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What is freedom?
Freedom is the ability to choose for yourself.
Freedom is a choice between what is,
and what can be.
Freedom is empowering others to love themselves.

What is your government?
Who are these impostors who speak about the need to breath,
but won’t let us?
Who fights for freedom and equality?
No one.
These men fight against us for the slice of a pie,
lining their pockets as kids in Africa die.
The people shouldn't fear their government,
the government should fear its people.

What is the value of a dollar?
Is it the freedom to eat?
Or the cement wrapped tight around your feet,
water forced between your teeth?
Who is freer?
The Baker Boy?
Scraping by on a dime?
Or old man flush with pedigree?
Drunk with greed and the taste of fine wine?
Freedom is being faced with two equally infallible truths,
and choosing deftly between the two,
which sounds better to you?

Who is freer?
Those who choose to drop f-bombs on stage,
or those who drop bombs of wisdom in its place?
Don’t be discouraged when the one locked down is you,
when the wicked wage war in your home terrain,
when you struggle back and forth,
with the pain of being raised a Jew.

Who decides your fate?
Who decides your fate when your rent is late?
Who decides your fate when you discover your son is gay?
Who decides your fate when the crest falls flat?
Who decides your fate when the tumor is malignant?
Who decides your fate when your sutures fall out?
Who decides your fate when you find you've lost your way?
Who decides your fate when the embers die down?
Who decides your fate when sorrow silently drips across your face?
Who decides your fate when the voices inside your head can’t seem to agree?
You,
your life is yours to create.

What bars our freedom?
Oppression,
Persecution,
Indecision,
Doubt,
Hatred,
Cont­ention,
Jealousy,
Addiction,
Pride,
And most importantly of all,
(Silence)
Fear.

Yes!
Fear is no friend of freedom,
Antithesis to the dream.
Fear is a struggling shadow,
Cast behind us as we gleam.
Contrast,
Darkness exists through the brightness of the sun.
Our predisposition isn't for failure,
But bursting forth grasping for freedom’s sake.
Don’t settle for sickly shadows,
Accept only warm smiles between friends at the end of the day.

Do you hear that?
That’s the sound of freedom,
The march of liberty.
Fear isn't the courage to stand up for a friend,
Fear isn't the strength to share what you believe in,
Fear isn't holding a friends hand when they've lost their sight,
Fear isn't within a friend’s victory finding only delight,
*But freedom is!
A.P. Beckstead (2013)
I stand at the convenience store counter
with a smile but conflicted inside
I know I don't need them
yet, there they are.

A rainbow of apathetic death
a mosaic of bad breath
and even worse excuses
waiting to be packed
put into my chest pocket
and held close to my heart.

It makes me sick, hard to breathe
and yet here I am all ready to leave
with twenty more sticks of disease,
the same ones that gave my father
C-O-P-D.

But still I buy.

I swipe that card with little regard
to the fact that I'm reliving history
a son just as dumb as his father before him
scoring the same dope
wearing the same rope
around his collar.

I've thrown whole packs out car windows
sworn them off cause the habit,
the money lost and especially the cough
was getting to be a problem.

I've renounced this addiction
with the conviction of a holy man
yet still I stand smokes in hand
puffing away; swearing this to be my last
every time I can't help but laugh a little
cause I know I'm full of ****.
(Don't we all)

But still I buy.
Standing alone in silence, on a cliff made of diamonds,
I look down at the world and see it for what it truly is.
The sick grow weary, children starve on the street,
the rich grow mighty, the poor continue to beg at their feet.
The world leaders continue to speak, filling the pockets of the elite,
with each drop of innocent blood, our humanity grows bleak.
All alone I watch in silence, as the innocent are slaughtered;
since the beginning of time, mankind has chosen to live in darkness, where they stay mesmerized day after day.

Holding hands with a child, I look deep into her eyes,
I see a beautiful creation, I see a magnificent light.
Then we rose into the heavens and joined the legion of innocent lives.
Standing alone in silence, I watch the diamonds in the sky.
© JDMaraccini 2013
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