I am seventeen.

We must live and fight for the masses

Graduation.
Burning with youths vigor.
Free from parents
who condemned my revolution,
and from Franciscan friars
who were mere pigs hiding
behind religious cloth.
No one understood me, then.
But now as an Iskolar, it is time
for me to rage against the machine:
Down with the administration!
I will surely change the world.
Fuck the capitalists.
Die, die, and die.
I am nineteen.
I have joined countless rallies,
knowing all the chants by heart.
The masses is rid of all abstraction
rather, it is now as familiar
as the back of my hand.
Oh, how time flies.
And now Marxist dogma flows through me
Into new batches of freshmen:
bright-eyed and innocent.
Now my name is synonymous with the color red.
Now my stare can part oceans of people.
Now my voice can crush barricades.
Fiery. Bloody. Revolutionary.
Surely, I am a figure now:
The hotheaded Communist.
By now, the government must have
my name under their watch list,

recording every time I blink,

I breathe, and I snore.
I am twenty-one.
I am now spearheading the revolution.
For the masses, we flood the streets.
From EDSA to APEC,
Maguindanao to Mamasapano.
Even marching to the Presidents house,
we called for his removal.
And yet, black clouds seem
to form on the horizon.
Suddenly, I notice only the same faces,
only the same people.
Hearing the same voices,
shaking the same hands.
A symptom of the revolutions
stunted growth.
Like a virus, it spreads.
Now, the chants have become too repetitive.
The placards too tacky;
the calls too extreme.
Too impractical.
Too irrational.
Too impossible.
And so I took a break
from the revolution.
To clear my mind, I said
and yet, I found myself doubting.
I promised to continue fighting after graduation.
I am twenty-two.
Graduation.
Revolution as a full-time occupation.
Turned down 6-figure job offers,
I hid in the mountains

To be one with the natives;

sparking their discontent,
turning the coals of their anger
to push for their long-awaited eruption.
I was again burning fiery-red,
or so I thought.
But soon, the mosquitos were too much
My throat, denied cold bear it was accustomed to,
Was starting to burn parched, aching.
The nights were too hot, the days leaving me
with too much free time Im dying.
Boredom much deadlier
than bullets will ever be.
And so I bade goodbye to the natives.
Temporarily, I thought, just as soon
As I find myself again in the city.
Ill be back. I promise.
I am twenty-five
Now, I am working eight hours a day,
earning the big bucks,
hemorrhaging my beliefs:
one anti-colonial sentiment per second.
But it didnt bug as much as it used to.
The humming of the air-conditioner is relaxing,
like the glass of ice-cold beer in my hand,
as I hear my fingers continuously
tapping on my new Mac computer.
I am now forty-four.
Manager.
I made my name thwarting union talks,
and firing employees with reckless abandon.
Memories of my college life
feel like dreams far away.
I now have a son,
on his way to college.
I urge him to embrace the blue eagle.

Not that hellhole and its activists!

He answers back, So am I.
My hand kisses his left cheek,
leaving a stinging red mark.
Stupid kid, I thought.
This generation is going down the drain.
My son looked at me with an icy stare,
and said snapped back
Every syllable seething with defiance;
Every word burning with fervor.
We must live and fight for the masses.