immigration – bendingtheneedle

“A Lot More Shirley Chisholms” is Live on Streaming Services

“A Lot More Shirley Chisholms,” the latest single from Sapient Rain, is live on Spotify, YouTube Music, and Apple Music.

Sapient Rain is a musical project that blends human creativity with artificial intelligence. It is a collaboration between writer/lyricist Geoffrey Reilly and the AI music engine, Suno.

You can listen to “A Lot More Shirley Chisholms” for free on Suno.

A Lot More Shirley Chisholms

Thoughts skewed by algorithms
caught in thought complacency
dumbstruck and stuck in schisms
of moral rot and latency

We’re lost in planes and prisms
we’re distracted by our screens
we need a lot more Shirley Chisholms
in the land of the obscene

A greedy bigot runs the show
we all get painted by his brush
America’s lost that special glow
and the world’s been stunned
into a hush

[Chorus]
We’ve gone from taking huddled masses
yearning to be free
to terrorizing humans
trying to earn their currency
We’ve tamped the lamp of freedom
we closed the golden door
that shining city on the hill
is just a giant Walmart store

We choose a news that won’t refute us
we set up camps, we pick a side
we seek a truth that won’t dispute us
we all refuse to swallow pride

Lady Liberty has vanished
in a MAGA world of hate
she’s a dead idea in bronze and stone
we can’t resuscitate

We’ve become constant politickers
never doubting what we see
walking talking bumper stickers
with no humanity

Sapient Rain is best categorized as a human–AI hybrid musical project — specifically, a lyric‑driven, politically charged, genre‑fluid collaboration between writer/lyricist Geoffrey Reilly and the AI music engine Suno.

For a free listen, check out the library of publicly available Sapient Rain tracks on Suno.

From Maine to Minnesota Available on Music Streaming Services Today

Check out “From Maine to Minnesota,” my collaboration with AI Music Generator Suno, available on Apple Music, YouTube Music, and Spotify today.

Paint It, Black

Read to the cadence of “Paint it, Black” by the Rolling Stones.

I see a brown wall
and I want it painted black
if you have brownish skin
I want to send you back

I see brown men walk by
dressed in their working clothes
I tell my ICE agents
It’s time to make them go

I see the Ukraine fry
in Russian drone attacks
the bombing raids and tanks
that turn their cities black

I see our democracy
begin to fade away
a thousand starving kids
in Palestine today

When I look inside myself
I see my heart is black
the orange spray-on tan
can’t cover up the fact

’till that day I fade away
you’re tied onto the track
I’ll make you suffer days
while turning this world black

I watch the climate change
from here to Timbuktu
I smile at the heat that’s
burning into you

If you look hard enough
into my soulless eyes
there’s only room enough
for all that I despise

I see a brown wall
and I want it painted black
just like my darkened heart
too hard to even frac

I see brown men walk by
dressed in their working clothes
I tell my ICE agents
It’s time to make them go

My feeble mind is tainted
tainted black
Black as night
Black as coal
I wanna see the hope
Blotted out from your eyes
I wanna see them painted, painted, painted
painted black, yeah

If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my first book, My Paper, My Words: Rantings from a Progressive Boomer and Peeved Parent, from Amazon. And if you feel moved to write a review of the book on Amazon or elsewhere, I’d be honored.

My Paper, My Words is a collection of essays, stories, and poems that reflect the challenges of a middle-class husband and father trying to navigate a rapidly changing political, religious, and technological landscape of post-9/11 America.

A Mouth Full of Scripture, A Heart Full of Hate

Donny sells his Bible,
his MAGA hat and tees
a crypto-grifting-sneaker-whore
devoid of dignity

A grievance crowd
of dumb and proud
stand in line to pay their fee
to the seditionist-exhibitionist
The king of bling chotchke

What trickles down
ain’t money
it’s hatefulness
and greed
no “love your neighbor”
sentiment
you’d rather
see them bleed

With a bible wrapped
in stars and stripes
and anger as your creed

A mouth
that’s full of scripture
with a heart
that’s full of hate
isn’t Christian
as you claim
and doesn’t
make us great

And so, I wonder
what God will say
When you’re standing
at his gate?

What Shining City?

When did it become Ok

In America

for snickering governors

to play politics

with the lives of tired

and desperate human beings?

When did the light

from that shining city

on the hill

become a trick candle?

When did America

erect its Darwinian dome

of indifference towards

the tired and the suffering?

When did we drift from the

Give me your tired and poor

to a cold and callous

Let me show you the door?

When did we

start to fear and hate

the huddled masses

detesting them

while casting a cold

and stony shoulder?

When the humane

treatment of others

takes a backseat to

cheap political stunts

it’s time to look at

the soul of our nation