A Poem Insisting to be Written

This is a difficult poem that insists itself

to be written. You think of the manner

of calisthenic attack as you walk in circles,

one at a time, with another reluctant

poet who thinks about his private God

in the syllables of sin. I do not, of course,

believe in the mortality of words

nor in the finiteness of verses

and so I say, these are all the same:

the poet in his manner of skewed

seeing of the world, the witty rebel

in his skewed seeing of the word,

the prophet in his skewed seeing

of the world worded. And so I tell him,

this reluctant poet who does not trust

paradoxes nor the back gray of light

in darkness: they are all the same,

these, the meanings playing a pun

on language, seeing how the eye

sees itself with all these ruses,

one tricky phrase at a time

until the whole thing becomes

a stanza of our grief. Poets are lonely

people, I offer, saying this to him

to console even as I say the same thing

to myself. But they are most happy,

too, in their loneliness. We walk

another round in one inner circle

of our courage or creative rage

or whatever that you call

these feelings we have against

all that oppresses like verses

unable to identify themselves

if they are stanzas of pretense.

It is night, it is the Wednesday

with no sense, the flood lights

bathing our evening steps

to make the first move

and another first move

to think about what we want

whether to write a first poem

or resist writing one while all along

we have known the poetry of injustice

in this land where we have our

dreams deferred, dispersed.

A Solver Agcaoili

Manoa/Oct 28, 2009

A Poem of Sin at SM Marikina Starbucks

Today is another  

afternoon 

of my return after 

a long while.

The homeland is hot, 

blazing hot.

The weather is hell 

as in the heck

of our everyday 

stranger's life. 

The hot pandesal

at Pugon de Marikina 

is the size of roaches

shrinking to bite size, 

the price of wheat bread

no longer good 

for the exiled palate.

Now, I know this

even if in the emails

I read before flying back

I have been forewarned

of hunger in front 

of abundant Starbucks, 

with its swift and quick

offer of the good life,

cafe Americano

and the arabica of 

hallucinatory life

we live to the hilt

to anounce what drinks

are for the nation's gods

what drinks are that cost

the daily wage 

of those leading a life

that goes into Starbucks

to say hi to those pretending

to write poems but cannot figure

out what this free verse

of our miserable life 

is all about, this life

that has its prose

like metaphors of coffee

served via bottoms up.

This recession is killing me

kills my facile claim to poetry

and I need to kill back

to come alive from this heap

of murderous cups of coffee

tea or capitalist lies.

So there is no way 

to get even, I realize,

with these terrors of a return

except to keep running away 

from the couldron of a country

of our pains, pesos on recession

and faith in foreign food going wild.

So we run to where 

the air conditioned air is

this running dictating 

how much dwindling dinero

we need to survive

our rat's lives 

how much quivering cash 

we can dole out

to whoever is the capitalist 

that preys upon our not-so-sweet

of non-innocence 

a city we have lived

a city that has robbed us

of our decency has defined.

 

It is at the SM Starbucks

that this first sin comes alive:

brewed coffee tall and tangential

the cost of a day's work

for these young men and women

whose sin is they have names

as so far away from the city

far away from the palace

far away from where they make laws

far away from it all like mine. 

I get a glimpse 

of how is it to live

one pandering, 

pauperizing life.

For once, I am courage:

I make finalmente 

some Starbucks choices 

between a grande of sorrow

or a tall glass of bitter Marikina lives.

Brown Starbucks sugar 

or a choice of sugared honey 

to make me forget instantly  

that in the land yonder you flew out

we sell our soul to the highest bidder

even as our hopes for a better life

nosedives with 

our hope for an afterlife

with or without Starbucks.

Tall, sir, or grande 

or what lies, sir?

This American English-speaking 

crew of a college girl calls out

to my drunken desire. 

I have the laptop for security 

to keep me company while alone

to make me kill the hot hours

to wean me away 

from committing the first act

to a  suicide with all the notes

from committing to a promise 

for a profit-driven 

crack at a cosmic

charade of sliced cakes

for a queen whose devotion

to justice is for the democracy

of Starbucks coffee 

and our commercialized 

chatter of a malling mind.

The college girl of a crew

asks in afterthought:  

latte, with the fancy ice cream

with its fancy offer of a refreshing 

chill that lasts forever

after you have thrashed your first cup 

your hundreds gone to the waste bag?

I have no clue, 

I say. 

In Honolulu,

I run away from all

these hacks of Starbucks life.

In the cold mountain mornings

of my solitary exile's life,

I drink marunggay

soup with the vow

of a celibate cup

and saucer

and a plate that sing

with zing of fulflled loves.

I scan the smiles 

of middle class

men and women 

absorbed in the absences

of their strange loves, 

their fragile fingers 

on keyboards of mute laptops

with all the gesticulations

of grace and grandstanding menu

of upper middle class brew

of our sundered national class.

Here are the clues:

the poor like me 

ask what you like

the rich like them 

saunter in their long roads

to fulfill their elite desires

going extra wild.

Just add 15 pesos, sir, 

and you have it all, sir,

you will drink 

your green tea

with all its antioxidants

and all the glories of a wi-fi'd mind.

Delight, sir, delight

is what you get

in this ambient corner

of our Starbucks 

that gives you the fantasy

of a real love.

I say, bring 'em on.

I say, let me sin.

I say, let me be bourgeois

for this afternoon, just for once.

I think of the heat on my chest.

I think of the small war 

I have waged, have to let go.

I think of this poem 

I am going to write

its title in honor 

of the men and women

who pamper me 

with their coffee lies:

Starbucks for the rich

Starbucks for the moneyed

Starbucks for the sophisticated

Starbucks for the yuppie

Starbucks for the alternative 

to a city life. 

And so I let go.

I nod to let her 

ring the register

with my pesos gone, 

this currency

of our faked lives.

Some chocolate, 

in-house, sir,

dark, sir, 

creamy and 100 percent, 

its beans

from Aceh to save the lives

of Sumatrans.

I think of Aceh 

I think of Benguet

I think of Kalinga and Apayao

their beans that 

of my morning brew

that leads me out 

of Manila dreamland.

Two hundred sixty five pesos

is your bill, sir, 

and please, please

pay with your life. 

Let your soul, sir,

be intact, sir, 

so you can come, sir,

again and again, sir, 

so we can trick you, sir,

into believing, sir, 

that our lies, sir, 

are your truth, sir,

and your truth, sir, 

is also ours, sir.

I bring out the crisp bill

long hidden in the recesses 

of the Seiko wallet with all the luck

I bought for a lifetime of self-reward.

Luck has it that I have kept

the snake skin after

centuries of seeing the capitalists

come to life, resurrect forever

to haunt us alive.

A Solver Agcaoili

May 21/09/SM Marikina

 

Bullets for a husband and daughter

I miss both of them so much. My heart bleeds in pain. My sorrow is deep. Their loss is too much too bear. I am alone. Lilian de Vera, on the death of her husband Jun and young daughter, Lia, in the hands of policemen. From an email that is going around, April 12, 2009, Easter Sunday

Dear Lilian de Vera:

Jun de Vera's name is about truth.

Vera is a last name that completes

the sentences we utter to word our lack

the vacuities we keep deep in our heart. 

It is also Lia's, your darling daughter

of sweet lingering laughter 

and of joyful promises of care

when your hair is white

and you knees can no longer carry

the weight of your years.

The Vera name remains those 

of her father and his daughter

the two the recent reminders

of  what justice is in our land,

their bodies riddled with bullets 

blinded in the heat of the tropical homeland

and so like our callused selves do not see

at a time, in a December like this one,

is a season of sad extremes

when all you can have is to beg for mercy

shout amidst the maniacal zing of guns

shot to please stop the murder of our dreams.

You both could have been blessed, you say,

Lilian, say it in your silence even 

as you stand by, your word lost in the world

as you embrace their cold bodies 

riddled with this puzzle of untimely death

even as you speak with them in the silence

of that unspeakable grief only women know

women who are wives and mothers

women who are offerers of stories that heal

our land, this bloodied land 

that gives us all these ultimate horrors

we cannot define, not now, in these months

that we hear of the advent of song and mystery.

We say to your husband:

Your wife was there in the Church of Nazarene

the black man-god, miraculous as he is

staring at all the tired faces 

staring at your wife's vow to keep coming

in his wake, tend to your death

touch your sorrowing countenance

she cannot reach 

and kiss your marble of black feet

some have kissed a thousand times

before her turn to stand up 

from bended knees. 

What was it that came into 

that belief, hers, and the need for prayers

and that begging for grace

just one more grace?

The report says of the complicity

of lying killers whose deeds are familiar

they could be our country's daily stories.

It was them, the police people

whose jobs we keep

whose lives we sustain

whose protecting hands we protect

so they can keep going with their business

of assuring us of our capacities to forgive

our desire to forget

but not these twin murders!

How could we forget except

to be rattled, pissed, come to griefs

when while you prayed, Lilian,

they preyed upon the innocent body

of Lia your daughter in her young years

her laughter your mother's grace, 

your sweet, sweet grace?

How could we forget except to 

fight back, fight this impunity we call

a jungle's law or its lack in the hands

of uniformed killers, them to whom we entrust

the outlines of our first joys 

the temporary sketches of our dreams

the structure of our colorful happiness?

No, you have got the opposite:

the ping of bullets whizzing by

and felling Jun to the bloodied ground

and felling Lia to his pierced body

their breath coming together

in that last rite of communion, one hand

on her face, his other hand on her lips

ssshh-ing her, telling her heaven

is just near, the heaven they will go to

the heaven you will be absent

you, Lilia of our nightmares,

in a long, long time yet

not when this fight has just begun

not when this call for vigilance

against those who protect us

is one call we have to do at last.

You say you will learn to live

without them: please do.

Your knees know the shape 

of fears and tears and faith,

your body knows what goodness

is even as your mourning

is what will keep you awake.

We send you our prayers:

the wind knows where to go

the spirit of the sun will reach

you so that with the warm

of the sun and the breeze

you will see Jun and Lia a hundredfold

in the victory you will behold.

Go with the sun, then,

go with the blessing of the crescent

moon and under its light

call out to Jun and Lia

and tell them to go the way of angels

of the light, the one final light. 

A Solver Agcaoili

Hon, HI/Apr 13/09

   

  

 

The Dream of An Angel

A young girl portrays an angel lifting the black cloth covering a statue of the Virgin Mary during the traditional “Salubong” of the resurrected Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday in Barangay Pulang Lupa 1, C5 Extension, Las Piñas City. N. J. Orbeta, Inquirer, Apr 12/09

I am an angel for 

this Sunday of an Easter

and I am dressed 

in the oft-white of ritual.

I am not sure if I knew

what I am doing, 

little girl angel

that I am. 

I speak of my act ten-twenty-thirty

years from now 

when I shall have more

mind to offer, 

not this reluctance

of my right hand 

as I hang in ropes

tied to my young girl's body.

It is this ceremony of the centuries

of denial, colonized or inculcated

in the head by prayers heard

or imagined, like hell.

This is the one I have been told to do:

remove the veil of the mother

that sorrows so. 

The week past was misery

in a different crescendo, with the poor

gathering their strength to come to Cutud

and there watch the fallen Christ fall

once again in the man who had promised

to be nailed a hundredfold. 

And now this, and now this:

I lift the holy veil, silky black and blue, 

of the mother that suffers so

she with her agony as agony can be

watching her god-man of a son 

go through it all, 

this sin and this sinning

this show of a gallery 

wanting his blood in gallons

like oil from Baghdad

and raging breath from the cells

of Guantanamo

and then his body, bruised,

battered, left for dead

but will soon rise again

as it is today when I wipe

her tears finally, wipe them 

with my young girl's fingers.

 

I do not know, I really don't

as I live in a country run by patriarchs

and their wives and dark memory

eager to await for Lent with their song

that speaks of evil in other places

but not in this country

when all I see are beggars

hands outstretched for a morsel

of bread and being

mendicants asking for mercy

pedestrians walking endlessly

to altars without cold saints

and miraculous waters

but blood and more of them

blood oozing out the streets

blood in our hands clasped in adoration

blood in our senators' chambers

blood in the house of thieves

them men and women who should know

where human justice begins

so that god's pity ends.

I lift her mourning mother's veil

and in the years ahead

I will remember that today,

this 12th of April

in the year of the Lord

in this common era of our grief

our world's will to live

is will unto itself

like prayers to all mothers

that grieve, like incantation

to the god-man that rises

from the loneliness of his grave.

A Solver Agcaoili

Hon, HI/Apr 12/09