POEMS 

Wait Wait...and you will see what we have promised you As your fields dry up Your cattle dies And when you have nothing left And when your world is broken around you Wait. Wait...as your children grow hungry As your family starves And their cries, the cries of the forgotten, the disappeared, haunt you in your dreams And when they take from you what you have worked for And when the dreams of your future, and the memory of your past, grind into ashes. Wait. Wait..as the life slips from your fingers As your friends and family Disappear into the wind And when they remove you from your land And you are left without a home Wait. Wait...as you see the earth suffering The rivers run dry The soil turning to desert Wait...as blood covers the land The blood of the animals, and people we have slaughtered Wait...until there is nothing left Until everything has been taken from you And everything is broken Wait... Keep waiting... Just a little more... And if you begin to doubt... Don’t worry. Wait. And modernity Progress, will bring all that we have promised you. Even if there is no one nothing left to enjoy it

Can you hear them? Can you hear them? Their voices hoarse from crying out in the night, their screams, unanswered, lost in confusion, until their cries disappear so that not even a whisper escapes them. Can you see them? Standing there huddled together along the side of the road in groups, alone standing or lying where the earth shall meet them as a home, and a grave with no marker to remember them by. Can you see them, with your eyes? Can you see the pain and torture, and suffering which slowly strips them of all they have until nothing is all that remains. And can you feel the blood flowing through their veins? like the rivers which once crossed the land until they too run dry so that there is nothing left not even blood to flow through their bodies. Can you see the countless millions, the billions who inhabit the earth? Who have lived, and sung and danced, in thousands of languages and thousands of voices. Can you feel their happiness? their joy their love Or their pain, As all this is taken from them. Look, hear, feel. And do not ever forget, as you go to your offices, your schools and universities as you drive your cars to and from work and home that this is the world you have asked for the world you created And are forcing upon us. Where you have taken from us our voices our songs our dances All so that we can work, and learn, and live Like you do. Even though we have never asked for it. Even though we have never tried to be who you are But rather live, and love, and celebrate our differences. And, instead of this, you would have us eliminate difference. And forget that it ever was. All to be one, the same Without choice. Is this the freedom, the democracy you preach? Can you not hear us? Can you not see?

Progress Progress? When in a year we use the same amount of resources that it took the earth a million years to create. When a few decades from now, we may have destroyed what it took the earth 3000 million years to create. When soil is eroded, forests burned, and rivers polluted. When we produce more food, while more people starve. When ‘wealth’ increases, while more people are made poor. When children, young people, adults, the old, grow up lost and afraid. Unable to speak to each other, unable to dream. What progress? Why? So that the capitalists can grow wealthy? So that those in the north can have one more car? One more television set? Or do our rulers wish for one more palace or mansion? Is this why we must die? Why you take our lives? And as cities grow, and the earth disappears; As machines become ever more productive, and technology goes, where no one has gone before, Yet we starve, dying of hunger of diseases you have long since forgotten or cured.  For yourselves that is. Is this progress? Do you really expects us to believe that. No. I am sorry. We cannot believe. For your progress, Is our death.