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!

Short sidedness,
blistering thoughts;
selfish predisposition:

What a world!

Hypocritical claims
about profound lack of wisdom
and fear of loneliness;

Deeply ironic statements
about some lust to be alone
that you felt as you ******:

Your words seem well chosen and articulated,
and perhaps in time will become true;
but it seems to me that they right now
are as hollow and transient as the space
between your actions, logic, and resolve:

I've found very little
that can make me stop
to laugh and cry all at once,
perhaps a few pieces of Beethoven's music and some really ******* good metal;

but you sit atop that short list
on your rather gorgeous and elegant hubristic throne,
mocking the progress I've made,
oozing with scorn and spite:

You have so much to learn before you will be regarded as you like to assume you are:

"Responsible"; word around the campfire is: hardly.
"Honest"; perhaps in words, but apparently not actions.
"Mature"; physically, it seems, but mentally? Not so much.
"Respectful"; only to yourself, and seemingly not even that.

I tried to help, and clearly failed.
If it were a test, you cheated;
didn't bother to see how it could've been,
but hey:
at least you were honest.

At least you told the Truth,
though your actions were untrue.

I thought I loved you;
I thought I needed you.
Perhaps I did,
but it has run it's course:
you killed it on purpose.
I suppose it served it's purpose to you;
that I have served my purpose to you.

I detach myself from you,
and from myself, in the process,
and in the process, I fall in love
with those aspects of myself
I so seek in others:

Darkness; honesty. Honor. Intellect.
Humour. Creativity, balance. Respect.
A level of elegance, but an amount of "**** it";
Mental maturity, to an extent.
A moderate badass. A **** badass.

Though, it seems,
the path to Heaven is paved with good intentions,
and is built with the bones of the hopeful,
and is illuminated by unfounded faith
in ****** ******* people:

A mandala of Irony.

I see straight lines
Binding giant rectangles to collapse
On the nature of what's below
Endless copies
Animals of asexual, mechanical, foreign disposition
I don't think I know what it means to be solid
To be perfect
But as much as I love almosts
and innocence
They're telling me to grow up now
To find a rectangle to waste away in
But my ghost wasn't meant to be form-fitted
I wasn't meant to be cubic.