MAITA GOMEZ, 64

by: Cheryl L. Daytec 

So you were on your way to the huge hippodrome

You moved with the grace of a swan

Twenty  million  people  waited for the wave

 of your dainty hands on black-and -white TVs

That was what you were supposed to do

Alas, you rolled down the car window

The stench of  existence deterged of freedom

pervaded the air

You  looked straight into the eyes of a child

hawking her tender flesh to wrinkled  strangers

not quite comprehending her  tragedy

You saw her haggard mother

holding with one thin hand a boil-infected baby

letting go of  hope with  the other

You saw her jobless father  burn his self-deprecation

with a bottle of cheap alcohol

Hungry peasants carried full harvests to lay down

At the feet of an indolent  landlord chewing  cigar

There were millions of them

There were just a few of you

The soft bed, the flashy cars, the banquets,

The promises  of fame:   their  glitter was illusion

 Subdued by  the sudden flash of enlightenment

It was a time when opulence was a badge of shame

-an era  when hope was  heresy to  the wretched

Freedom was a  word inside  the lexicon

 devoid of form outside of it

a rhetoric of tyranny to mask injustice

a  birthright without duty-bearer

calling for  vanguards to unchain it

You heard the call the moment you knew

One cannot fully enjoy a world

that despoils the  laughter of others

So you turned the car around

Slipping out of your gown

You dropped

 the circlet of fame around  your head

the rogue lipstick into the garbage bin

It was war; you picked up a gun and rushed

 to the  battlefields - a soldier of the people

Power started to lose balance

when you and comrades cast arrows into apathy

creating a  hole through which sunshine could pass

to  grace  that young girl’s pallid life

to give her mother strength to collect hope

to put color on her father’s waxen face

You never  put down the freedom torch

You made more torches

passing  them on to the toiling masses

They found their way out of the darkness

of apathy and victimhood

To the light of consciousness

To the parliament of the streets

To the corners of the countryside

 To the slums, to the prisons

Confronting the throne

Crumbling the cornerstone of injustice

Winning victories for the oppressed class

There are  virtues more solid  than beauty

-Love for the unloved, love for the masses

Sacrifice for society’s dregs

Choosing them all,  

You turned your back on a crown of beauty,

the fancy dresses, the limelight

and became more  beautiful

Now, from where the struggle goes on

We watch you ride  into the sunset

Beautifully

as only you could/chytdaytec 14jul2012