THE OPEN VEINS OF THE PEOPLE "…y mis venas no terminan en mi sino en la sangre unaname de todos los que luchan para la vida…" Roque Dalton They will bloody the new moon with their terrible daggers, blunt the horns of this luminous crescent, and rip open the night that mothers us all. The killers will fall upon us and all dreaming will be disallowed. Only the screams of the skinned victims will be acceptable in this brand-new Amerikkan nightmare. We have come here to this ancient land to share with our blood brothers and sisters the evisceration of hope, We say that we will stand between the bombs of Bush and the cradle of civilization but indeed this is all metaphor and pantomime.  Now only a god who died long ago can deconstruct the monsters who plan this genocide. I am an old man who has lived an honorable life and now seeks an honorable death – but I refuse, above all, to surrender my beating heart to these whores of war. Wherever my soul shall fly tomorrow, it will never stop cursing that bastard who calls himself Bush and I shall survive in the flowers of the desert and the open veins of the people. ****************************** Baghdad/March 2nd 2003 (presented at the Iraqi National Theater)	THE THREE DEATHS OF MISTER LEE para Lee Kwang Hai y los y las compas de Via Campesina Mister Lee had some cows but he lost them to the bank. His friends explained sadly how sometimes Mister Lee would return to his lost farm and just sit there staring at the fallow land blowing away in the wind. Times are tough for small farmers in Korea, in Mexico, in India, in Palestine in the South, the North, the East, the West, he had some land, he had some cows, he lost them both to the bank or the government or the World Trade Organization, something bigger than himself. That was Mister Lee's first death. After Mister Lee's first death he flew to Cancun in Mexico to protest with many campesinos the WTO, the banks, the governments, the something-bigger-than themselves. They were angry. They wanted to sweep them all into the deep blue Caribbean sea, and on the Day of their Dead. the Koreans carried a dragon to the gates of the Palace and tried to shake them down. Mister Lee who was not young anymore, climbed the barricade and with a warrior cry, plunged the dagger deep into his sad heart. I saw him teeter and fall, his rich red blood spurting into the earth as he merged with his ancestors. That was Mister Lee's second death, The day after Mister Lee's second death, a handful of farmers wearing straw sombreros and green kerchiefs, brought candles and white flowers to mourn Mister Lee right inside the belly of the beast. For hours, they marched round and round the Cancun Convention Center laden with their sadness, so dignified by it that their authority caused the officials of the World Trade Organization to flinch, an incommong posture for such great men. Then the campesinos built an altar, all candle wax, incense, and white petals, to remember the lost lands the lost cows, the lost dreams, the dead farmers spread under the blazing sun south, north, east, west. And on the second day after Mister Lee's second death, we circle-danced in the street and sang anthems to the moon and even the Cancun police began to weep. And on the third day after Mister Lee's second death, we pulled down the barricades and Chaac rained down upon the still-green ground and we prayed to the gods that we could all be Mister Lee. And on the fourth day after Mister Lee's second death, the delegates from the poor places in the south, the north, the east, the west, took Mister Lee into their hearts and the talks collapsed into ashes in the mouths of the powerful and we all went home laughing. That was Mister Lee's third death, the one he liked best, his resurrection and ascent into the lost land from which he would be born forever again and again. ************ Cancun - September 2003
JOURNALISM The Midnight Special burrows into the bowels of the North American nightmare like a sleek silver tapeworm consuming the body fat of the most overstuffed nation on earth. The rules for travel are posted at the terminals: Report all suspicious activities. Do not leave luggage unattended. Protect your back at all times from suicide bombers, Homeland Security, GMO corn, AIDS, Anthrax, The Anti-Christ. the New York Times. I scratch out a map in a wilderness of white paper that bloodies the nation with crimson headlines from sea to stinking sea. I can no longer parse the horror. The scales have fallen from my snake eyes and the serpent has shed its skin. There is no one lie worth dying for. Ir al lugar de los hechos, Go to the place where it happened. That is the first rule of the finding. They will not want you there but you will learn much from their fury. Write it all down right away in your head. Do not let the details leak out no matter how badly they beat you. Do not forget their faces. Do not believe everything they say.  Do not believe anything you read. ********************** Autumn 2004, San Francisco	TRIBUNAL We emerge from hours days of hours hours of minutes minutes of seconds entombed in darkness so heavily freighted with the corpses of a hundred thousand Iraqis that we cannot breath a cavern of horrors this war it is with us every second of every minute of every hour this war weighing like a coffin upon our pierced hearts blindfolding us before the torturers this war they attach the cables to our genitals jam them up our rectums searing us with jolt after jolt of their imperial power tools this war we are beaten with rods, with chains, with each other, our minds are scooped out by American monkeys wielding stainless steel spoons the noise of this rendering pummels our ear drums as we watch our loved ones drawn and quartered forced to fake fuck each other in the drizzling gloom upon Bush's Murder Machine until our twisted lacerated corpses can no longer feel the sensation or taste the pain this war we are frozen in cryogenic darkness from which we are only allowed to emerge drained and punctured on the third day after the crucifixion resurrected by our rage and then suddenly as if nothing happened really as if it was just one more bad dream really we are in stunning sunlight above the azure sea watching the ferries drift off to Asia the memory of this war a black blot on the back of the brain like a paralyzing migraine that never goes away. ******************** Istanbul June 2005
IN TZOTZIL  On a green hillside south of Ocosingo, a campesino in rubber boots and a black ski-mask raises his single-shot .22 high and curses the deep blue sky that has taken his children. Together, the family had gone to cut the sweet cane in its season when the plane came circling back and dropped its death bombs upon them. the bultos hit the ground like an evil kiss, the concussion knocking him into mindless oblivion, and when he awoke, blood was bubbling from Rosa's lips and young Agustin was cradled limply in his lap on the banks of the San Carlos river where such a thing had never fallen from the sky before. It was his own Black Tuesday and in the broken earth of his heart. the seed of Jihad germinated. In San Cristobel, the Tzotzil men stand in the street staring at the banks of shiny television screens upon which the jumbo jets plow into the crumbling skyscrapers over and over and over again. What are they thinking? That it is just a movie? That it is the end of the world or maybe the beginning of the next one? That it is none of their business or all of their business because now the caixones will come again to tear apart the new dawn? War has lacerated these small wise women and men, forced them into caves to eat weeds and offal, their cousins have been killed over and over and over again but not on the TV. Is it really a movie or is the movie house being torn apart by advanced Tomahawk missile systems guided by cowards at the controls 10,000 miles from their targets, too far away to count the body parts or hear the lamentations or taste the blood. The corn is tall enough now to be bombed, the river full of secret germs, the wind is salted with the worms of fear – the Tzotziles have known war before, have tasted its rotting fruit, suffered its oozing wounds, picked up their children and they were dead. "There is a fire in my heart" the mother said, "if I could reach the one who killed my son I would eat him until he was dead" the mother said, the Palestinian mother said, *********** in Tzotzil, Chiapas 2001	A PIECE OF CHOCOLATE The three youngest boys begged their father for just one shekel to buy chocolate from the market. Abu Aziz was reluctant to allow them outside the small house so late in the afternoon but the curfew in Jenin had been lifted and the market only 50 meters away. Besides they were good boys who always obeyed their parents and never threw stones at the soldiers of the Occupation so I gave them each one shekel: a shekel for Achmed, a shekel for Jamil, a shekel for Tariq, and told them to hurry back home. After just a few minutes, we heard a loud explosion and feared for the worst. A single Israeli tank stood smirking in the street. You could still smell the smoke from its terrible canon, and we saw the boys then lying there in a heap. Achmed's internal organs were spread all around them there on the bloody ground and Jamil's legs were cut in two. Only Tariq was untouched by the exploding shell. When we ran to them, we saw that the boys were still holding the piece of chocolate in their little hands. Both my sons died later at the Dr. Suliaman Hospital and we buried the two brothers still with the chocolate in their hands. So this is what it means to be born a child in Palestine these days: you will die in the street with a piece of chocolate in your hand and you will never get to eat it. Occupied Palestine, ************************   From a piece in the Jerusalem Times, November 2003     ___________________________________________________ THE FIRST RAIN IN YANOON The first rain comes to Yanoon at long last. We have waited many dry weeks for you, drinking in the sun-baked days on the terraced hillsides talking to God about water, a conference call with the clouds. We are so thirsty the parched fields whisper to the wind. Now the valley flashes an electric beam of green blades and the new wheat promises bread and victory. ************************ Occupied Palestine, The Olive Harvest, November 2003