On this day, we reserve our whinges for tomorrow.
The holiday alights a ticket of rest – we skip the snooze,
We scroll mindlessly on TikTok’s for you page, as we bid
an ephemeral adieu to essays and chemistry worksheets
That give leeway to a 24-hour freedom.
I sometimes wonder, do our heroes look at us askant?
Is a scornful brow raised when we fail to commemorate
Their valiance? – the striking of melee and shotting of guns
Merely dwindling into a caricature of remembrance
Their persons limned in timeworn textbooks, statues, and murals.
And mustn’t remembering be accoutered with both pride and pain?
Pride for the revolution evinced in Rizal’s quill pen and novels,
In the Katipunan’s tearing of cedulas, in Mabini’s intellect
In Silang’s wielding of bolo, and other heroes
Whose names are both immortalized and unknown.
Pain for the martyrs succumbing to the Motherland that shushes
their bones and lulls them to an infinite slumber.
However painful, they are unchained of the trammels
From the wicked amalgamation of the conquerors’ force
And the conquered blinded idolatry to another soil.
So, remembering is not solely recognizing their valiance
But also, its fillip, the hands caging us into puppetry
Drawn up in oppression and indoctrination hardwired into us
That our memory must not elude the reasons
Why to begin with, such uprisings were to ignite.
In tombs, they may be silenced but their words wafted still
Gripping us with burliness of the same hunger, the same call
for independence their deaths barred them from witnessing.
No longer can they preen themselves for our triumph
So, they leave the honor to us in lauding their sacrifice.