The Wrong Question Poem by RIC BASTASA

this morning
you cry and with sobbing you report about
a child being mauled by the police
at the dead end
of Del Pilar street near the
municipal cemetery

the child was running away from
five policemen who kept on chasing him

and they caught him
and asked his age, his name, his father, his mother

and he said he is 19, Kiko, his father is Pepo, and his mother Karing
his father a fisherman and his mother a vendor
and he is from the far mountain
and just arrived to the city

and since he is frail and pale and looks like a sick child
he reaped the suspicion that he is a drug addict
and they mauled him almost to death
and he was hospitalized and charged

resisting arrest

Someone asks, not bothered at all by an imagination
of blood and broken bones and abuse of authority

'But why did he run away, in the first place? '