Fleeting, Fragile Freedom

By Andrew R. Duckworth

Freedom
Fleeting, fragile freedom.
Too much of a risk, so in the box it goes.
A break from liberty as time flows.
Will it survive?
Who knows?

In a box
Who needs liberty when we have the state?
They make the choices, so celebrate.
Is Schrödinger’s cat alive or dead
While thoughts of sweet freedom still twirl in our head
As we toss and turn, awake in our bed?

Freedom
Fleeting, fragile
Battered and bruised,
Abandoned and abused
Freedom.
God only knows if you still exist
And yet, in this brokenness, we persist.
We ask if you are dead or alive
As our world takes a deeper dive
To a place where we surely cannot survive.

Freedom
Fleeting, fragile
Battered and bruised,
Abandoned and abused
While it sits in a box
Forgotten, unused.
Freedom in a box is not freedom at all
While we cave under pressure and suffer the fall
In a state where oppression is being installed.

In a box
Who needs liberty when we have the state?
They give the mandates and they give the dates
For compliance in which we must obey
May the world’s eyes open we now pray
In a place where we now have no say.

No representation without taxation,
A notion now sweeping the nation
That once thrived on dreams of liberation.

Freedom, fleeting and fragile freedom
May we open the box to retrieve sweet freedom.

This poem is more of an examination of competing ideologies: those who feel comfy being subjects of the state, and those who actually VALUE freedom. Those who value freedom take a skeptical look at those who advocate for more state control of everything, and rightfully so. If they had their way, those who value freedom might lose it.