I work for the rights for the dead

My letter to Malaysiakini titled I work for the rights for the dead was published yesterday. I am sharing it with you here as well as over at my other blog KTemoc Komposes.


You see only a very dead man
Just a clammy lifeless corpse
Perhaps decomposing badly
To return home to Mother Nature

But I see in him a devoted son,
A dear brother, loving husband
We’re definitely different, ‘coz
I work for the rights of the dead

You claim he had given all up
Absconding from his life duties
Now lying on a cold marble slab
Body broken up in your eyes

But his scars confides to me
He went not of his own volition
His sad face tells me a story, ‘coz
I work for the rights of the dead

You avoid touching his cold hands
And cringe at the sight of him
A gruesome inconvenience for you
Just another statistic to file away

However I sense a glow still in him
The love of a man, the joyful pride
Of a father to be, I know these ‘coz
I work for the rights of the dead

His opaque glassy eyes terrify you
You look over your shoulders
At midnight you cower in groups
Fearing the ghost from your guilt

I feel his body and he whispers
To me pleas to tell the whole truth
Of his life stolen away, I will ‘coz
I work for the rights of the dead


Dedicated to Dr Pornthip Rojanasunand