>Please, the e-mail says, >do not forward political material; >it clogs up my mailbox. In the towns of Aleksinac, Medosevac, Cacak, in the cities of Nis, Novi Sad, Belgrade in Kosovo, Serbia, Yugoslavia the bombs drop (to stop the killing, they say.) The fleeing & the wounded clog up the bridges & streets.
>Please send only personal >or professional mail. In San Cristóbal de las Casas, in Acteal in Chiapas, Mexico, the dead clog up the villages & fields, the refugees clog up the rectories & naves. >Poems & good jokes are ok.
In Centla, in the city of Villahermosa, in Tabasco, Mexico, the disappeared, the taken, the imprisoned do not clog up the streets or the polluted farms; the armed soldiers do. >Hold political & religious messages; >I've pretty much made up my mind on all that.
In Becora, the city of Dili, Maliana in East Timor, while their wives sew Nike sport shoes in Jakarta, the Indonesian soldiers murder & murder those men & women with gall enough to vote, the children simply because. Their bodies clog up the neighborhoods, the exiles the roads. >I hope you understand.
In Afghanistan, the country of Rumi, in the city of Kabul & throughout the land the wounded, the hungry, the cold, the desolated clog the roads & byways
In Ramallah and Bethlehem, in Jenin in the towns of Hebron, in Jerusalem, in Israel/Palestine the bodies clog the streets, the roads, the ditches. Overturned ambulances & wrecked houses clog up the entrances & exits. The blood of the children of Isaac & Ishmael clog the holy land.
In Baghdad & throughout Iraq the bombs fall & the dying clog the cities & suburbs; in Abu Ghraib (in Bagram and Guantánamo, too) our young are turned into torturers & the bloodied clog the cells. >Be well. Except for the bay bridge & the financial district at certain times, our streets & bridges are not clogged. We take care our homeless do not clog our streets, nor our ill the hospitals. >I do want to hear from you.
April 15 comes with taxes due (for those bombs, those guns in Yugoslavia, in Mexico, in Timor, in Afghanistan, in Columbia, in Israel/Palestine, in Iraq) & the rich get richer while the hungry go hungry; the homeless, homeless; the ill untreated; the children and youth untaught. & when I was a boy Spam was a meat marmalade in square cans to feed the soldiers.
