Awake in the interregnum

A Third World president holds a press conference

in a busy Washington D.C. street corner.

For a moment, it looked as if a drunk driver

could finally hit her.

Her companion, a counter-insurgency expert,

promises dollars, a warship, and a rescue horde of Americans.

A Chinese businessman sweats at a hearing

cramped with officials who fail even the act of segregating

and recycling, the blame.

He was sorry the ship had to sail–

capitalism has not yet conquered the weather.

Outside, a mob eyes his trepid handkerchief wipes.

Relatives stare at the sickly green walls

of an asylum called the office of Sulpicio.

They’ve begged, yelled, fainted, and fell.

Still hours trickle like candle wax.

Clutching portraits with burning hands,

their anger flashes as white as from where small dreams come.

It is no longer accurate to say that they are simply a team
out on a search
seemingly,
and often truthfully,
interminable.

Sharing desaparecido, the name of loved ones,
common are they in tears—
sparkling,
trickling,
gushing forth—
to finally evaporate-solidify in
a fury immortal as justice.

Common are they in hope as a shadow heartbeat.

And they troop
to streets camps courts fields,
like hounds sniffing out a trail left by fascists,
careless or careful in obeying
the state machinery’s most carefree of deadly missions.
Let it be known that it is not the nature
of a mother
brother
son sister
father
to be attracted to the smell
of blood on cement, wire, or gun-butts.
This morbid endurance
to chase after traces of
stale cigarette smoke and engine exhaust,
sweat on abandoned plastics and blindfolds,
ashes of incinerated flesh,
rotting bodies in mud graves shallow
and other horrors
evocative
of that smile, that voice, that imprint of a soul,
is a symptom of something gone terribly wrong.

So they shake placard faces in faces.
The former is a fixed expression of an absence so deep
it burrowed back in time
and nestled right at the heart
of the continuing struggle:
between
oppression and self-might
between
ignorance and possession
between
capitulation and dying
between
reaction and liberation.

It is no longer accurate to say that they are simply a search team
that holds hands
and lights a candle
for the nation’s disappeared.

They, too, have found their memory.

***

Desaparecidos under the Arroyo regime (as of October 9, 2007): 184

May natagpuang ipis sa loob ng latang sardinas
Batang lalaki sa Pampanga tinamaan ng lintik
Motorsiklo nagsalpukan, tilamsik ang dugo’t helmet

Human Security Act na
Hindi pa naililitaw sina Karen, Sherlyn, at Jonas
Nasaan ang hustisya?

Holdaper kinuyog ng sampu, hinayaan ng pulis
Fans ni Rhian Ramos kay Mo Twister galit na galit
Kinansela ang diplomatic passport ni Yilmaz Bektas

Sa Tacloban, pinatay si Charlie Solayao
Ika-866 na aktibista sa bansa
Nasaan ang hustisya?

Wala ang patron ng mga nawawala, pari suspek
Bawal na raw kainin and may formalin na White Rabbit
May sunog sa Pasig (kahapon Makati, bukas Taguig)

Ligalig na ang mga mahistrado ng Korte Suprema
Militar nasa lungsod, may basbas ni Gloria
Nasaan ang hustisya—

Para sa walang alam, walang pakialam na madla?