You and Who Remembers
Vince Agcaoili You and Who Remembers
First light at the district. The avenues barely scorched, and already men and women swarm the streets in their tired suits. Dealers, clerks, aides, an entire colony of commerce trying to catch the minute and its quick steps. Even the sparrows, tired of their melancholy songs, are poised to flee their branches for seeds. The morning is a street yanked out of a dream and thrown into the city. Never mind the signs. Never mind the trace of buses, the vague clamor of old trains. Money has a song, and I have unbound my wrists from timbers. They remain so. This instance, everything’s where it’s supposed to be. The shadow of wings on the pond comes and goes, the beggar asks and never receives. You can tally your debts on the water and hope it remembers.
What Stirs
It might as well be disease.
It might as well be question’s echo
Treading through such dim halls.
Whether or not it’s ghost,
It’s looking for passage
To besiege:
Radio static swelling
Just before the anchor
Speaks of genocide, intervention.
Howls under rusting roofs
Below rustier bombs.
A window after dust settles
So you may overlook the wreckage.
You say, Ruin is ruin.
Still, no one rises from a grave.
In some cities, wind
Can sometimes be not breeze,
Merely tremor.
Creed
I denounce my victories. I resist my urge to hoist a blade over my days of longing, hours of work, or this ghost of frailty that lets me walk alone. I vow instead to defend my innocence, this luscious oblivion. I yearn to forget my joys – the scent of her hair, a precious meal after a month’s labor, a soft bed after a long day. At this country’s birth, when my people brandished rust to claim their throats, they decried their fears in blindfolds, convinced to pull the trigger or jump into a trench of fresh coals. They gave their arms for lesion. Blood, their word.
Take what you can, then. I forgo my name. I forgo my money and my sanity. Just leave me my sweet delirium. When the cups clink, when the soprano sings of battles won, bear the fruit of my absence. Place my bones in a good coffin. Permit my ghost to inhabit the dim halls.
After Hours
Lampposts forge a fortress on the pavement.
You cross the street, and a car cuts your next step.
You make a call for an extension, a check leaves your pocket
For another bill, your teeth bear the weight of your body.
This morning, the sun built a shadow of a house
Inside your house, doubling the walls, the cups on the table.
Night comes to take this away. You drag yourself
From one street to another, all set to start a fire, break
The windows, slit the throats of all the dogs who dare
To bark and race you. A revolution is on the way,
Or so the revolutionaries say. But tonight, your heart is a child
Who had scraped a knee, getting up and looking for a place to stay.