Desiring Machine

Every so often someone comes along and just spits the truth and it is beautiful.

They gotta war for oil, a war for gold
A war for money and a war for souls
A war on terror, a war on drugs
A war on kindness and a war on hugs
A war on birds and a war on bees
They gotta a war on hippies tryin’ save the trees
A war with jets and a war with missiles
A war with high seated, government official
Wall street war, on high finance
A war on people who just love to dance
A war on music, a war on speech
A war on teachers and the things they teach
A war for the last 500 years
War’s just messin’ up the atmosphere
A war on Muslims, a war on Jews
A war on Christians and Hindus
A whole lotta people just sayin’ kill them all
They gotta a war on Mumia Abu Jamal
The war on pot, is a war that’s failed
A war that’s fillin’ up the nations jails
World war one, two, three and four
Chemical weapons, biological war
Bush war 1, Bush war 2
They gotta a war for me, they gotta a war for you!

~Michael Franti “We Don’t Stop”

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

~Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus 1883

Or as Lou Reed once said

Give me your hungry, your tired your poor I’ll piss on em
Thats what the statue of bigotry says
Your poor huddled masses, lets club em to death
And get it over with and just dump em on the boulevard

~Dirty Boulevard