Papa's Post: State Of The Nation '84

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 All things dark and booty-full
        All rackets great and small
All things rank and plunder-full
        This "New Republic" has them all!

Decreed a day of "thanksgiving"
        Is September Twenty-One
The advent of martial power
        The power of the gun!

 A formal Constitution
        Approved by show of hands;
By voters and non-voters
        In parks and grandstands!

 With a Sixth Amendment
        The loyalists' excuse
There can't be legislation
        Against the Monarch's views.

 And now, the Agrava Commission
        The only ones who still don't know
Ninoy was slain for but one reason
        He was Marcos' foremost foe.

 The feats of engineering
        The pyramids of steel
With billions disappearing
        In many a "Dewey" deal.

 Patented privateering
        From light to logs and stones
And rampant profiteering
        In KKK "kurakot" loans.

 Marcos' solemn promise
        Was "to reform society"
Behold the New Corruption
        To rank satiety!

 Transnationals and cronies
        Plundering hand in hand
While disease and destitution
        And death stalk the land.

 Our freedom of peaceful assembly
        To air our grievance and seek redress
Repressed by gas grenades and truncheons
        Of legal goons in combat dress.
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 Woe unto us, the people
        Our leaders and our priests
Who confine our witnessing
        To alms and religious feasts;

 And asking "who's my neighbor?"
        To imprisoned and persecuted
By love of self and comfort,
        Blinded, deafened, muted;

 To dehumanizing tortures
        For "state security"
And rampant "salvagings"
        Committed with impunity!

 Insensible to injustice
        Mouthing the "Marcos line"
We spurn God-given birthrights
       As pearls upon the swine!

 Our present and our future
        Willed only by one man
Like Jews of old, the subjects
        Of Pharaoh at Malacañan!

 Who says "he has a covenant
        So he won't die, he won't resign
He's indispensable
        He's there by divine design!"

 Still it is, that God's
        Continuing creation
Must be man's handiwork
        'Tis we, must build our nation!

 Shall we be slaves forever?
        Bereft of heart and will
To make oppression bitter
        Our deliverance, fulfill?

 KAILAN PA? O BAYANG MAGITING
        ANG MANG-AAPI'Y, ITATAKWIL?
KAILAN PA, NA SA MANLULUPIG
        'DI NA PASISIIL?










29 September 1984















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