Declassified

We live in 1984
and 451
with eyes in our technology
and ears pressed against our mouths.
Men in firesuits insert the same stories
into every brainwashed head.
And Thoughtpolice rip through textbooks like Montag,
setting aflame ideas, hiding history.

They believe ignorance is paradise.
A device to create an oblivious society
never questioning authority.
Clarisse asked the questions “Why? How?”
How can you regret the past when the past is not known?
How can you change what is ignored?

Blackwhite
Freedom is Slavery

Tell us please…
Tell us about Luis Rodriguez
The Chicano Movement
and Cesar Chavez.
Luis, a man always running,
Hunted like an animal,
chased for his skin.
Brutalized, like all the others,
by the power hungry protectors of the
City of Angels.
To keep him in his place
to keep him from achieving his “American dream.”
To create and perpetuate so-called civil wars
When they rose above and asked only
for the government,
their guardians,
to keep their promise of equality.

And Chavez, his hunger strike.
Fight back!
Peacefully.
The first and only Mexican-American with his own holiday,
(Celebrated in limited states).

Doublethink.
War is Peace
Teach us of Elisabeth Mann, who looked up to the sky
to see dense, somber smoke colouring the air black,
Floating, unharmed through the spiked thorns of the barbed wire
curling around Auztwich.
Standing, half-naked, head shaven,
Listening to the laughter of a Nazi soldier
As he pointed toward the murky liberation
And said
”There! There are your parents!
The only way out of Auztwich
is through the smoke stacks!”

Oceania
Ignorance is Strength

Weep when you tell us the story of Brandon Teena,
Transgender.
Make the image burn into our minds:
His head thrusting backward,
smashing into the wall behind him.
Struck down by hate in the shape of a cylinder.
A bullet striking open eyes.

So many pages silenced by Big Brother
words burned from the pages.

We’re all traveling too fast to start a rebellion
or to realize the green blur is grass
and those hollow sounds are
their voices commanding to be heard.
Are you listening?

04/17/2007