Pennsylvania Death March
Marilyn Buck
[This poem is read by Merle Woo. 
]
Governor Ridge was inaugurated
in Pennsylvania
he promised
to expeditiously consign
the condemned to death
a morbid chill
keens within my bones
Mumia must not die!
Ajamu Nassor was executed
in Indiana last December
his comrade Ziyon Yisrayah
awaits the gas chamber still.*
to speak out
or standup
can be deadly
I have seen many die
who dared to stand up
Malcolm Martin Fred Hampton
assassinated by agents and pawns
many others also
who spoke only by their existence
lynched by racist mobs
choked dead by cops
they aren’t found in u.s. history books
yet their spirits also live
in furious condemnation
after living nearly 50 years
I still can not accept murder
constitutionally contrived
dispensed by government gas chambers
police artillery and air force bombers.
I have fantasies:
ripping out electrical wires
burying cyanide capsules
denaturing death row designer drugs
here in prison
I feel death tremors
through concrete and steel
from East coast to West
don’t you feel offended
angry
indignant
that a woman or man would be
gleefully
garishly
murdered
by State decree?
legally
not by accident
not in an incident
not in a war
deliberately
calendarically
calculated
in cold blood?
If not, why not?
What will you do?
January 1995
* Ziyon Yisrayah was executed in the late Spring of 1997
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