Tag Archives: bullies

Your Right

for Merle Haggard

I’m an easy-going guy as far as that’s concerned
I tend to only simmer where another fellow burns
Let live and go on living is the lesson that I’ve learned
I only ask for the same in return

Some fellows look for reasons to get into fights
They claim its just protection of their natural rights
But that’s no call to start a brawl near every night
When I’m trying to relax and just get tight

You’re free to exercise your right to party
You’re free to get real loud and cause a scene
You’re free to get attention by stating your intention
To go through life big, ugly, dumb and mean

This country was built in the name of freedom
and to protect it, I will come to blows
Your rights mean something to me,
but don’t bring ’em too close to me, ’cause
your right to swing your fist ends at my nose.

I’m patriotic, and I’ll wave the flag now and again
My country’s enemies are mine, and its friends are my friends
But there’s a way that breaks, and one that merely bends,
and it looks like you’ve confused them once again.

You’re free to exercise your right to party
You’re free to get real loud and cause a scene
You’re free to get attention by stating your intention
To go through life big, ugly, dumb and mean

This country was built in the name of freedom
and to protect it, I will come to blows
Your rights mean something to me,
but don’t bring ’em too close to me, ’cause
your right to swing your fist ends at my nose.

16 JAN 2006

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Sometimes in Fits of Restless Pique

Sometimes in fits of restless pique
I lose the will to even speak;
and listening to voices lie
reduces me to tears. I cry

not for their souls in peril; no,
but for a world that makes it so
worthwhile to bend and shape the truth
this way and that, a mood to suit.

And weeping, once the phone is dead,
I sit and wonder, seeing red,
why those who have integrity
must bear the brunt of infamy

while tarred and feathered by those fools
who will not play by agreed rules,
but choose instead to twist and wreck
the facts. But then, in retrospect,

I pity anyone who must
rely on guile instead of trust
to count some coup against their foe
scoring them, one, everyone, zero.

06 DEC 2004

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Talking Loud and Saying Nothing

Sink your teeth into a worn-out concept,
like it was an old piece of shoe leather;
worry it constantly, ’til its precepts
are soaked with saliva and turned to rubber

in the clamped vise of your tenacious jaws!
Suck the marrow from each worthwhile notion
seeking only for pleasure, without pause,
as substance flies apart in the motion

of your rabid fight to subdue victims,
to intimidate into silence all
who would question your fierce, deep loyalty.

But your true enemy is not living.
It is a useless collection of trash
that distracts you from the chain at your neck.

14 APR 2003

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