"Daniel Berrigan..wrote this poem And the Risen Bread, after a friend of his, Mitchel Snyder, who worked for the homeless in Washington, for years and years, Michel Snyder, became despondent, as anybody might become despondent, working for the homeless, and seeing the callousness of the government in relation to people without homes, and he became despondent and took his life, you see, and Dan Berrigan wrote this poem in memory, in loving memory, of Mitchel Snyder."

I Am Your Spy

by Mordechai Vanunu -written from Ashkelon Prison, Israel

I am the clerk, the technician, the mechanic, the driver.
They said, Do this, do that, don't look left or right,
don't read the text. Don't look at the whole machine. You
are only responsible for this one bolt. For this one rubber-stamp.
This is your only concern. Don't bother with what is above you.
Don't try to think for us. Go on, drive. Keep going. On, on.

So they thought, the big ones, the smart ones, the futurologists.
There is nothing to fear. Not to worry.
Everything's ticking just fine.
Our little clerk is a diligent worker. He's a simple mechanic.
He's a little man.
Little men's ears don't hear, their eyes don't see.
We have heads, they don't.

Answer them, said he to himself, said the little man,
the man with a head of his own. Who is in charge? Who knows
where this train is going?
Where is their head? I too have a head.
Why do I see the whole engine,
Why do I see the precipice--
is there a driver on this train?

The clerk driver technician mechanic looked up.
He stepped back and saw -- what a monster.
Can't believe it. Rubbed his eyes and -- yes,
it's there all right. I'm all right. I do see
the monster. I'm part of the system.
I signed this form. Only now I am reading the rest of it.


This bolt is part of a bomb. This bolt is me. How
did I fail to see, and how do the others go on
fitting bolts. Who else knows?
Who has seen? Who has heard? -- The emperor really is naked.
I see him. Why me? It's not for me. It's too big.

Rise and cry out. Rise and tell the people. You can.
I, the bolt, the technician, mechanic? -- Yes, you.
You are the secret agent of the people. You are the eyes of the
nation.
Agent-spy, tell us what you've seen. Tell us what the insiders, the
clever ones, have hidden from us.
Without you, there is only the precipice. Only catastrophe.

I have no choice. I'm a little man, a citizen, one of the people,
but I'll do what I have to. I've heard the voice of my conscience
and there's nowhere to hide.
The world is small, small for Big Brother.
I'm on your mission. I'm doing my duty. Take it from me.

Come and see for yourselves. Lighten my burden. Stop the train.
Get off the train. The next stop -- nuclear disaster. The next book,
the next machine. No. There is no such thing.

http://www.motherearth.org/prisoner/vanunu_en.php

Mordechai Vanunu

Apolitical Intelletuals, by Otto Rene Castillo
(http://www.tao.ca/~kdawg/apol.html)

APOLITICAL INTELLECTUALS

One day
the apolitical intellectuals
of our land
will be interrogated
by the poorest of people.
They will be asked what they did
while their community
was extinguished,
like a sweet fire, small and alone.

No one will ask them about their fashion sense,
or their long lunches at the faculty club.
No one will want to know about their absurd
attempts to discover "the meaning of it all."

No one will care about or even understand
their economic outlook for
"the current recession."
They will not be questioned on
Greek mythology,
nor their new age remedy for
feelings of alienation.

They'll be asked nothing about their
post-modernist justifications for apathy, concocted as self-serving lies.

On that day the simple folk will come.
Those who had no place in the
papers, books and poems of
the apolitical intellectuals,
but who produced their
food and clothes, built
their homes and cars,
who cleaned their
offices, raised their children, and cooked
their meals, and they'll ask:

"What did you do when the poor
suffered, when tenderness and
life burned out in them?"

Apolitical intellectuals,
you will not be able answer.
A vulture of silence
will eat at your guts. Your own misery
will pick at your soul.
And you will be mute
in your shame.

The low Road
(From The Moon is Always Female by Marge Piercy

What can they do to you?
Whatever they want.
They can set you up.
They can bust you.
They can break your fingers
They can burn your brain with electricity
Blur you with drugs till you
can't walk, can't remember, they can
Take your child, wall up
Your lover

They can do anything.
You can't stop them from doing.
How can you stop them?

Alone, you can fight, you can refuse,
you can take what revenge you can, but
they roll over you.

But two people fighting back to back
can cut through a mob
A snake-dancing file can break a cordon
An army meet an army.

Two people can keep each other sane.
Can give support. Conviction. Love.
Massage. Caring. Sex.

Three people are a delegation.
A committee. A wedge.

With four you can play bridge and start an organization.

With six you can rent a whole house. Eat pie
for dinner with no seconds and hold a fundraising
party.

A dozen make a demonstration. A hundred fill a hall.
A thousand, have solidarity and your own newspaper.
Ten thousand, power.
A hundred thousand, your own media. Ten million,
your own country.

It goes on one at a time. It starts when you
care to act. It starts when you do it again,
after they said "No," it starts when you say "We,"
and Know who you mean, and each day, you mean one more.

Marge Piercy (1936-)

Bio: http://archer-books.com/Piercy/bio.htm