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MAYAMOR*

By Tomas Talledo

 

You write poetry but who reads?

They who sends SMS “I luv U ga…mwah”?

They who sit at coffee shops blubbering inanities?

They who sex at the age of fourteen?

 

They’re Plato’s ilks who’ll banish poetry in our people’s republic.

 

You vividly paint the revolution but who stops to see?

The eyeless agents wobbling in graveyard shifts?

The dyslexiacs lost in labyrinth of wikipedia?

The somnambulists in flat cyberscreen?

 

They’re shards of broken mirror who can’t reflect the whole.

 

Still, you write and paint and sing of the coming wise-dom

Of enchanted forests, waterfalls and nourishing rain

Of communal dagsaw, drums and armalites

Of Tumandok people’s protracted war.

 

While we bury our eyes, guts and hearts at comfort zones of indifference.

 

Still, you write and paint and sing of communism

Of food, learning and spirited actions

Of binanog dances, healing and cultivation

that will surface in headwaters of Panay.

 

*A highest salute to painter-poet and companion martyrs in Antique

 

Tao of the Revolution

by Tomas Talledo

Imperceptible, moving the unmoving ceaseless Tao of Revolution,
The immovable Law of Motion calls,
“Come Li Ta-Chao, come Azad, come Reds now…”
Victory revealed by time, space and causality when burst forth open.

War machines spurt foul operation plans,
But Ho-Chi-Minh’s pond stays Zen.
Still is the tempest waiting, murmuring,
“Nanay Walingwaling, Kumander Posa, Ka Tingting”.
Fools are they who spit at the sky.

Summons of kubing, drums, gongs call over, over and over,
I glimpse of communism in dances of Tumandok highlanders
Where moving fauna totems meld together
In such ancient brave colors of their skin apparel.

While navel gazers amongst us are blind what lays ahead,
So are bourgeois ego lickers and eaters of the dead.

                                                                              –18 July 2018