Poem: Not From Here (from Chitauri Blues, a work in progress)

Not From Here
for beloved Kaleo who opened this door to me.
 

Credo Mutwa pointing to a likeness of a Chitauri that he painted 

(from Chitauri Blues, a work in progress)
©2013 by Alice Walker 

Anybody who despises elephants except for their tusks
is not from here.
Anybody who decapitates mountains
Is not from here.

Anybody who assassinates
 rivers, oceans,
and the air,
Is not from here.

Anybody who “disappears” continents
of buffalo
and foxes,  turtles and rain forests
oil, gold, diamonds
and sandalwood
is not from here.

You can sleep on
if you like.

But this is the easiest way
to tell
who is not Earthling.

Stop
nodding off
about this.

(The big time drug dealers,
pulling global strings,
not the teenagers with their
pitiful
nickel bags,
are not from here.)

Earthlings
 see grass
 (Chiefs Joseph and Seattle
 for example)
as hair
on the Mother’s head
rocks
as her bone
and teeth.

Oil and water 
as her blood and sweat.
Veins of gold
as her meridians.

Diamonds her tears
of stress, 

sandalwood  her perfume.

The Earthling
has her feet on the
Mother’s shoulders
gratefully.

She is not from out there
(Where the concept of Mother might not even exist.)
She knows
she is
from here.

They have removed us
almost completely
from  our own minds
our  souls
and from our defenseless
-because of this
fatal absence-planet.

We are in swoon.

The snack we are to them
Has no need of consciousness.

The ones who are
From there.

But let us take our stand
nonetheless
as Earthlings:
We are from here
and
on awakening
let us resolve not
to fall asleep again
or forget
that to protect
 Mother Earth
(and Father Sky
who is also under
attack)
is to protect
us all
who are
from here.

Cosmic locals

who refuse to have
our obscure, back galaxy
Paradise
raped, trashed and
cannibalized
before our
stricken
 eyes
by cosmic tourists.