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The road to peace and freedom is closed.
Adorned with lily pads and frogs
jumping from lotus through dead bouquets
and ink stained poems that fall
from heartfelt tears on a bridge…
only when the day is clear

Looking to the north
they pray in wooden crosses to Christ
and shark fat to Buddha,
on the altar of sheets that the elders built.

Somewhere on the lowest point,
of a river under a closed bridge,
to a land they can’t cross,
they’re watching.
Praying that the bank would lengthen
that the river go dry
to make the road to freedom
longer than the bridge above

Nothing is lost,
Even emotions get canned in preservatives
Even the eight million dollars it took
to build the wooden plank
up on river
up on its way to freedom

But life is a chess game of compromises
and freedom towns were built
under strict military supervision.
No one can go in, only a few come out
but quickly they return through a closed bridge
back where freedom gets displayed
back on the road to freedom

If you get past the twenty thousand mines
If you can get a freedom pass
for thirty minutes or two hours
there’s an amusement park on the edge of the world
waiting for a shilling and a months rent
welcoming you to freedom

The irony doesn’t escape me…
The men in guns keep watch
with specialty patches black belt 2 inches wide
What can you do when you’ve reached that joyous ferris wheel,
the merry go round with hundreds of soft yellow bulbs
And that pretty hot pink pony with a golden saddle,
Whose mane seems to be eternally gliding in the wind
and it’s perfect white teeth smiling at you…
or laughing with you,
along the road to freedom…