She freed me from prison

My President is she who freed me from a Marcos prison in 1986. I know that she alone is not responsible for 1986, for the millions were, as well as the thousands who died in the years before that, including my husband, and the tens of thousands who fought the dictatorship and led the revolution, including me. ...Yet it was she who freed me from prison...Mila D. Aguilar, Inquirer, Aug 21, 2009

We gave her the power

To free me from prison,

She freed me from prison.

The dictator and his ambition

His wife and her cursed word

These were all it took

To lead men to perdition

But here she was, yellow

Ribbon without the meaning

Except to hope for what was coming

In the wind as in the bark of trees

We tied this memento of our grief,

We gave her the time

To free us from his prison

From the barbed wires of the man

With the dark premonition

Here she was, we gave her

The chance to free us from prison,

We were freed from prison

We ended up in another.

Did it matter

That there was a promise to return?

It mattered that the men around

Who were all your friends

You drank with your bourbon

Cavorted with your greed for sums

And in the silence of nights

Rare as these were in your rule

Thought of how to appease the poor:

A kilo of rice for the next man

A can of sardines for the next woman

And a bunch of promises

For the wretched as they showed

Their sullied palms.

Man or woman, these leaders

Came after her and they all

Made spectacles of our hunger.

It was for a show, the business of misery

We have memorized so.

She freed me from prison

To end up in another,

My president, this president

Who had also put us asunder.

A Solver Agcaoili

Hon, HI/Aug 20, 2009