10 easy steps to become a Filipino hero

The following text is a transcript of an original Spoken Word piece by the author, first performed at Proyekto’s “That Martial Law Thingy: A Public Lecture and Open Forum” last September 10, 2016 at Gateway Gallery.

Step 1:

You must always win. Top all your exams; marry the most beautiful woman from the south. Legends are winners who keep on winning, so by all means win.

Your name will ring into ascent, and soon, the whole world will become so instinctively attuned to your victory that they will never know of your defeat. 

Step 2:

Raise beautiful children. Instill upon them your ideals. They will keep your name blaring in the sound waves even long after you’re gone; your waxed corpse frozen by the cold-bloodedness of your legacy.

Step 3:

Run for the highest seat in the land. Your iron fist will fit that iron throne like an iron glove. Baby, you were born for this.

Step 4:

You are a great man with great plans and as all great things, you are bound to make enemies. Arm yourself with powerful friends. Bend the law to your will. Summon bullets and hand grenades to punish those who defy you, the way God summoned flood and thunder to punish the sinner and non-believer.

You are God, and this is your temple of worship. Make them kneel.

Step 5:

When a boy speaks to your daughter in a language that does not know worship; in a tongue that curls only to question, punish him, too. He is no enemy. Not of this land. But he holds in his mouth a voice that can make the pillars of your great castle shudder.

He must be silenced. He must be stopped.

Step 6:

The world will hear of your accomplishment, and who cares if you’re belligerent? For as long as you’re omnipotent, magnificent: you are magic. 

Let the world watch as you pluck your enemies one by one from the ground and make them all disappear. You are a magician! It’s been thirty years and we still couldn’t find the trap door.

Step 7:

You will fall at the hands of a woman in a yellow dress. Your high holiness will be banished from your kingdom. Use this time to pray that it rots in your absence.

Step 8:

Die in the most natural way.

Step 9:

Your children will grow up without you. They don’t have to be particularly bright, or talented, or kind, but they will carry your last name and honestly, what can anyone ever really ask for?

They will return in fleets and dragons ready to reclaim the kingdom that has long forgotten. Relish as they bring an entire nation and its history to its knees. Warped, mutated, and repackaged, your memory will resonate across a hundred million people begging to be hurt the way they were hurt in your reign.

Step 10:

Sit back and relax as they slowly sink your body six feet underneath the same graveyard that cradles the fallen; the brave men who once fought you and your kind – we called them heroes.

History takes full circle, and we saved only the best seat for a hero like you. – Rappler.com