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