Silenced

 Silenced

By Amy Luz U. Catalan

The noose that’s been placed around their necks 

The muzzle of a gun pointed at their  heads

These are meant to silence them.

The despots rule this as the new normal:

Of the terrors that infest these days

Of the rapes of their sovereignty and of their protagonists

Whose dignities have been trampled

By the dotard that his zealots culled on that ballot day.

These should jolt them, like a whiplash, 

To cause them to feel its damage to their pride.

They must  remember the memories of that other law 

That history painted with barbed wires and water tubes

Forced down the throats of the young and the  idealistic 

Whose lives were cut short by the iron scourge.

Those images still haunt them

As history has never been learned

By the paladins- a repeat of the same evil.

These people, with a deep passion for liberation

Will soon cut the chains that weigh them down.

They need to be free and give others that chance to be.

The hope of this nation will take up the cudgels of dissent,

In a country where the poor had to die for their rights

And the rich gorge themselves with so much

They get away like nothing‘s happened. 

This silence is deafening; 

For though the people stopped marching out

This terror of a law will wither

When the will to be unfettered is fueled

By their yearning to be unchained.

Until they are silenced no more!