Truthiness, After The Colbert Report

This truthiness
after the Colbert Report
is falsity
manufactured
and then consumed
like those fastfood
promises of the good:
McDo for a day's wage,
Coke for an hour's sweat
and not even enough
to make you mad, damn mad
to rip your Levi's 501 in two
to let your hungry flesh
be seen, exhibited
for the traitors to see
the meaning of betrayal.

This truthiness
by the Colbert Report
is the same
as exporting democracy
in other people's
dinner table,
other civilizations
wrought in other times
and temper
and truth
but never your own,
not an America
not a Philippine
not a British
not any of the alliances
living unto their own,
us exiles too
mimicking the regime
of truth in our freeways
now our Hollywood
or the idiot of a television
telling us of the importance
of images without dark shadows
us trying to find out
the nickname of meaning of our lives
in better plots to reclaim
the substance of a nation
in terms declared by
its own dust panicking
in whispers
the blood in the memory
reminding it to keep still
keep the peace
keep the history
that matters
in each hurried meal
citizens of the nation
partake, together
and all, drink in the hand
and celebrating victory
in the way they define
life with a sense,
like the sweet smell
of fruits ripening in the graves
of their struggles.

Today, we impotent witnesses say:
today is truthiness
told as it were:
there are no illusions here,
only the imagination
of the real.

So we watch as the truth
unravels.

First in the democracy we share:
the fullness of tables
as in the fullness of lives we live
minus the dictates
of nations gifting us with grace
but then selling us their wares:
democracy like coffee, bland
and instant, with instant love
to taste.

Ha, forget the show:
it is all for the consumption
of the elite, this masquerade
with no relief.

Colbert Report and all, we report:
democracy is in the bread we break,
the wine we drink of the same cup,
in victory as in defeat.

Aurelio S. Agcaoili
Draft in Los Angeles,
Draft in Honolulu,
another final draft in Marikina,
Easter Sunday, April 16, 2006