Call to Arms

I can no longer hide.  I’m at war.  From the moment I came into this world, kicking and screaming like a geological upheaval made breath and skin, I WAS BORN TO STRUGGLE.

Eleven years ago I first heard the call to arms: I was fourteen years old, a boy, too young to fight, but humanity’s need for soldiers was great and my summons was clear.  IN THAT MOMENT I knew my childhood days were done.  My family was no longer my family; my home was no longer my home: I entered into war as a newborn enters the world: My second birth burning my weak and childlike skin, shaping it into something new.  I CHANGED - like steel from the furnace I was shaped, hammered, and sharpened until age-old lies split before me like a chopping block splits under an axe blade.  Innocence withered and died as the scales fell from my dark eyes.
And I saw.  I saw the workers drowning in debt, farmers with no more land to farm, starving people in a world of plenty, broken families, rape victims, youths who cut themselves in order to stay sane, little boys with no feelings, faceless toilers, forgotten veterans crippled in mind and body, the cynics who try desperately to ignore the SCREAMS and the cries of pain – telling themselves over and over that they can do NOTHING.
I saw abused children, abandoned elders, indigenous peoples for whom the whole world is slipping away, the victims of war who appear only as statistics on a computer screen or television set, the suicidal ones who just cannot take it anymore.  I saw the neglected, the abandoned, the brutalized, the betrayed, the exploited, the hopeless, the hated and the sheer pain of a world torn apart.  I FELT them all.  I’LL NEVER BE WELL ADJUSTED, NOT TO THIS! NOT TO THIS! OH VENGEANCE! No normal life is possible, no normal life, no normal love, no normal relationships, no normal existence: the front line is everywhere, and EVERYWHERE IS WAR.  Normality is nothing but WILLFUL IGNORANCE of this truth.  There was no going back.  For everything I loved was under siege.

Where you see peace I see war; where you see quiet streets I see battlegrounds; where you see catastrophe I see normality; where you see isolated incidents I see the continued hellish oppression of the human spirit.  My heart has been broken every day of my adult life and I have cried enough tears to drown myself many times over: but from broken hearts are drawn the greatest of warriors, the greatest defenders, the greatest champions, the greatest leaders, for they have felt the pain and are determined to stand by others as comrades in this struggle – reminding them again and again: YOU ARE NOT ALONE, YOU ARE NEVER ALONE! SOLIDARITY! SOLIDARITY! SOLIDARITY! Your living citadel - It’s the only love I have left to give.

Every man is a fighting man.  Every woman is a fighting woman.  FIGHT THE REAL ENEMY! Until at last this guilty society is burned to ash and a rising phoenix gifts us with peace at last.  Until that evil mental construct we call “the other” has been utterly discredited, until the alienation that tears us apart is overcome, until humanity stands together united in its diversity.  Until then, until that victory, there is only war.  UNTIL THEN I SAY WAR!

So, fellow comrades of humanity - brothers and sisters, sons and daughters – I give my body as a weapon of the war.  And I swear to you: this human weapon, this living blade, this sword of humanity, forged white-hot in this inferno, shall not rest in its sheath until justice is done – our victory will come.  STAND TOGETHER! HUMANITAS UNIVERSALIS!