Post by thepoetslizard on Oct 10, 2008 15:57:37 GMT 2
At 32, the four months Doris Nuval Baffrey was convicted to serve became four years first in Bicutan and later at Camp Crame Stockade. She was released in 1985. Baffrey was arrested as the "ASTA bomber" in 1980 after a convention in Manila of international travel agencies was disrupted by an explosion during President Marcos' keynote speech. (from the September 2007 / Martial Law issue of Our Own Voice)
web source:
www.ourownvoice.com/poems/poems2007b-baffrey1.shtml
"Searching"
(to Manoling and his tribe)
you look into our windows for light
hoping for the right answers
to question those answers
serve only
to give birth
to more questions
confusion brings you back
to our dingy halls
to layers of musty screens
which
though meant to divide us
instead bring us closer
bond us
as brothers and sisters
of a distraught nation
we were born to serve
you ask us
don't you ever cry
the answer my brother
is no
for what right do we have
to shed tears
over a few iron bars
while others have spilled their blood
for a sacred cause
no brother
there is no reason to cry
for as long as
you search for the truth
your thirst for knowledge
remains unquenched
as long as you keep coming back
to take with you
the little that we have to offer
then you are reason enough
for making prison
worth its while
January 25, 1983
*
"Maybe"
(to Manoling and his tribe)
I lie awake
body aching for sleep
my mind wanders
to far off places.
fear seeps in.
thoughts ...
of never seeing the horizon again
of not having the wind brush your face
nor the sun sear your skin
and of perhaps not ever loving again.
no,
not possible ... it couldn't be!
but then again yes.
the what ifs and whys
form an endless stream of doubts
that the pleasures that were
may never again be.
oh, that the sun might seduce me
the men likewise
the disco lights titillate my senses
love engulf me
i love you, sun
i love you, sky
i want you to the core of my being
so much that i hurt
you am i
i am you
not now, not yet.
what happened to all the time?
need I ask why?
the barbed wires hold the answer
but more so
fatigue outfits
of a species that refuses to be human
their mocking smiles
more telling than their guns
wake up
be strong
all hope is not lost
because you may yet touch those trees
savor the wind
wallow in love
because tomorrow you may be free.
maybe.
(from FIRE TREE: Prison Poems from the Philippines; Lines of Darius Printing, USA 1985)
