by Raz Bosoaga

What does freedom mean to you?
The right to live, to learn and to pursue
A life of meaning and one of choice
Free to be you and have your voice.
To practice faith or lack thereof,
But to have that choice, to choose to love
Or to choose to live a life that’s led
By a set of principles that spread
Honesty, benevolence, restraint.
To be loving, to forgive and not to taint
Your heart with evil, lies or hate.
Falun Gong these rules create
Aimed to instill and to procure
A life of peace and one that’s pure.
How can such faith, such true love shown,
Turn Chinese government on their own?
We watch the news, here in the West,
Countless Falun Gong oppressed,
Countless stories never told
Countless victims, young and old.
What principle means that they must face,
Such persecution, such constant chase?
People tortured; people dead.
People arrested as in their head
They dared to believe in something more
Dared to think it’s worth standing for
Humanity, truth, freedom to believe
To choose one’s faith and to conceive
That we’re all born pure, goodness innate.
Such passive teachings attacked by state.
The hammer swings, the sickle reaps,
A harvest plentiful as a mother weeps.
The crop of genocide laid bare,
People massacred, butchered with little care
“Re-educated,” tortured, organs sold—
But there’s one thing the state can’t hold.
That they can’t scare, slash nor silence
Falun Gong, for freedom, in defiance
Stand united, driven by belief from within
Freedom, love and peace will always win.

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Recognized as 4th Place in FoFG’s 2021 Poetry Contest