You must walk

even when you step over severed heads and hands.
Don’t be an idiot
throw out the orange pills
weep for the dead.

Look at the Real Estate section of the papers at homes worth millions of dollars and the six caret diamond rings look at the high rise apartments on Fifth Avenue bought by corrupt politicians for cash.

Did you see the bracelets made of ivory skulls that the rich purchase for amusement?

You must remember the hills of Rio De Janeiro where gangs of boys and girls are shot by cops, kids who never knew a mother or father, kids who are called scavengers and useless and dangerous, kids who eat food from garbage cans and drink polluted water, kids whose parents live in flimsy wooden shacks.

You must picture the people driven in black limousines by chauffeurs the ones who do not dare to carry cash into stores and use credit cards instead the ones surrounded by body guards who live in compounds.

Go to the villages in South America the ones you read about in books the ones that still have no water or electricity the ones where mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers had heads chopped off and no one dared walk by the rivers filled with corpses and body parts.

You must speak of the men the women the children who struggle to cross borders the ones cheated by smugglers who end up dead in the deserts whose hands are cut to shreds when they try to climb the barbed wire fences and when they get over are shot.

Listen to the stories of survivors who were tortured in the prisons. Remember each word they said.
Look at the wings of the birds smeared with oil. See the birds that fall like stones from the sky.
Don’t believe the lies in newspapers or watch CNN. Watch the black planes that spit out bacteria and germs over the cities. Look at the rising deaths from bronchitis and asthma. Connect the dots whether you like it or not.

Walk the aisles of supermarkets where fresh fruit and vegetables are not found and frozen food filled with chemicals are five dollars for a dozen.

Don’t think writers are useless. Trace the money trails that flow across the continents. Remember the experiments done by the CIA. Think how the police in England use electromagnetic pulse to push the ones who are drunk or sick off the streets.

Get up from that ditch where you think you are hidden before you get shot.
Keep on walking no matter what you see.

Anna Akhmatova and Adrienne Rich were not afraid to tell it like it is. History is the needle stuck the grove of a record that repeats a song you do not want to hear the song of war of starvation of hatred of forced marches across deserts of barbed wire of empty camps no one dares to even think about.

Think of yourself as a soldier even though you are a woman, and when you believe words make no difference and no one listens when others huddle in their homes with blinds drawn down and are afraid of a knock on the door just keep on walking.

I tell you once and I will say it again until your listen even if I have to shout to make you hear. Get up and walk and keep on walking no matter what you see or hear.

The one in the ditch is found and shot. Sooner or later.

Nationality makes no difference. We are all refugees in a boat far out at sea and the borders of the countries we need to enter are closed. The ones who learned the lessons of history are dead.

Were you thinking it would make a difference if you did not speak?

You lived your whole life in illusion. You were never different.