is running after your noon shadows
in these islands of nations
and countries and speeches,
this last you want to hear
again and again to validate
your voice, the vowels in your fear
the consonants in your tear.
Now the sun hides
behind the trails behind the story
of sweet murder or homicide, this
act against who walk by the morning
to catch the clouds hanging loose
in the skies on mountaintops.
The news comes with its newness:
you were about to do the ritual hike
to search for your steps
to gather your own words
to language, in verbs as in nouns,
what despair is when definitions
are in recession in this time of want
in this time of greed
in this time of thinking through
what menu we can offer
to the impoverished who dream
of three square meals rounded
to include your gifts to the gods
taking only gold, in crates and caches,
to hear what you have to say to yourself.
Life is a difficulty
in this America you
have come to know earlier
than you can complain.
The dream of abundance of long time ago
is absent here, not in this weather
when you are whipped by the ferocity
of what comes to punish every dreamer:
lingering loves are lost
as their capacity to grieve over the loving
that counts and counts more than ever
as their capacity to regain,
and in the new sun,
what light can light give
when they lose their jobs and joys
as themselves and the only safety net
they have got is to stock up on their nightmares
one at a time, one at a time
in this America of a dreamer's masquerade.
You need to get your words
together, throw your language
back to these waves going wild
and imagine all possibilities,
like an Ilokano banquet
you are not invited to go:
you have remitted
your promise to pay up to the night
that has mortgaged what diction and daring
you have kept to fight it out,
in the re-gathering of your own words
that will reside, finally, in your alien heart.
A. Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI/Feb 3/09
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