Before I start this poem,
I’d like to ask you to join me in
A moment of silence
In honor of those who died
In the World Trade Center.
I would also like to ask you
A moment of silence
For all those who have been
Harassed, imprisoned, disappeared,
Tortured, raped or killed
In relation to those strikes.
And if I could just add one more thing…
A full day of silence
For the tens of thousands of Palestinians
Who have died at the hands of
US-backed Israeli forces
Over decades of occupation.
Six months of silence
For the million-and-a half Iraqi people,
Mostly children, who have died of
Malnutrition or starvation
As a result of the 11-year US embargo
Against the country.
Before I begin this poem:
Two months of silence
For the Blacks under Apartheid
In South Africa.
Nine months of silence
For the dead in Hiroshima
And Nagasaki.
A year of silence
For the millions of dead
in Vietnam – a people, not a war.
A year of silence
For the dead in Cambodia,
Victims of a secret war…ssshhh…
Say nothing…we don’t want them to
Learn that they are dead.
Two months of silence
For the decades of dead in Colombia.
Before I begin this poem,
An hour of silence
For El Salvador…
For Nicaragua…
Two days of silence
For the Guatemaltecos…
None of whom ever knew
a moment of peace
45 seconds of silence
for the dead in Chiapas
25 years of silence
for the hundred million Africans
who found their graves far deeper in the ocean
and for those who were
strung and swung
from the heights of sycamore trees.
100 years of silence…
For the hundreds of millions of
Indigenous peoples
From here in the US.
So you want a moment of silence?
And we are all left speechless
Our tongues snatched from out mouths
Our eyes stapled shut
A moment of silence
And the poets have all been laid to rest
The drums disintegrating into dust
Before I begin this poem,
You want a moment of silence
You mourn now as if the world
will never be the same
And the rest of us hope to hell! It won’t be.
Not like it always has been.
Because this is not a 9-1-1 poem
This is a 9/10 poem;
A 9/9 poem,
A 9/8 poem,
A 9/7 poem.
This is a poem about
What causes poems like this
To be written.
And if this is a 9/11 poem, then
This is a September 11th poem
For Chile, 1971
This is a September 12th poem
For Steven Biko in South Africa, 1977
This is a September 13th poem
for the brothers in Attica prison,
New York, 1971
This is a September 14th poem
For Somalia, 1992..
This is a poem
For every date that falls
To the ground in ashes
This is a poem for the 110 stories
That were never told
The 110 stories that history
Chose no to write in the textbooks
The 110 stories that CNN, BBC,
The New York Times
And Newsweek ignored
This is a poem
For interrupting this program.
And still you want
A moment of silence
For your dead?
We could give you
lifetimes of empty:
The unmarked graves
The lost languages
The uprooted trees and histories
The dead stares on the faces
Of nameless children
Before I start this poem
We could be silent forever
Or just long enough to hunger,
For the dust t bury us
And you would still ask us
For more of our silence.
If you want a moment of silence
Then stop the oil pumps
Turn off the engines and the televisions
Sink the cruise ships
Crash the stock markets
Delete the instant messages.
If you want a moment of silence,
Put a brick through
The window of ‘Taco Bell’,
And pay the workers for wages lost
Tear down the liquor stores,
The jailhouses, the White Houses,
The Penthouses and the Playboys.
If you want a moment of silence,
Then take it
the next time your white guilt
fills the room where my beautiful
people have gathered.
You want a moment of silence
Then take it
Now,
Before this poem begins.
Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the space
Between bodies in embrace,
Here is your silence.
Take it.
But take it all.
Let your silence begin
At the beginning of crime.
But we,
Tonight we will keep right on singing
Four our dead.
___