I Demand Death

My hands are wet with blood. They are crimsoned with the blood of the man I have just killed.

I have come here today to confess. I have committed murder -- deliberate, premeditated murder. I have killed a man in cold blood. That man is my master.

I am here not to ask for pity but for justice -- simple, elementary justice. I am a tenant. My father was a tenant before me and so was his father before him. This misery is my inheritance and perhaps this will be my legacy to my children.

I have labored on a patch of land not mine. But i have learned to love that land, for it is the only thing that lies between me and complete destitution.

It is the only world that I have learned to cherish. And somewhere on that land I have managed to build what is now the dilapidated nipa shack that has been home to me.

I have but a few worldly possession, mostly rags. My debts are heavy. They are the sum total of my ignorance and the inspired arithmetic of my master, which I do not understand.

I labor like a slave and out of the fruits of that labor, I get a mere pittance for a share. And I have to stretch that mere pittance to keep myself and my family alive.

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