MANILA, Philippines -- Religious groups and leftwing militants on Monday held a rally for the third day running in support of whistle-blower Rodolfo Noel “Jun” Lozada Jr., as other groups warned of a bigger protest on Friday to demand the resignation of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Inquirer, Feb. 12/08
It is an old covenant story.
It was the prophet's threat
to the ruler who beads the rosary,
beg all to the archangels, even
worships the wooden idols
by touching their feet, light
and loving. Is there a pre-
meditation in all this,
the gesture of Fridays,
whether first or last?
There is excess in the promise
and she breaks, he breaks,
they break every word.
In the end, the utterance
of power becomes liquid
spills onto the ground,
past the sentries
past the secure gates
of palaces by the reeking river
the palaces of clerics
friars, robbers, some honorable men
some cheats, men and women
who go beyond what goodness is.
The dark liquid gets into the street
touches our rage, heat upon heat
and we explode, volcano like
and the dark days become years
and in an instant, the crying out
comes to a lifetime of mercy
grief, relief. Stone upon stone,
as in street upon street,
we demand in its fullness
the glory of our gifts.
We are a people too,
and this is what we seek.
The banners will fly
as the posters, and our legs
walk to trample upon
the beginnings of barbed wires.
We had done it.
And today we will do it.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI
Feb 11/08
as the
Showing posts with label english. Show all posts
Showing posts with label english. Show all posts
At the hour of the nation's death
MANILA, Philippines -- With the country gripped by another scandal, a Church-based group on Monday called on the Christian faithful to pray for the truth to be known and to say their prayers at the Divine Mercy hour -- every day at 3 p.m., the hour of Christ’s death. Inquirer, Feb. 12/08
It is the mystique in the hour, at the third
of his merciless death, this savior of a land
oppressed. They tell us once more,
and again and again: to keep the prayer,
keep the preying. Gripped we all are
and the show begins.
Or we repeat the same story
told a long time ago
when popes ruled over our pauper's soul
and we were drowned alive with tears
of our sorrow for having stood by
for having watched enraptured
by it all: the procession of thieves
whose sacred and golden cloaks
we gave, give, keep giving.
Include their posture
include their pretensions
to thrones we never offered
for them to sit on
and decree deaths upon us all.
So now we kneel once more
to the god gone cold. We did not do
enough to warm him, this god
in our song, and our throats croak
with the lies we feed ourselves with
believing that salvation is in self-deception.
We do it one more time, and in the future
we will do it again until we are numbed
until we are too weak to protest
utter something to resist
not even to deploy
what forgiveness can offer.
At three o'clock, when the son of god
is declared dead, the nation bleeds.
It is the same hour
of our dear nation's mortal death.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI
Feb 11/08
It is the mystique in the hour, at the third
of his merciless death, this savior of a land
oppressed. They tell us once more,
and again and again: to keep the prayer,
keep the preying. Gripped we all are
and the show begins.
Or we repeat the same story
told a long time ago
when popes ruled over our pauper's soul
and we were drowned alive with tears
of our sorrow for having stood by
for having watched enraptured
by it all: the procession of thieves
whose sacred and golden cloaks
we gave, give, keep giving.
Include their posture
include their pretensions
to thrones we never offered
for them to sit on
and decree deaths upon us all.
So now we kneel once more
to the god gone cold. We did not do
enough to warm him, this god
in our song, and our throats croak
with the lies we feed ourselves with
believing that salvation is in self-deception.
We do it one more time, and in the future
we will do it again until we are numbed
until we are too weak to protest
utter something to resist
not even to deploy
what forgiveness can offer.
At three o'clock, when the son of god
is declared dead, the nation bleeds.
It is the same hour
of our dear nation's mortal death.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI
Feb 11/08
Cocido Para Cena
MANILA, Philippines -- We’ve heard that President Macapagal-Arroyo and her family like to feast on cocido on Sundays. They like to think of their family as one of the last bastions of Castilian heritage, exponents of old-world urbanidad. Inquirer, Feb. 10/08
It is imagination in its ruthless
form, image and the actor
like the sinner and his sin.
The sin is multiple, collective
even. You wash your hand
with holy water, holy oil
and holy goddamn shit
to hide what history has not shown.
So far. Down the road, Sundays
oblige us to sit down, partake
of the meal that means one thing:
the sorrow of our people,
their backs breaking
their souls breaking
their hearts in peril
as is their last song wild with the wind
and then the thunder comes along
as you swallow that last morsel
of that ultima cena you have put
together to celebrate centuries
of oppression against all of us
we who do not know what sin is
because, simply, you have taken
our hearts, there, there, on your table
to partake with the cocido of your liking
the one you deal with for effect
as landlords had done for decades
years until your kingdom come.
On Sundays of obligation,
we offer our back
we offer our soul
we offer our dream.
We wash away our tear
with the purity of regret
for not having waged a war
against your kind long ago.
We believed in the heaven
that is yet to come, and our prayers
led us astray, to all places except
to the table with food
to our family with our happiness
to our children with our gifts.
Instead, we gave poison
to ourselves, took all we can take
taking suffering for its own sake
and here you are, dining well
on each Sunday that we go famished
with our Sunday faith.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI
Feb 10/08
It is imagination in its ruthless
form, image and the actor
like the sinner and his sin.
The sin is multiple, collective
even. You wash your hand
with holy water, holy oil
and holy goddamn shit
to hide what history has not shown.
So far. Down the road, Sundays
oblige us to sit down, partake
of the meal that means one thing:
the sorrow of our people,
their backs breaking
their souls breaking
their hearts in peril
as is their last song wild with the wind
and then the thunder comes along
as you swallow that last morsel
of that ultima cena you have put
together to celebrate centuries
of oppression against all of us
we who do not know what sin is
because, simply, you have taken
our hearts, there, there, on your table
to partake with the cocido of your liking
the one you deal with for effect
as landlords had done for decades
years until your kingdom come.
On Sundays of obligation,
we offer our back
we offer our soul
we offer our dream.
We wash away our tear
with the purity of regret
for not having waged a war
against your kind long ago.
We believed in the heaven
that is yet to come, and our prayers
led us astray, to all places except
to the table with food
to our family with our happiness
to our children with our gifts.
Instead, we gave poison
to ourselves, took all we can take
taking suffering for its own sake
and here you are, dining well
on each Sunday that we go famished
with our Sunday faith.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI
Feb 10/08
Loveless on Valentine’s
(For all OFW's on Valentine's)
This is a corny joke.
You are loveless on Valentine’s
And all you see are flowers in bloom,
Red and bloody in their secret scents
Taking hold of our waking hearts.
How can we ever dream of reversals
When all what we have got are quick
Trips to memories of a future gone past?
Like that tryst of skin on skin
Hers the promise of moons and stars
Yours the vow of relevance?
It is this language of touch, like lips locked
Intertwined so we cannot go away
From all the loving and the feelings
We need to remind ourselves
That after tonight, in some other nights,
There, in the dark of early hours,
We can get teary-eyed from it all,
This loveless lover seeking
One other loveless love.
It is the rhythm of the universe,
The dance of the spirit,
The energy of suns striking hard
On the awaiting land, earth, see
Sand, and surf—these singeing suns in us,
Their rays breaking through in our
Already broken heart. And then we
See the birthing of laughter as we open up
To the music of our mind meeting
A kindred mind. Did we say that
Two could be one in an embrace
Of selves originally far apart?
Now, on this Valentine’s
We commence this ceremony
Of loves declared, declaimed, desired.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI
Feb 8/08
This is a corny joke.
You are loveless on Valentine’s
And all you see are flowers in bloom,
Red and bloody in their secret scents
Taking hold of our waking hearts.
How can we ever dream of reversals
When all what we have got are quick
Trips to memories of a future gone past?
Like that tryst of skin on skin
Hers the promise of moons and stars
Yours the vow of relevance?
It is this language of touch, like lips locked
Intertwined so we cannot go away
From all the loving and the feelings
We need to remind ourselves
That after tonight, in some other nights,
There, in the dark of early hours,
We can get teary-eyed from it all,
This loveless lover seeking
One other loveless love.
It is the rhythm of the universe,
The dance of the spirit,
The energy of suns striking hard
On the awaiting land, earth, see
Sand, and surf—these singeing suns in us,
Their rays breaking through in our
Already broken heart. And then we
See the birthing of laughter as we open up
To the music of our mind meeting
A kindred mind. Did we say that
Two could be one in an embrace
Of selves originally far apart?
Now, on this Valentine’s
We commence this ceremony
Of loves declared, declaimed, desired.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI
Feb 8/08
Unraveling
MANILA, Philippines -- The Makati Business Club (MBC) on Thursday said the revelations of Rodolfo Noel Lozada Jr. about the controversial national broadband network (NBN) contract “may mark the beginning of the end for the regime” of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Inquirer, 2-07/07
This is bad poetry, this unlyrical sense
of what is yet to come in the birthland
of our woes. We count the years and centuries
and the distinction in them is that
they are all the same: presidents dying
on us without asking forgiveness
presidents pardoned by their own kind
presidents cheating us of our mind
making us believe that all is well
in the homefront of women vending sex
in Tokyo, of teachers becoming filipina
of Brits and Singaporean and the handywomen
of Hongkong. Put in the nurse of America,
my America that declared democracy
in Baghdad as in my country
and here we all are, spectators
of charades and more so that comes
around to torture us. It won't matter now,
it seems, even as the dollar of our redemption
tumbles down and would make our leaving
a joke. For here, even the very sweat
we sell are for the kings and queens
and their princesses and princes,
children of loam and clay
children that grew out of deceit
of thieving parents and kins
because (a) their mother is president
(b) their father is husband to a president
(c) their uncle is a lawmaker
(d) their neighbors are congressmen
(e) their distant relatives are mayor
(f) their godchildren are their puppets
(g) their godmothers and godfathers
are long dead. But here they are:
the lord of all the flies of the land
the mistress of all the roaches of cupboards
flies and mistress being the same
and roaches and lords no different.
So, the musical chair begins.
You stay here, the largesse is here.
Forgot the priest who does Onan
to cleanse himself of his sins
or lighten the load off his confessional self.
He cannot take, not anymore,
these giving away of many pater nosters
the equally many hail marys
and the endless glory bes. These are
there to keep us away from harm,
from this evil that has befallen us
when we began to believe in the prayers
of presidents. When is it that we stopped
praying, we cannot tell. We have not stopped
even when our prayer preys upon us.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI Feb 7/08
This is bad poetry, this unlyrical sense
of what is yet to come in the birthland
of our woes. We count the years and centuries
and the distinction in them is that
they are all the same: presidents dying
on us without asking forgiveness
presidents pardoned by their own kind
presidents cheating us of our mind
making us believe that all is well
in the homefront of women vending sex
in Tokyo, of teachers becoming filipina
of Brits and Singaporean and the handywomen
of Hongkong. Put in the nurse of America,
my America that declared democracy
in Baghdad as in my country
and here we all are, spectators
of charades and more so that comes
around to torture us. It won't matter now,
it seems, even as the dollar of our redemption
tumbles down and would make our leaving
a joke. For here, even the very sweat
we sell are for the kings and queens
and their princesses and princes,
children of loam and clay
children that grew out of deceit
of thieving parents and kins
because (a) their mother is president
(b) their father is husband to a president
(c) their uncle is a lawmaker
(d) their neighbors are congressmen
(e) their distant relatives are mayor
(f) their godchildren are their puppets
(g) their godmothers and godfathers
are long dead. But here they are:
the lord of all the flies of the land
the mistress of all the roaches of cupboards
flies and mistress being the same
and roaches and lords no different.
So, the musical chair begins.
You stay here, the largesse is here.
Forgot the priest who does Onan
to cleanse himself of his sins
or lighten the load off his confessional self.
He cannot take, not anymore,
these giving away of many pater nosters
the equally many hail marys
and the endless glory bes. These are
there to keep us away from harm,
from this evil that has befallen us
when we began to believe in the prayers
of presidents. When is it that we stopped
praying, we cannot tell. We have not stopped
even when our prayer preys upon us.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI Feb 7/08
A DIFFICULT LOVE
A DIFFICULT LOVE
It is the month of hearts in our popular culture and in our already mass-produced consciousness and culture. The images of hearts cut-out to size, and that romance-laden, almost iconic two hearts pierced by an arrow is almost too sweet for comfort with our already ‘mass’ lives that we perform daily, with that everydayness sometimes devoid of surprise and desire, Valentine’s day or not.
These and many other things visit us this month, the February of our memories of young love, mature relationships, domestic bliss, and lives lived happily ever after.
But even as we celebrate—and up the ante of that celebration by ‘cerebrating’ the meaning and relevance of love, we are assaulted by some grim statistics, with the latest about a boy—Cyrus Belt—thrown off a freeway before onrushing cars and in our own State, and two women succumbing to their death, their death caused by the very persons who are supposed to care for them, protect them, nurture them, and shield them from all the which is the antithesis of death, also in our State.
We can only question these realities that have otherwise turned ugly.
We can only question ourselves, our relationships, our communities, and all those unseen factors that push some of us to do the terribly wrong: this act of violence against our sense of good, this act of violence against our common sense, this act of violence inflicted upon others.
We cannot play victim here.
We can only accept the fact that in this social drama where the opposite of February is not love eternal but the pain of a people and a community that is going through this difficult rite of passage of either going out of this vicious circle of power and authority summoned for the wrong reasons or declaring ourselves advocates of what is just and fair in our human relationships, in our social relationships, and in our very institutions, including what some call as ‘intimate partnership.’
The anchor in all these is none other but that abstract thing we call ‘love’, as this month symbolizes.
But this ‘love’ is not really abstract in the end, as it demands articulation, elaboration, exemplification, and particularization.
This means simply that if we do love someone, that act of loving someone is plain and simple loving that someone in the here-and-how, an act that is particular, concrete.
Obviously, violence is not part of the equation of loving.
It is only when all of us recognize this fundamental concept that we can gain ground—and the recognition is one that is inclusive: all, all of us, and no one is supposed to be left out.
Love and justice go together—are inseparable wholes, two sides of the same coin, intertwined in a human relationship that can veritably be called human and humane.
Unless and until one person has not been left alone unable to act out—to realize—the duty to love and do just things, then our work is not yet finished, thus remaining undone, yet to be done.
Valentine’s day—and February—is supposed to be this.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI
(Written for the Fil-Am Observer, February 2008)
It is the month of hearts in our popular culture and in our already mass-produced consciousness and culture. The images of hearts cut-out to size, and that romance-laden, almost iconic two hearts pierced by an arrow is almost too sweet for comfort with our already ‘mass’ lives that we perform daily, with that everydayness sometimes devoid of surprise and desire, Valentine’s day or not.
These and many other things visit us this month, the February of our memories of young love, mature relationships, domestic bliss, and lives lived happily ever after.
But even as we celebrate—and up the ante of that celebration by ‘cerebrating’ the meaning and relevance of love, we are assaulted by some grim statistics, with the latest about a boy—Cyrus Belt—thrown off a freeway before onrushing cars and in our own State, and two women succumbing to their death, their death caused by the very persons who are supposed to care for them, protect them, nurture them, and shield them from all the which is the antithesis of death, also in our State.
We can only question these realities that have otherwise turned ugly.
We can only question ourselves, our relationships, our communities, and all those unseen factors that push some of us to do the terribly wrong: this act of violence against our sense of good, this act of violence against our common sense, this act of violence inflicted upon others.
We cannot play victim here.
We can only accept the fact that in this social drama where the opposite of February is not love eternal but the pain of a people and a community that is going through this difficult rite of passage of either going out of this vicious circle of power and authority summoned for the wrong reasons or declaring ourselves advocates of what is just and fair in our human relationships, in our social relationships, and in our very institutions, including what some call as ‘intimate partnership.’
The anchor in all these is none other but that abstract thing we call ‘love’, as this month symbolizes.
But this ‘love’ is not really abstract in the end, as it demands articulation, elaboration, exemplification, and particularization.
This means simply that if we do love someone, that act of loving someone is plain and simple loving that someone in the here-and-how, an act that is particular, concrete.
Obviously, violence is not part of the equation of loving.
It is only when all of us recognize this fundamental concept that we can gain ground—and the recognition is one that is inclusive: all, all of us, and no one is supposed to be left out.
Love and justice go together—are inseparable wholes, two sides of the same coin, intertwined in a human relationship that can veritably be called human and humane.
Unless and until one person has not been left alone unable to act out—to realize—the duty to love and do just things, then our work is not yet finished, thus remaining undone, yet to be done.
Valentine’s day—and February—is supposed to be this.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI
(Written for the Fil-Am Observer, February 2008)
Cyrus Belt is Dead
Heaven was missing an angel. We'll never forget you, Baby Cyrus.--Message on cloth banner hung on the site where Cyrus Belt, 23 months, was thrown off 25 feet below H-1 Freeway, Honolulu, Hawai'i, Jan. 17, 2008. Two cars hit him and on the spot he breathed his last.
It is your story that caught us off guard, not your tormentor's
report of demons and other evils. Your death flashed on our
computer alerts, telling us nothing but a traffic jam.
From the pictures we have come to know: wrapped in white
clothing to hide your fear and the fracture of your infant life.
How can it be, our angel, how can it ever be that those
who cause us misery are alive while you who give us
laughter and joy are no longer with us to remind us
that life's opposite is a stone to mark your grave?
We stopped for a while, knowing that we cannot go home,
not yet, until you are taken away to a chamber so cold
you really wished you were dead. Frozen beyond recognition
because your mother did not know how to make of your
dreams of flowers and moons? Or the sun on Waikiki
that perhaps you have not seen in its most beautiful
moment of radiating glow, telling us of hopes beyond
what mothers cannot do, what fathers will never know
what to do? For there, left alone to saunter in alleys
on streets on wandering you could not have done
were the doors were locked or the gates closed
or a guardian kept watch over you as you learn
to walk a mile and then two and then on your own
to life's turmoils. Snapping, a man caught your arm,
perhaps you laughed at him as you looked at his eyes,
a demon in a clown's clothing residing in there
and tickling you so, and tickling you some more.
You responded to his touch, worn man against
your baby skin and his smell you know sometimes
as he sat for you when you were left alone on your own.
And then he brought you to a theatre outside,
the arena of your quick goodbye. First, did he hold
you by your strong legs upside down, on the railings
with the speeding cars below, on 60-65 speed
of angry man hungered by the time of day
or by the light of the dancing sun in these islands?
Second, did he wave your body a bit a he held
you and then you shrieked with laughter
the laughter becoming terror you do not know?
Third, did he let you loose? Fourth, did he throw you off
with force your skull banged the cemented road
this act verily infantile muscle against metal
until your world cracked in half, your soul gone?
How do we say this this regret this sorrow this worry
this pain this tear this misery this nothingness
we all feel for you as you leave us not knowing
what could have become of you child of our days
going wild like wildfires like years shortening to months
such as your life? You could have grown to lead us
to saving ourselves from the perdition that is also us.
Be well, Cyrus, rest in peace, our child.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI
Jan 17, 2008
It is your story that caught us off guard, not your tormentor's
report of demons and other evils. Your death flashed on our
computer alerts, telling us nothing but a traffic jam.
From the pictures we have come to know: wrapped in white
clothing to hide your fear and the fracture of your infant life.
How can it be, our angel, how can it ever be that those
who cause us misery are alive while you who give us
laughter and joy are no longer with us to remind us
that life's opposite is a stone to mark your grave?
We stopped for a while, knowing that we cannot go home,
not yet, until you are taken away to a chamber so cold
you really wished you were dead. Frozen beyond recognition
because your mother did not know how to make of your
dreams of flowers and moons? Or the sun on Waikiki
that perhaps you have not seen in its most beautiful
moment of radiating glow, telling us of hopes beyond
what mothers cannot do, what fathers will never know
what to do? For there, left alone to saunter in alleys
on streets on wandering you could not have done
were the doors were locked or the gates closed
or a guardian kept watch over you as you learn
to walk a mile and then two and then on your own
to life's turmoils. Snapping, a man caught your arm,
perhaps you laughed at him as you looked at his eyes,
a demon in a clown's clothing residing in there
and tickling you so, and tickling you some more.
You responded to his touch, worn man against
your baby skin and his smell you know sometimes
as he sat for you when you were left alone on your own.
And then he brought you to a theatre outside,
the arena of your quick goodbye. First, did he hold
you by your strong legs upside down, on the railings
with the speeding cars below, on 60-65 speed
of angry man hungered by the time of day
or by the light of the dancing sun in these islands?
Second, did he wave your body a bit a he held
you and then you shrieked with laughter
the laughter becoming terror you do not know?
Third, did he let you loose? Fourth, did he throw you off
with force your skull banged the cemented road
this act verily infantile muscle against metal
until your world cracked in half, your soul gone?
How do we say this this regret this sorrow this worry
this pain this tear this misery this nothingness
we all feel for you as you leave us not knowing
what could have become of you child of our days
going wild like wildfires like years shortening to months
such as your life? You could have grown to lead us
to saving ourselves from the perdition that is also us.
Be well, Cyrus, rest in peace, our child.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI
Jan 17, 2008
A Date with History, 1
So many things are going on today, and the way to abbreviate the many stories of our lives in exile is this: today, indeed, is a date with history.
I counted those who came to the State Capitol at today's 'State of the State of Hawai'i' address of the Governor, Linda Lingle, and my count got to the entrances and exits, with people standing up and applauding endlessly.
Soon the session hall of the Legislature was filled up with peoples of various persuasions and perceptions, from various groups and interests.
But I realized that it was an invitational affair, with the invitation card serving as some kind of an entrance ticket, your name on the list checked for a variety of reasons, security included.
You realized that there were security people around, many disguised in formal wear but with phones in their ears, and their strides brisk and energized. For there, at that hour, was the highest elected public official of the State, and to protect here is a main concern.
I tried to find a seat in the middle portion of the hall, up there in balcony where you can see all, the social drama filled with acts big and small.
I realized I was blessed in so many ways. How many Filipinos have had the chance to be invited to the State of the State Address of the Governor of Hawai'i? I do not know but I felt so alone at this time. There was no other Filipino in sight except for a sprinkling of the big shots in government.
The Governor's speech came in cadence, lyrical and euphonious.
At first, I began to count the applause, but I soon got tired of the senseless act that I concentrated on absorbing the good words coming out from the lips of the highest official of the State.
Some good souls from one of her offices sent me the parking ticket to give me the right to park in those metered lots that can only give you two hours max so that if you forgot to feed the hungry machines with quarters after the second hour, the parking people would have a way to pinpoint where your car is and lo and behold, on your windshield is that traffic ticket that can cost you your day's wage.
I came early for the occasion, having arrived the parking lot fronting the Capitol hours before the nine o'clock opening of the 24th Legislature.
I did not want to miss this event, my first ever, although initially, I had doubts if I really wanted to go.
To beat the traffic jam from Waipahu, on a 25 mile stretch that on Likelike would send you genuflecting to all angels and archangels and saints, is an impossible feat if one were to leave his place at six in the morning.
Many of those who have jobs in downtown would have to calculate the energies expended for losing their cool in the early morning hours against those energies that they invest driving at four o'clock in the morning as if were were being shipped straight from heaven, with the lanes all looking like zip lanes. It is time that makes the difference here, but time as well that spells doom or delight.
I left the State Capitol soon after the governor's speech. I had to catch the hour back to the University some miles away for that noontime class on the structure of the Ilokano language.
On my way out was a bag lady, but her bags were hanging loosely on the shopping cart of some foodchain, the bags accumulating dirt and the demented mind of their owner. It poverty and misery and depravity in their most gruesome visuals. Juxtaposed against the huge buildings around me and against the riches of the downtown, and the rich history of struggle for justice in these islands, I could only cry in silence, tortured as I was by the contradictions that I saw around.
Inside the august chamber, I looked around for some signs of Filipinohood.
Except for the members of the Filipino Caucus, I did not recognize any Filipinos in this mix of peoples representing the diversity that is Hawai'i.
Where are we? I asked myself.
As soon as the Governor's address was over, I rushed out, ran to one State Capitol big shot I know to say my aloha and mahalo and moved to the parking lot on the Department of Health to go back to the University to teach my students the rudiments of lingustic right and cultural democracy.
A Solver Agcaoili
State Capitol, Hon, HI
Jan 22/08
I counted those who came to the State Capitol at today's 'State of the State of Hawai'i' address of the Governor, Linda Lingle, and my count got to the entrances and exits, with people standing up and applauding endlessly.
Soon the session hall of the Legislature was filled up with peoples of various persuasions and perceptions, from various groups and interests.
But I realized that it was an invitational affair, with the invitation card serving as some kind of an entrance ticket, your name on the list checked for a variety of reasons, security included.
You realized that there were security people around, many disguised in formal wear but with phones in their ears, and their strides brisk and energized. For there, at that hour, was the highest elected public official of the State, and to protect here is a main concern.
I tried to find a seat in the middle portion of the hall, up there in balcony where you can see all, the social drama filled with acts big and small.
I realized I was blessed in so many ways. How many Filipinos have had the chance to be invited to the State of the State Address of the Governor of Hawai'i? I do not know but I felt so alone at this time. There was no other Filipino in sight except for a sprinkling of the big shots in government.
The Governor's speech came in cadence, lyrical and euphonious.
At first, I began to count the applause, but I soon got tired of the senseless act that I concentrated on absorbing the good words coming out from the lips of the highest official of the State.
Some good souls from one of her offices sent me the parking ticket to give me the right to park in those metered lots that can only give you two hours max so that if you forgot to feed the hungry machines with quarters after the second hour, the parking people would have a way to pinpoint where your car is and lo and behold, on your windshield is that traffic ticket that can cost you your day's wage.
I came early for the occasion, having arrived the parking lot fronting the Capitol hours before the nine o'clock opening of the 24th Legislature.
I did not want to miss this event, my first ever, although initially, I had doubts if I really wanted to go.
To beat the traffic jam from Waipahu, on a 25 mile stretch that on Likelike would send you genuflecting to all angels and archangels and saints, is an impossible feat if one were to leave his place at six in the morning.
Many of those who have jobs in downtown would have to calculate the energies expended for losing their cool in the early morning hours against those energies that they invest driving at four o'clock in the morning as if were were being shipped straight from heaven, with the lanes all looking like zip lanes. It is time that makes the difference here, but time as well that spells doom or delight.
I left the State Capitol soon after the governor's speech. I had to catch the hour back to the University some miles away for that noontime class on the structure of the Ilokano language.
On my way out was a bag lady, but her bags were hanging loosely on the shopping cart of some foodchain, the bags accumulating dirt and the demented mind of their owner. It poverty and misery and depravity in their most gruesome visuals. Juxtaposed against the huge buildings around me and against the riches of the downtown, and the rich history of struggle for justice in these islands, I could only cry in silence, tortured as I was by the contradictions that I saw around.
Inside the august chamber, I looked around for some signs of Filipinohood.
Except for the members of the Filipino Caucus, I did not recognize any Filipinos in this mix of peoples representing the diversity that is Hawai'i.
Where are we? I asked myself.
As soon as the Governor's address was over, I rushed out, ran to one State Capitol big shot I know to say my aloha and mahalo and moved to the parking lot on the Department of Health to go back to the University to teach my students the rudiments of lingustic right and cultural democracy.
A Solver Agcaoili
State Capitol, Hon, HI
Jan 22/08
Blessings, 2
Heaven watch the Philippines.
from the song of Imelda Marcos in the film, 'Imelda'
Something reminds me
of heaven
in the homeland.
The riots, for instance.
Or the demonstrations that know
no bound, from street to street
until the stones on pavements
dry out and we convert the stones
to weapons for the slingshots.
Or the avenues vomitting people
as in vengeance, their hands
firm on placards
that in their red silence shouted:
"Down with dictators!
Down with fascists!
Down with imperialists!
Down with puppets!
Down with military regimes!
Down with poetry kowtowing to thieves!"
I do not know what can be raised here
when clamor is voice learned
and the people verbalize their
want for rice, not a dream
of pastries or bagel or croissant
whose fancy names
the masses of our people
cannot pronounce.
And the Italian masters, you say,
some Boticelli we do not know
whose landscape of pain
is a clean line of spring or snow
or some grand ladies
in their gold and brocade and diamond
their fingers the condominiums
of their husbands' greed and lust.
Or the cantor in his tenor
singing about the sun in its abundance,
shining brightly in lands
owned by friars and their queridas
or their substitutes in conference rooms
for the elect, their plans about saving us
whole-scale, in one full tango of a dance.
But there is one here
in the forefathers' land
that we do not know: the storms that
in their quick hand erode our view
of mountains and landscapes
and wind dancing with young leaves
in an afternoon glow of a rich hue
of orange and purple and then turning
into the azure of seas we dream of crossing
so we can see our own more fully,
away from the morning news
of rape of leaders against rights
bodies souls minds and decency.
As it is, we keep the singing
so we can temp the birds to fly
and challenge the skies
with their cotton clouds
that move with the earth and sun.
As it is, here always is the permanent
remembrance of things
that are yet to come.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI
Jan 19/08
from the song of Imelda Marcos in the film, 'Imelda'
Something reminds me
of heaven
in the homeland.
The riots, for instance.
Or the demonstrations that know
no bound, from street to street
until the stones on pavements
dry out and we convert the stones
to weapons for the slingshots.
Or the avenues vomitting people
as in vengeance, their hands
firm on placards
that in their red silence shouted:
"Down with dictators!
Down with fascists!
Down with imperialists!
Down with puppets!
Down with military regimes!
Down with poetry kowtowing to thieves!"
I do not know what can be raised here
when clamor is voice learned
and the people verbalize their
want for rice, not a dream
of pastries or bagel or croissant
whose fancy names
the masses of our people
cannot pronounce.
And the Italian masters, you say,
some Boticelli we do not know
whose landscape of pain
is a clean line of spring or snow
or some grand ladies
in their gold and brocade and diamond
their fingers the condominiums
of their husbands' greed and lust.
Or the cantor in his tenor
singing about the sun in its abundance,
shining brightly in lands
owned by friars and their queridas
or their substitutes in conference rooms
for the elect, their plans about saving us
whole-scale, in one full tango of a dance.
But there is one here
in the forefathers' land
that we do not know: the storms that
in their quick hand erode our view
of mountains and landscapes
and wind dancing with young leaves
in an afternoon glow of a rich hue
of orange and purple and then turning
into the azure of seas we dream of crossing
so we can see our own more fully,
away from the morning news
of rape of leaders against rights
bodies souls minds and decency.
As it is, we keep the singing
so we can temp the birds to fly
and challenge the skies
with their cotton clouds
that move with the earth and sun.
As it is, here always is the permanent
remembrance of things
that are yet to come.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI
Jan 19/08
Blessings, 1
God bless the Philippines.
from Imelda Marcos' song in the film "Imelda"
It is weaning away, like a mother's
heart letting go of her child
this song you sing
to repair our broken hearts,
many many hearts,
as a matter of fact.
You said it right through
the thick and thin of our primal fight
against those we have begun to love:
white skin and chocolates
democracy and white God.
They came to declare to us
that we are little brown brothers
the heavens decreed for them
to watch over and so
they have watched over us
with celloloid ecstasies
to keep us under guard, dreaming
dreaming dreaming of the day's wash
bathed in Hollywood lights, tinseltowns
in an orgy of tentative loves,
some violence to taste
some salvation for those happy endings
we expect to find in corner streets
where the rule of the game is the same
as in the august chambers of men
and women and lovers dreaming
about us, men and women and lovers
who have not known delight, not in a long
while while the earth in our land
is for sale, our souls for rent
and everything else such us honor,
offered on the silver plate for the kills,
in a frenzy of raping after raping
of our bitter cries.
The language, for instance.
And the culture we see as exhibits
of our meaningless lives.
We are enamored, and the world
opens up to us in quickie satiation
of need and want, in the dark
as in the shadows or both
to make things ephemeral
so in abstractions, as in thought
we can imagine of a republic of sorrow
a republic of failed dreams
a republic of struggles
in the olden times as today's.
And the shape of our miinds,
sharp like their noses
but only to mimic truths
on their books
and those of us who have become
them: us losing our accents
until ourselves are fluid like water
going through all the oceans
sailing and sailing so
and always ending up
in Los Angeles
Honolulu or New York.
Perhaps we are now in Houston
as in the borders of Laredo
or further down
in the outskirts of Arkansas
where walls define the destinies
of dreams we once owned
people of the earth
as well as people of exile
when borders did not have to cross us
where border are not in terms
of your abstractions about beauty
and truth and the good,
the trio of a deception
we had believed we had
before squatter walls
painted immaculately pristine
whitewashed for the touritsts to see
they who have the pretensions
to dance to your own tunes
even as you keep on drawing about truths
from ones and zeros and explain,
explain, explain, in words
empty as those of an Ilokano poet
talking about going home
while here, in the faraway reaches
of wandering like flotsam to dark water
we cannot tell of a teleology
you say is vision and salvation.
Were the dancing in the wee hours
those that did not include the dance
of deprivation we knew so well
like hunger going onto disease
or disease going onto greed for power
in the perpetuity of vice
so that on and on the show
was enough to feed us
with images, more images
and then we know nothing.
I do not know how to make
of your pronouncements:
what gives? what gives, indeed?
We count the years of our
wandering from dream
to dream. Words were given
us in the past, mantric and magical
and we know it was worth keeping
until the streets cried in pain
until the days were bloody whores
until the nights gave birth to fears
until the quiet was chaos
and then sleep brought us to other dreams
like cities we want to go back to
but cities that haunt us, come after us
like nations in their ghostly presence
residing in our confused selves
lives, loves. These are geographies too,
and the stories come to visit us
confirm who we are
and watch your full mouth
repeated the same mysteries
we memorized
we children of wars and revolutions
we children of much resolve to resolve
deceits in our hands the way we write
the truths we see in our verses.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI
Jan 19/08
from Imelda Marcos' song in the film "Imelda"
It is weaning away, like a mother's
heart letting go of her child
this song you sing
to repair our broken hearts,
many many hearts,
as a matter of fact.
You said it right through
the thick and thin of our primal fight
against those we have begun to love:
white skin and chocolates
democracy and white God.
They came to declare to us
that we are little brown brothers
the heavens decreed for them
to watch over and so
they have watched over us
with celloloid ecstasies
to keep us under guard, dreaming
dreaming dreaming of the day's wash
bathed in Hollywood lights, tinseltowns
in an orgy of tentative loves,
some violence to taste
some salvation for those happy endings
we expect to find in corner streets
where the rule of the game is the same
as in the august chambers of men
and women and lovers dreaming
about us, men and women and lovers
who have not known delight, not in a long
while while the earth in our land
is for sale, our souls for rent
and everything else such us honor,
offered on the silver plate for the kills,
in a frenzy of raping after raping
of our bitter cries.
The language, for instance.
And the culture we see as exhibits
of our meaningless lives.
We are enamored, and the world
opens up to us in quickie satiation
of need and want, in the dark
as in the shadows or both
to make things ephemeral
so in abstractions, as in thought
we can imagine of a republic of sorrow
a republic of failed dreams
a republic of struggles
in the olden times as today's.
And the shape of our miinds,
sharp like their noses
but only to mimic truths
on their books
and those of us who have become
them: us losing our accents
until ourselves are fluid like water
going through all the oceans
sailing and sailing so
and always ending up
in Los Angeles
Honolulu or New York.
Perhaps we are now in Houston
as in the borders of Laredo
or further down
in the outskirts of Arkansas
where walls define the destinies
of dreams we once owned
people of the earth
as well as people of exile
when borders did not have to cross us
where border are not in terms
of your abstractions about beauty
and truth and the good,
the trio of a deception
we had believed we had
before squatter walls
painted immaculately pristine
whitewashed for the touritsts to see
they who have the pretensions
to dance to your own tunes
even as you keep on drawing about truths
from ones and zeros and explain,
explain, explain, in words
empty as those of an Ilokano poet
talking about going home
while here, in the faraway reaches
of wandering like flotsam to dark water
we cannot tell of a teleology
you say is vision and salvation.
Were the dancing in the wee hours
those that did not include the dance
of deprivation we knew so well
like hunger going onto disease
or disease going onto greed for power
in the perpetuity of vice
so that on and on the show
was enough to feed us
with images, more images
and then we know nothing.
I do not know how to make
of your pronouncements:
what gives? what gives, indeed?
We count the years of our
wandering from dream
to dream. Words were given
us in the past, mantric and magical
and we know it was worth keeping
until the streets cried in pain
until the days were bloody whores
until the nights gave birth to fears
until the quiet was chaos
and then sleep brought us to other dreams
like cities we want to go back to
but cities that haunt us, come after us
like nations in their ghostly presence
residing in our confused selves
lives, loves. These are geographies too,
and the stories come to visit us
confirm who we are
and watch your full mouth
repeated the same mysteries
we memorized
we children of wars and revolutions
we children of much resolve to resolve
deceits in our hands the way we write
the truths we see in our verses.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI
Jan 19/08
Roda of our Redemption
Before the encounter, a gunshot was heard. Father Roda’s body was found bathed in his own blood. He died on the spot, Goltiao said in the AP report. Inquirer Mindanao Bureau, Jan. 17/08
It is martyrdom like this that we remember.
Witnessing it is this dying in sacrifice,
blood bathing you on cold cement
afterwards, with but the air you breathe
leaving you as soon as it can. Was it in the head
that the bullet ricocheted through, spilling
the brains in that head that knows
so much love? First, the story coming alive
in this oblation we call your history now,
your tragedies congregating to remind us
that once there was you and the men
before you, flesh on decay on the ground
that ate you up becasue: (one),
there are murderers of saving dreams and (two),
some can be on the ready to let go
of what this life and this earth can offer
so that, (three), more can be had from all these
nothingness that consume us all,
believers and those who believe something else.
The names come in whispers now:
Tulio Favali the foreigner,
and then you brethren of the cloth:
Rudy Romano (where is he now, he disappeared
in the shadows of the Marcos regime, with that famous
promise for a clean break with the rich
so that the new rulers can corner the best?)
Ortega of Bakun (did his severed head go back
to the rotten body while the dancing of the kaniaw went
on to appease the anitos of the dead?)
Balweg of Abra (was his political theology
something deep the killers do not understand
resonance of thought and words
and that sanctity that goes
with music and song and sadness
of injustice?)
How much more of blood in drums and drums
of them would be needed to keep the peace
and the quiet of our souls, we children
of the faith, children of murders, killers,
thieves, pretenders, cheats, politicians,
and careerist priests and clerics?
Our lives are conflicted. Yours define
the mysteries of the things
we hardly understand.
But let us go on, let us go on,
with your death. The living comes after it.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI
Jan 16/08
It is martyrdom like this that we remember.
Witnessing it is this dying in sacrifice,
blood bathing you on cold cement
afterwards, with but the air you breathe
leaving you as soon as it can. Was it in the head
that the bullet ricocheted through, spilling
the brains in that head that knows
so much love? First, the story coming alive
in this oblation we call your history now,
your tragedies congregating to remind us
that once there was you and the men
before you, flesh on decay on the ground
that ate you up becasue: (one),
there are murderers of saving dreams and (two),
some can be on the ready to let go
of what this life and this earth can offer
so that, (three), more can be had from all these
nothingness that consume us all,
believers and those who believe something else.
The names come in whispers now:
Tulio Favali the foreigner,
and then you brethren of the cloth:
Rudy Romano (where is he now, he disappeared
in the shadows of the Marcos regime, with that famous
promise for a clean break with the rich
so that the new rulers can corner the best?)
Ortega of Bakun (did his severed head go back
to the rotten body while the dancing of the kaniaw went
on to appease the anitos of the dead?)
Balweg of Abra (was his political theology
something deep the killers do not understand
resonance of thought and words
and that sanctity that goes
with music and song and sadness
of injustice?)
How much more of blood in drums and drums
of them would be needed to keep the peace
and the quiet of our souls, we children
of the faith, children of murders, killers,
thieves, pretenders, cheats, politicians,
and careerist priests and clerics?
Our lives are conflicted. Yours define
the mysteries of the things
we hardly understand.
But let us go on, let us go on,
with your death. The living comes after it.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI
Jan 16/08
Deploying a Despedida for Dean
(For Dr Dean Alegado, who decided to go back to the Philippines after more than 30 years of service to the University of Hawai'i and to the Filipino Community in the United States)
would you have kept
the poem I wrote
about homelands
not needing heroes
and if they do,
tough luck?
from my blog are more
of those, repeated, repeated,
repeated repeated
pleadings
that summon what grief
we have for ourselves.
you go back soon
to the very earth
that gave you the words
to find the road to a revolution
in thought and in deed
one revolution that means
so much to us exiles
students teachers advocates
we who know nothing but restlessness
as we keep moving from tale to truth
from truth to your truth
and the challenges that come in between.
i watched you gather all the phrases
that need to the said uttered recited
to keep us on the guard for those who will sell us
to the devil who knows what enchantment
there is in making life akimbo
as if in a perpetual motion of regret.
and then here you are:
coming full circle in that circle
we can only envy.
another poet
of the revolution and of our people
in their cries think of going home
after this stint with earning something
for the remittance that comes in as a duty
each week, each time the dollar gets into the hand.
in the meantime, of course,
the homeland waits for the returning exile
in his lights, food or no food in sight.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI
Jan 16/08
would you have kept
the poem I wrote
about homelands
not needing heroes
and if they do,
tough luck?
from my blog are more
of those, repeated, repeated,
repeated repeated
pleadings
that summon what grief
we have for ourselves.
you go back soon
to the very earth
that gave you the words
to find the road to a revolution
in thought and in deed
one revolution that means
so much to us exiles
students teachers advocates
we who know nothing but restlessness
as we keep moving from tale to truth
from truth to your truth
and the challenges that come in between.
i watched you gather all the phrases
that need to the said uttered recited
to keep us on the guard for those who will sell us
to the devil who knows what enchantment
there is in making life akimbo
as if in a perpetual motion of regret.
and then here you are:
coming full circle in that circle
we can only envy.
another poet
of the revolution and of our people
in their cries think of going home
after this stint with earning something
for the remittance that comes in as a duty
each week, each time the dollar gets into the hand.
in the meantime, of course,
the homeland waits for the returning exile
in his lights, food or no food in sight.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI
Jan 16/08
Returning to Exile
(And I did not want to see him go. I could only imagine his clothes on his closet, folded and awaiting for his return next year. My son's blog entry, on my going away, again and again.)
It is a child's language of pain
minus the words and hyperbole.
No exaggerations here but descriptors
of what we go through, we exiles
to ourselves, to other selves.
Loss, losses, in time and memory.
It is distance you can never navigate
you make up for whatever you can scrimp
like stories we can only imagine
or laughter we are never part of
but caught on screen or on camera.
Always you spot this:
the surface of joy is flat, and is bland
you cannot even touch the heart in pictures
sent to you on e-mails.
You do not know the toll it takes
to go away. Always, it is the anticipation
of return that makes matters worse
and like children, you feel all those rivers
becoming oceans, those deluge of absences
coming in to account small-time presences
you can afford to give as luxuries.
It is that you are always looking
for your children in the blank stares of screens.
And you think of your story
multiplied a hundredfold,
ten million of your people going through it all,
this loss, this loss, this loss.
You know of the dividends, like a son
looking at your clothes packed
for the touching, yours, till next,
neat and nifty, and the naphthalene balls
at work. What do you say?
How do you say regret in a sentence
crisp and clear without words?
How do they take it,
the absence of periods and pauses
for this going away when in mornings
children need your command
of loving, hurrying them up to catch the hours
or bring them to their evening concerts
while you wait in parking lots
by reading your tabloid paper
from page one to the puzzles?
You take in all these,
remembering what the son wrote
in his blog, a masterpiece of sadness.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI
En 11/09
It is a child's language of pain
minus the words and hyperbole.
No exaggerations here but descriptors
of what we go through, we exiles
to ourselves, to other selves.
Loss, losses, in time and memory.
It is distance you can never navigate
you make up for whatever you can scrimp
like stories we can only imagine
or laughter we are never part of
but caught on screen or on camera.
Always you spot this:
the surface of joy is flat, and is bland
you cannot even touch the heart in pictures
sent to you on e-mails.
You do not know the toll it takes
to go away. Always, it is the anticipation
of return that makes matters worse
and like children, you feel all those rivers
becoming oceans, those deluge of absences
coming in to account small-time presences
you can afford to give as luxuries.
It is that you are always looking
for your children in the blank stares of screens.
And you think of your story
multiplied a hundredfold,
ten million of your people going through it all,
this loss, this loss, this loss.
You know of the dividends, like a son
looking at your clothes packed
for the touching, yours, till next,
neat and nifty, and the naphthalene balls
at work. What do you say?
How do you say regret in a sentence
crisp and clear without words?
How do they take it,
the absence of periods and pauses
for this going away when in mornings
children need your command
of loving, hurrying them up to catch the hours
or bring them to their evening concerts
while you wait in parking lots
by reading your tabloid paper
from page one to the puzzles?
You take in all these,
remembering what the son wrote
in his blog, a masterpiece of sadness.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI
En 11/09
Coming Together for Self-Love
Copenhagen.—Hot on the heels of San Francisco and London, Copenhagen is to host a Masturbate-a-Thon in May which organizers hope will help break lingering taboos about self-love, an organizer said Wednesday. AFP, Jan.10/08
We can play it up,
this idea of self-love.
The clerics will not pardon us
nor will the friars. The body
is not a buddy, man.
It needs flagellation
and freedom of movement
of hand punishing and
supplicant in silence:
spikes on ropes
or barbed wires on strings
and the rhythm of points
and bluntness of the spirit
and the receipt of the flesh
of whipping and more whipping
of metal caressing
our tissue of pain
until blood oozes out to declaim,
No more, no more to passion
but back to reason,
cold and calculating
and it is for real, as in graves
and memorial parks
where the deceased
do not weep
nor guffaw nor feel blessed.
So they will show us
the way to this
marathon of self sacrifice,
in full view
of the Copenhagen
sun and stars.
How will the lights
of mornings
ever reflect the motions
in multitudes
of strokes reaching out
to orgasmic delights
while in Kenya, the tribes
are there for the kill,
this spectacle of variety
as we move from
a public place
to private faith in man,
woman, and lover of self?
We need to come out
into the open,
so they say, and admit
that a synchrony
of maneuvers like these
can come out unto its own
and then we say,
Good luck
for good riddance
because man, woman,
and the lover
of self is born.
The impotent seminaries
of the elect would have a lot
to learn from this,
with that show of force
to make us come to grief.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI
Jan 9/08
We can play it up,
this idea of self-love.
The clerics will not pardon us
nor will the friars. The body
is not a buddy, man.
It needs flagellation
and freedom of movement
of hand punishing and
supplicant in silence:
spikes on ropes
or barbed wires on strings
and the rhythm of points
and bluntness of the spirit
and the receipt of the flesh
of whipping and more whipping
of metal caressing
our tissue of pain
until blood oozes out to declaim,
No more, no more to passion
but back to reason,
cold and calculating
and it is for real, as in graves
and memorial parks
where the deceased
do not weep
nor guffaw nor feel blessed.
So they will show us
the way to this
marathon of self sacrifice,
in full view
of the Copenhagen
sun and stars.
How will the lights
of mornings
ever reflect the motions
in multitudes
of strokes reaching out
to orgasmic delights
while in Kenya, the tribes
are there for the kill,
this spectacle of variety
as we move from
a public place
to private faith in man,
woman, and lover of self?
We need to come out
into the open,
so they say, and admit
that a synchrony
of maneuvers like these
can come out unto its own
and then we say,
Good luck
for good riddance
because man, woman,
and the lover
of self is born.
The impotent seminaries
of the elect would have a lot
to learn from this,
with that show of force
to make us come to grief.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI
Jan 9/08
The Double of a Black Christ
Thus God made people a bit different: some with flat noses, some with long slender noses; some with blue eyes, some with jet-black eyes; some with yellow hair, some with brown hair, some with curly black hair. N. Turner
Honest, I did not know.
The miracles are everywhere
in our midst, the poor who come to you
in supplication as in sorrow.
Today we celebrate your feast
you, black Man-God, black God-Man
and here we all are, away or on your altar,
giving you this distant look
as if you come to rescue us now
from all these spectacle after spectacle
of deceit and lies. Accept this handkerchief
with my sweat and in both are my life,
the cloth to make an imprint of your looking away
from all these processions of our blighted lives,
my sweat, odor and testimony and both,
my passport to your granting me what I ask,
strange as it is, you realize,
in these times of difficult wants.
Did you come from Mexico
move here to Manila to bless us
with your Aztec warmth, your color
the evidence for a black God?
You were white, as it was, or the color
of wood alive and aglow with forest soul
and the fire that gave you life
made you a redeemer of color
like our own people in exile.
We try to keep on with the watch
for blessings as we throw in the towel
that comes from our brow or shoulder
or in our pockets as we march
the rough streets on bare feet and fierce faith.
We do not know how to stop
as the throng keeps thronging
maroon men in need of mercies
multiple as the loaves and fish.
And we become a sea of desperados
as we have always been for centuries
and centuries on end. We have not been lucky,
you know well, black Nazarene of our salvation.
We cannot even save ourselves
from the revenge of our lands
going to other hands, some those of friars
who venerate you, believe in your kingdom
and preach about your justice and freedom.
In the past, the colonizers got them all,
the good lands and graces, and they called this
the wages of the Spanish god
who did not look like us. We looked at them
the colonizers and their priests and their allies
in their abundance, the best of fruits and fantasies
the best of lust for brown skin, the best of days
for merriment beyond the prohibited hours
the best of happenstance.
What we do not know is that we have prayed
and forever we did and the preying has gone on
and on and on. Are we going to open our
souls even to those who cannot see you
eye to eye because they have so much
to offer and they are giving you back at your feet
at your donation boxes, at your basket of offerings
those things that they stole from us?
Today is the parade of our terrible lives.
We walk the talk on belief and the miles on the Quiapo
of our regrettable loves. Even here, our hopes are alive.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI
Jan 8/08, on the occasion of the Feast of the Black Nazarene of Quiapo
Honest, I did not know.
The miracles are everywhere
in our midst, the poor who come to you
in supplication as in sorrow.
Today we celebrate your feast
you, black Man-God, black God-Man
and here we all are, away or on your altar,
giving you this distant look
as if you come to rescue us now
from all these spectacle after spectacle
of deceit and lies. Accept this handkerchief
with my sweat and in both are my life,
the cloth to make an imprint of your looking away
from all these processions of our blighted lives,
my sweat, odor and testimony and both,
my passport to your granting me what I ask,
strange as it is, you realize,
in these times of difficult wants.
Did you come from Mexico
move here to Manila to bless us
with your Aztec warmth, your color
the evidence for a black God?
You were white, as it was, or the color
of wood alive and aglow with forest soul
and the fire that gave you life
made you a redeemer of color
like our own people in exile.
We try to keep on with the watch
for blessings as we throw in the towel
that comes from our brow or shoulder
or in our pockets as we march
the rough streets on bare feet and fierce faith.
We do not know how to stop
as the throng keeps thronging
maroon men in need of mercies
multiple as the loaves and fish.
And we become a sea of desperados
as we have always been for centuries
and centuries on end. We have not been lucky,
you know well, black Nazarene of our salvation.
We cannot even save ourselves
from the revenge of our lands
going to other hands, some those of friars
who venerate you, believe in your kingdom
and preach about your justice and freedom.
In the past, the colonizers got them all,
the good lands and graces, and they called this
the wages of the Spanish god
who did not look like us. We looked at them
the colonizers and their priests and their allies
in their abundance, the best of fruits and fantasies
the best of lust for brown skin, the best of days
for merriment beyond the prohibited hours
the best of happenstance.
What we do not know is that we have prayed
and forever we did and the preying has gone on
and on and on. Are we going to open our
souls even to those who cannot see you
eye to eye because they have so much
to offer and they are giving you back at your feet
at your donation boxes, at your basket of offerings
those things that they stole from us?
Today is the parade of our terrible lives.
We walk the talk on belief and the miles on the Quiapo
of our regrettable loves. Even here, our hopes are alive.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI
Jan 8/08, on the occasion of the Feast of the Black Nazarene of Quiapo
Rituals of Welcome
I can only imagine the scene. Or scenes.
At this hour are the traffic of movements
of feet and minds and hands. Children,
three of them in a concert of emotion
with my absence, talk of making the fruit salad
from the coconut tree I planted when,
in the years of our want and fiery hopes, I touched gold
in the seed with its future of flowers and fruits
food and faith in abundance
all coming in off-season, rain or no rain.
It is the mixture of memory and all the other
ingredients I like. And the care for preparing
a bowl of love with the coconut meat in slices,
long and thin like the rice noodles
that go with this ritual of good graces.
The pancit canton is for long life
and the greens as well like the okra
fried in corn oil and in the heat of our
missing each other for the many new years
we have spent burning wires and greetings
miles and miles away from each other.
The e-mail, of course, is a constant,
with the smiling faces and the e-cards
with their well wishes, some formulaic,
the others complaints about not being there
about them not being here. I see the all-year round
fruits tied on to window sills and railings,
caressed sometimes by the mountain wind
that comes to visit in raucous nights like this new year's:
the foreigner's grapes, red and green for a variety of sweet luck,
a heap of three bunches with their long thread so they sway
with the dance of this moment
the oranges, watermelon, pomelo,
apples from Washingtom with their bloody
suggestion of delight and destruction
whichever one you want to view
the ponkan from China with its seed gone
so we can neutralize our taste buds
and soon forget how is it to be bitter
about life at home or abroad
some other fruits that count to twelve,
on a wooden bowl or tray of rituals
to remember as for always
what we have come to in all our years
in this life of our best days.
We connect and reconnect
and this should make our new year complete
like the fireworks giving way to a few seconds
of spectacles and then everything is gone
save the refuse on our streets, yards
and ourselves. Then again, some glories come
even when moonlights are epiphanies waning,
this year of the rat or no rat.
You call home seven thousand miles away
and the call bounces back with loves
in multiples, some honeyed and hopeful
and the rest our contract with some saviors.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI
Jan 2/08
At this hour are the traffic of movements
of feet and minds and hands. Children,
three of them in a concert of emotion
with my absence, talk of making the fruit salad
from the coconut tree I planted when,
in the years of our want and fiery hopes, I touched gold
in the seed with its future of flowers and fruits
food and faith in abundance
all coming in off-season, rain or no rain.
It is the mixture of memory and all the other
ingredients I like. And the care for preparing
a bowl of love with the coconut meat in slices,
long and thin like the rice noodles
that go with this ritual of good graces.
The pancit canton is for long life
and the greens as well like the okra
fried in corn oil and in the heat of our
missing each other for the many new years
we have spent burning wires and greetings
miles and miles away from each other.
The e-mail, of course, is a constant,
with the smiling faces and the e-cards
with their well wishes, some formulaic,
the others complaints about not being there
about them not being here. I see the all-year round
fruits tied on to window sills and railings,
caressed sometimes by the mountain wind
that comes to visit in raucous nights like this new year's:
the foreigner's grapes, red and green for a variety of sweet luck,
a heap of three bunches with their long thread so they sway
with the dance of this moment
the oranges, watermelon, pomelo,
apples from Washingtom with their bloody
suggestion of delight and destruction
whichever one you want to view
the ponkan from China with its seed gone
so we can neutralize our taste buds
and soon forget how is it to be bitter
about life at home or abroad
some other fruits that count to twelve,
on a wooden bowl or tray of rituals
to remember as for always
what we have come to in all our years
in this life of our best days.
We connect and reconnect
and this should make our new year complete
like the fireworks giving way to a few seconds
of spectacles and then everything is gone
save the refuse on our streets, yards
and ourselves. Then again, some glories come
even when moonlights are epiphanies waning,
this year of the rat or no rat.
You call home seven thousand miles away
and the call bounces back with loves
in multiples, some honeyed and hopeful
and the rest our contract with some saviors.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI
Jan 2/08
Benazir is dead, democracy is born
Benazir is dead but democracy is born.
We had the same story years ago.
The people will live forever as we do.
Only that those who command the killing
Are alive as well even if they bomb themselves
To nothingness. Except that, of course,
Presidents know how to squander our chances
Because they do not know what life
Is in the streets, with our changing
Going wrong most of the time
As what comes of our lips are lamentations
And the dirges of mothers, fathers
And the thieves of spirits.
We saw the blood, and it is in the news
Fresh with the message of turmoil
As well as courage. These extremes,
What do we get indeed, from murdering
Our dreams to murdering other people's
Dreams? What do the shrines say, the mosques
The angels? How soon do we call everyone
Martyrs except those who are condemned?
Benazir is dead. We are alive for the kiss.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI
Dec 27, 2007
We had the same story years ago.
The people will live forever as we do.
Only that those who command the killing
Are alive as well even if they bomb themselves
To nothingness. Except that, of course,
Presidents know how to squander our chances
Because they do not know what life
Is in the streets, with our changing
Going wrong most of the time
As what comes of our lips are lamentations
And the dirges of mothers, fathers
And the thieves of spirits.
We saw the blood, and it is in the news
Fresh with the message of turmoil
As well as courage. These extremes,
What do we get indeed, from murdering
Our dreams to murdering other people's
Dreams? What do the shrines say, the mosques
The angels? How soon do we call everyone
Martyrs except those who are condemned?
Benazir is dead. We are alive for the kiss.
A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI
Dec 27, 2007
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