| Regard the King of the Road: presidential metaphor
Of transport to progress for the masses,
Inferior third world contrivance
Out of the postwar junk of GI Joes.
Discern the neocolonial contraption of the state
Taking the people from nowhere to nowhere
On the ramshackle ride of diversions.
BASTA DRIVER, SWEET LOVER.
The President lectures the masses
To take their pleasures in other ways
And stop breeding even more poverty
Though macho satiation prevailed
In his example of unbridled fathering�
The least this braggadocio is
He wasn�t firing blank bullets
Unlike Marcos whose war medals
Came not out of Bataan but a novelty shop.
But if obscenity must be cited
It must not be the sight of children
Screaming on the mud floor of a peasant hut
But the presidential fat brats
Glutting themselves in ruling-class privilege
No longer human in shape or want
While the ruled gasp out the hunger that is human.
BAWAL ANG SABIT SA BIYAHENG LANGIT.
The people know where they want to go.
Not the artful barker of hollow promises,
Cunning invoker of cherished dreams
Of redeeming the prostituted motherland,
And land for the peasantry�s dispossession,
And true power, not force of exploitation,
In the bending of the working class arm,
And then a school with a roof for the innocents.
Pity the sleeping, they are startled awake
In the turbulence of the unpleasant ride
Over old potholes. The road well-trodden by
Neocolonial politicians they have renamed
Philippines 2000, and fallen flat in awe at the progress made.
HILA MO, HINTO KO.
Estrada does not hear out of pretense
The imprecations of the discontented
Over old and new cronies monopolizing
The conversation as well as everything else.
Danding gloats in his glutton�s appetite
For coconuts, sugarcane and San Miguel beer;
Lucio flies paper planes of dismissal notices;
And Imelda sings �Dahil sa Iyo� to the masses
Like a confession as she fondles her jewelry.
In a country where strings need to be pulled
The masses hold none. Only the great paragons
Of greed staking their claims on the vast
Plantations and factories, to the last drop of lifeblood
And sweat of labor of the workers and peasants.
Stop! But the wheels of the neocolonial conveyance go on
Without remorse, and over the din of suffering and resistance,
One stands above all, the imperialist Ultimate Supervisor
Pulling the strings to Estrada. Erap is not an actor.
He is a puppet.
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