1896 (Cry Freedom)

by Aurelio Alvero

The cry awoke Balintawak

And the echoes answered back
Freedom!
All the four winds listened long
To the shrieking of that song.
Freedom!
I heard it from the planters in the
vales
I heard it from the traders tying
bales
I heard it where the fishers strike
their sails
Freedom!
Every poet struck his lyre
With those burning notes of fire
Freedom!
All the women knelt to pray
In their hearts that frenzied lay
Freedom!
Een the children and the old
Took to arms and shouted bold
Freedom!
I heard it from the huskers neath the
trees
I heard it from the divers of the
sea
I heard it from the pounders in the
leas
Freedom!
All the people raised the cry
Fearing not to bleed or die
Freedom!

Up the mountain, down the plain,

Louder, louder rang the strain
Freedom!
All the tombs of slave and sire
Broke to voice that great desire
Freedom!
I heard it from the makers of the
brooms
I heard it from the weavers at their
looms
I heard it from the smoking smithy
rooms.
Freedom!
From the temples, from the shrines,
From the bosom of the mines
Freedom!
Kris and bolo flashed in light,
Thunder-voices air did smite
Freedom!
Muscles sound and spirit strong
Broke the chains with metal song.
Freedom!
I heard it in the bullets whine and
roar
I heard it in the farthest islet shore
I heard it and shall hear it ever
more
Freedom!

Air Castles
by Juan F. Salazar

My life's tomorrow beckons me

From distant mountains high and low
My future seems a boundless sea
When moving passions come and go.
Deep in my heart Ambition dwells
He cheers me up the highland way
And guides me through the hills and dells
Wherein i pass the busy day.
I cannot write with Shakespeare's pen
But i can write with Shakespeare's heart
I love his skill, his craft of men
His mastery of poet's art.
I do not care for fame as he
Enthroned was he, like unto a God
the depth he reached are dark to me
But i will grope the ways he trod.
I wear achievement's coronet.
For blest are they who see things done
and all my cares i soon forget
When i have wrought my work alone.
If i be met by adverse fate
And all my dreams be but in vain
then i will work harder yet
with high resolve to try again.

To A Lost One
The Sea

by Angela Manalang-Gloria

by Natividad Marquez

Why does the sea laugh, Mother,

As it glints beneath the sun?
It is thinking of the joys, my child,
That it wishes every one.
Why does the sea sob so, Mother,
As it breaks on the rocky shore?
It recalls the sorrows of the world.
And weeps forevermore.
Why is the sea so peaceful, Mother,
As if it were fast asleep?
It would give our tired hearts,
dearest child,
The comfort of the deep.

I shall haunt you, O my lost one, as

the twilight
Haunts a grieving bamboo trail,
And your dreams will linger strangely
with the music
Of a phantom lovers tale
You shall not forget, for I am past
forgetting
I shall come to you again
With the starlight, and the scent of
wild champakas,
And the melody of rain.
You shall not forget. Dusk will peer
into your
Window, tragic-eyed and still,
And unbidden startle you into
remembrance
With its hand upon the sill.

The March of Death

by Bienvenido N. Santos

Were you one of them, my brother

Whom they marched under the April
sun
And flogged to bleeding along the
roads we knew and loved?
March, my brother, march!
The springs are clear beyond the
road
There is rest at the foot of the hill.
We were young together,
So very young and unafraid;
Walked those roads, dusty in the
summer sun,
Brown pools and mud in the
December rains;
We ran barefoot along the beaten
tracks in the cane fields
Planted corn after the harvest
months.
Here, too, we fought and loved
Shared our dreams of a better place
Beyond those winding trails.
March, my brother march!
The springs are clear beyond the
road
There is rest at the foot of the hill.
We knew those roads by heart
Told places in the dark
By the fragrance of garden hedge
In front of uncles house;
The clatter of wooden shoes on the
bamboo bridge,
The peculiar rustling of bamboo
groves

Beside the house where Celia lived.

Did you look through the blood in
your eyes
For Celia sitting by the window,
As thousands upon thousands of
you
Walked and died on the burning
road?
If you died among the hundreds by
the roadside
It should have been by the bamboo
groves
With the peculiar rustling in the
midnight.
No, you have not died; you cannot
die;
I have felt your prayer touch my
heart
As I walked along the crowded
streets of America.
And we would walk those roads
again one April morn,
Listen to the sound of working men
Dragging tree trunks from the
forests,
Rebuilding homes- laughing againSowing the field with grain, fearless
of death
From cloudless skies.
You would be silent, remembering
The many young bodies that lay
mangled by the roadside;
The agony and the moaning and the
silent tears,
The grin of yellow men, their
bloodstained blades opaque in the
sun;

I would be silent, too, having nothing

to say.
What matters if the winters were
bitter cold
And loneliness stalked my footsteps
on the snow?
March, my brother, march!
The springs are clear beyond the
road
Rest, at the foot of the hill.

And we would walk those roads

again on April morn
Hand in hand like pilgrims marching
Towards the church on the hillside,
Only a little nipa house beside the
bamboo groves
With the peculiar rustling in the
midnight
Or maybe I would walk them yet,
Remembering... remembering

When I See a Barong-Barong

by Maximo Ramos

When I see a barong-barong neighborhood in the heart of war-torn Manila;

When I behold beside the Pasig sudden lean-tos defended against sun and rain
with salvaged sheets of tin;
When I take a truck ride through Suburbia and find nipa huts clustered within the
shell-punched walls of former mansions of stone
I do not look away in shame or throw up my hands despairing for my people.
I fill my chest with the bracing breeze of this my country and say:
Though my race has been pushed around in his own land for nearly half a
thousand years,
Though my people have been double-crossed again and again by foreigners,
Though my race has been pitted against themselves down the centuries;
I joy to discover that they are whole and remained unbroken in spirit;
Building them makeshift huts of nipa and salvaged tin and standing straight with
heads against the stars.

Beggar Children
by Emmanuel Torres

Where they go, skies looking after

them
Remain lean ghosts of killer kites.
Even their cloths have the rip holes
of kites
Caught raving among high electric
branches.
Playgrounds they wander in are
condemned
By the fat book of proverb: games
have abandoned them.
They trail the tracks of sparrow
slingshot
Would stone down, live, into their
dreamless hands.
Shreds of nests, wind struck, straw
their hair.
When they speak, plucking the high
sleeves of strangers
Beyond reach of sweat crowding
their brows,
It is all a hopscotch make-do
language.
Reaped from wall of liberal graffiti
(Colorum profiles, amulet signals,
pistols

Pointed at hunger shaped like

pursue of hairy mouth)
Patrolled by the shadow of a carnal
cop.

Their eyes, alert, are blacker than

shadow

They spill about them and loose in

crowded noons.
Catch-as-catch-can is what their
fingers learn
From hoops of skinny thorns: thus
they survive.
If between the billboard siren and the
rainy highway
Their eyes fall on pebbles, their
wishes are not
For marbles gleaming with swirls of
heaven
But for hubcaps to take to as far as
the next possible town.

Father
by Alfred A. Yuson

August 17, 2009 at 5:11 am

Must everything begin and end with tensions
as with Father and son,
the memory of games and sins between?
In the hospital I watched your heart
tighten its flutter across a screen, a moty
blipping from breath to breath
And finally arriving at a pin point
of dark, the last light a feint
that three me off your sorry hint.
Eutering your deathroom I came
upon a sad peace, bent towards time
and kissed you; you were him.
Pressed your hand and in wild

appeal to chance thumped a childs

blow upon your chest, a field
I wanted to revive and roam
upon some more, though the dusk of a dream
hurried me along toward half a home.

Order for Masks

by Virginia Moreno

To this harlequinade
I wear black tight and fools cap
Billiken*, make me three bright
masks
For the three tasks in my life.
Three faces to wear
One after the other
For the three men in my life.
When my Brother comes
make me one opposite
If he is a devil, a saint
With a staff to his fork
And for his horns, a crown.
I hope for my contrast
To make nil
Our old resemblance to each other
and my twin will walk me out
Without a frown
Pretending I am another.
When my Father comes
Make me one so like

His child once eating his white bread

in trance
Philomela* before she was raped. I
hope by likeness
To make him believe this is the same
kind
The chaste face he made,
And my blind Lear* will walk me out
Without a word
Fearing to peer behind.
If my lover comes,
Yes, when Seducer comes
Make for me the face
That will in color race
The carnival stars
And change in shape
Under his grasping hands.
Make it bloody
When he needs it white
Make it wicked in the dark
Let him find no old mark

Make it stone to his suave touch

This magician will walk me out
Newly loved.
Not knowing why my tantalizing face

Is strangely like the mangled parts of

a face
He once wiped out.
Make me three masks.

Valediction sa Hillcrest
by Rolando S. Tinio

Pagkacollect ng Railway Express sa

aking things
(Deretso na iyon sa barko while I
take the plane.)
Inakyat kong muli ang N-311, at
dahil dead of winter,
Nakatopcoat at galoshes akong
Nagright-turn sa N wing ng
mahabang dilim
(Tunnel yatang aabot hanggang
Tundo.)
Kinapa ko ang switch sa hall.
Sa isang pitik, nagshrink ang
imaginary tunnel,
Nagparang ataol.

Or catacomb.
Strangely absolute ang impression
Ng hilera ng mga pintong
nagpuprusisyon:
Individual identification, parang
mummy cases,
De-nameplate, de-numero, dehometown address.
Antiseptic ang atmosphere,
streamlined yet.
Kung hindi catacomb, at least
E filing cabinet.
Filing, hindi naman deaths, ha.
Remembrances, oo. Yung medyo
malapot
Dahil alam mo na, Im quitting the
place
After two and a half years.
After two and a half years,

Di man nagkatiyempong mag-ugat,

ika nga,
Siyemprey nagging attached,
parang morning gloryng
Mahirap mapaknit sa alambreng
trellis.

At pagkabukas ko sa kuwarto,
Hubot hubad na ang mattresses,

Pihadong panay ang display sa Des

Moines.
Don ang Cosntance arent coming
back at all.
Gusto ko nang magpaalam
to whom?
The drapes? The washbowl? Sa
double-decker
Na pinaikot-ikot naming ni
Kandaswamy
To create space, hopeless, talagang
impossible.
Of course, tuloy ang radiator sa
paglagutok.
(And the stone silence,
nakakaiyak kung sumagot.)
Bueno, lets get it over with.
Its a long walk to the depot.
Tama na ang sophisticationsophistication.

Wala nang kutson sa easy chair,

Mga drawer ng bureauy
nakanganga,
Sabay-sabay nag-ooration,
Nagkahiyaan, nabara.
Of course, tuloy ang radiator sa
paggaralgal:
Nasa New York na si Bob and the
two Allans,
Yung mga quarterbacks across the
hall

Sa steep incline, pababa sa highway

Where all things level, sabi nga,
Theres a flurry, ang gentle-gentle.
Pagwhoosh-whoosh ng paa ko,
The snow melts right under:
Nagtutubig parang asukal,
Humuhulas,
nagsesentimental.

Bus Riders
by Gloria Garchitorena-Goloy

These ruminants on the run, when they travel,

travel a mobile mental mileage metered

by the depth and distance of their dreams:

a stern silence isolates their brotherhood
from each to each even where a truant high
kneads against its sudden mate.
(How well the guise is glared!)
the vehicle screams an overweight,
less of flesh, more of mood
ferried burdensomely with heavy fettered
lives sitting out a fleeing trap by
the windows of the mind.
Tight the spell upon the vacuous space!
And all the gathered transients strain against
the bus bursting seams.
But it will break when all who have not sat
and stood disperse their thoughts
with an ambivalent sigh,\disperse them at the
corner of goodbye.