i know my friends-   they are those born in nipa huts in the countryside, under patched-up roofs of slum-dwellers in the cities, or on hole-riddled mattresses in cheap hospitals.   they are those baptized en masse through hurried oremuses of priests scrimping on spittle for the next special baptism.   they are those whose passage to age is barely noticed for no newspaper would dare print their names or report the humble gatherings on their days of birth.   they are those who, if only for a day, are afforded the chance to be gods by the bogus servants of the people, and are forced to laugh at pretty lies.   they are those who, after elections, are again made to worship the masters cordoned by fences of guns that reach up to their washrooms.   they are those sunk in the quagmire of indebtedness and who can only gawk at the fruits of their own toil in the markets and display windows of famous stores.   they are those who, in plays staged in the theaters of the rich, go unnoticed or act out villain roles.   they are those who, possessing talents and skills, become hired brains and hands of big businessmen.   they are those who live by themselves in fertile mountains whose contours carved by their old culture become the butt of joke of the "civilized" in the name of christianity and progress, who are being disowned of their wealth and cultivated lands.   i know my friends-   they are those whose stories are inscribed in the bloody and muddy pages of the books of cadres who have fallen in the mountains of Luzon, Visayas, Mindanao.   they are those whose welfare dwells in the mind of every oppressed person who slowly aligns himself on the left end of the field.   they are those whose lot is also mine... to live in a free country or die in struggle!