The Revolution is a Circus

The revolution is a circus.
Each of them is a showman now,
The clerics and idiots, the pretenders and politicians,
Bishops and presidents and the priests who run and run.
We do not know who takes in all the killing or the billing
But the people know: they who know how to spell
Democracy and prepare its raw materials:
The blood in our sleep
Or the dream of beds, soft and pungent
With the smell of love and embrace
Or of romance spent only to come alive again
In springs when flowers relearn the road
To putting on color and riot,
Only to end up in crystal vases
Of greed and want from some mistresses
Not able to see the sorrows of leaves,
The agonies of each petal as it seeks
The sun or soil.

We have yet to tell the rebels,
Ask them to go on and on like bees,
Making honey out of deceit
As is the enemy's penchant for impossibilities
Like a revolt, for instance, with its parent,
With its child, parent and child becoming
Parent and child to the revolution of circuses
So that from here on happiness
Shall no longer be allowed
But episodes of egalite even if we do not mean it
But episodes of fraternity even
if we will murder all laughter
But episodes of liberte with no flesh
But words stripped of miracles or magic.

To remember the homeland
We need only to summon a soldier
We do not know how to guard
A bishop whose prayers we do not hear
A vice president who welcomes what old age
Means by declaring the independence of charlatans
Who double as spider man for a fee
Or that cathedral of the lost-and-found-and-lost angels
That is built upon stones and stones
Bricks upon bricks but with the odor of death
The ardor of a circus man collecting entrance fees
Before the show begins.

We expect more to come, say the papers,
Our only link to the reality of our days:
This business of calling the shots
To announce the holding of a war
Against the obligations of the sun
Or the universe to come warm us
Even as we die of grief from laughing
Too hard the stomach gets out
To say hello to our fears and tears.

A Solver Agcaoili
UH Manoa/Nov 29, 2007