I wrote this verse at 30,000 feet
En route to Austin
Next week Chicago
Last week exhausting
Speaking about my people & what 6 years cost them
Syrian bodies strewn ashore
Families who've lost them
Brutality the likes of which
A child should never see
Let alone be subjected to
Lonely, poor & destitute
Realities the likes of which
Our voices never free
Freedom marches
Across the harshest seas
Only to be rejected too

I'm appealing to the best of you
If my mama didn't raise me right
I wouldn't be addressing you
I'd be on my knees begging you
These babies deserve better
Than blurbs in newsletters
Or decisions about their futures
That help arms dealers earn better
In addition to the smugglers & the looters
Oil barons & air polluters
Killer telecommuters
Shooting bombs off drones
Offices close enough to home
To be dozing off by 8pm with little trauma signs shown

Pundits adding to the drama
One that flaunts a devil's thumbprint
But that index pulling triggers isn't charged
When the body it's connected to is in uniformed garb
Ain't that something?
Trust me, they don't hate your freedom
It's the lies they find repugnant
It's the wars & the coups
The propping up of dictators
Short-term memory
Long-range missile radius
& the craziest election rhetoric imaginable
How we would claim a moral high ground
Just isn't fathomable ...

The fact that #BlackLivesMatter
Has to even be said is telling
Back in '08
It was 'Hope & Change' selling
Eight years later
Some Great Lakes waters were strange smelling
And Syrian lives shattered
From a barrel bomb shelling
On an hourly basis
While our cowardly faces
Stared at a camera phone reflection
Drowned away in disgrace
Hundreds of thousands
Were plundered by thundering rounds
Of obliterating agony
World leaders would rather lead us to believe
They were being liberated
Actually ...

The older I get
I find the meaning of 'freedom' is relative
It doesn't even mean the same
To me & my relatives
Democracy on a high horse
Or high off of sedatives?
Keeping up with the Jones'
That ain't being competitive
Now I'm no longer in debt
But still feel like I'm getting it
The misuse of my tax dollars
Getting repetitive
Meditative retreats
Were all that kept me from losing it
Now I look in my son's eyes
To find what is relevant ...
Jibran, the best medicine
But if we had tried to immigrate today
They wouldn't let us in
That's unsettling ...
Yeah ... that's unsettling.