POEM Against Impunity: For the Victims of the Ampatuan Massacre

These Ruins Remain My Only Gifts

© by Emily Porcincula Lawsin

In Memory of the Victims of the Ampatuan Massacre

 

For you, brown widow, I bring

Your journalist’s tattered notebooks, exploded pens, and spilt ink-wells:

The shape of kneeling railroad spikes with rusted springs.

 

Followed by lost door knockers and burnt iron fence posts,

Cross-bound by Manila hemp and splintered bamboo:

Confiscated garden tools guarded by guilt, but no shame.

 

 

All found objects one comrade collects as art

Mirrored here in the dustbowl’s abandoned fields,

Where a caravan of blood stains the tire-marked grasses

 

And the east wind blows fire into the   seas   that   part     us.

 

Here, we cannot bury our grief in an unmarked coffin!

Shaken by such shallow graves sinking beside us,

Our children scream as the ancestors wake.

 

While we find pebbles, pennies, and partial pesos as poor pacifiers

To string this raging rosary, chanting for justice across sacred lands:

My God, my god, why have you forsaken me?

 

 

April 29, 2010

Ann Arbor, Michigan

For the

Anthology of Rage: 100 Poems. 100 Filipino Poets.

Edited by Joel Salud (on Facebook)

www.emilylawsin.com