The land of the brave and home of the free,
Suffers at the hands of small-minded men;
Stand against the tyrant, never take a knee.
Have faith in your fellow man, stand with me,
Defend our Rights against federal sin;
The land of the brave and home of the free.
We’ll not last without the Liberty Tree,
Time grows short, and opportunity thin;
Stand against the tyrant, never take a knee.
Proclaim anew with bold voice our unity,
And push back against the threat from within;
The land of the brave and home of the free.
So, join hands from sea to shining sea,
Be faithful and strong until we shall win;
Stand against the tyrant, never take a knee.
The Constitution says how it must be,
Take heed and now let freedom ring again;
The land of the brave and home of the free,
Stand against the tyrant, never take a knee.
Singing and dancing,
as the last to arrive,
he outshone his brothers
in the Jackson Five.
Moonwalking across the stage,
he was quite the fancy dancer,
but what happened to his other glove,
is a question no one can answer.
Comparing the early to his later work,
you can hear it when he sings,
Michael the 'King of Pop',
put a new complexion on things.
But in '85, with 'We Are The World',
he was dead wrong,
when he wrote the lyric
to the song,
as, from sea to shining sea,
on this globe there is much more,
than only that there north American shore.
Yet, Billie Jean (not his lover) was just a girl
who claims that he is the one,
and Bubbles brought on many troubles,
but the chimp is not his son.
To be left bare to all rhyme and most reason
From gnarled wounds of sweet nectar eaten
A Mother whom suckled life, beyond season
Still they come in glee, lapping there the given
In her bloomed bouquet of chronomantic hues
She was resplendent as she captivated views
Coyly she stripped away at her prophetic news
Fall has come to hibernate into his nestled snooze
Thirteen points stretch from Sea to Shining Sea
Proudly branching Freedom to stand Tall for Thee
Blend into her blanket of Oz piled high to your knee
How warm it is to hug intently OUR Sugar Maple Tree
The real America is not divided into states of red and blue.
The real America is united stripes of red, white, and blue.
The real America is 50 states, and each one is a shining star.
Like an ever-winding river, she flows from sea to shining sea.
From high on the Great Divide, she descends, inspiring and serving.
Through canyons, valleys, and lakes; over hills, prairies, and swamps;
From mountains high, she watches the wanderers and the weary,
helping them to find an abode under the sun, a place of belonging,
a home of their very own. And she offers them hard work,
opportunity, and freedom, not entitlements and handouts.
The real America has already been greatly blessed by God.
Presently, my most humble request is that God will graciously
hear our humble cry to be saved from ourselves.
082224PS
War To End All Wars
It will be the war
On corporate polluters
The corporate polluters
Who deprive Our Children
Of clean air, clean water and clean food
These corporate polluters
Driven by ego and greed
Are relentless
In their pursuit of profits
To sustain their avaricious
Narcissistic lifestyles
*
Parents and their Children
Will be armed with Love, Courage
And Determination to
Dismantle the laws and policies
Allowing rampant pollution
To harm so many of us
Demand for corporate accountability
Will be heard from 'Sea to Shining Sea'
*
We are on the Edge of Existence
We and Our Children
Will not be pushed
Over the cliff
*
The Love we have for
Our Children
And their future
Will engender
A massive push-back
And a fierce stare-down
Of corporate giants
*
Governments will understand
A Mother's
Intense
Ferocious
Passion
To Save
Protect
Their
Children
The
Future
They
Deserve
*
The face of America not long ago
an immigrant hard at work
has undergone a dramatic change
immigrants have gone berserk
From sea to shining sea
from California to New York
they make fists and scream at rallies
voicing opinions incredibly warped
Anti-American as they can be
protected by our own laws
it seems to me ~
out to destroy our great country
May America and Israel forever be free
from sea to shining sea
~ of Nazis
And should either country find itself drowning
in an ocean of jackboots and hate
May there be a reckoning and accounting
The marchers are 'useful idiots'
chanting 'Palestine, from sea to shining sea'
Their apologists say they don't support Hamas
but the words in their chants betray them en masse
Be they Palestinian Arabs themselves
or thoroughly brainwashed students
The marchers' intent is crystal-clear
a one-state solution
run by Hamas reappears
This is no time for talk of 'Peace in the Middle East'
The hour has come to slay the Hamas-Palestinian beast
America, land of the free,
riches and opportunity,
abound from sea to shining sea,
dreams become reality.
Everyone has the right to be,
equal voice of society,
everyone that is…except me,
was not given the chance to breathe.
May America gather and agree
To be love-full and malice-free.
To unite as one, live one decree
From sea to shining sea:
To let brotherhood and unity
Propel new opportunity.
Arise, in new community
And crush our land’s disunity.
America come, give thanks
For the soldiers on foot; in tanks
Whose loyalty never broke ranks
From interior to outer banks.
Come young and old, altogether!
We share many a bond and tether.
As one nation, we’re strongest together
We’re one plumage but many a feather.
A man with horn-rimmed glasses
knelt in the sand
thinking: "my office just got a whole lot bigger."
He had just flown from sea to shining sea
to survey the sea lions.
He walked barefoot to a rocky outcrop
to count the creatures (for he was an accountant),
the counting took many days -
he was engaged upon a sea lion census.
The sea lions would dive into the tossing waves
and so deplete the sea lion company or rookery,
other's would arrive with unaccounted-fore friends,
The rest yelled all day long or grunted huffily.
it was a rowdy crowd.
The accountant took off his glasses and wiped his brow.
The sea lions continued to bark at him
while scratching their ears with distaining flippers.
Reluctantly he turned to fly back to New York,
where sea lions are parked carefully
in a funky concrete compound.
Each one of those aquatic New Yorkers
could be counted upon
and they were
as they swam moodily in the small oily pool
generously provided for them.
Of the tomorrow I seek
I was once allowed a peek.
Such beauty I did see
From sea to shining sea
Skies so blue
For those that stand true
Broken down was the wall
That stood between us all
Kindness lead the way
It was in the very words, one had to say
Peace was the rule
Kindness the tool
Action done with pure heart
Lead to a new start
Gave mankind a chance .
I was giving this glance
no one else seems to see
This place we can someday be
This place of tomorrow,
If only you can rise above your sorrow
Yesterday is no more
Time to open a new door
A heart is meant to soar
Kindness, is the key
The admission is free
All the beauty you will someday see
Oh… Beautiful
O beautiful for spacious skies,
Oh what lies they are…
For amber waves of grain:
The government is insane.
For purple mountains majestic
Above the fruit plain!
Why is no one sane?
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown they good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
But they couldn’t let the Native Americans be…
We are not all true Americans, we come from immigrants.
O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
They say they don’t, but the government
Controls our life.
America, America…
Where is they liberty in law???
Faults draw their battle lines,
fingers point to all and nowhere,
the powerful seize their dishonest moments.
America still has its lights on
but those lights are dead-eyed,
they stare like the painted orbs
of broken dolls.
I cannot write about this sickly ‘shinning,’
it both glares and shades my mind.
The new 'normal' is old,
both angels and devils, the meek and the bold
run to each other for answers,
but no one knows
the anger quotient of: Why?
From sea to shining sea
no one now is free.
Leave the statues where they BE.
They may not mean much to you or ME,
But they speak volumes to all about HISTORY.
If it's truth we SEEK, give history a chance to SPEAK.
Whether in DEFEAT or VICTORY,
Statues need not make anyone ANGRY.
They unveil both the COWARDLY and the BRAVARY.
So again, I say, let our history tell the true STORY.
Present generations need not WORRY
About the past but lock in the MEMORY,
Refusing to repeat the evil and the MISERY.
Yesterday, we NEARLY self-destructed in RIVALRY.
But for the Grace of God, there would be no LIBERTY.
Today, we must soon determine who's the real ENEMY.
And I pray we resolve our DIFFERENCES without ACROCITY.
And tomorrow, may freedom still ring from sea to shining SEA.
051522PSCtest, A Brian Strand Premiere Choice Poetry Contest
Sub Categories
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.