Barbarians at the Gate

We are your barbarians, spawned in the last century,
black booted still, now gray of beard and hair,
we skid down internet walls, undetected
like the first signs of an emerging virus,
slide into your living rooms, your libraries,
hack into your arrogance, your exploitations,
of people, of the planet, of life itself,

We seduce your offspring with ideas,
we predators for the spirit, whisper to them online,
lure them to sanity, to cross state lines
in search of the old truths, a reverence for earth,
sacredness, and the wonder of life,

We honor the wisdom of the people
you tried to exterminate in
the genocide you called expansion,
we listen to the words of Black Elk and Chief Seattle,

and the poetry of Ray Young Bear,

We're recruiters for the army of your destruction,
we're soldiers who climb ancient redwoods,
perch there, defiant as eagles for
as long as it takes to stop the bulldozers,

we're warriors who sail in small boats to end
the slaughter of the singers of the deep,
those great whales still snuffed for the
thrill of the kill and the lust for body parts,

we're demonstraters against the rapists
who torture earth, who slice her body
with heavy machinery,  eviscerate
her with bombs, poison her with chemicals,

we'll bury you with no ceremony,
no monuments to your evil, but
with a catalogue of your sins,
of attempted matricide bred from
mind stupor and the ignorance that
spawned degradations,

we're the prophesied barbarians
who haunt your dreams,
we're on the doorstep,
the avengers of our great mother
and the time is now.

© Zen Oleary
June 21, 2003