By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo

 

ROYGBIV, a guide my mother made me memorize to remember the colors of the rainbow, in the same manner that “Man Very Easily Makes Jokes So U Never Pout” ingrained itself in my memory as a guide to the first letters of the 9 planets. The colors of the rainbow may evolve and the number of planets may change as research pushes further into the unknown.

The colors of the rainbow became a political metaphor in 1969, when the Rainbow Coalition, a multicultural movement, was founded in Chicago, Illinois by Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party, along with William Fesperman of the Young Patriots Organization and Jose Cha Cha Jimenez, founder of the Young Lords, the first of several 20^th century black-led organizations to use the “rainbow coalition” concept.

The term is currently used in countries with parliamentary systems to refer to a coalition government composed of several ideologically-unrelated political parties united by opposition to one or more dominant parties.

In 1995, Jose de Venecia created a Philippine version of the rainbow coalition, a converging of “political parties that include the LDP, NPC, Lakas NUCD, and other minor parties to make a solid majority” in the House of Representatives, which ensured his reelection as congressman and consequently as Speaker of the House. Former President Benigno Aquino had his own “rainbow coalition in the composition of the 2013 senatorial slates which includes former political rivals and his first cousin”.

The coming 2022 elections may not exhibit all the colors of the rainbow, as there seems to emerge a genetically modified coalition (GMC) quietly creeping and supported by those who have been exposed to GMOs.

 

Colors

When you tell me

of a blue sky, I see a blue sky

and sparkling blue stars

even in the darkness of night

in the absence of stars

 

When you tell me

something is red, I see red

I see the body of the devil

before my naked eyes

and I can instantly feel the flames

of hell and the lashes from his long stiff tail

 

When you tell me of green

I see you becoming a bee

flying over a field of wildflowers

sipping fresh juices, one after the other

and resting, with a bite of an apple

from my hands

 

your word turns all colors

into the color of hell and paradise,

the colors of my curse and redemption

 

By your thrust, I see the stars

with every push, I walk the rainbow

to a pot of gold, in a field of colors

moving rhythmically into a dance

divined by the collusion of the gods

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