"Datuterte: Imagined Confessions, 2024" by Karlo Sevilla (WTF is this?!)

Trigger warning: various shocking contents. Read it here for FREE!

(Cover art by Kaleb Sevilla)

• Published June 10, 2024, this is the first of three individual poetry projects that I committed to complete as a 2024 International Human Rights Art Movement (IHRAM) International Fellow.
• What I wrote to IHRAM Executive Director Tom Block upon submission:

For this collection, "Datuterte: Imagined Confessions, 2024," I assumed the (despotic, brutal, chauvinist, misogynist, condescending, foulmouthed, etc.) persona of the previous Philippine president, Rodrigo Roa Duterte, and via a series of portrait poetry and prose attempted a fictional autobiography which narrative arc begins and ends with his contemplation on his current situation: now that rumors are rife about the imminence of his arrest by the International Criminal Court over his alleged crimes against humanity, mainly the extrajudicial killings committed during his brutal “war on drugs” that claimed tens of thousands of lives.

Imagined but based on the subject’s actual statements and reliable news reports, the persona narrates his childhood, young adulthood, and his political career that began with his appointment as OIC vice-mayor of Davao City and ended when he finished his six-year term as president of the Philippines. In his stories, he speaks of the multitude of fatal crimes under his separate administrations as mayor then president; including the ones he purportedly committed himself – straight from his own mouth as factual statements, or tough talk to pander to his fanatical supporters, or both.

The fictional narration delves into the psychology and personal background of an autocrat, along with the social and political milieus within which each select slice of the storyteller’s life was lived, and the crimes he committed personally and/or under his leadership. Insights are also shared on how and why a significant number of a populace end up embracing fascistic propaganda and supporting tyrannical and (therefore) anti-human rights policies as possible solutions for social ills, preponderantly for the perceived or actual breakdown of law and order.

At the very least, I hope that this small collection will serve as a quick reference for any student of contemporary Philippine history, specifically about the administration of the 16^th president of the republic (2016 to 2022) that is now widely considered as the most murderous and with the highest number of human rights violations when it comes to state-sanctioned violence.

• A positive review from Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Nominee poet Gretchen Filart:

If there is anything you will read today, make it Karlo Silverio Lagman Sevilla III's free digital poetry collection, Datuterte. It's a unique, honest, and powerful collage of first-person poems spoken from Rodrigo Duterte's viewpoint, using real-life statements during his bloody six-year regime as Philippine president. It offers an encompassing grasp of his violent political term and is a product of Karlo's fellowship at International Human Rights Art Movement (IHRAM).

And, again, you can read "Datuterte: Imagined Confessions, 2024" by yours truly here for FREE.

Poetry and Plumbing

A little past noon. Reading "This World: Poems by Harvey Shapiro" while seated on a short concrete fence bordering between Royal Midway Plaza building and its parking lot. Two utility men wearing green shirts printed with "Royal Midway Plaza" approach and slide off the concrete cover of the manhole, a meter and at a forty-five degree angle left of me. It reveals three big pipes and one small one, all bent downward at a ninety degree angle. I close my book and ask, "Sa tubig ba 'yan?" ("Is that for the water?" Really my way of asking, "That's not the septic tank, is it?") The older guy replies, "Yes," and tells me and his companion about fixing the water supply with plumbing jargon. He'll buy a "floater" (yes, I believe that's what he said). They leave. The manhole, with its cover slid off (and perhaps an empty tomb laid at its bottom), remains open. My book of poetry remains closed.

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Check out My Personal Anthology (12 Poems). 

This blog is sponsored by Limitado

phone nos. 09167840522/ 023588753

and S.P.R.A.W.L.-MMA

3rd floor JN Building, 657 EDSA corner Monte De Piedad Street, Barangay Immaculate Concepcion, Cubao, Quezon City

Prose, Poem, Prostitute

Based on her true story.

I.

She was a minor when the raid happened. Videotaped dancing naked onstage. On national TV news with her soon-to-be-lady parts pixelated along with her face. The raid, led by an international-something agency, was conducted to rescue them and arrest the perpetrators of a major offense. 

Brought with the other victims to a facility of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), she was the most defiant and engaged the department secretary in a shouting match. Innocent and ignorant perhaps of her own exploited innocence and underagedness -- and all its criminal implications and liabilities -- she demanded tearfully for her immediate freedom to work for food as she knew how.

II.

Under the government agency's custody, she -- they -- soon found out she was pregnant with her then-lover's child. They advised her to sue him: statutory rape. She refused; he was her lover.

She threatened abortion, giving them more reason to keep and watch over her.

She seriously considered adoption, till she gave birth and saw the face of her firstborn and decided to keep and raise her baby daughter.

III.

They were protected, trained in livelihood skills, and rehabilitated.

Upon her release, she soon found out that he was immigrating somewhere to North America.

Upon her release, she worked at various odd jobs, barely supporting herself and her daughter (whom she sent off to live with her family somewhere in Southern Philippines).

Months after her release, she was back in the oldest profession. Anyway, she would soon be of major age.

IV.

She prefers it here in a provincial city, where the bar owner gives her, them, the option to refuse takeout service. She prefers it here in a provincial city, unlike in Metro Manila where the bar owners compel her, them, to render takeout service. (Who knows what lurking monster or monsters will end up with her, alone in a secret den.)

She worked in one of the classier and higher paying joints in the big city, though. But she wouldn't go back there as it is humiliating: It is always assumed that those who left that high-end brothel "successfully" married their rich customers, or "progressed" into kept women. 

V.

She tried her hand in swine raising, in her home city, but found it difficult to earn only every three months, when the hogs are grown and ready for sale. (She had, and has, full-grown pigs for company every night. One of which was 66 years old, and it just didn't stand a chance.)

VI.

Back in Metro Manila, the DSWD gathered homeless street dwellers off the streets; among them where the apartment she rented, stood. And she had opened her gate to a fleeing mother and child, every time, to spare them from measly meals served at the government facility. 

VII.

There are months when she could afford a vacation, and lives in her home city with her mother and now six-year-old daughter. There she mostly stays at home, in plain shirt and pants. There in their poor neighborhood, she knows women who are regularly fetched by the mayor's aides. She refuses to be one of them.

She doesn't want her daughter to think that she's that kind of woman.

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This work is republished at Pacifiqa as a photo essay (with beautiful photos!), and retitled as She doesn't want her daughter to think she's that kind of woman.

*  *  *

Check out My Personal Anthology (12 Poems). 

This blog is sponsored by Limitado

phone nos. 09167840522/ 023588753

and S.P.R.A.W.L.-MMA

3rd floor JN Building, 657 EDSA corner Monte De Piedad Street, Barangay Immaculate Concepcion, Cubao, Quezon City