The knife does not tremble in the hands of the starving, only in the grip of the uncertain.
Steel sliding through fabric, through skin and the fattened arrogance of kings,
History does not write in laurels but in open throats,
Manuscripts are written from the blood pooling at the foot of the throne.

So they gather, not senators in silken robes but feet blistered from marching,
Voices sharpened into weapons, mouths cracked open in cries too long swallowed.
A tyrant does not fall by the weight of whispers, ink, nor prayer.
It takes the crushing of bodies, the breaking of doors, and fire that turns palaces into graves.

Did he not believe himself untouchable? Did he not think God had carved his name in gold?
Did he not hear the echoes of February, the ghosts pressing against the glass?
When the first stone is thrown, when the first shot cracks the sky open,
There will be no prophecy—only the promise that the world will break before it bends again.

Let them call it treason, let them call it madness, let them drape him in martyrdom—
A tyrant dead is still a tyrant, no matter the color he bleeds.
And so we march, not for kings or Caesars, nor the poetry of ruin,
But for the hands that hold the blade, steady and unrelenting, until the last empire falls.

- Beatrice Diane D. Bartolome
(Illustration by Iya Maxine Linga/FEU Advocate)