I have always believed that those who have any talent such as a poet, musician, artist, actor, writer, have a duty to use that talent to record, display and highlight the truth, to inform and take sides on the side of justice and freedom. To do other, seems to me to be a waste of that talent, a dereliction of our responsibility to others.
We The Poets.
We the poets
must rise to hold the mirror,
not at romantic moon
dressing trees in silver web
but, at sadness in a child's eyes
helpless face festooned with flies,
the listless look of hunger.
We the writers
must rise to hold the mirror,
not at hopes of super stars
pandering to an ego of selfish greed
but, at misery of the world's maimed
duty done by smart bombs, computer aimed;
peoples crushed by pitiless power.
We the artists
must rise to hold the mirror
not at views from penthouse windows
of meadows green and lush
but, at peoples broken by starvation,
at war, its brother deprivation,
capitalism's bastard twins.
If across the planet as a whole
we don't stand up and play our role,
poet; heart of compassion,
writer; voice of conscience,
artist; eyes of justice,
we've cheated tomorrow's generation,
hurried the planet to extinction.
