Welcome to Terrorism 101!
I trust you all had no trouble getting here;
It’s just a sharp left from the mainstream

Will the class please come to order?
Where by class I mean the class of people
Being groomed by the global elite for bright future careers as foot soldiers
In the underarmed resistance that provides the excuse for a stockpile
Of arms

Is everyone seated? Have you found your place in the order?
Seats have been assigned according to type – look closely at the labels
That try to capture you.
Are you Muslim? Black? Young? White? Angry?
Are you ready to follow orders?

Are you ready to be a terrorist?

If you open to page one of our text,
“How to become a Terrorist”
You’ll see the first step is to be scary.
Terrorists are the people the government fears.

To be a terrorist, think scary thoughts.
Start small, Think
Little observations like,
Those flags on the highway overpasses
Are creepy.

Think bigger. Think everyone deserves a fair trial and
Bush stole the election and
Thousands of innocent people have died
For his lies.

Think: Didn’t I grow up in a country that valued my civil rights?

Terrorism: Level Two
Saying Scary Things

To be terrifying, you must speak the fears of the nation.
Scary speech often takes the form of a question:
Where is the evidence of WMD?
Who really won that election?
Why aren’t they listening to the 911 commission?

When you run out of questions, stay strong. Keep scaring people.
Say, “We have become the evil that we deplore.”
Say, ‘I will not be silent anymore.”
Try just saying, “NO” to war.

Terrorism: Level Three
Now you’re ready to live scary actions.
Stop paying the 50% of your federal taxes that will be spent on war.
Stop watching Fox news.
Stop smiling and nodding.

Start causing a ruckus.
Leap out of your car at an intersection and plant
Tomatoes for peace in the potholes.
Feed your inner lunatic.
Compost the lies into art.
Get organized.

Scared yet?
Terrorism is as simple as the words you speak every day
As simple as the desire for privacy
And the right to speak out.
You may have been a fully functional terrorist for years
Without ever knowing it.
Walking around, calling yourself “artist”, “student”, “activist”
Or even merely “awake”
Unaware of the terror you invoked in the minds and hearts of a media too cowed by power to speak truth.

So rise up! Rise up and shout “this is what a terrorist looks like!”
“This is what a terrorist looks like!”
“This is what a terrorist looks like!”

This is no time for another moment of silence.
Rise up now in a single moment of violence-
Not of weapons but of words,
A cacophony of voices raising
The languages of the world
To the ceiling of our rights.
Raise the cry for freedom in a
Shower of broken glass and ruined tyranny

I’m calling for a healing fire to flood this land
A storm of tongues
Rising over the dim din of the corporate press,
Licking lady Truth into a frenzy of ecstatic visibility,
Teasing her out of the shadowed lover’s nest she shares with intuition in the dark recesses.

And with your voices raise your arms.
The only arms you will ever need
Growing free and strong from your perfect body.
How much does your arm weigh?
Ten, Fifteen, Twenty Pounds
of flesh and bone and muscle and blood
Collectively we raise a ton of arms,
ton upon ton as we claim the
Space.

Each arm holding out a willing hand –

in several of Australia’s aboriginal tongues
the word for shaman and the word for butterfly are one.
They are the creatures who change shape. –

Let each raised hand become the wing.
Fragile, sacred,
The silent song of the butterfly
Like a smear of paint against gray sky
A curiosity alone
But with the collective power to
Transform a landscape
Lay bare trees to reveal
The skeletons beneath.