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