To A Murderer Investigating Murder Poem by Cheryl L. DaytecYañgot

And so you created a commission to
look into the senseless deaths of heroes
dispatched by the force of your might?
The grieving nation giggled at this one.
Did you hear the melancholic laughter?
Your concern mocks the pain of death.
It slanders the sorrow of the orphaned
It slurs the heartache of the widowed.
It burlesques the outrage of the nation.

You were the one who pulled the trigger.
Nakedly, you spattered fresh blood on
the unsullied walls of the churches and
the hospitals and the homes and the
schools and the faces of the innocent.
You did it once and again and again.
Your power’s conscience is frozen.
The edifice of truth shudders from the
white tales squirting from your tongue.

Even the ground on which the bodies
have fallen wince from the force of the
butchery by your bloodstained hands.
Even the gun you exploited to display
your dearth of respect for life shudders
from the despicability of your vice.
Even the lady of justice has doffed her
blindfold to let the mighty stream of
her sorrow cascade; the magnitude of
your crime has slowed down her grind.

And you now investigate your own crime?
I beg of you: Please stop this madness!
Defile not a corpse with crocodile tears!
Polish not the nation’s lesions with salt!
May God forgive you; the nation cannot!

(Under the administration of Gloria Arroyo in the Philippines, many activists, lawyers and journalists were either murdered or made to disappear. In 2006, Arroyo created a commission to look into the extra-judicial killings. Subsequently, Prof. Phillip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on Summary and Extrajudicial Killings came to the Philippines to investigate. His findings showed that the government was responsible for the killings and disappearances.)