The world we meet and grow in should be one in which free thought leads to free expression.  Some will be good.  Some will be bad.  But, each thought should be allowed it’s space to be experienced and grown from.  Hampering this can only cause more harm than cure.

Free Expression Heeded
by Michael Romani

Despite the homogenous propaganda 
Over seven billion separate agendas
Seek to rule the world we live in
Yet, though and to think once again

Some are too weighed down 
By the practical to wear that crown
Some seek only enough strength for breath
Content in forestalling that night of death

Those caught up in this hard-pressed urgency
Are not concerned with more than the daily emergency
The reality lived is filled with such threads
Filled to brim with hopes and also with dreads

Still, these predicaments require less drinking
And perhaps a willful inclination toward thinking
More important than speaking is listening in conversation
If we, together, are to get past our frustration

The celebration of our wisdom is equaled by stupidity
And the all too human urge toward mass cupidity
The overarching questions remain the very same
Of what is happening and really who is to blame

That perhaps is the simple and greater shame
Nobody truly wins in playing the blame game
Though global these questions are deeply personal
And are best resolved through discussion and not arsenal

In an era of hacking the synapses of the human brain
If we are to keep the whole thing from the drain
We are going to have to move beyond the sinister
Be it from sheer reason or from worded ministers

The all encompassing spiderwebs of connection
Put pressures and drive into moral introspection
Personal gestures can set the world ablaze
The path out is a complicated twist of a maze

We wake up from insecurities in our complexity
Fully alert to a world faced with anxiety
History takes its unexpected turns
As we try out best to live and discern

We stand perched at the edge of our irrelevance
Wondering how biotech and data have this consequence
All the promises lost in what can easily go wrong
And we humans wonder just where do we belong

Biases and hatred bind in an era of post-truth
With greater complications than known in our youth
Trying to make sense of this Frankenstein of our creation
Together we struggle to get grasp of our situation

Living long and through this age of bewilderment
We need and weave new stories of what's meant
Overly ambitious in our thrust to find meaning
Only the hopeful speak in terms of living dreaming

Biotech and artificial life allow us to re-engineer
Ourselves into that brave new world that we fear
The invisible hand is blind and will not long wait
We need to move ever forward even as we hesitate

What's coming next is quite the journey
Borne from the depth of our very human legacy
Illiberal regimes crush down on free speech
But, it's only such thought that will teach

Teach us past obstacles of our own wicked making
Facing up to the risks, each well worth taking
Though it be dangerous and sometimes soul shaking
The alternative is nothing less than heartbreaking

(c) January 29, 2019   Michael Romani
All Rights Reserved