Haunted - By Peauladd Huy

Haunted

            … because we are all born and must die one day.

                                                                        ~Sirik Matak

Prince Sisowath Sirik Matak

Somewhere, hadn’t a father sacrificed his son to better

himself & his own image in his son?

You are no first

man-god, no holy ghost

in the host three. You are man – does he know?

Can I say it? 

You can’t buy every murder-

soul off your father’s nightmare; no more can your father

blind us with his polished pedigree. We can see the same

images shore up to his bedside,

as he lies dying, facing the sea of shifting faces

insisting on clarity. Something has yet to settle

amongst all parties: past, present and future, one

demand – that theirs returned. Each face’s the same story told:

his father’s sent out the pack to silence theirs.

I don’t wish to speak of this culture,

but this image frightens me. I see hands bound & heads

wonder behind the blindfolds & each little terror

is tearing the heart wall to wander on its own.

It is hate worked into the soil for the savage

seeds in us. Here, in fear, they’ve surrendered. In death, they’ve stood

to test each fragile time bottle.

The end says it all. A man

Sirik Matak. A king

awaiting a returned crown: a man

misdeeded under colonial bondage. & the children must bear the cost for another

hundred years. I see secret handshake between devil and half blood-kin. & I see the blood of a king spoiled on the pavement before the house of assembly. I can hear their boots

sticky in the puddle and their footprints

leaving evidence in the grout.  

Something’s always too porous to wash out.

How else the children would know

to trace it back to that blood history?

Did he know one day we’d question?

That’s why the letter.

I wish his royal words hadn’t followed me. Such a tragedy

in lesson no other way: from father to son to the king of scapegoats, the throats must cut

to gut out the vocal cords

of what’s remained. The grass’s gone to seed and random birds

in the yard. & overhead, yesterday’s crows are still busy

circling over the radio stations and dark chattering houses.

Part rain cloud is moving in.

I am no reader of omens,

but sometimes a feeling is all we have to make a run for cover again.

For God’s sake, when will it all stop

o lord of blood tyranny? Enough is enough.

Now right your boasts of the helpless

women and children you’ve trampled on

is no way to man up your troves.

Sweet heaven, it’s what has been going that more have gone missing.

Season floods and rice’s gathered. Beneath the giant fig’s trembling, new rains

tumble deep to reach the stony basin.

Dilution is a factor of solute to what’s there.  

Blood is no bluer than the ocean

for the last journey. A gold coin cannot weigh down two murdered eyes.

My daddy said, Ghosts tell no lies. No sir.

No more than a child can forget the shadows

crawl along the sunrise from their slaughter mounds.  

Bones don’t grow from the rice fields, sir.

& water has yet to dry up a desert.

Save your lies.

We’ve lived long enough to know

right from wrong. Even the yellow fools know sacrifice & death

when bloom buds are scorched by late winter’s freeze.

It is the choosing that bears the coming.  

                                                                                    ~By Peauladd Huy