Wise Words: It Makes Me Ill

The Defense Department is in me, but don’t think it isn’t a menace on the outside as well. Someone, somewhere wants to be free and independent. Our Defense Department launches an offensive. It makes me ill. Someone wants to make an exorbitant profit and it affects my health. Someone puts something in my food which makes me ill. Someone puts something in the air which makes me ill. Someone puts something in the water which makes me ill. Someone radiates the soil which makes me ill. Someone builds weapons, the research and the manufacture of them alone, before their use, makes me ill. Someone defends these actions. A defense system, but it isn’t mine. Someone turns a deaf ear, which makes me ill. Someone says, “I will never listen to women.” It makes me ill. The system by and of and for these someones has made me ill.

(Deena Metzger, from Tree, in The Woman Who Slept with Men to Take the War Out of Them and Tree (two works in one volume), Wingbow Press: Berkley, California, 1978, 1981, pp. 145–146)