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
