Haunted Poem by peauladd huy

… because we are all born and must die one day.
~Sirik Matak



Somewhere, hadn’t a father sacrificed his son to better
himself & his own image in his son?
You are no first
man-god, no holy ghost
in the host three. You are man – does he know?
Can I say it?
You can’t buy every murder-
soul off your father’s nightmare; no more can your father
blind us with his polished pedigree. We can see the same
images shore up to his bedside,
as he lies dying, facing the sea of shifting faces
insisting on clarity. Something has yet to settle
amongst all parties: past, present and future, one
demand – that theirs returned. Each face’s the same story told:
his father’s sent out the pack to silence theirs.
I don’t wish to speak of this culture,
but this image frightens me. I see hands bound & heads
wonder behind the blindfolds & each little terror
is tearing the heart wall to wander on its own.
It is hate worked into the ancestor soil.
Here, in fear, they’ve surrendered. In death, they’ve stood
to test each fragile time bottle.
The end says it all. A man
Sirik Matak. A king
awaiting a returned crown: a man
passed over. I see the blood of a king spoiled
on the pavement before the house of assembly. I can hear their boots
sticky in the puddle. Did he know one day we’d question?
That’s why the letter.
I wish his royal words hadn’t followed me. Such a tragedy
in lesson no other way: from father to son to the king of scapegoats, the throats
must cut to gut out the vocal cords
of what’s remained. The grass’s gone to seed and random birds
in the yard. & overhead, yesterday’s crows
are circling over the radio stations and dark chattering houses.
Part rain cloud is moving in.
I am no reader of omens,
but sometimes a feeling is all we have to make a run for cover again.
For God’s sake, when will it all stop
o lord of blood tyranny? Enough picking. Now right your boasts of the helpless
women and children you’ve trampled on is no way to man up your troves.
Sweet heaven, it’s what has been going that more have gone missing.
Season floods and rice’s gathered. Beneath the giant fig’s trembling, new rains
tumble deep to reach the stony basin. Dilution is a factor of solute to what’s there.
Blood is no bluer than the ocean
for the last journey. A gold coin cannot weigh down two murdered eyes.
My daddy said, Ghosts tell no lies. No sir.
No more than a child can forget the shadows
crawl along the sunrise from their slaughter mounds.
Bones don’t grow from the rice fields, sir.
& water has yet to dry up a desert.
Save your lies. Even the yellow fools know sacrifice & death
when bloom buds are scorched by late winter’s freeze.
It is the choosing that bears the coming.