Oh my beloved world You have given me so much and yet so little Always offering an answer to my questions Always with a comeback for where I come from And yet here I stand Still full of questions of self For your responses my world, Have been an unread subscription That lingers on the coffee table With images that grab. But your answers do not fill So I just wanna say, “Yo soy libre” Because I have been freed by the great I Am.
For I am as the cobblestone on The Grand Concourse that call out From breaks in the asphalt What was once suffocating From sinful tar and stony heart Has been freed from the heat of Grace I now see through the melting-pot holes And now by my presence I call out To the world that this land on the Surface is not all there is or was Yo soy libre porque El me ha liberado ¡Libre!
I am Carravagio spray painted On the Spanish-Harlem wall The beauty is unquestionable And it calls out to all But some choose to dismiss it As Medieval graffiti Chaining themselves up With the fetters of false ideologies Worshipping the beauty of creation While executing in their hearts the Creator Who has freed me Yo soy libre porque El me ha liberado ¡Libre!
I am one who stands in awe of the martyrs, But my tastes have changed For once my heroes were Pancho Villa, Che and Trotsky For these died for what they believed But man cannot find his end in himself I too have envied the rich Wishing it were I instead of they For these lived for what they achieved or received But man cannot be his own measure So I have traded in the rhetoric of empowerment For the contradiction of the Cross. And now I know what freedom is Yo soy libre porque El me ha liberado ¡Libre!
For what the Lord has kept from the wise and learned He had revealed to mere children That one must lose his life in order to gain it Now my heroes are A wrinkled blue and white Flower from Calcutta A bishop of a war torn land Killed for preaching peace And a man who goes throughout the world Clothed in white Saying, “Do not be afraid” Lord, help me not to be afraid… Lord, I need you to help me to not to be afraid… Porque Yo soy libre, Tu me has liberado. Libre.