IF…(revisited 2023)

IF…You can keep your head when you’re surrounded by fucking idiots who blindly believe
If you can fall and get up, when motherfuckers who should know better repeatedly knock you down
If you dream of a future where no one goes hungry, or without the basic, important things that everyone needs
If your head spins from lies, corruption and greed, from sources empowered, trusted as news.
If you care about kindness and feel pain when others are hurt due to the ignorance and selfishness of those who are unkind.
If you respect life and are sickened when people and animals suffer cruelty at the hands of inhumane humans.
If you believe in equality and justice for everyone, and live in horror or fear at the hateful deeds of those who profit on racism and exploitation of the poor.
If everything going on seems an insane new normal, each new insanity making the last one seem comfortable.
If this world is not one you prefer, and the fuckheads in power seem doomed to make things worse
If making things better still seems important, even after all we’ve all been through

Then remember one thing,
my friend you must be
For so many have eyes
but refuse to be able to see
through the lies to the truth on the table
in Freedom’s last light
We squint into nothingness
Pretending it’s too fucking bright

Original poetry by Jamie Gray (with apologies to Rudyard Kipling)

Frustration

Sometimes I can’t open my eyes, the day is not my friend
Some days it’s so much harder to try, than it is to just pretend
Everything comes around and always fades away in time
and all the secrets that you hide, haunt my broken rhyme

The path I see before my feet is twisting in my head
The sky may look serene and blue, but I can see it turning red
All around me there is nothing more than barren fallow ground
I’d break these chains of fear and run, but I know you’d track me down

Streams of consciousness, self inflicted medication
Scenes of bitterness, in empty meditation.
Only loneliness is true emancipation
Only everything, insanity…or maybe just frustration.

Set your focus on the prize you hope you’ll someday win
See the ending, from the point of no return where you begin
Only dreams will stand apart from where you once were young
All the anger that you keep inside until that day will come

They say the devil runs this place, and hell is what you make it
Blinding us with fear and bullshit, but we ain’t gonna take it
Give us back our nation, stop treating her like a whore
We’ll teach our children better ways, just like we did before.

freedom

Flying low, into the wind
Halfway through the mountains
Dreams abandoned and embraced
The time imagined behind.

Shadows creeping among
The red sun signposts
A hundred and sixty horses
Carry me through the fire.

The cool morning breeze
I stand naked on this rock
Darkness behind my back
The fire rises, blinding my eyes.

She called and I followed alone
Lost along The Highway of the Sun
I am too hungry to sleep.

©2008 – Jamie Gray – All Rights Reserved