Putol Of Michael Coroza Summary

A poem helps the mind play with its well-trod patterns of thought, and can even reroute those patterns by making us see the familiar anew (Yakich, 2013). According to one of the students of Mark Yakich (Yakich, 2013):

Poem
I might look weird or terrifying, but really, I’m a device that helps people breathe. Under normal circumstances nobody needs me. I mean, I’m only used for emergencies and even then, only for a limited time. If you’re lucky, you’ll never have to use me. Then again, I can see some future time when everybody will have to carry me around.
The poem “Putol” of Michael Coroza is about a right foot, wearing Nike, that has been cut off and thrown in the garbage, was picked up by a garbageman and blood flowed from the foot after,
and Senator Jose Diokno.
Initially, the declaration of martial law was well received, given the social turmoil the Philippines was experiencing. Crime rates plunged dramatically after a curfew was implemented. Political opponents were given the opportunity to go into exile. But, as martial law dragged on for the next nine years, excesses by the military emerged.
The elevating rate of lawlessness served as one of the reasons of the declaration of
Martial Law. Marcos knew that the crime rate at that time were significantly high and that he discovered that through the declaration of Martial Law, crime rates extremely decreased due to the curfew implemented. Although one of the intentions of Martial Law is to lessen the crime rate, there were evidences found that extra judicial killings were already present and practiced by the military officers and soldiers for the next nine years as stated.
Amnesty International (AI) has assessed that during martial law, 70,000 people were imprisoned, 34,000 were tortured, and 3,240 were killed as reported. The AI mission, that visited the Philippines from November to December 1975, found that 71 of the 107 prisoners who were interviewed claimed that they had been tortured (Hapal,
Historian Michael Charleston Chua, the author of the study entitled, "TORTYUR: Human Rights Violations During The Marcos Regime," elaborated the different kinds of torture used by authorities, most probably the military officers, during this dark chapter in Philippine history, as recounted by victims and published in different reports (Hapal,
2016). According to Michael Chua as cited by Hapal (2016), there are forms of torture done to the victims during the martial law and these are:
…electric shock, where electric wires are attached to the victim’s fingers, arms, head and in some cases, genitalia; San Juanico Bridge, where the victim lies between two beds and if his/her body falls, he/she will be beaten; truth serum, where an injection administered in hospitals and used for interrogation is used in making a victim "talk drunkenly."; Russian roulette, where a bullet is loaded into one chamber of a revolver, spinning the cylinder, and then forcing the victim to pull the trigger while pointing the gun at his/her own head; beating the victim by a group of soldiers; pistol-whipping, where the victim is beaten with a rifle butt; water cure, where