Albay 2K6 (Reming Aftermath)

Tomorrow

Instead of frolicking in the snow

I will have to color my world in sorrow

Tomorrow

Instead of wearing green and red

I will have to wear the color of the dead

Tomorrow

Instead of going to the ballgames

I’ll have to go to church and pray

For the people who lost everything.

Requiem for the dead…

Coco Nuts

The charbroiled kamote is picked up from the glowing embers by dirty trembling hands
It’s charred skin similar to the one now holding it- dark, baked by the intense heat
Blowing cool air into the hot and smoking bounty of the fertile loam soil of Bicolandia
Making beautiful thoughts of the fare that would make a fine relief to the
Gnawing pangs of a hungry stomach.
Justiniano, a diminutive worker harvesting Copra in the middle of the vast Coconut plantation in Albay owned by the swaggering descendants of the Colonizers of yore
His face dripping with sweat while his hands continue to work with machine- like precision unmindful of the singing of the Balinsasayaws that dances from tree to tree
His thoughts wondering why they have to toil under the sun while their supposed
Masters had their ice-cold lemonades and biscuits in the shade.
A sad reality that more than a hundred years after our so- called independence
We are still nothing but slaves in our own country.

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11/09/2003