By Bill the Butcher
THE OTHER
Who am I?
I am the Other, the other brother
The brother you would rather forget
I am the shadow shivering
Under the bridge
When winter comes;
The child selling cheap pens
In traffic jams.
I am the one you make fun of
For eating with my hands
For not speaking with your accents
I am the Other.
I am the one who does your slave work
I am the one who cleans up after your party
I am the one who pays with my blood
For your Eternal Frontiers.
Laugh at me, snub me
For I am not like you.
But some day I shall rise,
I, the Other.
And
I am, I will be
The stuff of your
Nightmares.
Fear me.
**************************
A BILLION OBESE PEOPLE WALK THE EARTH
A billion obese people walk the earth
Eating more than their health can sustain
Eating more than the world can sustain
Feeding on the blood of the world.
Meanwhile, stones fly in the shadow
Of the Pyramids. Ancient, and built of
Ancient stones
Hauled up by scrawny slaves
From the great Mother Nile.
What would they say today
These nameless faceless unknown slaves
Who being nameless and faceless yet
Built monuments for the ages?
What would freedom mean to them?
Is freedom but a word?
Would the food the billion obese consume
Mean more to those slaves
Than the blood and courage
Of the men and women standing up to guns and tanks?
Empires rose and fell in the shadow of the Pyramids
Empires meant to last till the end of Time.
Ozymandias, Rameses, Caesar, Napoleon
Have come and gone. But the Pyramids, built by slaves,
Endure.
Today’s Empire, halfway round the world
Will fall, and the blood and courage
Of the people of Egypt shows the way.
But if you could turn time back
Back to beginnings, and ask one of those naked slaves
What he’d rather have,
Freedom or food to fill his stomach
What would he have chosen?
To a slave, what is freedom?
Is it just a word?
The billion obese weigh down the earth with their
Obscene weight.
The Pyramids
Endure.
************************************
OPERATION GREEN HUNT
This is not your land
The sacred hill where the gods of air and water live
The flight of the bird on the wing,
Shimmer of the sun on the water
They do not belong to you.
They never did.
Your machines of steel and anger
Would rip the heart out of the earth,
Rip the old gods from their hills and forests.
Your greed fuels your machines
Your uniformed minions, with guns in their hands
Your uniformed minions who after all are only men
As we are men, and women
Earth’s Children, we.
Your greed would make an end to everything we have
Everything we live for
But this is not your land
And we will not pay the price for your greed
And we will not go away.
No.
We will not go easily, no, we will not go easily.
We will not go easily, into the dreadful night.
This is not your land, no this is not your land
Our ancestors have lived here
The old gods have lived here
Since before the days when the hills were young.
Yet you want what is not yours
You try to take what is not yours
And death is all you offer us
And death is something we understand.
No, we will not go easily
Though you do what you will
Offer us your platitudes, feed us with
Words.
Your words
Your words are like your promises
Empty.
Empty like the eyes of the skull on the dry rock
Empty as the scars on the earth
Empty like the bellies of our children
When your machines have moved on.
But when we pick up the gun
The gun is not empty.
Our forests, our villages
Our land, our gods
Our world, not empty.
Call us what you will
Red terrorist, Maoist, Anti-national
Call us what you will, but
Our world is not empty.
We will pay with our blood
Yes we will pay with our blood
We will water the land with our blood
And it will be our land.
Our words, our promises
Are not empty.
Note: Operation Green Hunt is the Indian Government’s war against its own rural poor living in the forest areas of the nation, in order to take their lands and hand it over to mining companies in the guise of “fighting Maoism”.
Renee Garcia Brown
Revolution inspired poems…how un-PC! Awesome, Bill!
You have some very poignant lines, Bill. One of my favorites is, “i am the shadow shivering under the bridge”. How it draws up the images of the hopeless, the drifters, the desperate! When i read your poem, “A Billion Obese People Walk the Earth”, i was struck by a memory. After several years of trying to sell crafts in Mexico City, some of the street artists and i decided to try our luck in Monterrey, which is close to the U.S. border. We were immediately struck by the number of fat people who casually walked the streets, some of them as broad as three street artists put together. In Mexico City, there were plump people, some rather robust people; primarily among government officials, policemen and tourists, but the average citizen looked a bit thin and hungry. While it boggled our minds to see so many overweight people, the only thing i could really think about was how much i envied them for having so much to eat, they could get fat.
Excellent and timely. Thank you Bill.
Many of the obese in America are among the many poor as well, due to poor nutrition. The food our companies here pump out aren’t fit for the troughs of pigs, yet they widely market it. But for the sake of the meaning our your poem, this one was quite well penned and is obvious to the truth of many rich folks who collect off the backs of the common man’s toils.
Cheers, Don
Dear Bill,
I am doing a project in my english class involving doing a presentation of a poem having to do with “Revolution”. We must have an actual name for our author and I couldn’t help but love your poem and everything it stands for. May I trouble you in asking for your name?
Thank You,
Sophia V
the other. Anti bourgeoisie culture. Sir, Respect.