Young Writers Society

No more.

No more will we burn at the hands of your kind,

No more will we sit back and watch as you continue to slaughter our children, our men and women.

We stand with you, we fight with you, we think of you as our family.

Yet you murder us.

You inflict horrors on us, that my father and his fathers before him have faced.

We fight in your wars, we aid your healers,

we trade, we laugh, we live, together.

Yet we are treated with inequality.

You promise us brotherhood, unity, and a safe haven.

Yet you commit acts that endanger us, you spread willful hatred towards us

Why? Because we look different from you? Yet are similar in every other way?

You stare at us, with annoyance, with hatred.

You stare at our scales, our horns, our tail.

Do you forget that you too are not so different?  

But some of you know compassion, love, kindness.

Some of you look at us, with adoration in your heart.

It gives me hope, it gives me happiness.

The love outweighs the hatred.

But it does not erase it, The hatred is everlasting, ever-present.

It is like a virus, a sickness, it festers and it grows in your heart and minds.

It is far more lethal than any ailment, known to civilization.

It made you hunt my kind, for hundreds of years.

My forefathers, my ancestors, tore from their homeland.

Bound in chains.

Enslaved.

But the fire in their hearts was not extinguished easily.

Even though their bodies were chained and beaten,

Their hearts were forever ignited;

Their souls, soaring still through the serene skies of their beloved homeland.

Eras passed, and we, were all but enslaved,

to act as domestic animals and your playthings.

Until we rebelled, we rebelled for our lives and for our freedom.

Some of your kind stood with us, stood for our liberation.

We waged a war,

against those who stood by and aided in the horrors you inflicted on us

It ended in our liberation, but at the cost of bloodshed, on each side.

We were no longer slaves, no longer tortured for mere enjoyment.

We had faced enough war for all of our lifetimes.

We wanted to live in peace and harmony,

but it was a luxury we could never possess. You would not let us.

We realized that even though we had earned liberation,

we were not yet free from the injustice.

Even though we could finally live and love for ourselves, by our own rights.

There were still more horrors to come.

The stigma still prevailed and so did the discrimination.

Little by little, they continued to harm us.

The little stares of disgust, a snide remark here, a little denial of service there.

We were tired, we wanted peace, our hopes were teetering on the edge of chaos,

We stayed silent. We made a mistake.

Years went on, and the hatred was hungry, it was no longer satisfied with blatant racism.

It hungered for blood, and you executed its wish like it was a holy sermon.

The killings began anew.

But we had hope, we lived in a modern civilized society where law & order prevailed.

We hoped that the lawmakers would see to it that justice was carried out.

It wasn't.

So many of our brothers, fathers, mothers, and sisters were sacrificed to your dark god of hatred.

It felt excruciating, like an old, healing wound being ripped open again.

Why did you take them ? They were innocent. They were peaceful.

You skewer your leaders over the slightest inconvenience in your daily life.

You call it your right as a democracy to call for justice.

So where was the call of justice, for the ones we lost ?

Where was it, for Jamar Clark ?

For Philando Castille ? , For Dreasjon Reed ?

So many, taken from us, so many futures and families destroyed.

Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Botham Jean, Trayvon Martin.

Why did they deserve death ?

Michael Brown, Michelle Shirley, Redel Jones, Kenney Watkins, Tamir Rice.

Did these lives mean nothing ?

Some of your kind sympathized with us, they loved us and they felt the pain that we did.

They broke out in rebellion with us, to support us. They demanded justice from the leaders you appointed.

And so, what did your leaders do ? What did your lawmakers do ?

They sheltered the murderers, who had no remorse for the life they took.

We were shocked, we were broken. You promised us justice but instead denied it.

And then we stopped grieving, we stopped believing that you would give us justice.

So we demanded it, we made waves against the privileged and the bigoted.

And you called us vile, disobedient, law-breaking vagrants.

While you abetted the true monsters, and branded them as upstanding citizens and misguided souls.

My mother had weaved for me, stories of greatness and heroism and compassion of your kind.

Was this your compassion ?

Was this your greatness ?

You expected us to sit silently and accept your injustice.

You forgot that we are creatures of fire and brimstone.

We chose peace, but we will not be forced into silence.

We are creatures of fire and brimstone and we will not,

Be silenced.

You deny us justice, yet cry foul, when we seek vengeance.

You have taken another, and for that rages a revolution in the streets.

We revolt for the one you’ve taken from us, His name was George Floyd.

He was kind and caring, a happy man, a man with a family.

You killed him, as if he was a monster.

If it is a monster you seek, take a look in your mirrors.

If it is a monster you seek, turn to the dark god of hatred you worship.

Today, those among you, who believe in justice and fairness, stand with us.

They revolt with us, they stand against you and they demand answers.

You have no concept of the retribution that approaches you.

This is not a wistful declaration of our pain.

This is an omen, of the end of the reign of your dark god.

We, the ones who seek justice, will continue to fight,

Until our very last breath.

We will be the undying flame, the one that you can’t snuff out.

How many can you kill ? How many can you silence ?

Can you silence the billions of raging souls, that demand the end of your tyrannical bloodthirsty reign ?

I once held a given name, Henry Hall, he was person who believed that justice is dealt to those who most deserve it.

He is long gone, burnt away, when your injustice and inaction gave birth to me.

The one with the unending rage, the one who sees the pain and agony that the souls felt when you took them from us.

I am a dragon reborn, the undying fire.

I am but one of many, a minuscule part of a legion.

I am Lockheed.

I demand Truth.

I demand Answers.

And I demand justice for George Floyd, and the ones before him.

Heed our warning.