WE are a powerful nation,

choose to believe,

offer faith,

we imagine ourselves the solution,

yet, here again,

in the middle of the night,

again, again, again,

49 times, 23 times, 7 times, 33 times,

all the counting is leaving me a bit spent,

like a floor covered in splayed shells,

WE are the same people

who came over in boats, with hope, with dreams,

had fistfights to claim,

this neighborhood is mine,

this way of life is,

this way of life,

this way of – I’m sorry you cannot agree.

I need to live

to be free,

I want to love, I wish to know,

this way of life,

is the freeing reality I choose.

 

Deep inside the tenets of religion,

we all studied, we laughed,

we fingered the notion of sin,

prayed for absolution

while we never really knew why,

just holding on,

hopeful we might someday understand,

an Act of God.