We have all heard that to be said.
But,
I, I am the people.
In me a multitude of genders and races co-habit.
I am the people-
my body, my face, my justice.
I am the people anywhere, not just here.
I am the people in the endless marches, endless migrations, endless exodus.
I, landless people of my country or any country.
I, the people.
I, transposed by a fence, am the people.
I, floating in crowds in boats, am the people.
and
I, building edifices or
I, buried beneath ruins in the orifices of disappearing cities.
I, the body hung from an old tree, the people.
I, dismembered, dispersed over land, the people.
I, under unfair and fatal sentences, the people. And
Yeah, I striped and blending into bars in renewed concentration camps,
Am the people.
In any other uniform, still
Am the people.
I, in never-enough mineral extractions anywhere,
the people.
I, any name in inhuman payrolls, the people.
I, trapped in slaving factories, the people.
I, in perverted, soiled rooms, waiting to be sold
Am the people.
I, a statistical number;
I, in front of a gun;
I, in pieces under non-pacific rivers;
I, cast away out from the arc of history.
I, with no identity.
I, in the unseen cemeteries,
Am the people.
Or I,
Who pray on my knees in the breeze of Guantanamo or Ghraib.
I, camouflaged as murder in any country.
I, inside obscure prisons.
I, with a leash on my neck.
I, a suffocating bag.
I with no Blessings of Liberty
I with no Posterity.
I, I, I
Am the people.
[@ Eva Rocha -scribed while walking among a million people in Jan 2017]










