Freedom

A cliché
One thousand miles wide
An inch deep

Free to move on foot
Access limited to places
Without signs
Or economic fences
Or social gates
Or membership dues

Free to speak
Without a platform
Or a printing press
Or the captive programmed audience

Free to hear or read
Only that which passes through
The editorial filter
The spin doctor’s web
The official version
The victor’s treatment of history
Academe’s comfort zone
The cleric’s collection plate

Free to engage in discourse
Which ‘runs the gamut from A to B’
Free to seek and subscribe to truth
Or not to

Free to lead
Or follow the lost

Free to combat the dragon

And St. George
Free to hurl pebbles
At teflonned Goliaths

Free to translate or misinterpret
To champion or misrepresent

Free to see beauty in blight
Or blight in beauty
Shine through the rust
Or through the glass darkly

Free to live nightmares
Or chase dreams
To fall through the looking glass
Or plough the sunless sea
Free to tilt at windmills
And suffer Cassandra’s fate

Free to fix what’s only bent
Or not to