No one is entitled to my body-

Not the parents who made me

Not the culture that raised me

And not your precious little baby

You may call it 20 minutes of action-

Your words can't break me

I see a world in wreckage

I live in a land that's betrayed me

But when the words of Joe Biden-

Move me to tears

When I sit in silence next to my mother

Because we both know

That you are us, and we are all you

I wake in the morning-

To a new state of the nation

The news shakes me

Obama's 18th reading

His fruitless request

That we all start feeling

One day he begs, one day we will all agree

Enough is enough

I think to myself-

How can I live in a world

As dark as this?

It must be a nightmare

That the woman whose genitals do not match her identity

Is more feared than any zealot with a gun

And when that gun is given to that man

With more ease than it takes

To register to vote

I live in a country

That values the 2nd Amendment of the Bill of Rights

Over my right to life

I live in a country that asks a victim of rape

Why she even bothered to leave the house

Do not go out into this country

The defense says

If you do not want your body and soul violated

Do not leave your home-

Do not dare to be yourself

Because this is not a land that allows that

Because the right to a gun is written in stone

But the right to love another man

Is asking for death

Aptly named-

Pulse beat with life

But became a house of death

What was once a refuge-

Keep your gay away from me

They say

So we retreat

To dance, to sing, to live apart

Separate but equal they say

Is over

But I do not see

The world they claim exists

When all around me

People are dying

Men aren’t crying

And women can’t speak

When the gun sounds-

When our bodies are used without our consent

In the broken land of red white and blue

I was raised to stand

To pledge allegiance each day

To the land of the free and the home of the brave

But all I see around me

Is a country slowly dying

Choking on that God damned

Red White and Blue