dust, terror, and ancient earth
Soldiers partake of a meal of brown cake and nervousness
And down their yearnings for many cold Christmas mornings
With the obligatory red wine and whining to hide the tears.
In another divided land sundered by centuries of oraciones,
One nagging novena to a saint for each day of all the weeks,
One for a patron in the time of rain and storm and flood,
A sea of the masses of people fill the void of pre-dawns
And the warm streets, carry their lost hopes on their shoulders
Even as they trod on past snaking alleys and calm callehon,
Past the early hours and the many nights that had not slept,
Beyond the celluloid dream for a hero that gave quick relief
From the day-to-day troubles and telling temptations
In the theatre of traitors and cheats, manic masters
Masquerading as saviours, messiahs for our miseries,
Narrators all in this our tangled histories of duplicities.
We monitor both events from afar, distant but awed
By the fierce energy that springs from how mornings
Give off much courage for all of us to move on and on,
Believing that a future awaits us, a morrow of song
And singing in this rhythm of life we think we knew
Or have at least divined somewhere in horoscopes
Or in the facile formation of lunatic moons and stars
Or in the multiplying mercies of remembered sobs,
Many if we think of all that which we need to mourn,
Many if we think of all the names now that we etch
In the pantheon of all that have died for peace
And for war, in the peace of an unwanted war,
Here or elsewhere or in countries beyond the seas,
In cities beyond the skies, beyond our shared stories
Of fighting for justice outside dark filmic realities
Of searching for meaning beyond armored speech.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Dec. 21, 2004
One a nowness in the manner of accounting the dead
Another in a people's presence from church to crypt.
It is a season beyond borders where sorrows start.
In a war-torn country of dust, terror, and ancient earth
Soldiers partake of a meal of brown cake and nervousness
And down their yearnings for many cold Christmas mornings
With the obligatory red wine and whining to hide the tears.
In another divided land sundered by centuries of oraciones,
One nagging novena to a saint for each day of all the weeks,
One for a patron in the time of rain and storm and flood,
A sea of the masses of people fill the void of pre-dawns
And the warm streets, carry their lost hopes on their shoulders
Even as they trod on past snaking alleys and calm callehon,
Past the early hours and the many nights that had not slept,
Beyond the celluloid dream for a hero that gave quick relief
From the day-to-day troubles and telling temptations
In the theatre of traitors and cheats, manic masters
Masquerading as saviours, messiahs for our miseries,
Narrators all in this our tangled histories of duplicities.
We monitor both events from afar, distant but awed
By the fierce energy that springs from how mornings
Give off much courage for all of us to move on and on,
Believing that a future awaits us, a morrow of song
And singing in this rhythm of life we think we knew
Or have at least divined somewhere in horoscopes
Or in the facile formation of lunatic moons and stars
Or in the multiplying mercies of remembered sobs,
Many if we think of all that which we need to mourn,
Many if we think of all the names now that we etch
In the pantheon of all that have died for peace
And for war, in the peace of an unwanted war,
Here or elsewhere or in countries beyond the seas,
In cities beyond the skies, beyond our shared stories
Of fighting for justice outside dark filmic realities
Of searching for meaning beyond armored speech.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Dec. 21, 2004
Umay ti Namnama iti Bigat
Uray kasano a tutuok, uray no agtulakaktayo
Iti waw ken bisin ken amin a panagbuteng
Umay ti namnama, kadarato nga umay
Iti bigat dagiti darepdeptayo, iti panawen
Ti panagriingtayo a nasapsapa ngem
Dagiti malinnaawan ken naridap a rikna.
Kuna dagiti damag iti daga a nakayanakan:
Sakasaka ken saksakidol dagiti mamati
A sumuknal iti templo dagiti masida
Wenno kalluto a kabaruanan, wenno
Bang-i ti ittip a rumasuk iti rusok,
Manglanglangan iti husto a bussog
Mangsegsegga iti iliw iti nalingta nga ikan,
Dagitay maalaw kadagiti malmalmes a danum
Kadagiti matikawtikaw a baybay. Iti sabangan
Dagiti amin a regget iti asin a maimurumor iti labay
Wenno maisudsusudsod kas iti bukel ti utong
Kadagiti gumawgawawa a bakras dagiti turod,
Sadiay nga agkammaysa ti tamnay iti bisintayo
Ken ti apgad dagiti nakail-ilala unay a sirmata
Maipapan kadagiti manumeruan a maipapel
A kinalabon kadagiti pagraramanan a ragsak,
Pekpekkel para kadagiti isu amin a tagainep
A madi ken nalidem, kontra signos ti dakes
Iti gasat wenno iti kapay-antayo a kayattayo
Met laeng, wenno kinayattayo lattan ta awan
Ngamin dagiti bandos wenno bituen iti sardam
A mangisuro iti umiso a pul-oy a kannayon
Dagiti pia ken karadkadtayo manipud idi punganay
Ken agingga koma itatta. Ngem ala, adda paripirip
Maipapan iti panagballigitayo a mangipayapay
Iti aklo a malmalday sakbay a kalungkongentayo
Dagiti kalangakang a pinggan wenno ungot.
Malagiptayo dagiti seremonia ti linglingay,
Am-ampog iti mata kas iti ubing a nakusim,
Daytoy ar-arkos dagiti dila dagiti tatang,
Senial dagiti naimot pay laeng nga aldaw,
Ti managimbubukod a pariok wenno banga
Wenno sinublan a pagalaan iti bingay
Iti pagdadayaan. Ditoy a sumangbay
Dagiti lagip, dumtengda kas mannanakaw
Iti rabrabii wenno katengngaan ti aldaw:
"Asin, asin, makalulukmeg iti pingping,
Asin, asin, makalulukmeg iti pingping."
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Dec. 20, 2004
Iti waw ken bisin ken amin a panagbuteng
Umay ti namnama, kadarato nga umay
Iti bigat dagiti darepdeptayo, iti panawen
Ti panagriingtayo a nasapsapa ngem
Dagiti malinnaawan ken naridap a rikna.
Kuna dagiti damag iti daga a nakayanakan:
Sakasaka ken saksakidol dagiti mamati
A sumuknal iti templo dagiti masida
Wenno kalluto a kabaruanan, wenno
Bang-i ti ittip a rumasuk iti rusok,
Manglanglangan iti husto a bussog
Mangsegsegga iti iliw iti nalingta nga ikan,
Dagitay maalaw kadagiti malmalmes a danum
Kadagiti matikawtikaw a baybay. Iti sabangan
Dagiti amin a regget iti asin a maimurumor iti labay
Wenno maisudsusudsod kas iti bukel ti utong
Kadagiti gumawgawawa a bakras dagiti turod,
Sadiay nga agkammaysa ti tamnay iti bisintayo
Ken ti apgad dagiti nakail-ilala unay a sirmata
Maipapan kadagiti manumeruan a maipapel
A kinalabon kadagiti pagraramanan a ragsak,
Pekpekkel para kadagiti isu amin a tagainep
A madi ken nalidem, kontra signos ti dakes
Iti gasat wenno iti kapay-antayo a kayattayo
Met laeng, wenno kinayattayo lattan ta awan
Ngamin dagiti bandos wenno bituen iti sardam
A mangisuro iti umiso a pul-oy a kannayon
Dagiti pia ken karadkadtayo manipud idi punganay
Ken agingga koma itatta. Ngem ala, adda paripirip
Maipapan iti panagballigitayo a mangipayapay
Iti aklo a malmalday sakbay a kalungkongentayo
Dagiti kalangakang a pinggan wenno ungot.
Malagiptayo dagiti seremonia ti linglingay,
Am-ampog iti mata kas iti ubing a nakusim,
Daytoy ar-arkos dagiti dila dagiti tatang,
Senial dagiti naimot pay laeng nga aldaw,
Ti managimbubukod a pariok wenno banga
Wenno sinublan a pagalaan iti bingay
Iti pagdadayaan. Ditoy a sumangbay
Dagiti lagip, dumtengda kas mannanakaw
Iti rabrabii wenno katengngaan ti aldaw:
"Asin, asin, makalulukmeg iti pingping,
Asin, asin, makalulukmeg iti pingping."
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Dec. 20, 2004
Miting de Avance for Ayi
(For a son who writes poems about his love for his land)
Young man, welcome to the world, worded
Divine and pristine, uncorrupted. You are
Going to be past the teeny-teeny wishes
Of your youthful years. Nineteen is some
Game, some kind of a peek-a-boo for
Poetry in rallies, the one you join in, go
With to shout it out with your lungs out
The ugly reality of a nation's life,
One defined by cheap fish now inflated
To include egos of presidents and actors,
Crazies all in cahoots with crazed luck.
No, we made the luck, with the votes
And all, with our forgiving hearts,
Unable to whack the child in them,
The impostors and pretenders of country
Love, loves. Pretty soon you will see all.
At twenty you will see the bravado
Of braggarts, politicians, their alias.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
LA, CA
2004
Young man, welcome to the world, worded
Divine and pristine, uncorrupted. You are
Going to be past the teeny-teeny wishes
Of your youthful years. Nineteen is some
Game, some kind of a peek-a-boo for
Poetry in rallies, the one you join in, go
With to shout it out with your lungs out
The ugly reality of a nation's life,
One defined by cheap fish now inflated
To include egos of presidents and actors,
Crazies all in cahoots with crazed luck.
No, we made the luck, with the votes
And all, with our forgiving hearts,
Unable to whack the child in them,
The impostors and pretenders of country
Love, loves. Pretty soon you will see all.
At twenty you will see the bravado
Of braggarts, politicians, their alias.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
LA, CA
2004
Our Mortal Dreams, Here They Come
(Another OFW comes home in a coffin, a news item)
In another city, a countryman dies.
A woman caregiver, the wires tell
In words circuituous and fanciful
You never see the dire days of her
Death. It is fall here as you imagine
The delayed lamentations
Of children, mother and kin,
The same scene haunting you so
In your mortal dreams. It is lifted
From Filipinas, the film and fiction,
A fact for overseas workers, this lady
Dying with her fears. She leaps
To her end, she is raped of her song,
Robbed in daylights coming in low
And late, the way the amo came in
To her with the lust of evenings
Named and unnamed. Another Filipina
Dies, another hope comes alive
Sparkling in the deep dark
Of stolen secrets, useless loves.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
2004
In another city, a countryman dies.
A woman caregiver, the wires tell
In words circuituous and fanciful
You never see the dire days of her
Death. It is fall here as you imagine
The delayed lamentations
Of children, mother and kin,
The same scene haunting you so
In your mortal dreams. It is lifted
From Filipinas, the film and fiction,
A fact for overseas workers, this lady
Dying with her fears. She leaps
To her end, she is raped of her song,
Robbed in daylights coming in low
And late, the way the amo came in
To her with the lust of evenings
Named and unnamed. Another Filipina
Dies, another hope comes alive
Sparkling in the deep dark
Of stolen secrets, useless loves.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
2004
St Basil at Six
(For Rev. Fr. Efren Villanueva, migrant, friend,
and classmate I bumped into in Los Angeles
after 22 years of not meeting up)
Tonite, we tell tall tales of the lies
We learned, lived through all along
This Los Angeles boulevard. We share
The same tales, their titles our hopes,
Their plot the greed of lilac loves
In lavenders and bricks and browns.
Here, in these streets and sidewalks
And pavements we make a pack
With evil without signing up in a blood
Compact. Over tofu and fish and kimchi,
We swap stories, all sorts, spices
In between sipping the soup piping
Hot in our broken hearts. We know
Better now, much better now, we migrants
From pilgrim islands. Lilac ladies,
Lilac men, lilac loves: they all come
In all shapes and sizes and kinds
To pray on stone angels, pray for
Us and then, and then, prey on us.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
St Basil Church, Wilshire, LA
2004
and classmate I bumped into in Los Angeles
after 22 years of not meeting up)
Tonite, we tell tall tales of the lies
We learned, lived through all along
This Los Angeles boulevard. We share
The same tales, their titles our hopes,
Their plot the greed of lilac loves
In lavenders and bricks and browns.
Here, in these streets and sidewalks
And pavements we make a pack
With evil without signing up in a blood
Compact. Over tofu and fish and kimchi,
We swap stories, all sorts, spices
In between sipping the soup piping
Hot in our broken hearts. We know
Better now, much better now, we migrants
From pilgrim islands. Lilac ladies,
Lilac men, lilac loves: they all come
In all shapes and sizes and kinds
To pray on stone angels, pray for
Us and then, and then, prey on us.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
St Basil Church, Wilshire, LA
2004
Stealing Time in a Cold Place
I steal time to write poems,
Food to satiate my soul, pencil, paper,
Pocket, this last one ever the pauper's,
Impoverished for pesos, favors, faith,
currencies I need to buy dollars
The politicos of my homeland
Squander to pay off padres,
Compadres, pawns, patrons, fawning
Defendants of all this charade,
This circle of a circus in this
Black comedic clime, country to our
Chaos, begotten of sin and salvation.
I write of our chanting from afar,
On the sullen skies shares sorrow
For sorrow with starving lines, sentences
About magical men dying while bearing
The santo niño of a God in Quiapo.
On this 357 and 2, the Gardena, the Metro,
I steal time to write of my work
To sell my soul, mind, word.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Gardena/Los Angeles, CA
2004
NB-
The 357 and 2 are buses plying the Gardena-LA & Gardena-Torrance, CA route. Hey, amigos, I write poems on buses
and on waiting sheds. The poems nag me when I do not write them. It is only when I have written them that I am able to have
my own good share of sleep. Pray tell, how do you call this phenomenon? While I wait for the red light to go green, I survey the possibilities, check on my break, grab the pen and the notebook on the passenger seat and scribble what I can when
the word/s come/s. If I fail in this process, I repeat the word/s in my mind, recite it/them and try writing them again when the traffic stops. So I call this as my own way of stealing time. But is there ever any sane poet?
Food to satiate my soul, pencil, paper,
Pocket, this last one ever the pauper's,
Impoverished for pesos, favors, faith,
currencies I need to buy dollars
The politicos of my homeland
Squander to pay off padres,
Compadres, pawns, patrons, fawning
Defendants of all this charade,
This circle of a circus in this
Black comedic clime, country to our
Chaos, begotten of sin and salvation.
I write of our chanting from afar,
On the sullen skies shares sorrow
For sorrow with starving lines, sentences
About magical men dying while bearing
The santo niño of a God in Quiapo.
On this 357 and 2, the Gardena, the Metro,
I steal time to write of my work
To sell my soul, mind, word.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Gardena/Los Angeles, CA
2004
NB-
The 357 and 2 are buses plying the Gardena-LA & Gardena-Torrance, CA route. Hey, amigos, I write poems on buses
and on waiting sheds. The poems nag me when I do not write them. It is only when I have written them that I am able to have
my own good share of sleep. Pray tell, how do you call this phenomenon? While I wait for the red light to go green, I survey the possibilities, check on my break, grab the pen and the notebook on the passenger seat and scribble what I can when
the word/s come/s. If I fail in this process, I repeat the word/s in my mind, recite it/them and try writing them again when the traffic stops. So I call this as my own way of stealing time. But is there ever any sane poet?
The Picture Telling All
(Angelo dela Cruz, an OFW, is poised to die.- a news item)
The picture tells all, Angelo.
The masked men, armed with faith,
And their guns are about to snap
Your back and take that as swee good luck.
They might call that too as a passport
To some heavens not found here in America
Nor in the countries where we toil
To pursue the dream we cannot have
At home and in the homeland.
We can only be afraid now
Of the morrow that is not yet come,
One defined by blood, ransomed by blood.
Do we blame your captors for this bad show?
Do we blame the tyrants for their rule
Of law, their rhetoric of pure sorrow?
I see the candles now in your hometown
The poor light for your journey
And the president sheds a tear or two.
It is always this way, Angelo,
This calvary that we carry, the cross
For centuries and centuries too heavy.
In the meantime, our politicos eagle eye
For bribes, their women for cheap loves.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Artesia, CA
2004
The picture tells all, Angelo.
The masked men, armed with faith,
And their guns are about to snap
Your back and take that as swee good luck.
They might call that too as a passport
To some heavens not found here in America
Nor in the countries where we toil
To pursue the dream we cannot have
At home and in the homeland.
We can only be afraid now
Of the morrow that is not yet come,
One defined by blood, ransomed by blood.
Do we blame your captors for this bad show?
Do we blame the tyrants for their rule
Of law, their rhetoric of pure sorrow?
I see the candles now in your hometown
The poor light for your journey
And the president sheds a tear or two.
It is always this way, Angelo,
This calvary that we carry, the cross
For centuries and centuries too heavy.
In the meantime, our politicos eagle eye
For bribes, their women for cheap loves.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Artesia, CA
2004
Dissecting the Corrupt and Corrupting Consequences of the Conflicts of Nations and Locating the Rizal Alternative to Resolve these Conflicts
Dissecting the Corrupt and Corrupting Consequences of the Conflicts of Nations and Locating the Rizal Alternative to Resolve these Continuing Conflicts
By A. S. Agcaoili
There is a need to dissect the anatomy of conflicts that have become a corrupt and corrupting raison d’etre for many countries, cultures, and civilizations. These conflicts have taken on various forms. There is a long list—-a kind of a callous catalogue of the ways humanity has elaborated its death knell. The list is relentless in its capacity to offer violence and death, famine and deprivation, poverty and injustice: wars, acts of terror, secessionist and revolutionary movements, overt and covert occupations, civilian revolts, genocide, religious conflicts, and nationalist struggles. To locate Jose Rizal in these questions of fatally flawed conflicts of nations is to go back to the sources of his humanitarian and internationalist ideals.
This is a Rizal that saw so much of the collective sufferings and sorrows of peoples and societies even as he witnessed these and personally experienced them in his own country.
This is a Rizal that documented the evils of domination and conquest that was couched in a seemingly naïve, neutral, and non-political terms as this was vended in promotional marketing terms such as "civilizing the natives," "evangelizing the heathens," "manifest destiny of bigger brother nations to care for the small and underdeveloped ones," and "moral obligation to promote democracies." In the earlier days, this was packaged--ribbons and wrappings and the obligatory small card for the greetings--as "God and glory and gold," with God, capital G, as the stress and the point of attack. It was a gospel, alright, and it was "God." But it was a gospel according to the dictates of an imperial program and the "God" was a "God" according to the uses of the conquerors: white and western, powerful and puritanistic, chic and calculating--in effect, a god of the commerce of war, a god of the warlords, and a god of the merchants of wretchedness.
This is a Rizal that saw what it took to fight for a people’s basic freedoms--a fight that took flight and soared in the minds and imagination of the suffering masses. In seeing this, he reinvented the discourse of the fight into a sensible grammar of struggle for and in the name of the people’s liberation from the bondage of injustice and un-freedom.
This is a Rizal that recognized the fire in the passion for a meaningful method to move on with the struggle that promises redemption, a Rizal that realized how the very idea of a struggle moved people and touched their hearts, stirred their spirits, and made them resolve to hold on to their just causes: food and freedom, jobs and justice, land and liberty--dreams that defined their days and desires.
This is a Rizal that saw the infinite possibilities and promise of the idea of a Philippine Revolution that was to be conducted and staged in the name of a long-suffering people, the same idea of a revolt and revolution we see everywhere in all the continents where injustice and inequity are the rules rather than the exception. A philosopher once meditated on "the revolt of the masses"--a revolt that is necessary to renew social relations and put an end to socially built-in, inherited privileges that were reserved for the few. Another one talked of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" that was meant to eradicate the ugly reality of classes that divided peoples and sundered societies.
From here we see what is wrong--we witness the workings of a wrong that, when not righted and when it becomes "the way things are," when it becomes such that it is a commonplace--it becomes a disconnect that breeds social illness, a "dis-ease," "a social cancer," one in which even the suave touching brings about pain and discomfort. This is the context of "noli me tangere" that morphs into a mantra: "touch me not," the mantra demanding in the end a filibuster.
But we cannot allow the cancer--the conflict of peoples, the conflict of societies, the conflict of nations--to spread. Within the lens of interconnectedness of all beings and of all life, within the frame of a world that is not "an island unto itself," and within the perspective that forces us to sit down together in that bargaining table so that the fundamental issues on what makes sense to all of mankind could be addressed, there is no such thing as the force and power of conflict as the premise for making human and international understanding to be possible. We are thus called into a restatement of our parameters for the conflicts to be resolved. The process to doing that is truthfulness--and truthfulness demands of us a sensitivity to the dictates of a clear and committed conscience, one that is not self-serving but gracious, tolerant, humane.
It takes a critical consciousness to arrive at this kind of a conscience, a mindset that is essentially grounded on a broad understanding of the dynamic of cultures and societies, an understanding of the complex and complicated nature of power and politics, and the borderless reach of capital and its effects--not to mention the subtle projects of empires to control the world and its institutions.
This kind of a critical consciousness makes us see the world as it is: with its truths and falsities, with its global drama of power and powerlessness, with its higher yearning for that which renews in order to transcend the banal and the unimportant. In many references to education and that capacity of the mind to grasp the essentials, Rizal, in his works as well as in his actions, moved towards embracing warmly this critical consciousness as an antidote to conflict, as the panacea to the question of a bloody resolution of misunderstandings, as an alternative to a fierce adherence to the barrel of a gun and the bullet. In saying this, we are not discounting other alternatives to resolving war and injustice. We are not making a franchise of the word that salves and saves. When the Philippine Revolution was in its birth throes--when the Kataas-taasang Kagalang-galangang Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan under Andres Bonifacio was rallying for that final solution to the Spanish colonization problem and was calling out to Jose Rizal for his imprimatur, Rizal sent out a precaution and prescription to what could be done at that time. Rizal was bogged down by a number of issues: (a) how prepared were the filibusters in terms of understanding fully what sacrifices the struggle demanded and (b) how prepared were they in terms of the logic and logistics of war--materiel and money and foreign assistance from nations that understood the meaning of giving the gift of freedom to other nations. We see here a scenario of thought that builds on both reason and passion, seeing things objectively and yet, with the ember of emotion pulsing fire and pulsating with life, these things that are not right are subjected to scrutiny and then, the enlightened actors and agents commit themselves to their correction in order to allow truth and beauty and justice to reign once again. Rizal saw no other way to propose social justice as the only real remedy to the conflicts of nation—and to the conflicts within nations. Rizal saw that the naming of the problem has to be done with that rite of courage of spelling out the inequities and the institutions that support these inequities. Rizal saw of the urgency of calling the violence from these inequities as violence and not love.
Seen thus in these lights, the solution to conflicts is not in the running away from the moral obligation to unearth their root causes and in adopting a certain double entendre language of courtesy and politeness--a kind of a diplomatic dialect designed and calculated to not to hurt the feelings of the powerful perpetrators of these conflicts.
Wars, the United Nations Constitution holds, begin in the minds of men. Before wars become a full scale show of force--before they become the language of might, before they become a social drama of the tragic that they are and that present as exhibits, act by act, the vanquished and the victors--they are first and foremost some forms of consciousness. They are some forms of an idealization of some fiercely guarded positions in reference to a conflicted issue. They are concepts with their own display of blood and gore, of hatred and annihilation, of pulverizing the enemy, of reducing them to smithereens. They are mindsets that call for actions whose moral worth may be questionable, their legitimacy one of empty rhetoric and shallow rationalizations by those who call the shots, who hold the purse to the financing of profitable wastage of lives and limbs, of the irreversible destruction of the citadels of civilizations and cathedrals of faith, and the profiteering that comes from investing on people’s fears and anguish. The moral here is that the pretentious claim to that which good is immoral. The moral here is that the conflicts of nations--the conflicts that bring about unnecessary wars--is a pointless exercise. The point--if there is a point at all--in the conflicts of nations is that it is the ultimately pointless act, the ultimate vacuity that must be unmasked at once.
The road to the resolution of conflicts is one in which reason and its possibilities are played out to the full--a reason that is tempered by passion for that which is just, fair, and true. The only road, thus to end all these corrupt and corrupting conflicts is the road to peace: the road to speech, the road to dialogue, the road to language, the road to discourse--in short, that road that we draw up with sincerity and honesty and transparency, the road that takes in all the cost of war, the accounting of our dreams, the covenant to making it possible for man and his world to become a slice of the eternal.
This road is not easy. We are forced to take the high road with its gusty winds and dust storms that make us uneasy in the journey. It makes us take stock of what we have got--the will to do it; the belief that this can be done; the courage to innovate, invent, and reinvent our methodologies and procedures; and the boldness to define and redefine our terms of engagement and negotiation. But there is no wavering here--only that will to succeed--because we cannot afford to fail. This idea of pursuing what critical consciousness dictates and demands is what stirred Rizal into rethinking the means and methods of resolving the issues that attend to the social conflicts of his time. This reasoned rethinking demands daring--but daring we must give in order to allow peace to come about, flower, flourish, and bloom. For here, life is at stake--and there is no substitute to life. And there are no willing proxies in death.
The Rizal alternative--one of reasoned discourse, one of a dialogical understanding of the healing promises of peaceful remedies, one that takes into account the potency and potential of naming the conflicts and draw from there the humane and life-affirming remedies--is one of the many alternatives that we can explore for its promise of infinite possibilities, one that can inform us profoundly, and one that can shape the solutions for what they are supposed to be: long-lasting solutions because they strike at the core of conflicts and not at their camouflages.
-30-
December 19, 2004
By A. S. Agcaoili
There is a need to dissect the anatomy of conflicts that have become a corrupt and corrupting raison d’etre for many countries, cultures, and civilizations. These conflicts have taken on various forms. There is a long list—-a kind of a callous catalogue of the ways humanity has elaborated its death knell. The list is relentless in its capacity to offer violence and death, famine and deprivation, poverty and injustice: wars, acts of terror, secessionist and revolutionary movements, overt and covert occupations, civilian revolts, genocide, religious conflicts, and nationalist struggles. To locate Jose Rizal in these questions of fatally flawed conflicts of nations is to go back to the sources of his humanitarian and internationalist ideals.
This is a Rizal that saw so much of the collective sufferings and sorrows of peoples and societies even as he witnessed these and personally experienced them in his own country.
This is a Rizal that documented the evils of domination and conquest that was couched in a seemingly naïve, neutral, and non-political terms as this was vended in promotional marketing terms such as "civilizing the natives," "evangelizing the heathens," "manifest destiny of bigger brother nations to care for the small and underdeveloped ones," and "moral obligation to promote democracies." In the earlier days, this was packaged--ribbons and wrappings and the obligatory small card for the greetings--as "God and glory and gold," with God, capital G, as the stress and the point of attack. It was a gospel, alright, and it was "God." But it was a gospel according to the dictates of an imperial program and the "God" was a "God" according to the uses of the conquerors: white and western, powerful and puritanistic, chic and calculating--in effect, a god of the commerce of war, a god of the warlords, and a god of the merchants of wretchedness.
This is a Rizal that saw what it took to fight for a people’s basic freedoms--a fight that took flight and soared in the minds and imagination of the suffering masses. In seeing this, he reinvented the discourse of the fight into a sensible grammar of struggle for and in the name of the people’s liberation from the bondage of injustice and un-freedom.
This is a Rizal that recognized the fire in the passion for a meaningful method to move on with the struggle that promises redemption, a Rizal that realized how the very idea of a struggle moved people and touched their hearts, stirred their spirits, and made them resolve to hold on to their just causes: food and freedom, jobs and justice, land and liberty--dreams that defined their days and desires.
This is a Rizal that saw the infinite possibilities and promise of the idea of a Philippine Revolution that was to be conducted and staged in the name of a long-suffering people, the same idea of a revolt and revolution we see everywhere in all the continents where injustice and inequity are the rules rather than the exception. A philosopher once meditated on "the revolt of the masses"--a revolt that is necessary to renew social relations and put an end to socially built-in, inherited privileges that were reserved for the few. Another one talked of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" that was meant to eradicate the ugly reality of classes that divided peoples and sundered societies.
From here we see what is wrong--we witness the workings of a wrong that, when not righted and when it becomes "the way things are," when it becomes such that it is a commonplace--it becomes a disconnect that breeds social illness, a "dis-ease," "a social cancer," one in which even the suave touching brings about pain and discomfort. This is the context of "noli me tangere" that morphs into a mantra: "touch me not," the mantra demanding in the end a filibuster.
But we cannot allow the cancer--the conflict of peoples, the conflict of societies, the conflict of nations--to spread. Within the lens of interconnectedness of all beings and of all life, within the frame of a world that is not "an island unto itself," and within the perspective that forces us to sit down together in that bargaining table so that the fundamental issues on what makes sense to all of mankind could be addressed, there is no such thing as the force and power of conflict as the premise for making human and international understanding to be possible. We are thus called into a restatement of our parameters for the conflicts to be resolved. The process to doing that is truthfulness--and truthfulness demands of us a sensitivity to the dictates of a clear and committed conscience, one that is not self-serving but gracious, tolerant, humane.
It takes a critical consciousness to arrive at this kind of a conscience, a mindset that is essentially grounded on a broad understanding of the dynamic of cultures and societies, an understanding of the complex and complicated nature of power and politics, and the borderless reach of capital and its effects--not to mention the subtle projects of empires to control the world and its institutions.
This kind of a critical consciousness makes us see the world as it is: with its truths and falsities, with its global drama of power and powerlessness, with its higher yearning for that which renews in order to transcend the banal and the unimportant. In many references to education and that capacity of the mind to grasp the essentials, Rizal, in his works as well as in his actions, moved towards embracing warmly this critical consciousness as an antidote to conflict, as the panacea to the question of a bloody resolution of misunderstandings, as an alternative to a fierce adherence to the barrel of a gun and the bullet. In saying this, we are not discounting other alternatives to resolving war and injustice. We are not making a franchise of the word that salves and saves. When the Philippine Revolution was in its birth throes--when the Kataas-taasang Kagalang-galangang Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan under Andres Bonifacio was rallying for that final solution to the Spanish colonization problem and was calling out to Jose Rizal for his imprimatur, Rizal sent out a precaution and prescription to what could be done at that time. Rizal was bogged down by a number of issues: (a) how prepared were the filibusters in terms of understanding fully what sacrifices the struggle demanded and (b) how prepared were they in terms of the logic and logistics of war--materiel and money and foreign assistance from nations that understood the meaning of giving the gift of freedom to other nations. We see here a scenario of thought that builds on both reason and passion, seeing things objectively and yet, with the ember of emotion pulsing fire and pulsating with life, these things that are not right are subjected to scrutiny and then, the enlightened actors and agents commit themselves to their correction in order to allow truth and beauty and justice to reign once again. Rizal saw no other way to propose social justice as the only real remedy to the conflicts of nation—and to the conflicts within nations. Rizal saw that the naming of the problem has to be done with that rite of courage of spelling out the inequities and the institutions that support these inequities. Rizal saw of the urgency of calling the violence from these inequities as violence and not love.
Seen thus in these lights, the solution to conflicts is not in the running away from the moral obligation to unearth their root causes and in adopting a certain double entendre language of courtesy and politeness--a kind of a diplomatic dialect designed and calculated to not to hurt the feelings of the powerful perpetrators of these conflicts.
Wars, the United Nations Constitution holds, begin in the minds of men. Before wars become a full scale show of force--before they become the language of might, before they become a social drama of the tragic that they are and that present as exhibits, act by act, the vanquished and the victors--they are first and foremost some forms of consciousness. They are some forms of an idealization of some fiercely guarded positions in reference to a conflicted issue. They are concepts with their own display of blood and gore, of hatred and annihilation, of pulverizing the enemy, of reducing them to smithereens. They are mindsets that call for actions whose moral worth may be questionable, their legitimacy one of empty rhetoric and shallow rationalizations by those who call the shots, who hold the purse to the financing of profitable wastage of lives and limbs, of the irreversible destruction of the citadels of civilizations and cathedrals of faith, and the profiteering that comes from investing on people’s fears and anguish. The moral here is that the pretentious claim to that which good is immoral. The moral here is that the conflicts of nations--the conflicts that bring about unnecessary wars--is a pointless exercise. The point--if there is a point at all--in the conflicts of nations is that it is the ultimately pointless act, the ultimate vacuity that must be unmasked at once.
The road to the resolution of conflicts is one in which reason and its possibilities are played out to the full--a reason that is tempered by passion for that which is just, fair, and true. The only road, thus to end all these corrupt and corrupting conflicts is the road to peace: the road to speech, the road to dialogue, the road to language, the road to discourse--in short, that road that we draw up with sincerity and honesty and transparency, the road that takes in all the cost of war, the accounting of our dreams, the covenant to making it possible for man and his world to become a slice of the eternal.
This road is not easy. We are forced to take the high road with its gusty winds and dust storms that make us uneasy in the journey. It makes us take stock of what we have got--the will to do it; the belief that this can be done; the courage to innovate, invent, and reinvent our methodologies and procedures; and the boldness to define and redefine our terms of engagement and negotiation. But there is no wavering here--only that will to succeed--because we cannot afford to fail. This idea of pursuing what critical consciousness dictates and demands is what stirred Rizal into rethinking the means and methods of resolving the issues that attend to the social conflicts of his time. This reasoned rethinking demands daring--but daring we must give in order to allow peace to come about, flower, flourish, and bloom. For here, life is at stake--and there is no substitute to life. And there are no willing proxies in death.
The Rizal alternative--one of reasoned discourse, one of a dialogical understanding of the healing promises of peaceful remedies, one that takes into account the potency and potential of naming the conflicts and draw from there the humane and life-affirming remedies--is one of the many alternatives that we can explore for its promise of infinite possibilities, one that can inform us profoundly, and one that can shape the solutions for what they are supposed to be: long-lasting solutions because they strike at the core of conflicts and not at their camouflages.
-30-
December 19, 2004
Nightfall in Indianapolis, One
(For Moustafa, and then, for Salve)
Lovers come and go like predawn lights
In Indiana, past the Parthenon of a new
And renewed love, this last one a gift,
God-given, a reward for coming to grief.
But the beloved stays, lingers a little
Longer to entwine with the sadnesses
Of beds, linens, pillows, cares
All awaiting coupling with the alien,
Strange beasts of our privileged
Life stories pulsing with hopes,
Pulsating with nightfalls, dreams,
Gyrating, radiating with sunsets,
The orange of young eves,
The green of luscious lawns
Surrounding the home of your heart
Come alive, your with her,
She with you in that one
Ultimate call for song,
You and the belowed dueting
In the chorus of forms.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Los Angeles, CA
2004
Lovers come and go like predawn lights
In Indiana, past the Parthenon of a new
And renewed love, this last one a gift,
God-given, a reward for coming to grief.
But the beloved stays, lingers a little
Longer to entwine with the sadnesses
Of beds, linens, pillows, cares
All awaiting coupling with the alien,
Strange beasts of our privileged
Life stories pulsing with hopes,
Pulsating with nightfalls, dreams,
Gyrating, radiating with sunsets,
The orange of young eves,
The green of luscious lawns
Surrounding the home of your heart
Come alive, your with her,
She with you in that one
Ultimate call for song,
You and the belowed dueting
In the chorus of forms.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Los Angeles, CA
2004
Free for All, This Sideshow
Free for all,
this sideshow.
You take the ticket
for entrances and no exit,
the price cut
to a third
because
some
body
BIG
is born in a manger.
A show of no-force,
this farce, a.k.a.
happy holidays
the terrorists
the capitalists
the religionists
the clerics
have either vowed
to reject or
respect
as in centuries past
of victory or
of defeat.
In some ways, this is called
Domination, capital D.
Or another form
of covert colonization
of the mind, capital C.
Or that capital
of all the capitals
you can think of,
capital C:
Capitalism gone haywire,
brainless, mindless.
Irrational.
Arational.
Atavistic.
Immoral.
All the adjectives
you can think of
to account
this grammar of greed,
this cadence of cold conceit,
years and years
of the same greed,
the same conceit,
all the time in frenzy,
the beat in allegro,
the rush in andante.
This is what happens
when the time of our life
loses its heart
and its spirit
goes kaput,
is gone,
dead.
It becomes
a new big D, dominant or
a new big C, capitalist.
And so we lose heart.
We cannot speak
of forgetting
here.
There is no such
when the soul
is somewhere else,
with the gusts in the west,
with the surf riding high
on the balmy waters
and the air is a breeze
soothing you.
For free.
For a fee you speak
of going home to partake
of ricecakes and the reasons
for the remotest of possibilies
of either celebrating
or just sleeping it off.
The festive seasons
are the timeliest
for the show.
There are the bonuses,
a jacking up of payslips
merry morale
for the shopkeepers
to rake it all
to have all of it
in beribboned boxes
of sweet nothingness.
You go through
that, for its force
of a farce, a yearend
ceremony of lost loves.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Dec. 18, 2004
this sideshow.
You take the ticket
for entrances and no exit,
the price cut
to a third
because
some
body
BIG
is born in a manger.
A show of no-force,
this farce, a.k.a.
happy holidays
the terrorists
the capitalists
the religionists
the clerics
have either vowed
to reject or
respect
as in centuries past
of victory or
of defeat.
In some ways, this is called
Domination, capital D.
Or another form
of covert colonization
of the mind, capital C.
Or that capital
of all the capitals
you can think of,
capital C:
Capitalism gone haywire,
brainless, mindless.
Irrational.
Arational.
Atavistic.
Immoral.
All the adjectives
you can think of
to account
this grammar of greed,
this cadence of cold conceit,
years and years
of the same greed,
the same conceit,
all the time in frenzy,
the beat in allegro,
the rush in andante.
This is what happens
when the time of our life
loses its heart
and its spirit
goes kaput,
is gone,
dead.
It becomes
a new big D, dominant or
a new big C, capitalist.
And so we lose heart.
We cannot speak
of forgetting
here.
There is no such
when the soul
is somewhere else,
with the gusts in the west,
with the surf riding high
on the balmy waters
and the air is a breeze
soothing you.
For free.
For a fee you speak
of going home to partake
of ricecakes and the reasons
for the remotest of possibilies
of either celebrating
or just sleeping it off.
The festive seasons
are the timeliest
for the show.
There are the bonuses,
a jacking up of payslips
merry morale
for the shopkeepers
to rake it all
to have all of it
in beribboned boxes
of sweet nothingness.
You go through
that, for its force
of a farce, a yearend
ceremony of lost loves.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Dec. 18, 2004
Di Pa Huling Huntahan Sa Konggreso Ng Mga Masaklap na Kapalaran Sa Aking Bayan
Di ito ang huling huntahan
sa konggreso ng ating
masaklap na kapalaran.
Mamamayan tayo
sa lipunan
ng ating buhay
na pananabik
sa katarungan
ng mga nakakasapat
na pakinabang
sa hapag-kainan
ng kung ano ang angkop
para sa mga karaingan,
sa katuparan ng pangarap
para sa isang masaganang
kainang di lang iilan
ang dumidighay pagkatapos
kundi tayong lahat,
dating mga pinipi ng wikang makapangyarihan,
dating mga biningi ng tinig na nakakapanlumo,
dating mga pinilay ng mga utos ng mga hari
dating mga binulag ng mga eksena ng karangyaan
na ngayon ay kasama sa mga sabayang paghalakhak,
buo at nambubuhay ng mga kalamnang pagal
nagdiriwang
sa pagdiriwang
ng mga pagdiriwang
na kasali tayo, kasalo, kasama.
Kahit sabihin nating namayapa na
ang mga imahinasyon tungkol
sa pagbabalik ng mga naghahanap
ng hustisya sa padaya ng pagilian,
kahit sabihin natin na ang katuparan
ng mga ligaw na alalahanin
ay nasa ataul na ngayon at pinagmimisahan
ng mga masang ang alam ay ang orasyon
sa panlipunang katarungan,
kahit ngayon ay bubusugin ka
ng mga akto sa sinehan
o sa pelikula ng kamangmangan,
kahit sa pagpipila-pila
ng mga panaginip natin
ay patutungo tayo sa malawak
na altar ng mga bagong kalungkutan
sa bayan
tulad ng mga lungkot
sa mga panaginip na niraransom
o ng mga kabayang binibihag
ng mga masaganang handaan
para sa mga anak at mga anak
ng bayan,
kahit ngayon ay sasamahan natin
ang namayapang panaginip
sa kanyang huling hantungan
sa musoleo ng siglo-siglong
panagimpan,
sasabihin natin sa ating mga sarili:
Huhusgahan natin ang mga mababangis
na hangin at madarang na araw.
Bibigkasin natin itong sentensya
ng lahat ng mga sentensiyang
noon pa sana natin naisip,
isinagawa, pinangalanan,
ginawang pinal na pangungusap upang
maging puso ng ating pansamantalang
pagluluksa:
Hindi pa ito ang huling huntahan
sa konggreso ng ating masaklap
na kapalaran.
Hahanapin natin ang huling huntahan
sa mga bukal ng ating pagtangis.
Dudukalin natin ang katubusan
sa mga parang at mga gabing
nagsisilang ng kapayapaan
sa dulang at sa himlayan.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Dis. 18, 2004
sa konggreso ng ating
masaklap na kapalaran.
Mamamayan tayo
sa lipunan
ng ating buhay
na pananabik
sa katarungan
ng mga nakakasapat
na pakinabang
sa hapag-kainan
ng kung ano ang angkop
para sa mga karaingan,
sa katuparan ng pangarap
para sa isang masaganang
kainang di lang iilan
ang dumidighay pagkatapos
kundi tayong lahat,
dating mga pinipi ng wikang makapangyarihan,
dating mga biningi ng tinig na nakakapanlumo,
dating mga pinilay ng mga utos ng mga hari
dating mga binulag ng mga eksena ng karangyaan
na ngayon ay kasama sa mga sabayang paghalakhak,
buo at nambubuhay ng mga kalamnang pagal
nagdiriwang
sa pagdiriwang
ng mga pagdiriwang
na kasali tayo, kasalo, kasama.
Kahit sabihin nating namayapa na
ang mga imahinasyon tungkol
sa pagbabalik ng mga naghahanap
ng hustisya sa padaya ng pagilian,
kahit sabihin natin na ang katuparan
ng mga ligaw na alalahanin
ay nasa ataul na ngayon at pinagmimisahan
ng mga masang ang alam ay ang orasyon
sa panlipunang katarungan,
kahit ngayon ay bubusugin ka
ng mga akto sa sinehan
o sa pelikula ng kamangmangan,
kahit sa pagpipila-pila
ng mga panaginip natin
ay patutungo tayo sa malawak
na altar ng mga bagong kalungkutan
sa bayan
tulad ng mga lungkot
sa mga panaginip na niraransom
o ng mga kabayang binibihag
ng mga masaganang handaan
para sa mga anak at mga anak
ng bayan,
kahit ngayon ay sasamahan natin
ang namayapang panaginip
sa kanyang huling hantungan
sa musoleo ng siglo-siglong
panagimpan,
sasabihin natin sa ating mga sarili:
Huhusgahan natin ang mga mababangis
na hangin at madarang na araw.
Bibigkasin natin itong sentensya
ng lahat ng mga sentensiyang
noon pa sana natin naisip,
isinagawa, pinangalanan,
ginawang pinal na pangungusap upang
maging puso ng ating pansamantalang
pagluluksa:
Hindi pa ito ang huling huntahan
sa konggreso ng ating masaklap
na kapalaran.
Hahanapin natin ang huling huntahan
sa mga bukal ng ating pagtangis.
Dudukalin natin ang katubusan
sa mga parang at mga gabing
nagsisilang ng kapayapaan
sa dulang at sa himlayan.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Dis. 18, 2004
Pagparintumengennak ti Daniw
Pagparintumengennak ti daniw.
Ta ti daniw ket maysa met nga ubbog
ni ayat a pagkurnuan
dagiti kasamekan ken kapanagan
iti barukong.
Briaten ti daniw dagiti aglulusiaw
nga urat dagiti takiag iti uniberso ni pintas,
dagitay urat a makipagsipungtuan
kadagiti litania ti naibabawi a paraiso
iti man bannawag wenno iti kidem
a rabii, kadagiti angin a sumarut
iti rupa ti naumbi a bulan, kannag
wenno simmagaysay, agpapauyo
wenno darudar kas iti panagdarudar
dagiti maibinggas a balikas
nga orasion kadagiti agpatnag a kararag
wenno bunar a mangisagut iti sam-it
wenno naimbag a gasat
wenno ti anak ti diablo
nga alumpipinig iti nakem, sumilud
a di agpakpakada, mangibati iti letteg
iti lukong ti palad wenno sangi wenno teltel,
sugat nga agkitebkiteb,
di aglunit uray no mano
nga abrakadabra kadagiti paulo,
wenno rima wenno panagiballatek
kadagiti padas a naipatarus
kadagiti mababain a linia
kadagiti mangibabain a panagsalawasaw
kadagiti pakaibabainan a panagtabbaw
kadagiti kababain a panagtarabitab.
Pagparintumengannak ti daniw.
Kadagiti ulimek iti babaet dagiti ariangga
a parnuayen ti buteng kadagiti binatog
dagiti nakain-inaka a sao, sadiay a tumrarong
dagiti natitirad a bantay, agkikibinda
a mangitunda iti mannaniw
iti puseg ti baybay
iti puseg dagiti sagrado a darikmat
iti puseg dagiti wawaig ken bubon
a partuaten ti managdakiwas a turay
dagiti maikanatad a balikas
dagiti umiso a balikas
dagiti napudno a balikas
dagiti nabileg a balikas
a naynay a makapaadda kadagiti amin
nga awan pay iti panunot wenno iti rikna,
daytay panunot a managpili iti pagsasao
daytay rikna a nakusim wenno manglanglangan,
saan a mangipauneg iti labatiba wenno pagpurga
saan met a sumimsim wenno tumilmon iti ling-et
wenno katay wenno telkak wenno tupra
a pangpapigket iti rikepan a sobre ni rugso
a para kadagiti isu amin a makabiag
a para kadagiti isu amin a mangpakulaidag iti laladot
a para kadagiti isu amin a mangriing iti turog.
Pagparintumengennak ti daniw.
Iti kasta, inaldaw a sangalek dialogo
ni derrep, daytay panangibinggas
iti estranghero nga an-anek-ek:
ti maipapan iti puli dagiti essem
ti maipapan iti tribo dagiti anag
ti maipapan iti ili dagiti bugas
ti maipapan iti gimong dagiti kaipapan
ti maipapan iti pagilian dagiti protesta
dagiti amin a mabalin nga yebkas
wenno isao wenno isawang
wenno ikur-it kadagiti ulimek dagiti ulimek
a pakapunnuan amin a kurang ken pagkurangan
a pakatungpalan amin a kari ken kaikarian
a pagaddaan amin nga awan ken kinaawan
a siuman dagiti palso ken nalaad
a kamalala dagiti mailaklako a rigat.
Pagparintumengennak ti daniw.
Iti panagtamed, awatek ti kired
iti makaisalakan a palpaliiw.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Las Vegas, Nevada
Dis. 16, 2004
Ta ti daniw ket maysa met nga ubbog
ni ayat a pagkurnuan
dagiti kasamekan ken kapanagan
iti barukong.
Briaten ti daniw dagiti aglulusiaw
nga urat dagiti takiag iti uniberso ni pintas,
dagitay urat a makipagsipungtuan
kadagiti litania ti naibabawi a paraiso
iti man bannawag wenno iti kidem
a rabii, kadagiti angin a sumarut
iti rupa ti naumbi a bulan, kannag
wenno simmagaysay, agpapauyo
wenno darudar kas iti panagdarudar
dagiti maibinggas a balikas
nga orasion kadagiti agpatnag a kararag
wenno bunar a mangisagut iti sam-it
wenno naimbag a gasat
wenno ti anak ti diablo
nga alumpipinig iti nakem, sumilud
a di agpakpakada, mangibati iti letteg
iti lukong ti palad wenno sangi wenno teltel,
sugat nga agkitebkiteb,
di aglunit uray no mano
nga abrakadabra kadagiti paulo,
wenno rima wenno panagiballatek
kadagiti padas a naipatarus
kadagiti mababain a linia
kadagiti mangibabain a panagsalawasaw
kadagiti pakaibabainan a panagtabbaw
kadagiti kababain a panagtarabitab.
Pagparintumengannak ti daniw.
Kadagiti ulimek iti babaet dagiti ariangga
a parnuayen ti buteng kadagiti binatog
dagiti nakain-inaka a sao, sadiay a tumrarong
dagiti natitirad a bantay, agkikibinda
a mangitunda iti mannaniw
iti puseg ti baybay
iti puseg dagiti sagrado a darikmat
iti puseg dagiti wawaig ken bubon
a partuaten ti managdakiwas a turay
dagiti maikanatad a balikas
dagiti umiso a balikas
dagiti napudno a balikas
dagiti nabileg a balikas
a naynay a makapaadda kadagiti amin
nga awan pay iti panunot wenno iti rikna,
daytay panunot a managpili iti pagsasao
daytay rikna a nakusim wenno manglanglangan,
saan a mangipauneg iti labatiba wenno pagpurga
saan met a sumimsim wenno tumilmon iti ling-et
wenno katay wenno telkak wenno tupra
a pangpapigket iti rikepan a sobre ni rugso
a para kadagiti isu amin a makabiag
a para kadagiti isu amin a mangpakulaidag iti laladot
a para kadagiti isu amin a mangriing iti turog.
Pagparintumengennak ti daniw.
Iti kasta, inaldaw a sangalek dialogo
ni derrep, daytay panangibinggas
iti estranghero nga an-anek-ek:
ti maipapan iti puli dagiti essem
ti maipapan iti tribo dagiti anag
ti maipapan iti ili dagiti bugas
ti maipapan iti gimong dagiti kaipapan
ti maipapan iti pagilian dagiti protesta
dagiti amin a mabalin nga yebkas
wenno isao wenno isawang
wenno ikur-it kadagiti ulimek dagiti ulimek
a pakapunnuan amin a kurang ken pagkurangan
a pakatungpalan amin a kari ken kaikarian
a pagaddaan amin nga awan ken kinaawan
a siuman dagiti palso ken nalaad
a kamalala dagiti mailaklako a rigat.
Pagparintumengennak ti daniw.
Iti panagtamed, awatek ti kired
iti makaisalakan a palpaliiw.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Las Vegas, Nevada
Dis. 16, 2004
Pimmusayen ti Presidente ti Republika Dagiti Pobre
1.
Patgen a babaknang:
Ita a panagligsay
ti katengngaan ti sipnget,
pimmusayen ti presidentemi,
daytay pangulomi,
dakami a makipagili
iti republika dagiti pobre,
republikami nga agmirmiraut
iti saluyot wenno marunggay
a pammarakubaken a yabraw
kadagiti tagainep iti nakararagan
a pammigat, ti di nalisayan
a pangngaldaw,
ti di nagkiraos a pangrabii,
dakami a mabisbisinan
iti kalinlinay nga inapuy
wenno hustisia
iti masida iti dulang
dakami a mawaw
iti danum ti kappia
iti antigo a gimong
dagiti mannanakaw,
aduda a duog
a mannanakaw,
iti turay
wenno kalkalsada,
dagiti birkog
a heneral dagiti amin a butengmi
a kolonel dagiti amin a duaduami
a kapitan dagiti amin a panagsagabami
a teniente dagiti amin a panaganusmi.
2.
Pimmusayen ti presidente ti republika
dagiti amin nga ar-ararawmi,
daytay dadaulomi iti pantasia
dagiti dimi mabilang a pannakasubbot
kadagiti amin a sukir ken sairo,
siririingkami wenno nargaan iti turog.
Sumuknalkaminto iti massayag
dagiti adu a namnamami,
ti adu a panangibabaet kadakami
ti presidente dagiti duayyami.
Sumuknalkaminto, dakami a dungrit,
dakami a mukatmukat, dakami a bilbilokan,
dakami a naangdod ken naangot,
dakami nga agdigdigos iti ling-et
dakami nga agkape iti agsaraaw a bagas
wenno mais, wenno kinirog a barako
a tedtedda dagiti adda iti ballasiw-taaw,
dakami nga aglauya iti paragpag ti ikan
a sushida idiay Makati wenno Japan,
dakami nga agsigang iti ulo
ti udang, inkaasi
ti bugbugian a bagi,
kinamaron rebosado
dagiti ari-ari
ken agin-aari
idiay Paris
wenno Aparri.
Sakasakakaminto
a mapan sumuknal,
dakami a makipagili
iti republika dagiti pobre
dakami nga agam-amlid
ta nangina ti sabon
ta nangina ti danum
ta nangina ti sabidong
a pagsamal koma no mabalin
wenno pangpatibong
kadagiti baliodong
isuda nga uloulo
ti amin a kinalanggong.
Sakasakakaminto a sumuknal
tapno mariknami ti lamiis
ti marmol a datar,
daytay nakasilsilap
a pagiladan dagiti guduagudua a dios
wenno baddekan dagiti nalamuyot a sakada
wenno pagulanganto dagiti ubbingmi
a mangisunonto iti naidasay a presidente
a mangipatakderto iti templo dagiti mamati
a mangirakurakto iti kinapudno
dagiti eksena ti panangisalakan
kadagiti amin a marigrigat
amin a maidaddadanes
amin a maikuskuspil
amin a mapapaidaman
amin a makuskusit
amin a maaw-awanan.
3.
Sumuknalkaminto iti presidente
dagiti amin a kalbariomi.
Makipilakaminto iti pila
dagiti amin a sumuknal,
babaknang wenno agimbabaknang,
nagbangbanglo wenno nabangsit,
mamati iti kinapresidente
ti pimmusay wenno saan.
Kalpasan ti pananglusaklusakmi
iti panaglidliday
ti maysa pay a babai,
diminton bibiangan
dagiti petalo iti korona ti natay,
dagitay sabsabong a nangina
ken napusaksak,
nangina ta napusaksak,
puraw nga orkidia
nalabaga nga anturium
ken berde a pakpako,
amin dagitoy a bisti iti ipupusay,
amin dagitoy nga aggapu
iti panagulser ti bagismi kas ti isipmi,
ayna, dinto inggaan ti ungetmi.
Pirsapirsayenminto amin a pakalaglagipan
ti pannakapaay dagiti ar-arawmi,
ti pannakakeltay dagiti ar-arapaapmi.
Pimmusayen ti presidente
ti republika dagiti pobre.
Awan ta awan sa lattan ti namnamami.
3.
Isu ngarud, kakabsat a babaknang,
umaykayo met, a, sumuknal,
dakayo nga aglablabonan, dakayo
a presidente dagiti parparapo
a senador dagiti panaginkukuna
a diputado dagiti panagindidi
a gobernador dagiti panagindadalus
iti ima wenno iti aramid,
umaykayo ta imatanganyo
ti maikatlo nga aldaw
ti aldaw ti panangungar
dagiti an-anib,
dagiti intabonda nga an-anting
dagiti presidente nga aginlalaing.
Dagiti nagsurat a siraraem,
Dakami a saanen a siraraem kadakayo,
dakami amin a pobre, makipagili
iti republika ti pimmusayen
a presidente, republikami,
dakami amin a tinallikudan ti kari.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Dis. 17, 2004
Patgen a babaknang:
Ita a panagligsay
ti katengngaan ti sipnget,
pimmusayen ti presidentemi,
daytay pangulomi,
dakami a makipagili
iti republika dagiti pobre,
republikami nga agmirmiraut
iti saluyot wenno marunggay
a pammarakubaken a yabraw
kadagiti tagainep iti nakararagan
a pammigat, ti di nalisayan
a pangngaldaw,
ti di nagkiraos a pangrabii,
dakami a mabisbisinan
iti kalinlinay nga inapuy
wenno hustisia
iti masida iti dulang
dakami a mawaw
iti danum ti kappia
iti antigo a gimong
dagiti mannanakaw,
aduda a duog
a mannanakaw,
iti turay
wenno kalkalsada,
dagiti birkog
a heneral dagiti amin a butengmi
a kolonel dagiti amin a duaduami
a kapitan dagiti amin a panagsagabami
a teniente dagiti amin a panaganusmi.
2.
Pimmusayen ti presidente ti republika
dagiti amin nga ar-ararawmi,
daytay dadaulomi iti pantasia
dagiti dimi mabilang a pannakasubbot
kadagiti amin a sukir ken sairo,
siririingkami wenno nargaan iti turog.
Sumuknalkaminto iti massayag
dagiti adu a namnamami,
ti adu a panangibabaet kadakami
ti presidente dagiti duayyami.
Sumuknalkaminto, dakami a dungrit,
dakami a mukatmukat, dakami a bilbilokan,
dakami a naangdod ken naangot,
dakami nga agdigdigos iti ling-et
dakami nga agkape iti agsaraaw a bagas
wenno mais, wenno kinirog a barako
a tedtedda dagiti adda iti ballasiw-taaw,
dakami nga aglauya iti paragpag ti ikan
a sushida idiay Makati wenno Japan,
dakami nga agsigang iti ulo
ti udang, inkaasi
ti bugbugian a bagi,
kinamaron rebosado
dagiti ari-ari
ken agin-aari
idiay Paris
wenno Aparri.
Sakasakakaminto
a mapan sumuknal,
dakami a makipagili
iti republika dagiti pobre
dakami nga agam-amlid
ta nangina ti sabon
ta nangina ti danum
ta nangina ti sabidong
a pagsamal koma no mabalin
wenno pangpatibong
kadagiti baliodong
isuda nga uloulo
ti amin a kinalanggong.
Sakasakakaminto a sumuknal
tapno mariknami ti lamiis
ti marmol a datar,
daytay nakasilsilap
a pagiladan dagiti guduagudua a dios
wenno baddekan dagiti nalamuyot a sakada
wenno pagulanganto dagiti ubbingmi
a mangisunonto iti naidasay a presidente
a mangipatakderto iti templo dagiti mamati
a mangirakurakto iti kinapudno
dagiti eksena ti panangisalakan
kadagiti amin a marigrigat
amin a maidaddadanes
amin a maikuskuspil
amin a mapapaidaman
amin a makuskusit
amin a maaw-awanan.
3.
Sumuknalkaminto iti presidente
dagiti amin a kalbariomi.
Makipilakaminto iti pila
dagiti amin a sumuknal,
babaknang wenno agimbabaknang,
nagbangbanglo wenno nabangsit,
mamati iti kinapresidente
ti pimmusay wenno saan.
Kalpasan ti pananglusaklusakmi
iti panaglidliday
ti maysa pay a babai,
diminton bibiangan
dagiti petalo iti korona ti natay,
dagitay sabsabong a nangina
ken napusaksak,
nangina ta napusaksak,
puraw nga orkidia
nalabaga nga anturium
ken berde a pakpako,
amin dagitoy a bisti iti ipupusay,
amin dagitoy nga aggapu
iti panagulser ti bagismi kas ti isipmi,
ayna, dinto inggaan ti ungetmi.
Pirsapirsayenminto amin a pakalaglagipan
ti pannakapaay dagiti ar-arawmi,
ti pannakakeltay dagiti ar-arapaapmi.
Pimmusayen ti presidente
ti republika dagiti pobre.
Awan ta awan sa lattan ti namnamami.
3.
Isu ngarud, kakabsat a babaknang,
umaykayo met, a, sumuknal,
dakayo nga aglablabonan, dakayo
a presidente dagiti parparapo
a senador dagiti panaginkukuna
a diputado dagiti panagindidi
a gobernador dagiti panagindadalus
iti ima wenno iti aramid,
umaykayo ta imatanganyo
ti maikatlo nga aldaw
ti aldaw ti panangungar
dagiti an-anib,
dagiti intabonda nga an-anting
dagiti presidente nga aginlalaing.
Dagiti nagsurat a siraraem,
Dakami a saanen a siraraem kadakayo,
dakami amin a pobre, makipagili
iti republika ti pimmusayen
a presidente, republikami,
dakami amin a tinallikudan ti kari.
Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Torrance, CA
Dis. 17, 2004
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