Day: February 28, 2019

My fellow Americans, you can have justice,

Or you can have liberty, but not both.

Why, you ask? Look at the symbols,

A blindfolded woman in a clinging dress,

That slips off her shoulder, exposes her thigh,

A person about to engage in a sado-masochistic exercise.

The scales in one hand, a sword in the other–

What’s that about? Will she lop off the head

of her consort? And the symbols of liberty,

A cracked bell, another woman wearing

Layers of robes that conceal her form.

Could she be pregnant? She’s looking up,

Not down at the poor and huddled in the harbor.

And that crown. Sharp spikes warning away anyone

Wanting a closer look. Which do you want?

Justice is only as blind as the old man hunched

Above the fray, harumphing at the nonsense

Appointment has forced him to endure.

When he closes his eyes does he pluck digestible

Fact from acres of weedy fiction, or does he imagine

The young woman at the table in less seemly attire?

Liberty is not just a matter of chains and shackles,

But concerns the oily machinery of the mind,

Where everything is possible until the pulleys

Try to spin and gears try to mesh and the

Cracked bell rings its inharmonious tune.

 

© Dennis Hathaway

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