POEMS (My Way of Dealing With the Passage of the Human Security Act)

Other than through poetry, I cannot adequately express how I feel about the Human Security Act.

God bless us all.

The Plagues Only Solidarity Can Quash

We gather round
for lies have been sown
on fecund fields of innocence
They will sprout into evergreen trees
If we do not gather

We dared say the sky is blue
They say it is red, the color of blood
It is black, the color of terror
We dared say one and one equal two
They say a million
Give or take a few
To prove their point, they come down to us
With their arrogance printed on that
paper exalting Falsehood

This is the curse
that Truth can quash

We gather round
for the door to seal the cage
of thought is almost complete
We will be trapped inside
If we do not gather

We wondered loudly why the very few abide
in palaces and the rest inside Baguio Oil cans
They say "Choose- destiny or misfortune;
Indolence or hard work!"
We dared complain that the innocent suffer,
the guilty are blessed
They say paranoia has been a scourge
since the dawn of civilization
As paranoia fueled barbarism,
it foments rebellion and terrorism
Neutralize the noise of barbarians/rebels
With that paper dignifying Silence

This is the plague
that Freedom can quash

We gather round
for the ink on our death warrant
is about to dry
It will dry
if we do not gather

We dared taunt them for their inability to tell
man or woman from quadruped,
They say biology fundamentals evolved
And how can we forget that immutable law
The lord of the manor has divine license to
shoot at beasts sowing chaos in his estate?
We dared ask why counting bodies on the streets
is a task never done like a woman's work
They say our calculator is counterfeit or obsolete
We dared demand to see the disappeared
They say we have gone to the wrong information booth
They wave at us the paper that watered down
debauchery in murder, celebrating Death

This is the plague
That Life can quash

We gather round, we gather round

Before we believe
The graves are a lie

or

themes of literary works of fiction

Before we believe
Our thoughts are a figment of our imagination

or

insanity in a clever disguise

Before we believe
that the broken bones
of our parents
of our siblings
of our children
are of chimpanzees

Before we stop chanting

Justice is not a squatter on earth
deserving eviction!
Equity is not a vice!
Disparity is not a virtue!

Before respiration becomes
mere proof of existence
not of animation

Before

Truth will be swallowed by Falsehood
Freedom will be caged in Silence
Life will be buried under Death

Only Solidarity can quash the plagues.

We gather round.


Warning to Tyrants

Cut off our tongue because through it
You become deaf to the injustice
You cannot hear what is being said
How can you hear what is not?
But the language of silence is a venom
Nature abhors a vacuum
It will fill the silence with noise
That will penetrate your deafness and
consume your soul weighed down by hatred
Till it evaporates into useless ash

Ascend your ivory towers
Arms folded, stand against a milieu of grandeur
Raise the trident so stillness will reign
Watch us with hawk's eyes
Eager to witness our fall with a move we make
But you will jump from your verandahs
When stillness will wave its hand
and metamorphose into Freedom that inflates
The sizes of small people
Whose massive force will pull you down

Push the buttons on the gas chambers
Let the bullets from your armalites fall
Like harsh monsoon rain
Let the grenade explode into splinters as many
as the untruths let loose by your tongue
and the wrecked aspirations of the masses
Let the mass slaughter continue
Every day is an open-game season
Extend the parameters of the mass graves
So that they can swallow more dead bodies

What you cannot stop:

Heroes will fall proclaiming that Life is wheel
on its axis; what goes up comes down,
what comes down goes up
This is not a thought
Rather, a conclusion of thought
From the matter surrounding it
The heroes' last rational thought will be of
the air you breathe poisoned by your paranoia
It is not a curse; it is nature registering
Itself in the mind of those about to collapse

I wonder, do you know
who will have the last laugh?

Tyranny
ends
for
the
dead.

It will continue to haunt those who live.