By Galileo de Guzman Castillo[i]
MAY DAY MAYDAY. The calm before the storm. EDSA, Quezon City, Philippines. 2022 May 1. Photo by Galileo de Guzman Castillo.
Shall this be the terminus or high time
Of harsh reckonings and new beginnings?
Resonant, dissonant reason or rhyme
Disconnected, unreal imaginings
And permanent conflicts, contradictions
Between those who raze and erase and mar
And those who build and rebuild foundations,
The universal and particular
In the State of Unrest and Restlessness,
They came from the streets and back to the streets
They go, hitting the dusty wilderness
Where the seeds are entangled in the weeds
Of deceit, they’ve fallen on stony ground,
To be scorched and withered, engulfed and drowned.
Shall this be the tipping or turning point,
The dying gasp or the defiant breath?
With opium poison, smear and anoint
Chips off old blocks for a pretend reset
Of cycling everyday tribulations,
While toiling endlessly and set at naught
With hubris, spurning repudiations
Of out-of-touch-ness and dull afterthought
By disenchanted, yesteryear forebodes
They came from the streets and back to the streets
They go, marching along the dark crossroads
Where the watershed marks itself and meets
The monsoon winds of the Great Forsaken
Rage in the eye of the storm, awaken.
[i] Galileo is a Programme Officer at Focus on the Global South. He wrote this poem one rainy morning in the aftermath of the 2022 Philippine general election.
