Songs of Freedom (Based on Bob Marley’s Redemption Song)

By Thorne McFarlane

 

Bought and sold,

Bartered over open seas,

Our futures traded for riches and gold.

 

My generation sat complacently amid insecurity.

They did not march nor protest,

Only to stand and accept squalor and inferiority.

 

Why should we fear the beatings, being whipped?

A greater slavery exists here,

Only to watch helplessly as our dignity is being stripped.

 

Some say our place is little,

Fulfilling just a minor place mark in history.

Our identity exists as the property cast in the middle.

 

We try to move forward but fear the moral recoil.

Positioned upon precarious pits,

All we can do is stick to our daily toil.

 

Only our minds shelter the place where they can’t find us.

Faith and hope make us stronger,

But only the truth of our songs can liberate and unbind us.

 

What will change? Only time will see.

The justice and the honesty hidden for oh so long,

Eventually the truth will set them free.

 

Until that time arrives,

I sing these songs of freedom.

Breaking my mental chains to let my soul thrive.

 

I sing these songs of freedom.