If I am all of these, then I am guilty

Gabriel Liwanag 

If I were to be born with shackles on my wrists,

Taught to breathe a freedom that exists only in ink,

Then I am oppressed; a prisoner of a grand illusion.

If the ivory towers demand I only study the hunger,

Taught to theorize the rot but never to touch the soil,

Then I will abandon the safe halls to learn from the tillers

If I bring my lens and notepad to the picket lines,

To document the cracked hands that reap a stolen harvest,

Then I am a son of the struggling masses.

If recording the people’s democratic revolution is a threat,

If pointing to the rot inside Malacañang makes me an enemy of the state,

Then stamp my chest with the mark of a terrorist. 

If the broadsheets serve only to wash the indebted blood from their hands,

And the daily broadcasts merely and echo the voice of the oppressors,

Then let all the truthtellers be the fire that burns their lies.

If I am tracked by unmarked cars, my face plastered on concrete walls;

And I decide that my final resort is to write in my own blood,

Then I will bleed out, only to pulse again through my words.

If at thirty my pen is silenced by a military caliber,

And we are planted into the cold, forgotten dirt,

Then the earth will only sprout a heavier defiance.

If they mask their slaughter of mine as a firefight in the tall grass,

And parade my bullet-ridden body to legitimize their medals,

Then the mountain winds themselves will howl the truth of my execution.

If the courts back at home decree that to hold a lens to the dark is a crime,

And to broadcast the truth is an act of war,

Then let them read my articles as my final confession.

If in life, to demand land for the peasants is theft,

And to echo the strike of the workers is treason,

Then even at death, bind my hands, and strike the heavy gavel.

If doing all of this means they brand me a communist,

A stain on the pristine collars of those who sell our sovereignty,

Then I will wear their red tags as my highest honor.

Let me be the revolutionary that reaps what they have sown.

If I am all of these–the ink, the target, the spark;

A criminal in the eyes of a rotting law–

Then I am guilty.

And it is the people’s judgment that will hang the executioner.