By Danton Remoto
This is the way
Children laugh in my country.
Gathered round
The store in the street corner,
Standing or sitting on the wooden benches,
They laugh, their voices tinkling like bells,
While a dead man lies on the ground,
In front of them,
A bloom of blood drying
On his white shirt,
Three holes of bullets
Bursting his skin, leaving
Dark holes the shape of mouths
Screaming.
But oh, the children of my country,
Sipping soda from plastic straws
The color of rainbows,
Or eating pork skin crackling in the dry air,
The children they just laugh,
And crack jokes, black and buzzing,
Like the flies now alighting
On the corpse.