Let Our Voices Sing

               Everything travels further down the river, calamity is awestruck by serenity, the greatest wars rage violently, and roar with intense sound, but when formidable foes strike, silence is left. Wind erodes the land, pollution erodes the sky, everything amongst these people is trying to kill them, but we will not die. We stand as one person, a blockade with each man, woman, and child as a husk that willingly says "no" firmly to your very core. We lift up our arms, our voices, and our souls to fuse, to become but one entity. Darkness acts as a whip beating us ravenously throughout life. The lost ones, liars, and thieves beat the tyrannical war drums.

                Fathers weep for the lost son, mothers weep for the sullen promises of change, Old Jim weeps at what we have become. I lift up my arms, my very being for truth. Rejoice as we breathe for today, as we drink today, as the bread is divided and all are fed for today. Little Susie cries solemnly for her parents, as does Bobby and Andrew. Who has the heart to tell these children their parents aren't capable of returning? We rag-tags  are slovenly rebels, the scum of this nation, so what does another life mean to them? We see something differently, thus we are different. In this world where conformity becomes reality, difference is a death sentence.

               A journal is opened, revealing collective sets of poetry from the deceased. The poem moves some, but opens wounds to all of those who know what has become of us. When disease is spread to all, the sick band together. But when all are sick, yet the immune band together, why are they Monsters? An outcasts recites:



Today marks the third month without communication

Again I slip into this damnation

Immunity, divinity, pain past ∞

What am I?

Gunshots ring through my ears,

My eyes are red from these morbid tears

Mother? dead, Father? dead Hope, Dying…



None of us could finish the poem, for it had ended at that abrupt, unfortunate ultimatum inside her head. She made her choice, and the next page showed a small death certificate. The bottom corner is littered with various scribbles of the pathetic worms who "misdiagnosed" her. I had been previously unaware that a lack of caring influenced another person's being. A placebo, the answer to all my fears, the blinding cloth, the binding law, none of these mystical objects cross our path. Lies no longer break our hearts or hope, for rationality has settled to our goals.

               Lift your voice, child. Lift your voice to those who cannot see our motives. Sight is stripped of the blind, hearing from the deaf, speech from the mute; but voice goes beyond sensible reason. So long as I know what I believe, so long as I state it proudly, I have my voice. I have the rights and responsibilities, the flaws and inadequacies, but I have no sympathy for you any longer.

                When war wages, fires engulf our souls; but the beginning tells the end in the form of a specter of a man. Gasping for the last breath his body requires, even upon his deathbed he helps us. Nearly inaudible, his words inspire us that insensitive rage and persistent attacks are futile; fight with our hearts, our minds, our own essence if it were. Bones and bodies, fairly brittle, are only objects in this world. Our will and virtue are unbroken, unending, undying.

               Let me ask you, what has happed to me? What has happened to you? Once upon a time man was united, with liberty and justice for all. We were one nation, under God, but where is God now? Where is justice, liberty, serenity, calamity, captivity? Asininity has washed their minds clean, all is for the taking, their logic cries louder, like the onset of war. Our voices have been carried to their ears, our thundering decrees rain from our tongues like rays of light from heaven.

               Each clamor roaring, tumbling, fighting its brother; who can win a fight against themselves? Another beating, semi-automatic hatred, guns blazing through night and day, blood dripping from my stomach. Have I died? Have I truly lived? Let these words reach you, the people who have voice now. Don't let war reign over this world wearing ironclad. Don't take no for an answer. Don't give up your opinions, your words, your voice, don't lose yourself.



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