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Friday 20 March 2015

Freedom Writers

Written in the wake of attacks on freedoms we enjoy and take for granted...

Update: apparently you can be killed in this world for writing poems and being an atheist and untold other things that harm no one. Artistic expression should never be a competition or deemed a threat worthy of sanction in a free world, and certainly not execution.

19/12/15 Update: today is International Human Rights Day. We strongly support the right of all people to freedom of speech, equality, fairness, equity and all the other things that makes us human. Music has always been a formidable protest vector.

Writeathon.
#write4rights #WriteForRights

Demo
The pen is not a sword
Thinking cannot kill you
What I think is not yours
No matter what you do

To attack for silence
Won't make us the same
You cannot build a fence
Tall enough to contain

If speech has freedom
words should have no cost.
Silence is a prison
where freedom can’t be lost.

Your laws to shut me down
Claimed to make us safe
Are a rope you put around
A noose with no debate

If I disturb you
Is your response just
If my words hurt you
Speak your mind you must

I make a word a stone
I live in a glass house
I hang it in the window
For you to hear it out.

Ya this freedom fight
Can't be about force
Words don't make me right
You take your own course

A picture is a symbol
Like letters on the page
How could a simple image
Lead to such outrage

If I mock and jest
What’s the hurt from it
How much pain and sorrow
Is just to inflict

Your act may draw attention
That media will vet
Such violent retribution
Nobody can accept

Writing clears a thought
Sentiment expression
Reading sets a path
To common resolution

What I have in mind
In a way for you to see
If you take the time
See some things I see

Meaning is not an object
But a context subject sign
Its an artifact
You have yours I have mine.

The freedom I write for
is not a freedom you can know.
I write what I write
you read where you go.

You say I see to be polite
But you don't really see
All you see is words I write
You make what they could be

Form a picture of it all
From those words you've seen
Paint it on your private wall
With all the lines between.

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