What Am I To You?

July 1, 2022July 1, 2022Leave a comment

What Am I To You? by Valerie Parente

What am I to you
but a means to breed?

What is my anatomy to you
but a sacrifice so sweet?

What is my pain to you
but a moral victory?

What is my pleasure to you
but a sin to preach?

What is my desperation to you
but a punishment for being free?

What is my free will to you
but a political chess piece?

What is my free will to you
but something to mistreat?

What is my hope to you
but a mere dream?

What am I to you
but a lesser being?

– Valerie Parente (6-28-2022)

everything is a choice

June 17, 2022June 17, 2022Leave a comment

everything is a choice by Valerie Parente

I think it’s strange
that you say you’re against choice
but you made a choice
by not making a choice
and it’s quite an anomaly
how you do want autonomy
just in a way
that denies others the same.

– Valerie Parente (6-17-2022)

The Utmost Importance

November 4, 2020June 24, 20211 Comment

The Utmost Importance by Valerie Parente

All I want
in the big scheme
is for you and me
to be able to speak
about how we feel
freely.
Where ideas are allowed
to differ in a crowd
without shutting each other down
with a buzzword to block the profound
just because one person has self doubt.
Because I might be bitter inside
from personal bad times
but that doesn’t give me the right
to say you cannot vocalize
all of your good times.

The right to speak
is the right to feel
and the right to feel
is the right to be
and if we can’t just be
then there is no point to humanity.

– Valerie Parente (11-4-2020)

We’re Headed for a Dystopia

September 26, 2020September 26, 20202 Comments

We’re Headed for a Dystopia by Valerie Parente

The precedent we’re setting is incredibly scary
where I can’t talk and you can’t talk
unless both of us agree;
where my freedom and your freedom
is no longer free.
Our basic freedom to think
is our soul’s freedom to just be.
To recognize that opinions aren’t objective
is what marks our humanity;
to collect our differing ideas
is what make us a society.

I don’t know if we can get any more low
than our current reality
where people are in a race to ruin each other’s livelihoods
just because they don’t like the way someone else breathes
and I know we all mean well
but any form of censorship is the enemy
the right to feel is dissolving before our eyes
and I think it’s a symptom of a bigger disease
because my generation was given a broken world
and we feel more in control dictating how each other speak.
We all have a different mind
and I want to hear the different stories
but we are headed for a dystopia
if we can’t agree to disagree.