Poetry with lilies can’t stop tanks.
Neither can poetry with tanks.
This much is true.
Here is more or less how it happens.
You sit at your desk
to write a poem about lilies and a clip of 9mm’s
is emptied into the chest of a mother
in Zamboanga. Her name was Hamira.
I sit at my desk to write a poem about tanks
and a backhoe in Ampatuan crushes the spines of 57
– I am trying to find another word for bodies.
The task of poetry
is to never run out of words.
This is more or less how it happens:
I find another word for bodies
and Hamira remains dead.
Her son was with her when she was shot.
I didn’t catch his name.
I don’t know if he died. Perhaps
he placed lilies on his mother’s grave.
Perhaps he was buried beside her.
One word for lily is enough.
There is enough beauty in flowers.
I want to find beauty in suffering.
I want to fail.