This is my voice, there are many like it, but this one is mine.

and it’s a fine line when you’re trying to define the finer points of politics

politics being a latin word

“poli” meaning many

“tics” meaning blood sucking butt lumps

you see too many live in countries where it’s bullets instead of ballots

where gavels fall like mallets when held in the hands of those whose judgments

can be bought as easily as children can be taught to covet

and the only ones willing to speak up are forced to live so far beneath the radar

that the underground is considered above it

this is for the Ho Ci Min’s and the Michael Collins.

for the Marquis de Sades and the muted gods.

This is my voice, there are many like it, but this one is mine.

We’re not always right, but we’ve got the right to be wrong.
we’re not always free, so this is just a short story long.

this is my voice, there are many like it, but this one is mine.

and this time it’s for the sons and daughters

who watch their mothers and fathers drown in shallow waters while

panning for the “American dream” in the polluted creek called the mainstream.

This is for the homeless people sleeping on steam vents,

making makeshift tents out of cardboard and old trash,

trying to catch 40 winks in between the crash of car wrecks

risking their necks by surviving another day so that they can starve

so that famine can carve their body into a corpse before their heart stops beating

so that men in a boardroom meeting

can make it harder for them to get welfare, health care,

it’s no wonder some of them pawn off their own wheelchair

and every time I walk ‘em by, I can’t help but feel at fault,

that maybe I didn’t search myself hard enough

for the control alt “s” so that I could save the world.

Or at least this little girl curled up into a ball

I’ve spent most of my life throwing compassion back like a fish that’s too small.

Gotta cash in my reality checks. drop her some spare fantasies

cause I’ve got three separate degrees from different universities,

but the most valuable thing I ever learned

was to believe people when they say “Please.”

This is my voice, there are many like it, but this one is mine.