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BY RHICK LARS VLADIMER ALBAY
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Tuesday, March 7, 2017
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I CONTRIBUTED, this poem to the 7025 folio of Resbak (Respond and Break the Silence Against the Killings) – an interdisciplinary alliance of artists, media practitioners, and cultural workers seeking to advance social awareness with regards to the killings brought forth by the Duterte administration’s “war on drugs.”
Through various art forms and platforms, they seek to lend a voice and empower the most vulnerable sectors targeted by the state-endorsed killings.
The folio was entitled 7025 because this was the casualty count of those who fell victim to the anti-drug crusade during the time of publication on Jan. 22.
Resbak held an Araw ng Pagkakaisa on Feb. 4 in Quezon City, Metro Manila where the folio was officially released.
***
Chalk Bedrooms
Let me draw chalk bedrooms
on the pavement
Here a wall, here a door,
a cardboard box for a bed
Close your eyes though
the city does not allow sleep
let the throb of your chest
drown out the sirens,
find shelter under
bullet-ridden canopies
I don’t feel safe in my own home,
the mother whispers under her breath
making sure her child doesn’t hear
She knows the streets are plied
by the ghost of drug lords
tattoos on taxi hoods,
wheels grinding under
a driver’s blood shot eyes,
lights flickering “vacant”
The boy who will die tonight
Feels the cold concrete against his spine
and hears alley cats and stray dogs howl
before vanishing into the thick night
There is solace in tracing streets,
Knowing Iznart intersects Rizal, and
Rizal cuts a corner to JM Basa,
and JM Basa slithers back to Iznart,
as Mulle Loney will always
follow the shape of the Iloilo River
But everything else changes too often
***
Chalk Bedrooms was written by Ilonggo writer Rhick Lars Vladimer Albay, from the city that has been dubbed by no less than President Rodrigo Duterte himself as the “most shabulized” in the country.
Iloilo was rocked by the sudden killing of two of its biggest drug personalities in August last year, yet drug trade in the city persists amid a manhunt for the other drug lords in the region./PN
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