WANDERLUST*

1.

This looking for the pot of gold, this looking
For the rich gentleman, this looking for the young 
Years in Darayday, Santa Maria, Gabu, Daurao
This looking for another shore, another home
Is it looking for what is not there?

2.

In Honolulu, did the sun rise in the west?
Did you see the full moon at noon? Or did you look 
  for the bitchy word
Or was it Baguio's naked shadow in the garbage dump
  at a backstreet in Waimanalo?

Was the ghost at Helekulani on the beach in Waikiki
  a memory of the white sands in Saud in Pagudpud?

3.

What did you say to him-- the huge Polynesian in rumpled
  coat-- who begged for a dollar
As you stepped out of Dimsun after gorging on noodles
     in the late hour?
Or did you see the grease man stretching his arms for alms
On the pavement beside the church along Quezon Boulevard?

(Did you bar-hopped with your buddies from the old country?
Where were you? The Honda Civic waited for you near
 a lamppost until the moon closed its ancient eyes in Keolu.)

4.

And what did you say to her who greeted you, a smile breaking
Her Oriental face, as you jabbed at eggplants, okra and ampalaya
Among Asian greens at Dong Phoung's Texas grocery store?
Did she make-believe you were the cousin lost in the Tet offensive?

It was a day the word was made flesh and you laughed teary-eyed
As she babbled on, her strong verbs galloping like wild horses

     from the great plains of Amarillo to San Francisco by the bay.

5.
Jot down anything that comes to mind, says Rickly Lee, echoing
     Julia Campbell the American writer.
So what did you write in 15 minutes on the three-ruled pads?
Nothing. Silence has afflicted the brown brains--the poet is dead
In the vast wonderlands --and death is interred among the bones
     of dried words.

6.

The TV was on, and the hairy bad man was cursing, son of a bitch,
we are in terrible danger, damn it, damn it. And the wife was lying
Flat on her back on the bed, her eyes covered with round slices
 of cucumber fruit.
In the east room by the window, Juanjuan was by his lonesome Playing Cordillera lullaby on his green-painted bamboo flute.

7.

No more are the snows under the pinewoods, oakwoods
And so are the icy mornings and cold evenings at Medi-park
Where dwell a thousand white ducks and flying multi-colored geese
Now agitated as the black man throws bird food upon the water.

8.

Stop it! Stop it! Was the Caucasian lady in red jogging pants      screaming?
Was she terrified at the camera aimed at a grove of pine trees
               she was passing by?
Or did you hear a hound dog barking in nightmarish dreams?
Or are you again counting the stars in Sagada, multiplying your
    sorrows seeing the bathers in the polluted waters of Pasig?

9.

Whatever, my friend, arise from the bench, and walk again 
the narrow path home where waits the New York Times' best-seller.
It is a must read tonight while brown men toil, their hue turning Bloody red in the sun in the sad country of shattered windows
   and broken dreams.  

     
* Included in the expanded edition of the anthology of Ilokano and English poems, "Umayka Manen, Ganggannaet/Come Again, Stranger."

Last Mass Pinoy Migration and the last of the sakadas (inset) in Hawaii