Giants of Hypocrisy by Amanda Eifert at Spillwords.com

Giants of Hypocrisy

Giants of Hypocrisy

written by: Amanda Eifert

@mandibelle16

 

This story goes, as many go, of freedom and captivity.
Of rights taken for granted.
We can run to the top of the lady fair,
Liberty holding her light, a torch burning bright — offering symbolic hope.
But often I wonder if this absurdly large woman, represents a farce.
If running towards the ‘American Dream’ means misery?
Observing immigrants throughout history,
Treated like dirt, though starving,
With images of family dying, mere bones, tin cans rattling.
Observing exhausted workers in sweat shops,
Having drained from their bodies — every ounce of labor.
And they’d no rights or liberties, when locked in factories,
Fire doors bolted, meeting cinders of death.
Smoke swirling, a heavenly gesture of empathy.
So the dying passed out first.
Come away, find emancipation,
Come you lost and broken souls — find a home here.
But be warned you’ll be judged, as every immigrant is and was,
Here you will be crushed, for your children’s opportunity.
See liberty throw out waifs at the border, back to war-torn countries,
Lady Liberty, can you claim differently?
When children face your gates, for a second chance at life?
Come away with me, for this land is not free,
It gives only equality of suffering, if only you had mercy —
And let the innocent inside, they don’t share your enmity.
They’re lost, with idealistic dreams of mythology,
So, lady liberty, take back your poetry, you are no ‘new Colossus;’
Just a shell of shattered words, a new Greek statue of terror.
Not a land for the “poor” and “huddled masses.”
You hold high your torch to the “golden door,” never letting known,
What wasteland lay in your dystopia, on your “teeming shores.”
You are a “tempest” aggrieved those “tossed” to you are quivering.
As your rich metallic door has but stipulations and hypocrisy.
So come away with me, in my homeland we judge you not,
Our history was not built on lies of liberty.
Here we do not judge, for we have remembered,
The true meaning of humanity: brotherly love.

 

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:

Quotes and References to Emma Lazarus’ The New Colossus

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