I watch the protests; I study the placards. At the end of the day, however, when I ponder people’s choices, I’m left scratching my head and wondering: Do they really want to be free? As I’ve come to see it, freedom is a very elusory lady.

There she is
Atop a lofty mountain.
So close t’is,
And yet so far away.
That unreachable and ungraspable miss;
Smiling down at hearts
That long for her bliss.

From their dreams,
She taunts her admirers
With her silvery themes;
Beautiful melodies
Whose streams
Only make their hearts sick,
And with decay their bones teem.

Beneath her enchanting glow
The rabble pant after her.
From the horde below
The tumult rages.
But their babble rings so hollow;
And their whining for freedom
An indolent wallow.

She knows it.
The smirk on her face
Betrays freedom’s intuit
Of the emptiness of their cry.
And so not a whit
Of a chance of her;
Except, in their world, a myth.

Since the mass of flesh
Heaped on this sphere of rock,
From the cradle to death’s mesh,
Blindly embrace freedom’s antipodean
In their quest for crèche,
A goodbye kiss to the smiling sylph,
Will their disappointed hearts thresh.

One or two here and there
May get lucky though,
Upon the tenor of their jailer.
For, holding innumerable victims,
Even hope is a strong master.
Allured by an ever receding future,
They languish in her vice-like tenure;

Would these teary-eyed suitors
Recognize freedom
Even if by a million tutors
She be flaunted in plain view?
For in spite of her charming accouter,
And glowing tenderness,
She is an overbearing master.

Belying her allure
Sits a heavy burden.
Underneath her glamour
There’s much pain.
Freedom’s sweetness swiftly turns sour
On the tongue of the simpleton;
For her pleasures’ cost is dour.

And so, at the end of the day,
With the sun tucked into the horizon,
The clamoring throng only pay
Lip service to freedom.
For though, like the horse, they neigh,
Yet freedom’s due price,
They hope to flay.

False suitors they are;
Their veins devoid of truth.
Unwilling to fight freedom’s real war
They don shrouds of platitudes
And pout the coward’s blare.
Cloaked with virtuous zeal,
They reek with barren prayer.

Beyond the fog, therefore, dare to peer,
And your illusions bid farewell.
Away from your naïveté veer.
For freedom’s dowry is blood;
Her grooms do not cow to fear.
She flirts with pain,
And may the robe of death wear.

Because her mortal foe
Is death’s fear,
Freedom’s beau
Must be willing, if need be,
To stand alone.
And from within
Courageously defy terror’s blow.

For freedom,
A fairy though she be,
Yet would glom
Onto the one whose choices own;
And lovingly prom
With one who his own thoughts
Think, though it were a bomb.

And if you knew what a bother
Freedom were,
And what a smother
Of death in her name you bring,
You would go no further
To offer freedom
To another.

If her suitors truly knew
Freedom’s guarded secrets,
And tasted her bitter brew,
Would they still stand
In view?
Or, as they’ve done through the ages, flee?
Maybe, of their distaste for her, they have no clue.