The Esoteric Turn Jurisprudence as Poetry — Legal Lyric: When Judgments Read Like Verse
The Esoteric Turn Jurisprudence as Poetry — Legal Lyric: When Judgments Read Like Verse Amiel Gerald A. Roldan™ February 27, 2026 I remember the smell first: diesel, frying oil, and the faint, metallic tang of rain on hot tar. Our street was a ribbon of concrete that never quite dried, even in the dry season, because the gutters were clogged with plastic sachets and the detritus of other people’s lives. I was ten when the first siren cut through the afternoon, a sound that made the neighborhood pause mid‑sentence. My mother told me to stay inside; my father, who worked nights, pretended not to hear. Growing up in that barangay was a curriculum in improvisation. We learned to barter, to read faces, to find humor in the smallest mercies: a neighbor’s extra rice, a borrowed umbrella, a joke that landed like a soft pillow. We were not sheltered; we were schooled in the economy of scarcity. Lucky, some said, were those who had half a roof over their heads, who could slip into a p...