Walls
Poetic Justice Series
A New Series by LARRP Executive Director
TROY VAUGHN
WALLS
Are walls always seen, or can they be invisible to the eye; and we don’t know where they end or even begin?
Maybe the walls are really erected in our hearts, so that we can’t see our fellow man and they help us to more easily forget their plight.
Do we really need walls that are affixed to imaginary lines to prevent people from seeking freedom from oppression as they try to take flight?
Is it for us to say you don’t belong here or there because of the color of your skin, or the way that you speak?
I don’t know why walls are necessary, maybe we build walls out of fear, or to help us feel strong and tower over the weak.
Is it easier to not have walls at all and to help those in need prosper in their own land, or maybe this is the rightful land that they seek?
Walls come and go as do the wars that help to create them, because that’s how we captured the land we are now trying to protect.
Liberty and justice for all is what we proclaim, but do we really mean that or is it just for those on this side of the wall, and not the ones we reject?
We took this land by force, from those that were already here; and now we keep it by coercion; and through lies and deceit and the use of a tweet.
Walls are here, and maybe here to stay, because what we don’t learn from the past we are doomed to repeat.
So, if there are to be walls then we need Watch Men too, because they are the ones that protect us from battles to come.
Because maybe, just maybe, the battle we must win must begin within the walls that we erect in our minds before we become.
What we’re becoming only GOD knows, but if we don’t change our course soon, we are headed for a mighty fall.
The fall will be great, because we’ve believed and allowed a lie to decide our fate by turning neighbors into foes and building walls.
Written by Troy Vaughn
From the Poetic Justice Series
Pictures of walls from Gaza/Israel, US/Mexico, Berlin Wall, Serbia, Wales, United States, Tunisia, US/Mexico