If the day ends and I no longer have the rights to myself,
Is it truly the land of the free?
Or is it only free to the straight white men that loom in offices and make laws on matters that don’t relate to them.
If I wake up tomorrow and see I can’t love who I love,
Is it really what Jesus said when he said love thy neighbor?
Or is thy neighbor only supposed to be a straight white Christian man?
A man who claims to live by a book written by other men like him,
Claiming stories of a man who loves everyone,
Of a man who said everyone must love equally
But why do these men not follow the simple rule from the book they revolve their lives around?
Is it that hard to love each other?
To love me?
A pained fifteen-year-old girl who wants to love someone and be loved,
Yet the rights of being a girl and the rights of love are ripped out of my torn and blistered hands and handed to the boy next to me who already has his own rights of living.
Is my life worth less than the next person because I might not marry a man?
That I might need to save my life by having an abortion after I’m ***** by the same men who claim they know me and my body?
At least my struggles aren’t as intense as my friends,
But is that a good thing?
No.
My rights might become limited,
But theirs might be truly gone
If the sun breaks the horizon and I lose everyone and everything I’ve ever known,
Will my home of the brave no longer be a home to those who fall into the categories of failure?
The work I’ve created, we’ve created, might be destroyed once the ticks of the tallies grow.

I was called to walk on the water,
but I ****** in the lake instead,
polluted the whole of creation,
until all its creatures were dead.

I was called to heal all the people
with hands that are gentle and kind
but I couldn’t turn round a profit
so I shat on the lame and the blind.

I was called to bring peace to creation
but found it better to sell,
weapons of mass destruction,
and condemn all the nations to hell.

And if I complain that the world,
is *******, unfair and unkind,
it’s because I ****** in the water
and left all my refuse behind.

A-walking ‘round a stony crag
atop which stands a castle strong:
I know each rock and brick and ****
that went to build it for so long.

My forebears helped to build this place
from its earliest days, just a palisade.
Thence it grew into this mighty space
that would touch the moon by fear unweighed.

The builders began, so constant and brave.
In Godspeed and discovery they came.
Once planted, a flower of May then gave
this rock two pillars of its fame.

Today it shines out far from its hill up high,
unhidden citadel of radiant beams,
reposed beneath the starry sky
while white and red roads to it stream.

Four hundred years — or thousands more —
has it took to make this fortress fair
at great cost to those who came before.
The scent of their toil fills the mountain air.

Yet this great rock is now on the verge
of toppling into the abyss below:
For those who claim it must be purged
now storm the keep with torches aglow.

Now there’s fear this fateful fortress will fall
to the whims and rage of a dishonest beast
who claims to just want to save it all
but will only lead to its defeat.

These castle walls shall not be breached
by the demons it once bred within.
The people who still build it shall reach
new vistas to the beast’s chagrin.

The world watches.
They hold their breaths
as the ballots are cast-
a responsibility and gift
not to be taken
for granted.

One more quadrennial,
one more election.
One more dawn,
one more day.
One day more and
we turn a page and enter
one more chapter of history.

A fork in the road.
Will it stab me like a knife
or spoon feed me joy?