Abortive

A woman's body ought to be her own;
Our history has struggled with this fact.
A fetus in her womb, however grown,
Is not a person, and it cannot act;
A father (and a mother) gives to her
A life, an education, and a home
She may owe them her love, but I am sure
She isn't owned despite a shared genome;
A husband, bound to her by vow and ring,
Should be a partner in the life they choose
But though they might agree on everything
He isn't her: and this should not be news.
There ought to be no need, but let's review:
A human woman is a human too.

Hello World

I find that I can write whatever here:
My words will never find the light of day
Since nobody reads sonnets anyway
My freedom is now comfortingly clear.
I can write nonsense, folderol, or queer
Misshapen things formed from my verbal clay
That crack in firing. Metaphors can stray;
It doesn't matter where they choose to veer.
Unedited, my words evaporate
And by their residue I know them pure
They leave no mark behind to indicate
I ever wrote them. And yet I am sure
Deep in my soul, their echoes resonate
In empty chambers where my heartstrings stir.

Manifest

Frontiers aren't empty. But they never were.
The basic concept that the West was Won
Requires it to be won from someone;
The New World's only new if you refer
To those who didn't know it. It's a slur
To those who did: implies that they are un-
Or less-than-human, because everyone
Who mattered was a connoisseur
Of only other lands. Columbus came
And with him death. Plagues and guns will kill
But even then the land is never void.
The bodies of the people thus destroyed
And even more those who survive it still
Deserve a presence, power, and a name.

Fear

Death is, they tell me, part of human life
A destination we cannot avoid
The best that we can do is quiet strife
And keep an even keel before the void.
Some say we linger on beyond our death
In something like a paradise or hell;
I fear their claims are merely wasted breath
For 'til we go ourselves, we cannot tell.
Each day could be my last, though I must doubt
That this one is particularly so
As yet I've given neither up nor out
But maybe that's the way that I will go
Merely exhausted from an endless day:
And who would really want another way?

(P)residency

You know, you cannot run for President.
The race will take the same amount of time
No matter how you go. If you are bent
On the becoming, you will slink like slime
Oozing towards Iowa. You cannot run:
Once you have entered, everything you do
Is ours, no longer yours. There is no fun;
The relaxations you're accustomed to
We will now judge. So you are not your own;
You cannot run a country otherwise.
Even when you think you are alone
The state will see you with eternal eyes.
The next two years are bliss, with joy mixed in
Compared to what will happen if you win.