Breaking Bread

The first time I saw
how a bread is broken
I died. Broken into pieces
and then lived again
to tell this poem.

It was a scene that tore
my heart. Bits and pieces,
like morsels to feed
a hungering soul.
The revolution
for the first time, in 86, in that road
about all the saints congregating
and telling us of epiphanies
whose stories we cannot tell
how they begin--that
was where it happened,
this miracle of the slices.

We were all famished, furious, fiery.
Days counted us with our fears,
in that road and in some others
we could gather our wits,
or courage or what was left of it
by the dictators of our young days.
Nights counted us on the streets,
sweat on our raging shirts,
our angry bodies,
our dream of morrows
snatched for decades.

We knew only the lies.
And the bread was nowhere to be found.
Nor the rice, nor the substitutes
to fake loves.
None of these was ever on altars
of democracy they promised us.
Like many of the fighters,
they went missing in action,
the right course.

But today, on this Wednesday of ashes,
I remember that breaking of bread:
two hungry men on that street of our revolting
halving the only bread left.

A Solver Agcaoili
UH Manoa/Newman Center
Feb 22/07