Kallamo

It is keeping secrets, this.

Like writing in the old kur-itan
Where you hide what needs to be hidden.

But yours is the opening up
Of language to what it cannot reach.

A pillow you get, so says the tale,
And you expose its bowels
For the drunken north wind to play on and on
And you see the cotton dance,
The feathers too, or whatever
Remnants of demonic memory and self
You have put in there, evil woman:
Words you bloodied, butchered too.

And you made us believe
Of the lie you called truth
Even as you led us to the dark
Corners of our fear. There,
The sun is a shy young man,
Unable to say into a syllable
What needs to be said about
You being the smiling temptress,
Evil woman and more so, cavorting
With alien friends, unable to see
What seeing is or ought to be.

Now, we have come to know:
This apprentice novice which is you,
Appended to what we could
Have become, better and better be.

In the Ilocos of your hand,
Its hollowed land is not hallowed.
Not anymore as you wreaked
Havoc on our words.

You have taken away the holiness
Of our pain, and you have sold
It all, thirty pieces of silver.

And more.

You could have become a leader,
And could have led us to freedom
We have not possessed
Not for a long long while.

Instead you danced around, swayed
Your fat hips to the beat of songs
Whose lyrics you do not know,
Do not take to heart.

Praying evil woman, what have you become
Apart from the evil you have become?


Tagbilaran City/
July 15, 2011