prescription: drugs

part of the web of
life series

before the shining
glass beads dangled and
called bright the colored cloth and
hammered iron pots strung up alongside our
white shells the sugar and flour and whiskey flowed
down the ancestors throats
now the plastic money and
shiny fast cars
and foods
computers and the
latest flat screens blinking loud
with their lies called the news
a prescription:
drugs to numb the senses
to keep a people defenseless
entertained mindless
while we are traded like pelts
the land raped and stripped
like our warrior's scalps stretched
a nick for someone's belt
our children bent and stooped
in fields
carved by cruel knives
clearing ancient trees
whose roots talked
and told the crops to grow
to cover up the crime of all time
sown in our people's blood that
flowed in rivers across the burnt land
fertilizing bitter the fruit
poisoned by greed but heeding
the call to survive we eat while
these people force feed us
their trinkets


©/Odilia Galvan Rodriguez, 2008