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| Photo by Elyana Faye Batungbacal |
As today marks the 50th anniversary of Martial Law, the CASA Chronicle Literary Team would like to dedicate our written tributes to this very day to grieve and remember those who have fallen and are still seeking justice during the harsh period of history enacted by Ferdinand Marcos Sr. We send out our love and thoughts to the families affected by these atrocities and pray that we may all find the peace and long-awaited justice our country deserves.
Apo’s Son on the Wall By Lei Janine De Guzman
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| Photo by the Author |
A new photo plastered on the walls
Of classrooms and of public halls,
Where everyone sees a face of deceit
Yet adored by few and many we meet.
Did the people already forget
The hands and mouths painted with red?
Proving truth as false, and lies as true
Why revere the face who knew no rue?
No more Apo, but here the Apo’s son
Hangs on the walls, hard to shun.
Behind him is a bloodied book
When asked, snaps and bites like a crook.
Would it have been better to hush,
Than to speak, like those who had freed us?
Those who took bullets from handguns,
Received no medals but were forced to hide and run?
An era, no place for a coward
Only men, who fought but were devoured.
After horrors of more than a decade,
The photo of Apo’s son is on the walls displayed.
Never looking back on past sins,
The image of terror, now admired with a grin.
And so, forgive us, those who lived in fear and fright,
And pray what’s done won’t steer back to plight.
My Sister’s Secret by Gabrielle Agbulos
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| Photo by the Author |
My sister has her friend locked away in her bedroom.
This is the third time this week, I count, that she is hiding him once again. Every time she sneaks him in, I feel as if darkness has come upon us, like when God asked the Israelites to smear blood on their doors lest He kills their firstborn. Except it is not lamb that is slaughtered in this home; here we silence our hearts, our mouths, our minds to survive.
On the first day, I asked him if he was her boyfriend. He was holding a placard tightly in one hand, ripped in half. I remember trying to make out what it said but in the darkness, all I could see was red. Before he could answer my question, he burst into tears, pale hands clasped over his gaping mouth trying to silence his screams. With a furious scowl, my sister pulled him away, telling me that I knew nothing. All I could do was stand alone in the corridor with my head tilted to one side, brows furrowed, trying to figure out what she meant.
The next day she got him into her room before I even knew he’d arrived. All throughout the night, I tried to close my eyes and sleep, but every once in a while I would be awakened by a thunderous howling coming from her room. Like banshee wails, broken glass, and innocence being taken away, I could hear his cries. “They killed him, they killed him!” His voice rang out into the vast emptiness, echoing out across the bungalow like a siren. My sister could do nothing but try and shush him. I could hear her bed creak; she was cradling him, rocking him back and forth, as she did me when I would have bad dreams as a newborn.
And today, my father blocked his entrance as soon as he approached our gate. Father is built like a brick wall, with thick heavyset brows and lips downturned into a seemingly permanent sneer. My sister begs him to let her friend in, pleading more than I’d ever seen her do so before—more than when she wanted that new Barbie for Christmas, or when father wanted her to stop seeing her old boyfriend. And just as he did in those times, he pays her no mind. Even as she kneels down, snot dripping down her chin, wrapped tightly around father’s leg like Mother Mary on the cross, he continues to stand guard, fangs bared at the ready.
“Please, Pa,” She whimpers. “You know what’ll happen to him.”
I hear her friend try to speak, struggling to do so as tears fall from his eyes. He talks through heaves and gasps, telling her it’s okay, over and over again, it’s okay. He forces his mouth upwards into a smile and before my father can stop her, she stands up and hugs him, murmuring sorries into his chest until her voice runs out. All he does is continue to say that it’s okay. He leaves shortly after that.
The next day, he didn't come. Neither does he show up on the fifth, or the sixth, nor any other week that follows thereafter.
The only time I ever hear about him again is while I am sitting with my family listening to music on the radio. I am sprawled out across the carpeted floor, tongue sticking out in concentration as I try my best to stay within the lines of my drawing. My mother, sitting beside me, brushes my sister’s hair. My father lights a cigar across from us and flips through the paper’s business section.
Silence befalls the room as suddenly the telephone starts to ring. My sister moves to pick it up. I hear from the receiver his name amongst a cluster of words I can’t understand. Before I can make out what “rebel” and “protest” mean, the phone falls from my sister’s hands. A sob escapes her; her cries pierce through my eardrums, and when I turn to look at her, I see her mouth agape in a silent scream, eyes closed in agony as tears start to spew forth like angry thunderstorms. With quivering lips, my mother hugs her from behind, shooting daggers at my father, but he only continues to blow rings from behind his copy of the Philippine Daily Express. My mother pulls her away as she sees her eyes start to shoot towards father, hair standing on end like a lion’s mane, eyes bulging out of their sockets, and nails poised into claws, ready to pounce. She starts to yell at him and I cover my ears because each word that leaves her mouth is a word father said he would punch out of my mouth if he ever heard me saying them.
My sister is dragged away for the remainder of the evening. For hours, she continues to scream. It is only ever broken up by sounds of glass breaking, or her fists thumping against the wall.
I sit in a ball in the corner and cry with my hands over my ears for the first hour, and then for the rest, I stare numbly at the telephone, waiting for it to ring once more. When it does, I reach for it, but father clears his throat behind me. Without looking up, he shakes his head, reaching for the knob of the radio and turning up the volume. I try to move forward, and when he hears my shuffling, he looks at me—that look he has memorized so well to instill fear into my heart, thumping away like a jackrabbit—and immediately I move back.
The Kinks start to fill the room with their music, and with my sister slamming herself against the wall into the next room, I find that I am at a loss for what to do.
So tired, tired of waiting
Tired of waiting for you
So tired, tired of waiting
Tired of waiting for you.
Offer by Sandra Eunice Fagerstrom
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| Photo by the Author |
Scars and whips across my back
And bullet holes in gentle enemies
Screams of people go unnoticed, unheard, ignored, silenced
In accordance with your so-called law
The nation’s blood runs cold and boils, staining the streets
Anger and Indignation met with Fear
A rebellious hope keeps the country alive, if only in secrecy
During the nightmare of your ‘Golden Era’
The people won but at what cost, did they truly win?
Thousands of lives lost to your apparent justice
Nothing more than a list of names for you
But were considered as life and love by those they left behind
Dragged away to confess to your lying truth, to ignore their rights
And more often than not your capital punishment a mercy for them
Rough hands and piercing wounds scatter across their bodies
To be left in a ditch for they only wished to persevere
Our freedom was nothing but a threat to you
So you gagged and bound us, hidden away
Covered up tracks with a burning flame
And got your hands dirty with blood, your clothes pristine
Clink your glasses and celebrate, the death of democracy
Revived only when you were gone, the people jeered and cheered
Your Golden Era merely became a Rusted Dream
But as the nightmare continues to this day and age
Atrocities hidden away to be claimed as fiction
Crimes brushed away as merely falsities of smear
The country shrieks, clawing at her heart and wounds, crying
‘Is this all you have to offer me?’
When all is said and done, and when you close your eyes to dream, what color do you see? By Samantha Sopeña
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| Photo by the Author |
“Did it hurt?” Asked he.
“Did what hurt?” Asked she.
“Seeing it all, feeling it all, living through it all — and yet having no one believe in you.”
A sigh leaves her lips. Tired, so, so tired, one errant thought away from collapsing and breaking apart.
“Dying for your country wasn’t supposed to hurt this bad.”
It’s all red as far as the eye can see.
There’s a sea of faces, crowds teeming vibrant red, cheering for the man who sits in the office. They know of his past, know of his family’s gravest misdeeds, but it doesn’t matter.
He gave them all the glittering promises in this new world he seeks to build.
She closes her eyes, and it’s still red as far as the eye can see.
Outside, it’s a constant swarm of red, misguided fools who put their faith in a man who could never really serve another — much less his country, for his life. But when she closes her eyes, it’s a different shade of red.
A younger her walks the corridors, punishment waiting for her “treasonous” actions.
Small steps, wobbly and unbalanced, pitter-patter on the stark black floor.
They leave dark red marks on the floor. Maroon streaks getting accompanied by her own footprints.
She hears the squelching underneath her soles. Something sticky and sinister, hot like molten lava, clings from her toes to her ankles.
She sees the bodies tossed into the dark. Hears the violent screaming ringing from the walls underground.
It’s still red as far as the eye can see.
Someone asked her once who she was voting for. A passing conversation, given as a means to perhaps embody a familiar kindness.
In her old, exhausted age, she could barely muster up an answer. Hoping to fix the country she so desperately loved, she gave it with a weak smile.
And just as a bullet train doesn’t stop for a falling somebody, she too felt the bones cracking at her answer.
The familiar kindness quickly dissolves into apparent hatred and contempt. The stranger all but condemns her for her choices.
Beyond the sudden outburst she is given — or more so, punished, with a shove to the side. She trips, and in front of her goes the stranger.
Her eyes sting as they land on the shirt; a flash of red, flitting away.
It saddens her beyond relief, how it’s still red as far as the eye can see.
She gave her testament with the hope that it might reignite the people’s minds and reawaken the people’s hearts.
Righteous anger, when paired with evidence of abuse, tends to create the results so many dream of but so few commit to. And though the branding of her pain hurt beyond belief, she laced her recounts with prayers for new recognition.
It was an unholy thing, to dig up the past in that undignified manner, and to piece it together for an audience who didn’t know a thing about her.
But she had to try.
The documentary releases, and in the midst of it all, she crosses her bony fingers. Hope, hope, hope, please, that they see the truth and see the wrong path they’ve taken. There comes a short silence where she thinks it’s finally time.
But her prayers are not to be answered.
They come at her with angry faces, fuming red. Her memories mocked, branded as “propaganda” against the man they say is the best of them all. Her trauma, made into either a joke to be passed around the internet or completely erased as she sees them create a new line of history.
It burns, this public execution of only her dream to see her country awaken.
It burns, and it bears the same red, still as far as the eye can see.
“How did you survive?” Asked he.
“I did what I had to do, and I withstood the pain they gave me,” said she.
“Wasn’t it just easier to stay silent, or give up?” Asked he.
“It could’ve been easier, but I can’t settle for ‘easier.’ I had to do what was right for our country,” said she.
“But did it hurt?” Asked he.
“...did what hurt?” Asked she.
“Seeing it all, feeling it all, living through it all — and yet, after all this time, having no one believe in you. Did it hurt? Does it hurt, still?”
Her hands tremble, and a ragged sigh leaves her lips.
She’s tired, so, so tired, one errant thought away from collapsing and breaking apart.
She’s betrayed by the tear that streaks her cheek.
“Dying for your country wasn’t supposed to hurt this bad.”
Forgotten. By Gabrielle Angeli Busto
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| Photo by the Author |
The world stopped in the ninth month of 1972
When the dictator did not step down
High and mighty, full authority and power
Up on his throne
The lives of many stopped
Slowly, bit by bit
Chunk by chunk
Until there was none left
It started when pens were forced to stop writing
Media cameras reflected only the golden lights
Infrastructures treated as flowers over dirt
Mouths taped, even sewn together
It ended with lives
Piles and piles of bodies, blood, and stories
Of horror, torture, and death
It ended with red on their hands but they seem not to care
Fourteen
The greatest years of our history they say
But how can it be great?
When it was the number of years many Filipinos lived and died in the dark?
Now, the world continues on
It hasn’t stopped anyone for a while now,
Even when the son now sits on his father’s throne
Built on bones, crimes, and lies
Cruel, don’t you think?
The dictator’s legacy lives on
While his victims' lives stopped a long time ago
And in every waking morning their stories are:
Fading away
Erased
Forgotten.
Dangwa by Elyana Faye Batungbacal
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| Photo by the Author |
dinala ako
sa dangwa maraming katulad
namumukadkad
sa ilalim ng silong
bawat patak
gumugulong
nararamdaman
naaamoy
pinapalibutan ng galamay
ang tangkay
habang pinupunit
pinipitas
hinahampas
tumingala sa sementadong langit
at doon napagtanto
na ang pula sa mga rosas
tulad ko
ay nagmumula
sa kamay mo
