Poems of Constancy and Such

I.

He makes his rounds
among his clientèle,
hawking his ten-peso ponytails while
his brother's looks and
pleas for a few coins
draws blank stares and averted eyes
from strangers humming to their I Pods.

"The youth is the fair hope of the Motherland,"
Rizal says.
But what hope could they cling to
in scrounging for empty bottles and spare change
like flies feasting upon another's remains?
O, to be young and desperate
while corrupt liars strut in million dollar suits
is the greatest tragedy of all.


II.

She was always there
an outstretched hand
asking for dimes
or warmth on a rainy day.
Her gaunt face spoke
of an everyday desperation
fueled by an empty belly
and her children's cries at night.

Still, the city passes her by
without mind, focused on
winning the rat race leading
to God knows where.
The tales we tell
of a world of monstrous hunger
and insatiable greed.
The narratives are the same
like seasons that unfold
without fail.

(An intervention, perhaps
if instead of an open palm,
She had a gun.)

III.

Yes
Auden was right
on "how everything turns
away quite leisurely from the disaster."
O, will it take a war
to make them see
the Real of the Illusion?


*with lines quoted from W.H. Auden's poem Musee des Beaux Arts
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~creswell/auden.html