RIN DEL ANGELITOS
(The Little Angels' Dance)
The Day Before March 15, 2003.

By Thomas Koppel 03/14/2003

Fortunate Son
We haven't seen you for some days now
Are you fingering your pretzel.
Look:

A ghost is waking up!
Walking through the world!
Faces
Old, wrinkled, eyes shining like stars.
Black stains of blood.
Little faces,
Little dirty cheeks,
Blood.
All walking
Walking
Walking
Towards the steps in front of your temple
The temple of the bankers and the executioners.

The children
Their breath is fresh as apples
They smell like children,
Sweet, Bitter as life, salt as tears.
Already they are dancing everywhere around you.
The Little Angels' Dance.
Rin del Angelitos.

Looks like they could be in the millions.
Chile, El Salvador, The Philippines.
Palestine, Iraq.

Why haven't we seen you for some days now,
Fortunate Son?

More and more
Are gathering
Around your house with no windows.
These are the children of
Hiroshima, Nagasaki.
The Jews that died slaves. Remember Thyssen?
Thyssen made your family very rich.
Thyssen killed my family.
Manya's little sister Anna,
twenty-nine perished,
While the U. S. government
Was seizing Union Banking Corporation
For trading with the enemy,
Adolf Hitler.
Letting your Granddad go, of course.

And Fortunate Son:
Look, the gypsies!
The burning guitars, the tambourines,
They died too.
They are all there.

You know,
I saw on Fox
That you liberated Europe.
I honestly think
The Dead of Stalingrad
Liberated Europe.

Twenty million rising through the ice
Like the very first spring blossoms.
They, too, are there today.

You asked for a party,
Here it is.

Here come The tribes.
Apache, Tonkawa, Coushatta, Tawakoni,
Chumash, Illinois, Timuka,
All there.
Kokopelli's flute
The drums of the Earth
Drums, drums, drums.
Drums, heartbeats. heartbeats.
They are all there.
The Earth is awake.
Starting to move.

Now hear the sound of broken chains.
Hosea Hudson, Angelo Herndon,
King,
Malcolm,
and Huey P. Newton,
That's where we came into the picture.
The Messenger Speaks.

Langston's raisin
Exploding in the sun.....

Bessie Smith,
Billie Holiday,
garcia Lorca,
Paul Robeson,
Victor Jara, Violetta Parra,
Theodorakis,
Nazim Hikmet, Pablo Neruda,
Mahmoud Darwish,
All the strange and shining fruits
That the prisons,
The closed doors,
The lies,
Couldn't prevent from
Reaching the sun.

They are all there.

They are as plenty as the stars!
How could I ever mention them all.

The children of My Lai.
Our sisters and mothers in Sabra & Shatila,
These women of Eternal Grace.
The poor of Guatemala, Nicaragua,
Colombia, Bolivia, Peru.
Ogoniland.
Soweto.
Thule.
Oh, the Inuits,
And the hunger-striking Kurds
Of the Gecekondu.

Dazzling beauty!
Amazing grace!
All the lies of corporate TV
Can't make it go away!

Fortunate Son,
I heard you lost your patience today.
Your war can't wait.
Fortunate Son, be patient.
Soon you'll lose it all.
You can bomb, kill, destroy,
But you have already been defeated.
Your lost, bewildered war
will find its way back to you.
Your patience will be buried in the sand,
Just like your bulldozers buried
The defenseless soldiers
In the sand.

They, too, are there
They are there with us
The salt of the earth.

Fortunate Son:
You know what?
Somebody told you a lie:
They said you're the only Superpower.
Well, take a look.
You are not.

There is a Superpower
Like nothing else before it:
The people of your country
The people of the World.
The peoples of the little countries
That your puppets are imitating, mocking every day.

From the Andes,
From the jungles,
From the slums of the big cities
Millions & millions are getting together.

From the sweat shops of Tijuana,
From the train stations,
The long forgotten buses of Los Angeles,
With their melancholy, modesty,
And innocent pride,
The only angelic vehicles
Of that City Of Angels,

From the schools,
The ghettos,
And the cemeteries,
We are all there.

The ultimate superpower.

You can put us in cages,
Microwave us.
MOAB us.
We're still there.

Look, we are moving,
Singing,
Dancing,
Speaking poetry,
We have life.

We can start a train
We can stop a train.

You don't even have Death with you.
We have Life and Death on our side.
On Dias De Los Muertos
The dead dance with the living
In the deep of East Los Angeles.

You have nothing.

Poor Fortunate Son
Nothing.
No friends.
The last shadows vanish
At the time of the trial.

Your freedom withers in your mouth
Tastes rotten.
Your weapons kill,
But the killed don't die.

I am sorry, but we have already forgotten you.
And we are moving on.

Freedom is not a dream,
Freedom has already arrived.
Freedom is born every single second
In a teenager's mind
Who decides to refuse.

============================


2.

FOR YOUR LOVE

By Annisette

Who carries you down
To a place safe & cool
Who eases the crying tree
Puts away your bloody shoes
Who comforts
Your sweetheart pale & fine
Man-child
The world cries

For Your Love
For Your Love


The leaves whisper
A storm's gonna rise
Let it come let it blow away
The hate the lies the crime
Awaken awaken
The morning young & new
Man-child
With you

For Your Love
For Your Love

For Your Love
For Your Love

======================

3.

A WORLD AFLAME
(NOT IN OUR NAME)

by Annisette 2002

A world aflame
A world aflame
A world aflame
NOT IN OUR NAME
NOT IN OUR NAME

Mr Death he’s playing God
Rooters celebrate on oil & blood
A world aflame
A world aflame
NOT IN OUR NAME
NOT IN OUR NAME

His smile demands
Blood on our hands
His smile demands
Blood on our hands
A world aflame
A world aflame
NOT IN OUR NAME
NOT IN OUR NAME

A world aflame
A world aflame
A world aflame
NOT IN OUR NAME
NOT IN OUR NAME

Free our world
Free our day
Free our song
Free our way
Free our love
Free our minds
Free our souls
Free our time
Free our world
Free our day
Free our song
Free our baby
Free our love
Free our hands
Free our souls
Free our friends

A world aflame
A world aflame
A world aflame
NOT IN OUR NAME
NOT IN OUR NAME