the wind blows like a ghost through Soweto
through cracked doors where a group of heads hang low
history in their eyes, difficulty of their lives
aching slow passage of time...all converging
across the sea a different story but similar fate
her calloused hands should belong to an older face
instead she weaves away, and for such meager pay
each thread a day, stitched into another day
down away, where once were slaves, sold away, upheaval
dreams put up on mortgages, foreclosure on a people
Black like a miner's lungs, like Appalaichian night
like skin caught in sites of police flashlights
...austerity, inflation
migrant workers drifting with no final destination
the inheritors of misfortune, undesired pain.
there are many forms of slavery: few require chains

though we've never met, never spoke once more
an invisible army, an invisible army, an invisible army in the millions
i know i've seen your face a thousand times before
an invisible army, an invisible army, an invisible army unleashed

my blood flows with stories from seven thousand islands [Philippines]
whose main export is the labor of its kababayan,
hopes tangled like a fisherman's net, yet
pulled from muddy currents, gasping life that we catch,
profit as the prophet, yes, steeple as a dollar sign
thousand faithful below, bowing in assembly lines,
...and branded into caste,
blood on the sugarcane, damn man if you could taste, but:
here comes a sound from down South of the Border
the Andes waking up and shaking up the old order
the next Pele's in favelas kickin' 'round a can
the next Fela drums in what was once a Bantustan
...and on the roof of the planet there's
a flag waving color of the blood of its inhabitants [Nepal]
somewhere is someone that police have yet to beat
somewhere within us is a future that has yet to be

though we've never met, never spoke once more
an invisible army, an invisible army, an invisible army in the millions
i know i've seen your face a thousand times before
an invisible army, an invisible army, an invisible army unleashed