I am.
That’s it.
I am not in your parameters;
I am not defined
By what I make
At the end of the month.
I am –
Spawn of this earth,
Of stardust and chaos given birth.

We are.
That’s it.
Not our countries, nor our flags,
Not the imaginary lines and borders,
Not our laws, or self-assured orders.
We are –
Sons and daughters of Mother Nature,
The fruits of her beautiful labour.

I am.
It is this belief
This sheer conviction
That universal respect for all life
Is key to avoiding strife.
That is what should unite us all.
To answer
The now ubiquitous question
“To be or not to be?”
I would dare say,
”We have little choice,
My dear Prince Hamlet.
The moment we borrow our first breath
We are, already.”

Even though
Many of us
Have been under siege,
Oppressed, hushed up,
Manhandled, cuffed up,
Generations of families
Lost forever
So a corporation can get contracts
To rebuild their nation,

EVEN though
EVEN more of us
Have had their souls ripped out
And left
To stumble around with no purpose,
A life in service
To faceless overlords
Who will drain and absorb
Not just us
But the world in which we came to life,

EVEN THOUGH
All of this pain,
All of this greed
This amalgamation
Of hate riding loneliness like a steed
Has been infesting us
Since time immemorial
We still are.

We
Are here,
We
Can be the tip of the spear,
A vanguard not bent on blood
But on refusing
To look the other way and obey
When the world which we breathe
Our air, the food we eat,
Our health, our spiritual,
Immaterial wealth,
Are taken, abused,
Packaged, used,
Spent and then left,
To rot and pollute.

This is why
Not enough of us
Are fighting whenever we can;
The resistance is there
Its strength lies
In this belief, a steady hand
That fortifies.
Action,
When taken
Like a swift, decisive arrow,
Like the forlorn will
Of thousands of millions
Of souls lost, of children
Washed ashore,
Of blood and gore
Spilled for a billionaire’s gains,
Someone’s profit margin;
When action
Is taken as described
When that rage,
That void inside
Is realigned,
Re-aimed,
Recalibrated to hit
Not an innocent soul,
Or a friend, or any
Of those who are
In the same gladiator pit
But those who built it –
Then,
Then we will all get to be.