OntheWilderSide

by Margot  "Pimienta"  Pepper

And what if we were allowed to interrupt
the blue phosphorescent faces
that calmly assess our fate

What if we stripped the presses of
their convenient projections,
voicing instead our own objections
to the national debt and immigrant debate

We are not the trespassers
who transformed our cobble-stone streets,
adorned by the twice repossessed
temples to our future,
into war zones:
bombed out and abandoned
like the dreams
hunger consumes.
We are not the trespassers
who engraved malnutrition
into the ancient faces
of our children;
carved servitude
into the knotted driftwood backs
of our campesinos
who mush relinquish our food
to the world's table.

We are not the trespassers
who annexed half our nations
hoarding our wealth in hands
as smooth and white
as the teeth of bankers,
las guardias blancas,
la Casa Blanca,
el banco mundial blanco,
though the skin at times may look brown.

And we will not pay one increment more
than the blood and tears
shed like ticker-tape
in the miscarried revolutions
creditors aborted.

For how are we to repay a debt that is owed us?

Please Sir, tell us,
how do we trespass on land that was first peopled by
us?

All that land you pried from the still-warm fingers of
our dead
like artifacts to be sold to private collectors.

All those wares you ripped like flesh
from the ribs of our hungry.

All that land on which we die
like ants in a poison rain when we till it;
like worms for turning garbage to gold.

All those riches    all that blood     all that sweat.

How are  we to repay a debt owed us?

Please, Sir, tell us,
How does one trespass
when a land belongs only to
the rivers, roots and sun?

©2006  Margot "Pimienta"  Pepper

Filed under: cynthia mckinney, Long Island Politics, Recommended Poetry, reform, social & economic justice, US Politics Tagged: | Uncategorized