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Photos
arriving on the wire.
American soldiers boarding planes,
dressed for success:
designer helmets, makeup and Kevlar vests;
leaden boots and M-16’s slick as Hollywood.
Bodies taut as cocked weapons,
their hearts will become as hollow
as the discarded shells.
They will bomb the square
where elders gather to tell stories,
tear-gas the laughter
that rides the perfumed winds of desert nights,
and pillage the secrets of lovers.
They will shrapnel the future,
mutilate the past -
rape and rub wounds with salt.
These are humanity’s hangmen.
I stare at the faces.
They could be waiting for the subway doors to open,
or standing in a movie line.
Is this the face
once caressed by a mother?
- once stroked by a lover?
Are the cheeks soft?
Kissable?
How many of these faces
will return to applause, college degrees
and a home behind a rose-wrapped fence?
How many will lose their minds
or drink themselves to death,
spare-changing between V.A. appointments?
Don’t
you know, soldier, that you are nothing?
You with the patriotic baby blues,
or you with your family in the ghetto;
you with the dark skin at the front of the line,
or you who wanted to show them
your parents don’t have to speak English
for you to be “American”....
Your president cares about you
less than last year’s American car model.
You are like a little boy
whose dreams are too small
and whose boots are far too big -
talking tough, terrorizing the playground
so no one will notice
you trembling as you take aim against those
who have more in common with you
than do the billionaires your weapon protects.
©2006 Margot “Pimienta” Peppern
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WHO
OWES WHOM?
by Margot Pepper
And
what if we interrupted
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:
We cannot pay
because our cobble-stone streets,
flanked by the twice repossessed
temples to our future,
appear now like war zones:
bombed out,
abandoned like the dreams
hunger consumes.
We cannot pay
because malnutrition is engraved
in the ancient faces
of our children;
carved into the knotted driftwood backs
of our campesinos
who mush relinquish our food
to the world's table.
We will not pay the debt
because half our wealth
is hoarded by 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.
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?
All
that land pried from the fingers of our dead
like artifacts to be sold to private collectors.
All those wares 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 cockroaches when we trespass.
All
those riches all that blood all that sweat.
How
are we to repay a debt owed us?
©2006
Margot “Pimienta” Peppern
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*
Bio by Margot Pepper *
I'm
a Mexican-born al revez Euro-Mexicana Xicana author
living in the Bay Area, whose most recent book is
the memoir, Through the Wall: A Year in Havana, which
I had the honor of performing at Tia Chucha's Cafe
Cultural last July. My most recent essay appeared
in the City Lights/Freedom Voices anthology September
11: Beyond the U.S. War. My poetry, articles and fiction
have appeared in Canada, Cuba, Califas and other parts
of the US. Pieces have been ripped off by the Utne
Reader, Hampton Brown and Examiner for no pay and
censored by Borders. Bla bla bla. You can check out
more on my publisher's website: www.freedomvoices.org.
Contact me at: mpepper@freedomvoices.org
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