Cheryl L. DaytecYañgot

Cheryl L. DaytecYañgot Poems

When I was young, you’d hold my hand
We’d swim the seas, explore the land
When ghouls and trolls would visit me
I’d call your name and they would flee
...

Love expressed in stones
Of assorted colors
The sea-green jade
The blue chevron beads
...

If Kabunian gave you a land of milk and honey
and ordered you to take care of it for posterity
What will you do if intruders want to take
it away?
...

The lights would not blink in the household of his class
Dreams were forbidden, slums plunged in deep shadow
The wide farmlands where staple corn and rice should grow
Were pools of blood from martyrs now and of time past
...

On this day, we remember the women and men
All too aware that death was their destiny certain
When in darkness and doom they scattered flames
A big number without faces, many without names
...

(for James Balao)

I keep looking toward an open door
...

(For Fred as He Dreams on the Foot of the Alps)

He is mine in opaque spaces
unexplored by the public eye
...

I was always trapped in the center
like the rusty fulcrum of the see-saw,
never way up, never way down
'The rule is not to argue against them
...

Do not go there, my child; your train must not arrive
Nature has intended that mine should come ahead
Come back, my child, come back, your thick baggage unpack
You must work on the seams begun with your fine dreams
...

I told you often. Long ago I learned
Distance is not measured by the meters
Of space from one estate to another
Rather by the height of the fence
...

I can smell the raw tangy scent
of will drying in my hand
I see the shape of dreams
Escaping the bowels of the fields
...

Now that you’ve said goodbye, go!
The door is impatient for your exodus.

I am an arena of pandemonium-
...

The streets are a sea of revelry, of expectation
The drums beat a deep baritone which
hums in the ears long after it is gone
We rush and force our way into bodies
...

(to the People of Chittagong Hill Tracts,
Bangladesh)

We must be beyond our fears
...

They arrived bundled up in white cloths.
Or rather what used to be white cloths
now smeared with the hardened blood
of champions of righteousness,
...

She left him with a shattered heart
Her tortured tears held their own art
He never figured what they meant
Her sentiments she did not vent
...

They often sit in a café
Whose meager crowd is its lure
While the tea brews
and cream perfects its assault
...

Can your memory carry you to that spell
I was five and you were four, when outdoor
frolicking was first on our aspiration list?
Can your memory reconstruct our umbrage
...

(In Memoriam)

They fell. One by one, heroes fell
On their blood against cold, harsh stones
...

If I could find an island
That has no lips
And ears
...

Cheryl L. DaytecYañgot Biography

Cheryl L. Daytec-Yañgot is a Filipino human rights lawyer and activist. A member of an indigenous cultural community, she is also very passionate about the rights of indigenous peoples. This is reflected in her poetry. She started writing at a very tender age, beginning with correspondences with missionaries and friends. She was the editor-in-chief of her high school paper. In college she was an editor of two campus papers and won various awards for literary works. Named one of the Ten Outstanding Students of the Philippines in 1999 for exemplary community involvement, activism and academic performance, she continues to search for justice and social equity. She believes that poetry has an indispensable role in societal transformation which has become her obsession. Her poems often deal with injustice and oppression, love and passion, and what she calls 'the enigma in between.' 'Words, spoken loudly by the throng, can put down an oppressive status quo, ' she says, as she encourages people to assert freedom of expression and use it to promote social change. She admires Jesus Christ, Karl Marx, Che Guevara and the Filipino revolutionary Andres Bonifacio 'who consecrated their lives for the freedom of human beings from the shackles of oppression.' Many of her poems were published, mostly by progressive publications. Some were translated by other poets in Tagalog, the language of the Philippine majority culture. A practising attorney, Cheryl Daytec-Yañgot is also an Associate Professor in St. Louis University, Baguio City, Philippines. by: Elton Jun Veloria)

The Best Poem Of Cheryl L. DaytecYañgot

From A Son Who Could Not Be His Father

When I was young, you’d hold my hand
We’d swim the seas, explore the land
When ghouls and trolls would visit me
I’d call your name and they would flee
You’d carry me on your shoulders
I’d feel so tall above the earth
Proudly, I’d say when I grow up
I’d be like you, and you would clap

Silver would gather in your eyes
We’d embrace; how time really flies
Then you told me to go to school
To be like you- nobody’s fool
But my interests are different
I want to paint every event
Life’s exposed truths and hidden lies
I witness with my own two eyes

You love to talk, to entertain
With words you heal a world in pain
You are so good at what you do
But then I can’t really be you
I have no wish to disobey
I love you every time of day
I tried to be hard as I could
A rhetorician in your mold

I fear the crowd, its probing eyes
I don’t get Socrates and Marx
Van Gogh and Picasso I know
They’re men as great as your Rousseau
I think I’m just not meant to be
The copycat of somebody.
Let me pursue my hopes and dreams
Let me hum with the flowing streams

Let me go where the clouds travel
Life’s mysteries, I’ll unravel
Dance in the rain, fly with the wind
Talk to the hills, hear the bird sing
For while I may not be like you
I love humanity just as you do
Politics works to set them free
Just as art does, so let me be.

Cheryl L. DaytecYañgot Comments

Dian Hayati 24 November 2008

my misery broken loose more than twice even... and u do shoot me with ths poem..great, gorgeous, wonderful!

0 1 Reply

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