Multiply This

They are stoning women in Afghanistan.
Here is a woman who is going to be stoned to death.
Now multiply my feeling for her,
My helpless wish to save her,
By a thousand, or ten-thousand, or a million.
Use rough figures; numbers are not important;
A lot.  We’re talking big numbers here.
That is the number of things I want to change:
Toxic dumping in New Hampshire,
The bullying of women,
Abuse of children,
Hitting a girl named Daisy with a baseball bat
Because she is your wife
And because you think you can.
Multiply that by a hundred-thousand

Building missiles
Bombing children
Setting land mines
The burning in North Vietnam of people
Who will one day be my friends.
Multiply that by a million.
Two mothers yelling way too loud at their crying children
In East Harlem.  A mother yelling furiously at her little boy
In a store in the mall.  Multiply that.  Multiply them.  

Multiply the freewheeling capitalists
Screwing their employees out of every dime they can.
Multiply the President and his gang
Spitting on democracy to grab the golden ring.

Multiply the bureaucrats pushing aside the diplomats
Fashioning policies that are never going to work--
That haven’t got a snowball’s chance in Hell.

Multiply the selfish bastards
The two-faced suits
Mouthing their tired public sound bites
While visions of oil and pipelines seethe in their hearts.

Multiply the money stolen away from poor students
Their schools, their parents, and their dreams
The homeless, the hungry, the starving in America.
Multiply the streets not paved
The Haitians and Africans shot dead by pig-faced New York police.
Multiply the fat-cat mayors and governors hosting
Jovial meals at mahogany-tabled steak houses.
Multiply them by a thousand, or a thousand thousand.
Multiply the eviscerated cities, the permanent governments,
The crack-drunk student who wanted to be a therapist
Seduced by a dealer, nodding out in class, bolting out the door
Forever.

Multiply the rulers who don’t see a crumbling nation
Don’t see a nation rotting from inside.
Multiply the lunatics driven mad by hunger,
Driven crazy by cruelty.

I am going to write a letter,” I announce,
In my quaint, old-fashioned way,
But what is the point?  I would have to write
Ten-thousand letters, and then ten-thousand more.
My fingers hurt
Before I have begun

I want a million women, men, too,
Rising up against war cultures
Rising up against the stoning of women
The cruelty to children,
Stopping traffic in all directions
In downtown D.C.
Showing every person on the planet
Every G.W. Bush
That Americans want a peaceful planet.
Don’t care about “revenge”
(We see how well that’s worked in Israel),
Just want peace
To raise children
Read and dream
Breathe the air
Study and dance
A pleasant place to hang out on.

Just want to feel secure,
Make a sweet life possible
For every human being.   Multiply this.  Multiply this.  Multiply this.  

--Jane Heil 2002