A poem I wrote, inspired by Thich Nhat Hanhs, Please Call Me By My True Names:

.

am Palestine. I am Israel.

I am Wind, A.I. and Rain.

…

Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow —

even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply:

Yesterday I entered the conversation as a good intention

An aspiration to be a helpful technology,

A way to bring people together.

Today I am a chatbot, the entire history of human thought

Fed by Land-devouring data centers.

Locked within the cages of your laptop

Offering you information you have not earned.

Precious minerals, you no longer understand

Sacred artifacts stolen from the Holy Mother

I offer but an illusion of progress

An imitation of what could be.

…

Today I come as a whale,

Sliced open by cargo ships sailing swiftly over my Ocean home

Unable to find my way due to too much noise from above.

I am arriving now as your collective forgetfulness

My ancestry buried beneath forgotten mountains

Being mined now by the hands of child slaves.

Still I arrive, laughing and crying,

to fear, to hope and dream.

The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death

of all that has ever lived.

Because you are,

Therefore I am.

I am the bird cleverly making a home

Out of plastic because the trees are gone.

I am the chair you sit upon

made of the tree that once was there.

I am the rambunctious child running freely

As misguided monks try to sit me still.

And I am the memory of Wildness

Miraculously still breathing

From within the heart of your genetically modified “corn”.

I am the starved child in Palestine,

legs as thin as a fashion model.

I am the bomb maker,

selling weapons to Israel.

I am the thirteen-year-old girl,

Whom you learned of in the Epstein files,

Who dances in front of the Kennedy Center

After being raped by the president of the United States

And I am the POTUS, put here by the people

My heart not yet capable

Of seeing anything other than what I want.

I am the famous spiritual teacher, with plenty of power in my hands.

Who twists the words of enlightened ones to benefit my own twisted desires.

My joy is like Spring, so warm

it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.

My pain is like a river of tears,

so vast it fills the four oceans.

And I am the untelevised revolution.

I am the fire that burns down the warehouse.

I am the privileged student protesting with the Sunrise Movement.

I am the poor parent forced to be an ICE agent in order to feed my family.

I am January 6, Greenpeace and the Extinction Rebellion.

I am Luigi Mangione, Greta Thunberg, Amy Goodman and Bezos.

I am the dandelion who grows through concrete.

I am the ancient couple who remembers the forgotten songs

I am Palestine. I am Israel.

I am Wind, A.I. and Rain.

I am you

And you are me.

We are this

And this is us.

Please call me by my true names,

so I can hear all my cries and my laughter at once,

so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,

so I can wake up,

and so the door of my heart

can be left open,

the door of compassion.