Part II

To a king, it doesn’t matter what you say,

Only at the end of the day, you will obey:

Have your little arguments, your athletics,

Your little writings, your entertainments,

But at the end of the day, you will obey.

We owe so much to Christianity,

For making our freedoms a reality,

For centuries, for ages, all that was known:

Only your soul, is yours to control,

And the soul can be a quiet thing.

Is this our lawfully wedded faith?

Where nothing changes, nothing gained?

Maybe only fools had time to question,

But they weren’t asking for the freedom of Heaven,

Only the story of a new name.

A heartbeat echoes down the generations,

Leaving their children asimple instruction,

A bright line from dawn’s early light,

Singing, weaving, burning away the night,

Chasing away all suspicion.

Only / your soul / is yours / to control.

Only / your soul / is yours / to control.

Freedom for the living, freedom comes too late.

So tie a rope to Heaven’s Gate,

and pull.

Every voice, a ray of light woven into a rope

The tyrants mocked such a feeble hope:

That Heavenly Gate? Go ahead and pull,

You can no more do that, than you can lasso the moon!

But it wasn’t a joke.

To a king, it’s freedom for me, but not for thee,

But why can’t there be maybe some for me?

Maybe this, maybe that. Maybes are for fools.

Pull that Gate a little closer to earth so those

In control, see they can make a copy.

They spoke of hope for a better life,

Despite all the odds, they lifted their voice,

Weaving a demand from a simple instruction,

Building an inferno from a flicker of freedom,

The soul must make its choice.

We’re not demanding the freedom of Heaven,

Even the facsimile of justice is a better direction.

Hear all our voices, demanding a Gate,

Make it here, make it now, make it in this place.

I can hear the sound of freedom.

It’s the final gate, for the final hour,

Accounting for all the tolls you inure.

The tyrants were right about those Pearly Gates,

No matter how hard you pull, they’re always too far away.

But a gate, by any other name, is a door.

And what to their wondering ears should appear?

Something by all rights shouldn’t have been there.

Their demands had conceived aGreat Door of Freedom.

All they had to do was push the Door open.

It was a ringing freedom, calling them near.

For centuries, for ages, all that was known,

Only your soul, is yours to control.

All those voices braided into a chorus,

United, unbroken, echoing down the generations,

They lifted their voices, in a brilliant incantation,

To bring forth the closest thing to Heaven on earth…

…a Freedom Nation!

For one more year, you will hold the Door,

And if this stands, 250 more!

Be still my beating heart,

The future is ripe with the present.

I stand before you telling this story,

I can hear it echo all around me,

Do not give in to resentment.

Hope is disappointment delayed

Hope is misery, suffering, pain,

Hope is a virus, a foolish contagion,

Hope might be all we have left in the end,

Don’t talk to me about hope, okay.

It’s the first few times,

Before your lucky break,

The one after that when,

You’re ideas, they didn’t take.

Inconsequential fool,

How many times before it’s fate?

But then hope it floats,

But then hope it floats,

And by the end of the day,

You’re swept away.

I almost have to apologize,

For if the hope bubbles rise,

They can lift you to the mountaintop

And once they pop, there’s no way to stop,

Hope is a disappointing surprise.

Why give in to hope, I mean, like, voluntarily?

You’re a foolish ship sailing rough seas.

But there’s a sliver of a window to right the wrongs of the past,

To lift every boat and hope it will last,

An answer, a long-suffering reply.

But then hope it floats,

But then hope it floats,

And by the end of the day,

You’re swept away.

Yet who will save us from ourselves,

When the flames are flickering, but no one helps?

Think of all those fools who went before us,

Hoping that maybe someday there might be something,

To make sense of all this suffering.

And how they lifted their voices in a hopeful chorus,

When freedom, in this world, struggled to be born,

How they sang together, an incantation,

To bring forth the closest thing to Heaven on earth,

At last,

this nation,

a Freedom Nation!

A nation so conceived,

Holding the Twin Flames of Liberty,

Will keep it open for all the others,

And call them cousins, sisters, brothers,

So each can write their own histories.

One day not so long from now,

You, our children, will renew this same vow,

You will hold both flames, stand strong in the breach,

You will say not here. Not now. Not in this place,

And when you look back, it will be worth any hurt,

To defend the closest thing to Heaven on earth,

…the brightest beacon,

…a Freedom Nation.

One day our names will be lost to the sands of time,

Our lives summarized in a few lines of rhyme,

As we summarize those who came before us,

They will braid our names into the chorus,

And all we will be is an unbroken line,

A simple instruction,

A sacred hope,

Just waiting to be found,

When we’re needed the most:

For one more year, you will hold the Door,

And if this stands, 250 more.

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