On Being Bound By The Freedom Of Expression Poem by Amberlee Carter

(I've destroyed where first I built-
I am god of this earth.)

The men came one morning
with whips and cords,
bound my hands and worse,
bound my head-

They took my thoughts and
suppressed them,
they took my ideas and
sold them-
They took the strength in my heart
and the will in my hands-

The men came one morning
shackled my feet,
blind folded my vision
crippled my dreams-
the put me into slavery
where I became
another thought in the tank-


All around me
were the great minds of old-
from hemingway to blake-
from blake to poe-,
just as I
these had been sold.

It made me ill to think
I was once among the living.
That I had to die
in order to be born-
all for the sake of glory.

Who is the beggar?
a man who sells his passion for bread?
or the man who is selfish with his talent
and works another man's dream instead?

I am abandoned by my own reasoning,
for choice will always be choice,
right with always be right
and what path is clear, and narrow and straight,
will always be overgrown by uncertainty and doubt-

So much so
that man forgets to walk and chooses to fly,
but men do not have wings and thus
we die.