Your hands are covered in blood

Can you feel the experiences of the lives you took?

Can you hear their cries whispering on the wind?

To live a life without mercy is bleak

To live a life without grace is cruel

To live a life of service is gold

And isn’t riches what you seek?

Crossing oceans, crossing seas

You pillage and rape both land and people as you please

Crossing rivers, crossing streams

You lie and destroy all because of your greed 

Bathe your hands in milk, drench them in the ivory cream

For their color is unnatural—stained burgundy and crimson

Scarlet lines detail your knuckles; ruby, burrowed within the crevices slashing across your palms

Dip them to camouflage the rouge 

Alas, it’s no use

They won’t ever come clean,

They’ve buried too many souls beneath the green

So lower to your knees with palms upwards and outstretched 

A sacrificial life rooted in servitude

Is the only way to bring about light 

From below you see more clearly,

You realize you’re nothing but mere dirt

For when we die we all resume—

Ashes to feed Mother Earth 

ASL | 2.1.19