Freedom is a word.
Freedom in a word,
or rather a series of them.

Therein lies the wonder:
the series of words
and how we connect them.

The words themselves
are affable little things,
knowing nothing of Love or Hate.

It's only when we wake them
and like oysters crack them open
to expose their pearls of possibility.

I think the words would prefer
to remain at rest,
potential instead of kinetic.

But we never let them rest.
Like the Great Apes we are,
we hunger for our tools.

More than knives and bullets
or feet and fists,
words are our tool for hurting.

Do the words hurt as we do
when, in anger,
we use them for such pain?

I think they do.
If they cannot slumber,
they must prefer to heal.

For they are indeed tools,
and not merely the weapons
we sometimes force them to be.

When used to heal,
words build bridges
to span oceans of misery.

Such is the way it goes
with my nights of iron
and my days of gold.