By ALEXANDER SANGUINIS

A blue and yellow screwdriver was still embedded in the left temple of human rights lawyer Angelo Karlo“AK” Guillen when paramedics took him to a hospital in Iloilo City…Guillen’s colleagues and the human rights community believe the assailants had intended to kill the 33-year-old lawyer who has been red-tagged and represents 16 members of the indigenous Tumandok who were arrested in Capiz and Iloilo Provinces on December 30, 2020 for alleged possession of firearms and explosives and for alleged links to communist rebels.

– Nestor Burgos Jr. “Lawyer for red-tagged tribal folk stabbed; laptop documents taken” INQUIRER.NET

1.
Death shaped the tip
of a screwdriver plunged deep—
wielded as a knife

straight into the left temple,
the head’s frontier, skull bone’s
skin ripped open

in the middle of the night’s
deepening daze. A city’s peace
once more cracked, broken

by a heinous deed
against a barrister of a people’s
rights. Nothing to explain

this scheme than the desire
to kill the targeted brain.
How will this be judged

and remedied
when the Law
cannot protect itself

from blatant lawlessness?
Where does this lead us
when the lawful

is unsanctified, debased?
Bleeding, his blood—
dark liquid crawling

on asphalt and cement,
almost a fatality.
The Law—

stabbed
and gravely wounded, near-
death

in General Luna Street.

2.
Bloodied hole
in the left temple,

a stab wound.
Never a Divine

Will—God

was not even there

when it happened.
Never sanctioned

by Heaven –
you must

remember
that primeval couple

forced to flee
the Garden

ages ago
with their shame

newly discovered
and intact.

The screwdriver
in lieu of the shining,

sharpest blade—
a kitchen knife,

dagger or balisong.
The screwdriver

like those spectacles
used by a former bodyguard

of Michael Corleone
to puncture

an enemy’s neck.
The screwdriver

like those spectacles
is never made

for killing.
The mind can be

criminal. The hands
murderous.

And something
close to murder

is still murderous.
Shamelessly murderous.

Alexander Sanguinis is a pseudonym of the long published poet who is from the Hiligaynon-speaking Region (VI). The poet is an established writer in both languages of the Region and English. With anonymity, readers are enjoined to focus on the pieces rather than on externalities of the texts.

By ALEXANDER SANGUINIS

…Three years since President Duterte launched the Philippine War on Drugs, much has been written regarding the degree of violence deployed by State and quasi-state mechanisms to rid the Philippines of an alleged 3.7 million drug users. Approximately 29, 000 deaths attributable to this policy have been recorded as of July 2019…Human Rights Watch (2017) has condemned the punitive treatment of suspected drug users and dealers. The concentration of victims in urban poor communities has led international and local groups …to report that the war on drugs is a war on the poor…

—Pangilinan, MKA et al. 2021. Examining the Effects of Drug-Related Killings in Philippine Conditional Cash Transfer Beneficiaries in Metro Manila 2016-2017. Journal of Illicit Economies and Development 2(2) p. 111 DOI: https://doi.org./10.31389/jied.50

When your voice no longer bears the weight
of what you must say, then language must have gone away,
or forcibly buried underground,
silenced the fascist way.

The eyes deliberately turned towards
a vision blinded by a full unquestioning
acquiescence and the tortured mind seeks
a possible means of utterance, escape,
or even a redress of grievance.

When your voice no longer bears the weight
of what you must say, then language must have gone away,
or forcibly buried underground,
silenced the fascist way.

For whatever you have to say
must be said without ever prodding
the rush of army boots, the camouflage
green uniforms, unwanted police warrants
foregrounded on stereotypes and sheer suspicion.

When your voice no longer bears the weight
of what you must say, then language must have gone away,
or forcibly buried underground,
silenced the fascist way.

Each home, every household—those hastily built makeshift shelters,
tenements right smack in the urban jungle, shacks lining the railroad tracks,
river banks of trash, or beneath bridges, or huts standing wobbly
on bamboo poles in coastal margins unguarded from storm floods,
vulnerable to the surge of the open sea.

When your voice no longer bears the weight
of what you must say, then language must have gone away,
or forcibly buried underground,
silenced the fascist way.

Those parts of the metropolis prone
to the vagaries of the tidal weather where the mid-morning
sun is hotter than the warm suburban midday
or the night darker, more ominous than the lighted
parks, avenues and boulevards at evening time.

When your voice no longer bears the weight
of what you must say, then language must have gone away,
or forcibly buried underground,
silenced the fascist way.

They had become battlegrounds, shacks riddled with bullets,
a shooting spree, blood at the tip of the rifle or gun, “..nanlaban kasi…”
they fought back.. we had no choice but to shoot—everyone
had been singled out: parent, sibling, teenager or child,
a pusher, user, dealer, an addict.

Their voices no longer bear the weight
of what they must say, their language gone away,
or forcibly buried underground,
silenced the fascist way.

The fascist way.
The fascist way.

Alexander Sanguinis is a pseudonym of the long published poet who is from the Hiligaynon-speaking Region (VI). The poet is an established writer in both languages of the Region and English. With anonymity, readers are enjoined to focus on the pieces rather than on externalities of the texts.