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POEM OF THE MONTH, May 2007 |
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Written by Claire Tran
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Tuesday, 01 May 2007 |
To the Imperialists
Are we free now?
Now that the rice fields are wiped out
And you've spread the sickness through
Generations of forests and families
Are we safe now?
Now that we've flown a thousands of miles from home,
Or we risked the ocean for your promises
Settled into slums or
Isolated in the white blank pages
Far from our words that once reminded us
Of the texture of tones my tongue cannot taste
Soon I will free the butterflies from my mouth!
My heart wants to know my language
How do you raise a child?
I grew up singing
Big Mac fillet of fish
Quarter pounder French fries
When I should have been learning my freedom songs
I like the unruly children the best
The ones who refused to be silent
The one with angry faces squeezed tight
Like a stress ball
What do you teach about freedom?
The thickness of your history book
Shh hush shh hush
Don't make a sound
As my father is pounding the shit
Out of my mother
Your history book heavy on my back
Won't tell of
My Lai massacres
And money spent, money spent
On land mines that maim
But my land
Is the one I name
In my heart that pounds out resistance
How sick is this system?
Demanding payment from my father
Who has paid with so many days his labor
In Ford's steel factories
Cutting remarks from the foreman
And cut from the job when his body has worn
In the waiting room my father suffers
As the receptionist pronounces him dead
In the absence of forty-five dollars
This country makes you embarrassed to ask to stay alive
How much must we pay to survive?
An African American man held little
Except for four seats on the BART train
Some bags of plastic bags
One crutch and a duffle bag
He is constantly reminded
That he was never supposed to survive
Well how many seats did you pay for?
Say the white ladies
I paid for all these seats lady
On this whole damn BART train!
I paid for this train with my life!
Well how many seats did you pay for?
Say the white ladies
He was never supposed to survive war
We were never supposed to be born
We are living ghosts sharing these seats now
From this stage I call upon all the spirits
The ones who resisted
The ones who names were not written anywhere
The ones who were women
The ones who were beat by their husbands and finally decide to leave
The ones who were queer
The ones who loved
When everyone and everything around them told them not to
The ones who told the stories
The ones who were brave enough to speak the secrets
The ones who sang songs
The ones who screamed when they were told to be silent
The ones who spoke poems
The ones who were not remembered
In biographies
Or had their faces put on a t-shirt
Or posters
Or were believed in by anyone but themselves
These are the spirits that possess me
That give me the strength to fight back
You cannot escape us.
Vietnam is but one battle.
We are in Iraq, in Venezuela, in the Philippines,
In Cuba and South Africa.
In West Oakland, in the Fruitvale, in San Antonio
On the Reservations,
In the TL, in Hunter's Point and La Mission
WE ARE EVERYWHERE!
Some are functioning
your family,
your tall tall buildings,
even your artillery
We are right next to you
Serving your food on a silver platter
Making your beds
We are ghosts here on gold mountain
We have strong bones
We have survived
We are alive
AND NOTHING CAN DEFEAT THE SPIRIT OF OUR PEOPLE!
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