"A Cage of Laws"

With best wishes for a serene summer celebration, here's a poem from a Newsmakers' reader that seems to suit the times in which we're living

By Dave Joseph Jr.

They say the law is blind,
but I’ve seen it squint.
It stares harder at brown hands,
frowns deeper at broken English,
and turns away
when the suit is tailored
and the wallet thick.

This is not justice—
it is a cage made of laws,
stacked in fine print and loopholes,
bars forged in bias,
keys held by those
who write the rules
but never feel their weight.

Three sets of laws—
all for the poor,
some for the rich,
and none for the president.
Power breaks the bars
with a smile,
while the powerless
raise sons in cells
and daughters in silence.

We see it—
in the boy who stole bread
and got five years,
and the heir who raped
and walked away—
affluenza, they called it,
as if wealth were a sickness,
not a shield.

Some are raised in zoos—
gawked at, fenced in,
conditioned not to roar too loud,
while others run free in wide open fields,
their mistakes erased
with signatures and donations,
their futures unshaken.

But ours—
our dreams are caged
before they can fly,
our hopes handcuffed
before they can bloom.
Communities crumble
when justice becomes
a transaction
instead of a truth.

We could build libraries
instead of locking minds away,
catalyze dreams
instead of crushing them
under court fees
and criminal records.
We could spend billions
to heal,
but we spend them
to hinder.

Don’t be Google—
don’t just search and scroll.
Be like God—
create.
Worship with your life,
not your likes.
Don’t build your worth
on someone’s skin tone,
zip code,
or net worth.

Know people
in the marrow of their laughter,
in the stories they’ve never told,
in the sacred weight
of their names.

Move past the ledger—
the line items,
the profit margins,
the tit-for-tat charity
that expects applause.

Let your hands build what money cannot.
Let your heart break the cage.
Let justice be your offering,
and love your legacy.

Because a law without love
is just a locked door—
and a country that forgets its people
has already imprisoned itself.

So rise,
not with vengeance,
but with vision.
Speak,
not to shame,
but to set free.
And when you open your mouth,
may it sound like liberation.

Writer and poet Dave Joseph Jr. is a pastor at Grace Community Church in Fulton, Maryland. Subscribe to his newsletter here.