Dickheads shit-talk, huddled single-file

First-world frat-boys and prairie skinheads

who will never walk a mile

or mourn a murdered friend

in this tiny woman´s shoes.

Drink up and mumble your abuse.

I´m still humbled by it all:

around the same time

that I was riding with no hands,

busting windows and getting busy

behind the sportsplex

(with Labonte´s older sister

decked out in her Speedos),

Bella was flinching from the sting

of a Depo Proveran "family planning",

her own Pearl Harbour

and a holocaust spanning

25 years to the rest of her life.

A prison my country underwrote in paradise.

And in the shadows of Santa Cruz,

she crossed her fingers behind her back.

Built Suharto a Trojan horse and lay still

'til the motherfucker sent her north

where as night fell she emerged

with a box under her arm

that held der pledge of allegiance

and her uniform.

She laid it at the gates

of General´s embassy

and her whisper echoed into a dawn

as she disappeared:



The truth will set my people free