Our country tis of thee
For you and me and the collective we
Sweet Land of Liberty
The true meaning applied will be
when all of our citizenry
Have the same opportunity
to labor for prosperity
And a valid measure of equality
When our nation’s wealth
is seen in its diverse community
Then will individual potential
be celebrated and assured
Thus becoming a Nation’s pledge concurred
Hope and possibility can both coincide
As twinned spirits
of our self governing society
Justice and privilege won’t collide
Unless you are the majority
of the lesser minority hued
In body and soul, poor and abandoned blue
Those who are otherized, marginalized, victimized,
trivialized theologized, fictionalized,
disfranchised,criminalized, penalized, capitalized
and propagandized
live in a state of uncertainty and defeat
That shapes their fate, and from belief
in unity, they retreat
With the bone weary confirmation
there is no validation
Affixed to any patriotic symbol,
song or dedication
Or any flag saluting blessing
that imparts the soul of a nation
Neither to lift any citizen up from ethnic deflation,
prostration of station, generational subjugation,
starvation of dreams, resignation of resistance,
Self-condemnation, exploitation of integrity and
gullibility,Neighborly deprivation
or xenophobic damnation
There is only a caste like class status
of selective evenhandedness in mind,
Without applying value or fundamental respect
for any cultural differences shown in kind
We must realize and recognize
That those we choose to malign, define and confine
within a politically polarized view,
Tomorrow could include you
Let our past remind us of where we have been
and who we want to be
Each and every tragic lash, noose, ball and chain,
divisive dividing walls
and all the bulldozed strip-mined, extinction
exploited, land grabbing fall of tree,
life value gone astray
and river damned demise moments
The relentless genocidal slash and burn
in land, body, mind, and spirit
The whole hearted slaughter of what stands
quietly and beautifully substantial
On the pathway towards the next horizon
With each denial
of our own societal accountability
Like an outstretched hand slapped away
Or a smile’s pearly white purpose
shattered and excised
We turn from objectivity
and only subscribe to our own subjectivity
What we surmise and misconstrue
We falsely generate to be true
We sever our democracy at the knee
when we fail to see
That it is a mutually shared responsibility
to work together to be free
The pulse beat of our people
needs resuscitation and participation
Governance in practice must
in conscience continually renew
So that the legitimacy
of our entire constitutional ideality
Mutually resides inherently
within word and deed reality
Then the reliability and continuity
Of our democracy will indeed be true
In this our country tis of thee we can trust
Our Sweet Land of Liberty
For each and everyone of us-MLH