Is this the freedom that you want?

Off a back alley, on the floor of a small room,

you lie  in a pool of crimson blood, dying

the doctor, with nothing but a bandage 

is unable to heal your gaping wounds

Your family pleads with strangers in orange vests

from far off Egypt, Sudan and Mauritania

because your privileged compatriots in the  City

show no empathy for your ilk

You are but a hoax to them, a conspiracy,

a figment of fevered, primitive minds,

who demand the right to freedom and dignity

and place their fate in the hands of  the divine

Your protestations are disturbing to them,

you expose their fake modernity for what it is,

the basest form of human existence,

privilege as reward for absolute subservience

They are the modern slaves whose master,

a deified leader with no redeeming qualities,

demands absolute obedience and yet,

unlike your God, shows no mercy or compassion

And so when one of the privileged

stands by your expiring body and chides:

"Is this the freedom that you want?"

you answer: "Yes, God save your rotten soul....."