We Hold These Truths: From fever dream to Freedom Dream
July 4th, 2026.
In dishonor of today, I pledge allegiance to the truth. This is not a day to romanticize, it’s our annual reckoning. May the chickens finally come home to roost.
A few notes on method, context & structure:
I used the blackout/erasure poetry technique on the Declaration of Independence, which is the act of taking an existing written piece and creating a new poem using words and phrases from the original document.
“fever dream” highlights the heightened state of aggression that dwellers in the United States are experiencing under the second iteration of the Trump regime. This poem serves as an indictment of and counter to the rampant colonial mythmaking efforts that this regime - and others in their ideological lineage past and present - continues to uphold as priority.
“Freedom Dream” is a second pass through. It is an intention in motion, a love spell cast over altar candle, burning constant. It is a sliver of a greater vision for this land currently called the United States. I am forever in gratitude to those whose labor makes this and many other Freedom Dreams more tangible each passing day.
Both poems have been typed below their visual formats for easier readability.
“fever dream”
The Unanimous Thirteen
become the powers of the Earth,
separate to Nature.
We hold these truths to be self-evident
that they alien
that to secure these “rights”
destructive government lay its foundation
to seem established,
evils to which they are accustomed.
The guards alter history
repeat injuries
direct an absolute tyranny over these states.
Let facts be submitted for the public good:
those people relinquish bodies
at places unusual,
the Depository of Compliance.
Houses of Annihilation
return to their exercise
establishing swarms
to harass our people.
Our legislature subject us to acts of pretend
troops cut off all parts of our consent
depriving us
transporting us beyond seas
abolishing free.
Our government declaring themselves
invested in waging war against us.
The most barbarous.
Friends, bring on every act
which define a free people.
We have warned them
of attempts to jurisdict over us
Conjure kindred.
Disavow these usurpations.
In our separation
we declare these colonies dissolved.
“Freedom Dream“ aka “The Sacred Pledge”
We institute principles
that abolish abuses,
pursuing a new future
most wholesome and good.
The rights of the people
be incapable of annihilation.
Beyond boundaries
our laws invest in protecting seas and lives.
We have been wanting
to conjure and rest.
We, therefore, appeal to the world
the power to levy Peace
and other acts which support
a divine pledge to each other.
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Here are a few compelling Freedom Dreams that we can reorient our compasses towards:
A rewriting of the U.S. Constitution from the People’s Project
Adopting Watershed Democracy, a land-based collective governance model based on watershed boundaries across the country