Freedom

As always, we’re confronted with freedom: 
Who gets it and who does not? 
What are its limits? 
How far before infringing on another’s? 

New children are born every day. What are their rights?
Do they vary by sex and language? 
Perhaps, religion? 
Is not everyone hungry for peace?

And who, after all, has the say 
to recruit for war?

And how, by right, is this done? 
By force? By prayer? By example?

Few are willing to pay for an army, 
while those who must 
pay largely with the lives of others 
who neither have money or power. 

Whatever they had is taken, most of all their children
to feed the hungers of war. 
No one seems to care,
since each year new millions are born.

These are simply fodder 

while the righteous few live upright lives:
up-tight, self-satisfied, imperious.
God is on their side.

As for the others: No hope. No dreams.
A few paltry years of hunger,
sickness, and grief,
always fear,
ensuing years of hatred and struggle.

Then comes relief,
if it come, in a pause for peace,
and, then, before you can stop it,
we are back to war

that no one, it seems, ever wins,
especially those
who were born without being asked
and who had no vote
as to where, by whom, even when.