For those who once walked among us
we must speak words never again spoken,
words muffled by thick palms
of henchmen in dark chambers
where everything seen and heard
becomes so vast, so complex
within the confines of the human heart
there are no words to describe what
they have seen and heard and thought;
must speak out for them, the disappeared,
shoved unseen whirling out of cargo planes
over oceans made invisible by sleet and clouds;
those drugged, gagged and shackled in prisons,
to concrete walls in mountain caves
of forever gone where words do not echo;
repeat the stories of the missing, beaten numb
and slammed bloody against stone walls,
kicked and dragged through back alleys,
tortured and emptied of what they have seen,
heard and suffered under cover of night,
the stories of those exiled into an eternity
of never been by juntas guarded by muscled men
in fortified villas and luxury penthouses
deaf to the words and screams of those
never again to speak, those silenced, buried
forever in the wordless tomes of the sea