This is Where You’ll Breathe Your Last

By Hans Pieter L. Arao

On the pot-holed pavement you knelt,
grimy knobby hands clasped in prayer
to gods wielding metal toys shooting metal missiles,
faster than your scrambled thoughts,
or the mumbled supplication of bystanders
wishing they weren’t there.

A banging sound, or three, louder than the clang
of church bells across the square.
But the hiss of blood that spurts is louder,
It squirts from the holes
on your pock-marked face,
and the twitching twig of your body.
But not louder than the silence that follows.

Not louder than the helpless, wordless
seething rage of silent watchers
drawing ever closer to the yellow ribbons
that ward them off. Nor the rending wail of mothers
or fathers or wives or husbands or children or lovers
— all spittled cries of addled brains.
They forsake the power of speech
for the greater power of incoherent gestures
and gurgles.

Your death is drowned out
by squabbles over who killed you.
Fake golden badges, or mounted ski masks?
Or plain robbers, does it matter?
They all point to murder, but
you’ll be just another number
after you draw your confused last breath —
another stick, another tick to the tally
of those counting Digong’s
casualties in the war he promised.

Lines will be redrawn over whether yours
was a murder well-deserved, or another
symbol of the State’s failure
to take care of its poor.
Besides that, you’ll soon be forgotten,
maybe even by your family, resigned
to the fate of a former user’s cautionary tale.
Suspected peddler, rehabilitated, does it matter?
You looked the part. Emaciated, jerky,
glazed, sunken eyes —
The telltale signs of addiction, of hunger.
Because that was the last thing you heard, wasn’t it?
That gnawing in your stomach? It caused a din
between your ears, subduing all comprehension

Before the cameras shot you lying face down on the floor.

)

The Kill List Chronicles

Written by

The new protest literature in the time of Duterte. Because according to Umberto Eco, “To survive, we must tell stories.”

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