Rage Against the Machine’s Zack de la Rocha Pens Poem for Occupy Movement

Time will tell whether Rage Against the Machine vocalist Zack de la Rocha’s involvement with the Occupy Movement will find its way into any of his future song lyrics. But for now, the rapper and rocker has written a poem for those who have been motivated into action by corporate greed and the division between those who have and those who have not.

“This poem is dedicated to the Occupy movement whose courage is changing the world,” says de la Rocha in a statement. “Stay Strong. We are winning.”

Read Zack de la Rocha’s Occupy Movement poem in it’s entirety below:

The beginning spills through city veins

Into the arteries

And under powers poison clouds

We move like the shadows

Through the alley ways

Through nightmares bought and sold as dreams

Through barren factories

Through boarded schools

Through rotting fields

Through the burning doors of the past

Through imaginations exploding

To break the curfews in our minds

Our actions awaken dreams of actions multiplied

A restless fury

Once buried like burning embers

Left alone to smolder

But together stacked under the walls of a dying order

All sparks are counted

Calloused hands raised in silence

Over the bonfire of hope unincorporated

It’s flame restores tomorrows meaning

Across the graveyards of hollow promises

As gold dipped vultures pick at what is left of our denial

And the youngest among us

Stare at us stoned like eyes determined

And say

Death for us may come early

Cause dignity has no price

At the corner of now and nowhere

Anywhere

Everywhere

Tomorrow is calling

Tomorrow is calling

Do not be afraid

We can’t help but wonder how those passionate words would sound rapped over the syncopated beats, churning rhythms and effect-laden guitars of Rage Against the Machine. Guitarist Tom Morello said earlier this year that the band has no plans to write together any time soon, but didn’t rule out future collaborations.

However, Morello sees eye-to-eye with de la Rocha when it comes to Occupy, and has played with an acoustic guitar at Occupy demonstrations in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, British Columbia, and in England in London, Nottingham and Newcastle.  He has also announced that he will contribute to an album of protest songs to benefit the Ocupy Wall Street movement.

“Every successful progressive social movement has a great soundtrack,” he told the Hollywood Reporter. “The soundtrack [for Occupy Wall Street] is just as democratic and grassroots as the movement.”