The Free Prisoner

Should I ask you to change? 

My beloved country, should I ask you to change? 

We bathe in the glory of war, 

The blood we smear on our faces— 

It reeks my brother, it reeks of hatred. 

I'm terrified of what we have become, 

I breathe the wreckage left, 

it waits for me, it leaves no one behind. 

Martyrs enshrined into our memories 

memories we remember and forget 

Are we worthy of sacrifice? I ask. 

The room goes quiet. I have sinned. 

I was born with freedom to speak, 

speak my heart's content, quench my mind's thirst for answers. 

And yet, I am told I no longer possess this freedom. 

Where is the world where I am safe? 

These years, we've lived 

Etching numbers and not names on gravestones 

And therein lie incomplete lives, 

whose ghosts wail every night 

Praying they can haunt us 

So we live knowing why they died. 

And we live knowing they could've been saved. 

We kill for we live, 

we do not live for we kill. 

Where is the land I was promised? 

Show it to me. 

When I go there, and I will go there 

It will not be blood that tattoes my face. 

It will be a billion hearts beating as one. 

I stand here, a pessimist, begging you for this, 

Should I ask you to change? 

My beloved country, will you ever change?