Citizen! Citizen, Do You See?

By: Gus Victoria

Citizen! Citizen, do you see?

The Government you voted in,

The men who stand for you,

Sit idly as you suffer,

Sign away your rights,

And fatten their purse

With all your coin.

Citizen! Citizen, do you know?

That all who fought before

Knew more freedom than you,

Had more rights to defend

Against all foes imaginary and real,

Against tyranny

And for despotism,

Citizen! Citizen, you have been betrayed!

All that voted

All who abstained,

Betrayed just the same,

Those in power

Make your children destitute,

While in patriotism they deliver

The death warrant of the Dream,

Across seas and across time,

They linger in shadows,

They watch and they plot,

They deliver death from a distance

And crown themselves Defender,

They murder and steal

And clothe in righteousness their crimes,

Citizen! Citizen, do you not see?

You are no longer free.

Caesar's Coin

By: Gus Victoria

Give to Caesar his coin,

Keep your guns,

The Horde is at the door,

The neighbor you know no more,

Claim the 2nd, plead the 5th

Liberty is just a myth

You’re a puppet without strings,

You can't resist

Holding signs

You drown in ignorance,

You beg for more,

Your bread

Your circus

You humble whore,

Take the dagger

Take the pill

But leave those bastards

on Capitol Hill,

The State kills,

On the altar you built,

They raise the banner

You hallowed,

With patriotic fervor you cry,

Under their Freedom you die.

The Centurion's Rebuke

By: Gus Victoria

I see your righteous spirit

Empty and destitute

Suckling at the golden teat,

Content prostitute

Vileness you spit

Like poison

And call it virtue,

Flickering images you idolize

Murderers you lionize,

Pimps and whores,

Hand and in hand,

On Freedom’s shores.

Drink deep from the rivers of inequity,

Take your ship,

Spread your filth,

The ocean is vast,

Cannot contain the disease,

Not the noble past,

Death comes fast

Empires rise,

Empires fall,

Wisdom fails,

Greed sends us all to hell.

To hell.

Unconsummated Ideal

By: Gus Victoria

Words, words, laws, words;

Brick and mortar

Of a shining new edifice,

Home of freedom,

Stained-glass windows of hope

Twist the light of a dream

Casting beautiful hues;

Liberty’s glory,

Democratic masons

Experimenting Enlightened ideals

On deep foundations

Projecting strength;

Serene, sublime, eternal...

And a cemetery behind,

Corpses to the soil

Immigrant blood irrigates

Stunted fruit,

Racial inequity,

God absent?

Man present,

Keeper of his brother’s shackle,

He steals now from others

What was given to him,

He closes the door

That was open for him,

War waged,

Burning unquenched,

Illuminating the palace

Built on freedom,

Conceived in liberty,

Made a lie in the struggle;

Unfinished, unconsummated ideal,

A mirage amid the dust

Of human frailty,

A building tall,

Precious to all,

Not undone,

Never destroyed,

Simply and tragically,

Not finished.

Revolutionary impulses,

Justice seeks its course,

Love its mate,

Peace its place,

Duty binds each generation

To place a new brick,

To bury less,

To shatter the shackles

That enslave us all

To finish together

Our home.

World of Shackles

By: Gus Victoria

I know the key.

In a world of shackles,

I have the key!

Promises written in the water

Of a filthy stream

Are the hope of the lost.

Shots of manufactured joy

Are the momentary relief

Of the enslaved.

Industrialization makes possible

The shackled present,

Mechanization of decay,

Abandonment of freedom,

Death of liberty.

Whispered truth

In a hurricane of lies

Is salvation.

Whispered truth

In a flood of tears

Is redemption.

Break your shackles!

Take the key.

Break the shackles!

Be free!

The Libertine

By: Gus Victoria

Freedom of thought and action

Confers upon the soul

A certain sublime honesty

That tests virtue

As it renders it meaningless,

That tastes sin

As it rejects guilt,

Nothing touches the Libertine

In the search of the fruits;

That of knowledge he knows

And of pleasure he seeks,

There is no wall he cannot break,

No mountain he cannot scale,

No depth too far

He cannot search.

Rejected by all others;

The Libertine.

Law unto himself;

The Libertine.

Chaos, Order, Good and Evil

Are broken fetters

Shattered by

The Libertine.

Indivisible, Indestructible

Mortar cannot hold this house together

As ideas seek to tear her asunder,

Words cannot assuage the anger

That we foment,

Ignorance is the darkness

And truth a luxury.

Yet she holds.

The winds of change batter her

And the sands of time erode

What we allow them to touch,

Yet she holds.

Rivers of tears flow

Threatening to flood

And make of her a memory,

Yet she holds.

This house cannot divided stand.

And this house divided shall not endure,

Our fathers and their brothers

Together, with blood paid,

Created a bond

That time cannot fade,

Words cannot degrade,

And we cannot repay.

Blue and grey

Perhaps never knew

What their struggle would do

To a country young as they.

Their sacrifice gave to us more than heroes

More than villains and battles,

More than songs,

They gave us this,

They gave us a home

They gave us brothers

They paid with life and blood

That ours be free,

For that is our destiny,

A destiny unachieved.

They gave us a home

From where our own fight can be waged

Indivisible and indestructible.