What Do We Call Ourselves?

What do we call ourselves in the end
when the birds are dead,
frogs deformed, babies born
toxic and ruined?

And the few rich men
who choked us all,
who tricked the masses
and trampled the grasses
with their war games, biotech,
golden cows and broken vows
are richer still?

While children live in clouds of tear gas,
atmospheres of ragged test scores,
institutions of walled violence that
breed greed for hate;

while women claw at ankles
with bloody fingers and withered breasts;
and men lay rotting in the street:
shattered immune systems,
broken wills amidst broken glass

in America
the Beautiful

where amber waves of concrete heat
enclose fields of genetically engineered grains,
where Majesties living in Texas and D.C.
belch emissions into spacious skies,
herd us like cattle
by a corporate media monopoly
into the slaughterhouses of ignorant faith,

where leaders worship:
conservative on compassion,
liberal with disrespect for anyone
outside their hierarchy of perverted power,
what do we call ourselves in the end?

When the peasants in the grassroots circles of parched dreams
burn not as easily as would seem
and the rich, fueled by barrels of gasoline, strike their matches, launch their bombs,
siphon fresh water, feed their lush chem-lawns,
offer poisoned run-off to the masses
as though it were gourmet…

And grateful tears pool in blind eyes of the enamored believers, who--
with bibles in one pocket, guns in the other--
take places in line for the mass slaughter:

Do we see it coming?
manipulated to water the lawns of the powerful,
strip the mines, guard the prisons, taste the poisons,
build slaughterhouses…

America
digging our own grave.

--written by Diana Tigerlily, May 2001
(above photo by Yindi Chen)