What lies beyond this dour door
that leads to things ahead?
I stand and wonder what’s in store
behind this portal grimy with dread.

Its glass is cracked, its lead paint is chipped
while its brick wall is turning to sand.
Its handle doesn’t invite to be gripped,
nor does it tell me where I’ll land.

I look all up and down the street
and see only more doors that look the same.
Before each one are more: their feet
wish to walk away from these doorframes.

Each one of us is seized by impotent rage
at facing a choice that’s no choice,
to be fixed as if in a steel cage
and finding no cause to rejoice.

But one of us in this bleak boulevard
must be the first to twist the ****
with the will to face the path that’s hard,
to not let our lives by fear be robbed.

Let each of us kick in our doors of fate
and overthrow their grips on our lives,
smash the clock and pass through that gate
with heads held high, fearless of where we arrive.

Spurred by the clarion call: it came to pass
our pent up waters burst the dams.
No captives are we! We struck en masse:
Battering rams forged out of lambs.