To Comfort The Disturbed, and to Disturb the Comfortable: Onward children of the sun

By Cesar A. Cruz, 1997

Daddy, why is Mommy hangin' from a tree?

the torture chambers of our minds
collide
hide
disguise
the plight
of
freedom
of might...

she called out my name in Tienamien Square
and I tried not to listen.
I saw his mother raped in Burma...
and all I could do was vomit
the disgust, the anger,
the rage, the fear...
my weak body felt numb...
where to turn,
where to run...

a peace accord was signed in Guatemala
with blood dripping from torture chambers,
of the disappeared,
pleas for peace.
a piece of savagery awakened the vast land,
as the flames,
the scorched earth
stretched its roots
to the south and yet El Salvador, Nicaragua,
Honduras, and Panama would not listen...

a child in Bosnia picked up a rifle,
cocked, reloaded and shot his own
father...
for there was
no other alternative...
his father's last words
ring clear,
night and day,
day and night
as the young soldier,
must rage on.
Get it over with... I want to die in my homeland...
a free man... the wound is too severe... do it for our country...

The military Gestapo arrived to ethnically
cleanse
the heathen population.

Calcutta cried, wept as our mother sat in a death bed
awaiting the inevitable.

ashes fell upon South Africa
as the turnover,
apartheid,
was complete on paper,
and now slavery would have to entail
a blueprint similar to America's...

make it legal...
make the details
a
party
(for us to)
hide...

apartheid

a
part
lie

sponsored
by the
rich
side

The cries of boardroom execs
competing to hire prison cons
strengthening multi-national corporations,
and the ghetto child wondering
why she/he deserves such
preferential
treatment
in America's
prison industrial complex....

the prophet planted a seed,
and Pinoy sisters and brothers
took aim at the coming of kalayaan...
freedom...
libertad...

they held hands

and drank the blood of
an endless river of
lgrimas,
y of tears of pain,
of survival, of oppression...
of liberation..

the revolutionary sister took the A-train
down past the underground tunnel
y aligned her troops,
seized Macchu-Picchu,
y Tenochtitlan and still
had time to catch the nearest exhibit
of pre-European Western art
at the local prison for indigenous treasures...
a west ern museum.

the little African girl
held her Bosnian brothers hand
as they saw the local newsreel
of resistance in Chiapas....
they smiled and the crystal
phoenix rose above their eyes
shattering the physical demise
of the commercialization of revolution

its spirit soared awakening Cambodian
teachers to shut down the local TV station
for showing another episode of Baywatch!

the Haitian refugee sought a light,
a gleam, an audience...
asking the Japanese elder to remind
America that internment camps were alive and well..
another detention camp just went up
for illegal slave aliens toiling the back fields
of a worldwide economy...

the little Mexican girl asked her tata:
Porque esta colgada mi madre de ese arbol?
her father, tried not to lose the deep end
and replied,
Tu madre quizo un poco de paz...

Your mother wanted a piece of peace...
but what she got
was a worldwide
masterpiece
of torture,
of rape, of splattered corpses
whose trail spawned
the winds of the east,
and the air conditioners of the west...

she sought...to
live...
to give...
but her roots..,
her struggle
her awakening
had flown out of
the theaters like
a cheap B-movie
whose turn was to hit the shelves.

She just wasn't marketable.

on the third day her spirit rose above ground
and a Taiwanese farmer planted her seed on the ground...

its rebirth,
the corn,
fed her people
as the rage of the storm ensued...

the young phoenix spread its wings
and delivered nutrients across vast lands,
crossing fictional borders
without even carrying a green card...
it landed on plymouth rock
and saw Tecumseh,
Tonantzin,
and Tupac Amaru,
awaiting the coming of prophecy....

el maiz habia renacido...
the corn had risen and the people
y were once again fertile...

the winds of rage sought to destroy
freeways in LA, and
skyscrapers in Tokyo...
but the people of East Timor would not be moved...

the free ways in which the earth shook
drowned those who dared not listen
to the call of the maz...
typhoons, tornadoes, and hurricanes,
rebirth....

a new seed,
a change being sung
by a homeless man in Philly
who sought spare change...
and yet all you could do was walk away....

the pain,
the rage,
is staring us in the face,
and yet,
we proclaim
democracy is only a step away.

our facade of democracy
is the world's reality
of starvation,
war,
and savagery....

and yet,
somehow,
amidst the rage of the storm
lies the roots
of our change,
our humanity,
our growth,
our hope,
our faith,

for revolution,
for peace,
made entirely
out of corn...
hecha de maiz y el corazon.