To You These Streets Belong (An Ode to Rebels and Misfits)

The Renegade on their soap box,
The Misfit, the Lunatic, the Rebel,
Be guaranteed, they don’t follow the flocks
Engrained, from birth, with a need to raise hell
The spiked mohawk with combat boots,
The Comrade, the Patriot --
To no authority do they lend their salutes.
Among them the timid and meek find unsettling disquiet.

Unwavering, they draw lines in the sand,
Liberty, respect: their only demand.
Their stern faces and bright eyes do few admire
Broken glass and upheaval is what they inspire.
Starting riots in the street,
No opponent too shy to meet
And as the gas burns their eyes,
Still again and again they rise --
And though shackled, still they fight.
Oh, what a beautiful sight.
Even as history would call them great men,
Cries for their heads ring again and again.

Unafraid, paving roads few dare to take,
Just in a desperate attempt
To dead and sleeping souls awake
Continually met with the fiercest contempt,
From those necks that were spared the very same rope
From which they will inevitably dangle and choke.

Dissenters, Heretics and Mavericks all
Carrying on weary shoulders
The weight of a world ready to fall
Doomed like Greeks to bear impossible boulders
Of responsibility and right,
Striving and struggling to bring us forth into day
Then having to watch as we turn back to night
Freely entering our prisons, and decay.

Never do they indulge in momentary rest,
Feet tired, knuckles bleeding from their quest,
Always ready and waiting to rearm
Tuned to the call of that perpetual fire alarm --
Honor won’t let them stand aside as it burns,
So called to a job that offers no returns
No voice falters in the singing of their song
Thus unto them will these streets always belong.

I alone will celebrate them if no one else dares,
And put them in ink,
If no one else cares
Where death cannot touch them or cause them to sink.
If I alone must carry their flag and remember their feats
Then Death to Tyrants will I proclaim
Or shout in the streets
Tread Not on Me and mar not my name.