The following spoken word piece was inspired by a student who once asked me, “Why do we have to learn this?” Education is meant to liberate, but school becomes the shackles through which children are constrained.
Monsanto and Novartis
Multinationals in pursuit of genetically engineered seeds
For industrial modified foods
Deformities
Malformed hybrids
A war against nature
Against humanity
Congress, USDA, FDA, Monsanto
An insidious bond
Genetic surgeries cutting
Through the sustenance of a people
Annihilating foods cultivated and harvested for thousands of years.
But my children learn about
Phenotypes, genotypes, homozygous dominant and recessive genes
From a textbook
Prentice Hall: Student Edition
They learn the definition for the test
Not its implication for the rest
BT corn, BT cotton
Enslaves farmers to Monsanto’s
Trademarked
Seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides
Four times the price of indigenous seeds
Predatory lending practices
Are the only opportunity
But my children learn about
Phenotypes, genotypes, homozygous dominant and recessive genes
From a textbook
Prentice Hall: Student Edition
25,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide since 1997
From ingestion of pesticides
But mostly from failed crops and greedy lenders
Coming to collect their payments
A perfect synchronized alliance between
Monsanto, banks, and dehumanization
Mexican corn
Source of livelihood for an ancient people
Source of all the world’s varieties
Evolved over 10 millennia
A myriad of characteristics and colors
Now under siege
By NAFTA
Monsanto
Genetic surgeries cutting through
The sustenance of a people
But my children learn about
Phenotypes, genotypes, homozygous dominant and recessive genes
From a textbook
Prentice Hall: Student Edition
Greed, the dominant gene
Power, the dominant gene
A poisonous hybrid of fear
I refuse this illusion
Love is the dominant gene
Justice is the dominant gene
The organic cultivation of the spirit
Who are we really genetically modifying?
What purpose do the biology standards serve?
Just enough information
To placate the mind
WHY do my children learn about
Phenotypes, genotypes, homozygous dominant and recessive genes
From a textbook?
Prentice Hall: Student Edition
Alma de Colibrí 