The Life of Shadows

The life of shadows

is based on light dancing

to the tune of lies, lies, lies.

Or words we spread

to make us on top

at the top of things

even if we kill all possibilities

to tell the truth.

Some writers over here

cannot seem to call it quits

with how to clandestinely rob others

of their living poems, snatch whatever

figure of speech is in the deceit

they pull off with those who follow

the command of a stanza

of a sacred verse.

I know of someone

who wears her literary ribbon

on her swollen chest for the dark

night to witness how clumsy

it could have been

if her friends did not make

it certain she would get

the honor before an open grave

of cymbals clanging to wake

up the angels coming to grief

for a people's word

that is now desecrated.

I know of someone who learned

to write by way

of a delayed resolution

to hide his hand-me-down emptiness

and the immorality

of his deeds

he who does not learn

how to behave

like a tamed beast,

always going wild following

the ember on his loins

his sins jutting out of his

naked self and crooked lips.

We speak of a conjugal

dictatorship here. And theirs

has been going on for long:

they shanghai the sounds

of our speech, they write

letters to popes and priests

so the extreme unction

be their honor, their own.

We do not look too far.

We have become

ensnared by

all these spectacles

this writing for show

for the applause

of the dead

and the dying

for the corrupt

and corrupting writers

pretending to know

the difference

between a red insight

and a yellow ruse.

It is shadows we have here,

the gauzy shadows of words

reflected hastily

on what we believe in

like our belief for the lies

of a dictatorship that should

not have been, this man

and this woman calling us

the sinners while they live

in communion with those

walking sideways, arms akimbo,

with stairs for their feet.

Someday soon we will see

someday soon we will realize

that all these campaigns

for the self of shadows

are campaigns for those

with their last spurt of blood

if at all they have something

just something that is left

in their language called lies.

And we call them writers

we call them writers,

sometimes.

A Solver Agcaoili

Manoa/Nov 22, 2009