I watch the violence on CNN in my Brooklyn home.
When it’s too much to bear, I change the channel.
But I care. I feel their pain already. The Libyan
people have touched the ghostly life force I call my
soul. And so I speak to them and their oppressor.

I eat your sadness. I cry. I drink the blood of war.
I die. Why?

I shriek the voices of the oppressed.
Goodbye, Qaddafi.

The dead can’t rest for vultures fly above. They smell
the rotting flesh below. My frenzied eyes swallow the
sprawling dreamscape of despair.

My battered brain tastes the surging waves of red sand
and the scattered human debris in the wasteland of the
desert.

Peaceful protestors died here so others could
be free.

I shriek the voices of the oppressed.
Goodbye, Qaddafi.

I can’t bear the brutal finality. When strangers suffer,
so do I. Why?

We, the people of the earth, are forever connected. We
share the sacred spirit of creation and destruction. We
pray for freedom. We rage against injustice. After
freedom prevails, we pray for peace.

I shriek the voices of the oppressed.
Goodbye, Qaddafi.