A lesson in Freedom

What happened in Venezuela, made me think about this poem I wrote when Russia invaded Ukraine a few years ago.

Someone spills blood on a land

which is someone else's birth right

He claims to know what freedom means

the right to shoot a rifle

and collect barrels

of carbon things that have stayed dead for millennia

To fuel the tanks that die

on the long tar road

that leads to the village

Where children once played with a rubber ball

bouncing on God's green grass

Before the children learnt

how to take a bullet in the gut

and to hide from bombs

Before the children learnt

to not grow attached to their limbs

or to their mothers

Before the children learnt

no country is worth dying for

A neighbour can send troops to kill you

and claim it's for your own freedom