SocialistStories حكايات اشتراكية

Liberty, You Say
by Otto Rene Castillo

Liberty,
you tell me,
is the most beautiful
thing that exists
on our young
planet.
You can't
live without it;
it's like oxygen
of the soul.
If you have it,
you can never
lose it,
for you would die
from such immense pain.

It is not conquered.
It is carried humbly,
like an afternoon
in the depths of the heart.

But I who live
and suffer my country
like no one else,
I do not agree
with you.
The people here
have never been free.
For many it no longer matters
if the chain is thick

Download: 

Liberty, You Say - Otto Rene Castillo.pdf

Revolution
by Otto Rene Castillo

Those who don't see
call us blind
but you have taught us
to see the color
of the coming times.

Those who don't hear
call us deaf
but you have taught us
to listen everywhere
to the agile sound
of human tenderness.

Cowards call us cowards
but with you we confront
the shadows
and change their faces.
Criminals call us criminals,
but with you we revive hope,
putting an end to crime,
prostitution,
hunger.
And we put eyes,
voice,
ears,
soul
on the heart of humanity.
Racists call us antihuman

Download: 

Revolution - Otto Rene Castillo.pdf

Freedom
by Otto Rene Castillo

For you
we have so many blows
on our skin
that even standing on end
there's no room for us in death.

In my country
freedom is something more
than a delicate breeze of the soul,
it is also a courage of skin.
In every inch of its infinite cry
your name is written:
freedom.
In the tortured hands.
In the eyes, open in shock
of mourning.
On the brow in its dignity.
In the breast, where man
grows up in us.
On our back, in our feet that suffer.
In our balls
proud of themselves.

Download: 

Freedom - Otto Rene Castillo.pdf

Distances
by Otto Rene Castillo

1. The irony
2. The understanding
3. The cowardly nation
4. Local logic
5. The question
6. Light and shadow
7. The lesson of the assassinated

1.
In 1935 Hitler said
"The Third Reich
will last a thousand years."

What did Hitler say
ten years later
under the ruins of Berlin?

A few years later
Mister Dulles, snoring
like a caterpillar
said "This decade will see the end
of the slavery of communism."

What did Yuri Gagarin
do a few years later,
sending his greetings to men
over the wide oceans

Download: 

Distances - Otto Rene Castillo.pdf

The One Who is Always There
By Otto Rene Castillo

You,
comrade,
the one who is always there.
The one
who never fell back.
Shit!
The one who never
played coward
with the flesh of the people.
Who stood up
against beatings and jail,
exile and shadow.

You,
comrade,
the one who is always there.

And I love you
for your timeless honor,
—little sensitive animal,
for your faith,
greater
and more heroic
than all the giants
of all religions combined.

But, you know,
the centuries to come
will stand on their toes
on the shoulders of this planet,

Download: 

The One Who is Always There - Castillo.pdf

Even Beneath This Bitterness
By Otto Rene Castillo

At the bottom of the night
the footsteps descend and retreat.

Shadows surround them.
Streets, drunks. Buildings.
Someone running away from himself.
A broken bottle, bleeding.
A widowed paper sailing around a corner.
A freethinker pissing on the grass,
where tomorrow the well-dressed children
will play
beneath the dew.

Far away something screams, dark metal, genital.
Asphalt and blind stones, sleeping air,
darkness, cold, police, cold, more police.
Streets, whores, drunks, buildings.

Download: 

Even Beneath This Bitterness - Castillo.pdf

Exile
By Otto Rene Castillo

I

My exile was made of cries.

The infinite face of police, grey
on my insufficient features.
The great tables of hunger beyond the fist
full of dollars that violates the land.
The bags packed every month,
ready to wrap up the exodus
of tears and dust.

I walked strange shores
in search of my country's face.
Dawns of gulls followed me.
I received the brutal embraces
of he who discovers a cataclysm of roses
in the most hidden places of his soul;
touch of hands in the nights
of escape, where the liquid eyes

Download: 

Exile - Otto Rene Castillo.pdf

This poem by Guatemalan Revolutionary Otto Rene Castillo, speaks of the monstrous injustice system and injust world we live in, in which an old widow could be evicted from her home and left to live on the street. Unfortunately, evictions are not over by any means, in fact if you read the news, you have surely heard of families living in poor areas being dragged out of their homes by the pigs, their homes demolished, and then being left without shelter for weeks (or forever) without assistance. Enjoy comrades:

Download: 

Report of an Injustice - Castillo.pdf

For the Good of All
By Otto Rene Castillo

Listen,
look,
touch
this voice,
for underneath
a man burns sweetly
for the good of all.

Cliches?

You,
try to be worthy
all day long.
Afterwords
we'll speak alone
if you wish.

I tell you.

At this stage of our time
after twenty centuries
of christian word,
man is worse than ever
more evil than ever
less caring than ever.
Even the word love
has been lost
—love!
This at least in my country
gentle and sonorous as no other.

And in spite of it all,
there are nations where man

Download: 

For the Good of All - Otto Rene Castillo.pdf

Let us remember all the revolutionaries (among them Castillo himself, who was burnt alive for fighting as a guerilla against the amerikkkan puppet regime in Guatemala) who have been martyred in the struggle for a world free of oppression and inequalites. May they rest in peace, and we continue their struggle, and continue until we are triumphant! Enjoy comrades:

Satisfaction
By Otto Rene Castillo

The most beautiful thing
for those who have fought a whole life
is to come to the end and say;
we believed in people and life,
and life and the people