Tag Archives: culture

Fortified By Walls

Fortified by walls

Convention dictates our roles

We are blind robots

Afraid to step out of the norm

For fear of ridicule

So who wrote these rules

Some wizard behind curtains

Calling all the shots

Break the mold–just live and love

Regardless of your gender

 

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

 

To Conform Is To Lie To Yourself

To conform is to lie to yourself,

To suck the joy out of this finite life.

It was never meant to be locked in a cage,

It was never meant to be stuffed in a box

Shrouded behind impenetrable walls

That blot out the sun and what lay beyond.

That is not living, it is merely subsisting.

Yet this is what our fears, our parents, our cultures preach,

Conform or you will be treated as an outcast.

Well then…perhaps an outcast is what I long to be.

 

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

 

What Lies On Distant Shores

What lies on distant shores,

Buckets, pigeon holes, troughs for segregation.

Language, dress, birthplace do not an enemy make.

Where came this bitter misdirection?

Religion, culture, song, dance,

These are things of man’s creation.

Strip naked man and woman–

Lay them bare of their mortal inventions.

Confiscate their language, dress, birthplace,

Expropriate their religion, culture, song, dance,

Take all they have of this world;

What have they left?

Blood and skin and bone;

That which crumbles with inevitable death.

Hopes and dreams, emotions;

intangibles that define humanness.

Air, food, water, shelter;

That which sustains us.

Boundaries of man hold no sway over these.

We are but one species,

Born and consumed in life,

Until the day we return home

To the dust from whence we came.

 

~~ Dominic R. DiFrancesco ~~

 

Heart Of New York

Car horns, sirens, shouts

Muffled by flimsy windows

Third floor apartment

Crowds rushing uptown downtown

Skyscrapers and tenements

Highlight the landscape

Architecture old and new

Music and culture

Time Square, Central Park, New York

The greatest city on earth

~

~~ Dominic DiFrancesco ~~