Poetry For Thought

9th Annual Independence Day Poem

        Liberty & Justice
               For All

I spy
with my little eye
people trying to get away
with murder
and more than murder

approved force
is not
legitimate force

forcing invisible corpse-sized
vivisections of containment
written in code and law

pathetic patriotism
standing in for paternalism
perverting the impulse toward loyalty

no more pretending our exchanges
are consensual, not coerced,
purchased

who for the benches
and who for the podia?!

information wants to be ubiquitous
not proprietary

if copying is stealing
then every baby owes a debt of atoms and bits

it's unprostitutional
to want to be free

a citizenry should be
a self-assembling mob of tolerance,
shifting alliances that acknowledge
and adapt to change

I want interstitial citizenship—
there is power, too, in the stutter

               Michael C. Rush