We Decide

The Strip went black. The east turned red. No flag above us - just names of the dead. We drew new lines through dust and stone: No distant masters. This desert: our own. At HELIOS One, the mirrors woke, Catching white fire through old-world smoke. We sent that current from Freeside to Sloan: One lamp, one well, one hard-won home. No senate seal, no throne, no chain, Just blistered hands on the salt-white plain. Every roof we raised, every grave we filled, Was a vote for the world the Wild Card built. Freedom keeps a ledger in blood and light; We pay in labor, we pay in lives. The Dam gives water, the turbines cry, HELIOS burns in the copper sky. We mend the road, we guard the farms, We carry the lost in our tired arms. Let every town say, weathered but alive: We built this land, and we decide. Goodsprings sent timber, Westside sent seed, The Followers tended the fever and need. From Bitter Springs to the Long Fifteen, We traded by word and defended the green. Raiders came hungry; the wells ran low. Some took the night road and never came home. We cut their names where the red cliffs rise, So the living remember what freedom requires. No anthem ordered, no uniform line, Just a thousand small fires refusing to die. Yes Man smiled from a tower of light, But flesh, not metal, held back the night. When the grid went thin and the floodgates dried, We shared the last cup. No one stood aside. Freedom keeps a ledger in blood and light; We pay in labor, we pay in lives. Still the Dam gives water, HELIOS shines, And every free town holds the line. We sow in ash, we build through scars, We bury our own beneath the stars. Let all Mojave, battered, reply: We built this land - And we decide. No crown above us. No chain at our side. Only the desert - And the right to decide.