Activist Video: Take America Back

A video of Steve Connell and Sekou at the 2006 ACLU conference. It is a very good spoken word poem, performed with such ease that it impresses me.

Poem: The Game We Played

I've been fairly distraught lately with current international affairs. I feel people are being slaughtered in what is close to a genocide in Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Not to mention the real genocide still going on in Darfur. I wrote this poem to get out some of that pain about the world. It is in the perspective of a American Iraq Veteran who has PTSD and is starting to loose their sanity. It is fairly jagged in structure on purpose.

My sleep is disturbed
By the dropping bombs
From far away
That break in my slumber
Like a Giant
Swinging an axe by my head

The visions grow stronger
And my rest grows weaker
As I start to loose control
From the horrors that haunt me

The burning bodies
The deformed children
And my dead friends
Still speak to me

I break at the edge of my existence
Wanting to just sleep forever
To have been on the opposite
End of that gun I fired

To be the victim
Not the murderer
Spurned on by my training
To be a murderer and a hero
All at the same time

Wretched nights continue
And even more wretched days
As people say they are proud
Of what I have done

What have I done
Been a pawn in an oil man's game
To kill the poor
For the rich and their black gold

Kill Kill
Is the name of the game
And with childrens bodies
We play
And with childrens bodies
We play
Kill Kill
Is what we play
By: Aurora Jade Pichette
Date: August 6th, 2006

Poem: Anti-Oppression Haikus

I
feminism brings life
embrace its freeing power
patriarchy brings death

II
Why would I oppress
for my oppressors dark will
I instead unite

III
tell you how light dies
and how slavery comprise
western society

Slam Poem: A Culture of Fear

Were indoctrinated to fear
All that is around us
To live fear
To breath fear
To produce more fear
And with this fear
Were supposed to hide away
To drink, do drugs
To buy, to acquire
To watch sports, and go to the theatre
Wait.. scratch that last one they're too Leftist and Queer
Watch TV
Because TV lets you fill your mind
With screaming commentators
Giving no context
And what they call reality.
See when I say hide
I don't mean from the malls
Because that would be
Letting the terrorists win.
No you need to hide from truth
Because truth is like a disease
It needs to be quarentined
Hidden away in some room
Where the policy makers
Choose their lies
That are propagated by the media
Who tell us about anthrax from Arabs
Gun violence by Goths
And Breaking and entering by Blacks
And after a while I just
Don't know who to trust
Trust? Who is to trust
Everyone is a suspect...
And if your Middle Eastern
My heart goes out to you
Because your a suspect times two
9/11 caused this
Reinvigorated racism
Like a new midwife entered the room
She nursed racism back to health
But gave him a new favourite enemy
And his godfather in the White House
Gave him a few more acts to play with
And called it patriotism and homeland security
But whats even more frightening is that
They were mimicked around the world
All Because of 9/11
We must not dissent from authority
To be a patriot
We must fear
Whatever is near
Whether that be avian flu,
WMDs, terrorism
You know what to do
Yet... 9/11 and this "new normalcy"
Just don't add up
I ask why building 7 perfectly fell at 5pm
I ask why the twin towers suddenly fell
When they were made to sustain a plane crash
Or that the firefighters said they had it under control
Before they suddenly crumbbled
I know fires hot enough to melt steel produce white smoke
Yet they came down and thousands of people lost their lives
Just as it was used as an excuse to kill thousands more
I'm also not supposed to know
That Al Qaeda is a CIA creation
I'm only supposed to know their lies
And to consume... consume... consume..
In a culture of fear.
By: Aurora Jade Pichette

Poem: In the Den

[I'm going to Toronto for the weekend for a political conference so no updates, but here is this before I go]

My sleep is haunted by the thunder
The crackle and wail of the gunfire
Leaving my brethren in a funeral spire
While the armies rape and plunder
My mind goes a sunder

I wonder why they come to leave death
As if to be able to tell a terrible tale
Even the thought of it leaves me pale
When is my turn to loose my breath
Or will I go as Macbeth

The end is near I feel it still
The step of the boot the click of the gun
Yet I fear there was nowhere to run
In this case I can only will
That they loose their drive to kill...

By: Aurora Jade Pichette
For all the civilians who are murdered on a daily basis in war.