Going Green

(Or my preachy Hallmarky-card
contribution
for this year's Blog Action Day
for the Environment,
October 15--it's still 11:26 p.m.,
so I still beat the deadline! hah!)


Last year (or was it two years ago?),
green was the new pink in fashion.

now there's
something green
for everything that isn't:

black is the new green
for web surfers,
smokers can rejoice
with organic cigarettes.
male voyeurs even have
an environmentally-friendly FHM issue.

wanton consumers tote
eco-friendly shopping bags,
mining companies
have green technologies
to bore into mountains,
war economies
have environmentally-friendly bombs,
fuel-guzzling Western luxury cars
can bathe in bio-diesel
squeezed from the guts
of Third World toddlers
howling in haciendas.

so many things green
for realities that are not.

sometimes
we forget
that green
is not about
dollars
but really about
land to till
water for all
air and freedom
flames burning
for justice.

Green is
not about "changing the world"
in little ways
for big people.

Green is
changing the world
in big ways

for little people.

Sometimes,
Going green means seeing red.

salvaged poem

Reflections on a damp evening in a distant land

You exhibit a translucency
On nights such as these:

Tonight, as smoke
Descends on stars,

When the moon
Is a sliver of nectar
On a dew-spattered plain,

Rumors of exits
Stain monsoons

And seep through mists
Obscuring mountains.

In these dim nights of
Inchoate sadness, you are
Real: wafts of sunlight
Streaked with dust-motes; livid, like the glare
Of languid afternoons. Without you, the night
Acquires a solitary luminescence
As with transience, or rage

or silence.

Unsettling, how the recall of your face

blazes like braziers

On nights such as these.

*ca. 2000. dug this up from the archives of an old moldy notebook. i rededicate this to erika salang, whose valiant story continues to humble us and remind us of the whys and hows.

sa pagtatapos ng 2005

Pagbuo ng mga Bagay
ni Mark Strand
--Isinalin sa Filipino ni Charlie Samuya Veric

Sa parang
ako ang kawalan
ng parang.
Ganito
lagi ang pangyayari.
Saan man ako naroon
ako ang nawawala.

Kapag ako'y humakbang
nahahati ang hangin
at lagi
lumulusong ang hangin
upang punan ang pook
na nilisan ng aking katawan.

May mga dahilan tayo
sa paglisan.
Lumilisan ako
upang manatiling buo ang mga bagay.




Keeping Things Whole
--Mark Strand

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

Questions From Autopsies

I.

The accounts are all the same: how bonnet-clad
men with pistols and motorcycles
pump a pellet in the nape
or, missing this, aim straight for the heart.

Their bullets do not choose between
tillers or toilers, those who wield
guns or placards, or pens.

The warning is not lost to those
who view the bodies:

How do blindfolds, hogtied wrists
and ankles testify to the crime
of opening eyes, waving fists,
marching on weary streets?

II.

It only takes a second to kill a man:
death comes quickly
as sculpted steel ricochets
through labyrinths of flesh.

The assassins vanish
in dim crevices.

Do they ever wonder why hundreds
of their spiralling shards fail
to stall the exodus
of hearts, halt heads
from birthing revolts, silence
the tireless tongues?

III.

When all of the bodies
have been accounted for,
when all the pale hearts
are laid in in a long queue,

shall we parade them along
avenues and ricefields
to rouse the dead from their stupor?

IV.

It only takes a single bullet
to kill one of us.
How much more of us will it take
to halt the gale of bullets?


October 21, 2004