I will never be Good Enough

I'm not doing well, the past few weeks have been yet another dark period in my life. So much happening... most of which I can't bring myself to discuss even in an anonymous setting like this…it's not YOU… it’s me, and the fact that I can't seem to admit the nasty truths to myself. I'm falling apart, I know it. I feel myself slipping. I am aware of the panic building deep inside of me. I know what the trigger is, but I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t know how to “fix” it…and IT *****! Everything feels like it’s upside down, I cry one minute and I laugh the next. Sometimes it starts as a laugh and ends as a cry. And I wonder how much strength and will power I really possess, taking a moral inventory, trying to figure out who the hell I am.

It's just not a good time;
I suppose I should just leave it at that.
I have good ideas,
but not enough heart to stick it out.
Or maybe I’m just not good enough, period?
That's how I feel... not good enough...
not smart enough, or pretty enough,
or thin enough,or rich enough,
or successful enough,
I’m not good enough.
Not Good Enough.
I long to be good enough,
yet that dream has not been realized,
and I wonder if it ever will be.

Lately, I feel nothing...
except emptiness, and hollow...
I can't for the life of me figure out what's wrong.
How did I get this way?
What led to this?
What's wrong with me?
Why can't I make sense of it all.
I think I'm broken.
I feel a heaviness in my heart
something is trying to happen far away
within a part of me I don't remember how to find.
I feel lost
I'm just wandering around within my mind, waiting.
Wishing for someone to tell me what to do and how
but there’s no one to help me.
I cannot allow myself to trust, to lean on anyone.
Been there, done that,
it only ends in more pain, more shame and hurt.
I am on my own with this.
So I write about it,
because that's what I know how to do
and the writing pacifies me
and teases me out of my own thoughts.
I have so much hurt and anger
it’s bubbling to the surface.

Everything around me, and the very fact that I have to go on in the midst of it, whispers to me of my own failure and horribleness as a human being. I know all that I tell myself is not true, but this is not the kind of thing I can just tell myself to stop and be happy.

I see myself as a child. I see a little girl sitting in a dark corner, hugging her knees and trying to be as small and "out of the way" as possible. When she looks at me, her eyes are full of a terrible anger- rage, really and pain. She is scared. I have never seen myself so dark. But she is undeniably me, and she must have existed during that time of my life. I have ignored her, I choose to ignore her, because she did not fit the image I held for myself. She makes me think about everything that happened to me. So much anger, so much hurt. She was rejected, hated, abused; never good enough. She was insulted, ridiculed, hated, ignored, and abused. The pain from the aftermath is unspeakable. I try to list the things my father said to me- did to me- not to relive the memories but to acknowledge the suffering I never could when I was actually going through it. I try to describe the pain and it's so overwhelming that no words will come. I don't know what to say to her…this child of my past. I don't know how to help her exist, how to let myself be angry and hurt, how to bring to life all of the things that I've repressed. I want to express it all, but I don't know where to begin. And I look for something anything, a book, a person, a therapist; anything to show me the way. I suppose there is no way, no road map, nothing but fumbling in the dark, at least that’s been my experience. I try to ignore her, but every night when I close my eyes and I see her, but I cannot sit with her or tell her I am here for her. I am unable to tell her that her pain is real and that she has every right to be angry. I cannot help her or stop her anger or pain. I don’t know how. No one has ever shown me how. And she wants, needs, something, and I don't know what to do, or how to help her. I am so tired of walking this road alone.
I am tired of the pain and anger,
but they are mine- a part of me.

And I don’t know where to go from here.
Or if there is anywhere to go from here.

**I will never be good enough.

IN SEARCH OF THE PRESENT

I begin with two words that all men have uttered since the dawn of humanity: thank you. The word gratitude has equivalents in every language and in each tongue the range of meanings is abundant. In the Romance languages this breadth spans the spiritual and the physical, from the divine grace conceded to men to save them from error and death, to the ****** grace of the dancing girl or the feline leaping through the undergrowth. Grace means pardon, forgiveness, favour, benefice, inspiration; it is a form of address, a pleasing style of speaking or painting, a gesture expressing politeness, and, in short, an act that reveals spiritual goodness. Grace is gratuitous; it is a gift. The person who receives it, the favoured one, is grateful for it; if he is not base, he expresses gratitude. That is what I am doing at this very moment with these weightless words. I hope my emotion compensates their weightlessness. If each of my words were a drop of water, you would see through them and glimpse what I feel: gratitude, acknowledgement. And also an indefinable mixture of fear, respect and surprise at finding myself here before you, in this place which is the home of both Swedish learning and world literature.

Languages are vast realities that transcend those political and historical entities we call nations. The European languages we speak in the Americas illustrate this. The special position of our literatures when compared to those of England, Spain, Portugal and France depends precisely on this fundamental fact: they are literatures written in transplanted tongues. Languages are born and grow from the native soil, nourished by a common history. The European languages were rooted out from their native soil and their own tradition, and then planted in an unknown and unnamed world: they took root in the new lands and, as they grew within the societies of America, they were transformed. They are the same plant yet also a different plant. Our literatures did not passively accept the changing fortunes of the transplanted languages: they participated in the process and even accelerated it. They very soon ceased to be mere transatlantic reflections: at times they have been the negation of the literatures of Europe; more often, they have been a reply.

In spite of these oscillations the link has never been broken. My classics are those of my language and I consider myself to be a descendant of Lope and Quevedo, as any Spanish writer would ... yet I am not a Spaniard. I think that most writers of Spanish America, as well as those from the United States, Brazil and Canada, would say the same as regards the English, Portuguese and French traditions. To understand more clearly the special position of writers in the Americas, we should think of the dialogue maintained by Japanese, Chinese or Arabic writers with the different literatures of Europe. It is a dialogue that cuts across multiple languages and civilizations. Our dialogue, on the other hand, takes place within the same language. We are Europeans yet we are not Europeans. What are we then? It is difficult to define what we are, but our works speak for us.

In the field of literature, the great novelty of the present century has been the appearance of the American literatures. The first to appear was that of the English-speaking part and then, in the second half of the 20th Century, that of Latin America in its two great branches: Spanish America and Brazil. Although they are very different, these three literatures have one common feature: the conflict, which is more ideological than literary, between the cosmopolitan and nativist tendencies, between Europeanism and Americanism. What is the legacy of this dispute? The polemics have disappeared; what remain are the works. Apart from this general resemblance, the differences between the three literatures are multiple and profound. One of them belongs more to history than to literature: the development of Anglo-American literature coincides with the rise of the United States as a world power whereas the rise of our literature coincides with the political and social misfortunes and upheavals of our nations. This proves once more the limitations of social and historical determinism: the decline of empires and social disturbances sometimes coincide with moments of artistic and literary splendour. Li-Po and Tu Fu witnessed the fall of the Tang dynasty; Velázquez painted for Felipe IV; Seneca and Lucan were contemporaries and also victims of Nero. Other differences are of a literary nature and apply more to particular works than to the character of each literature. But can we say that literatures have a character? Do they possess a set of shared features that distinguish them from other literatures? I doubt it. A literature is not defined by some fanciful, intangible character; it is a society of unique works united by relations of opposition and affinity.

The first basic difference between Latin-American and Anglo-American literature lies in the diversity of their origins. Both begin as projections of Europe. The projection of an island in the case of North America; that of a peninsula in our case. Two regions that are geographically, historically and culturally eccentric. The origins of North America are in England and the Reformation; ours are in Spain, Portugal and the Counter-Reformation. For the case of Spanish America I should briefly mention what distinguishes Spain from other European countries, giving it a particularly original historical identity. Spain is no less eccentric than England but its eccentricity is of a different kind. The eccentricity of the English is insular and is characterized by isolation: an eccentricity that excludes. Hispanic eccentricity is peninsular and consists of the coexistence of different civilizations and different pasts: an inclusive eccentricity. In what would later be Catholic Spain, the Visigoths professed the heresy of Arianism, and we could also speak about the centuries of ******* by Arabic civilization, the influence of Jewish thought, the Reconquest, and other characteristic features.

Hispanic eccentricity is reproduced and multiplied in America, especially in those countries such as Mexico and Peru, where ancient and splendid civilizations had existed. In Mexico, the Spaniards encountered history as well as geography. That history is still alive: it is a present rather than a past. The temples and gods of pre-Columbian Mexico are a pile of ruins, but the spirit that breathed life into that world has not disappeared; it speaks to us in the hermetic language of myth, legend, forms of social coexistence, popular art, customs. Being a Mexican writer means listening to the voice of that present, that presence. Listening to it, speaking with it, deciphering it: expressing it ... After this brief digression we may be able to perceive the peculiar relation that simultaneously binds us to and separates us from the European tradition.

This consciousness of being separate is a constant feature of our spiritual history. Separation is sometimes experienced as a wound that marks an internal division, an anguished awareness that invites self-examination; at other times it appears as a challenge, a spur that incites us to action, to go forth and encounter others and the outside world. It is true that the feeling of separation is universal and not peculiar to Spanish Americans. It is born at the very moment of our birth: as we are wrenched from the Whole we fall into an alien land. This experience becomes a wound that never heals. It is the unfathomable depth of every man; all our ventures and exploits, all our acts and dreams, are bridges designed to overcome the separation and reunite us with the world and our fellow-beings. Each man's life and the collective history of mankind can thus be seen as attempts to reconstruct the original situation. An unfinished and endless cure for our divided condition. But it is not my intention to provide yet another description of this feeling. I am simply stressing the fact that for us this existential condition expresses itself in historical terms. It thus becomes an awareness of our history. How and when does this feeling appear and how is it transformed into consciousness? The reply to this double-edged question can be given in the form of a theory or a personal testimony. I prefer the latter: there are many theories and none is entirely convincing.

The feeling of separation is bound up with the oldest and vaguest of my memories: the first cry, the first scare. Like every child I built emotional bridges in the imagination to link me to the world and to other people. I lived in a town on the outskirts of Mexico City, in an old dilapidated house that had a jungle-like garden and a great room full of books. First games and first lessons. The garden soon became the centre of my world; the library, an enchanted cave. I used to read and play with my cousins and schoolmates. There was a fig tree, temple of vegetation, four pine trees, three ash trees, a nightshade, a pomegranate tree, wild grass and prickly plants that produced purple grazes. Adobe walls. Time was elastic; space was a spinning wheel. All time, past or future, real or imaginary, was pure presence. Space transformed itself ceaselessly. The beyond was here, all was here: a valley, a mountain, a distant country, the neighbours' patio. Books with pictures, especially history books, eagerly leafed through, supplied images of deserts and jungles, palaces and hovels, warriors and princesses, beggars and kings. We were shipwrecked with Sinbad and with Robinson, we fought with d'Artagnan, we took Valencia with the Cid. How I would have liked to stay forever on the Isle of Calypso! In summer the green branches of the fig tree would sway like the sails of a caravel or a pirate ship. High up on the mast, swept by the wind, I could make out islands and continents, lands that vanished as soon as they became tangible. The world was limitless yet it was always within reach; time was a pliable substance that weaved an unbroken present.

When was the spell broken? Gradually rather than suddenly. It is hard to accept being betrayed by a friend, deceived by the woman we love, or that the idea of freedom is the mask of a tyrant. What we call "finding out" is a slow and tricky process because we ourselves are the accomplices of our errors and deceptions. Nevertheless, I can remember fairly clearly an incident that was the first sign, although it was quickly forgotten. I must have been about six when one of my cousins who was a little older showed me a North American magazine with a photograph of soldiers marching along a huge avenue, probably in New York. "They've returned from the war" she said. This handful of words disturbed me, as if they foreshadowed the end of the world or the Second Coming of Christ. I vaguely knew that somewhere far away a war had ended a few years earlier and that the soldiers were marching to celebrate their victory. For me, that war had taken place in another time, not here and now. The photo refuted me. I felt literally dislodged from the present.

From that moment time began to fracture more and more. And there was a plurality of spaces. The experience repeated itself more and more frequently. Any piece of news, a harmless phrase, the headline in a newspaper: everything proved the outside world's existence and my own unreality. I felt that the world was splitting and that I did not inhabit the present. My present was disintegrating: real time was somewhere else. My time, the time of the garden, the fig tree, the games with friends, the drowsiness among the plants at three in the afternoon under the sun, a fig torn open (black and red like a live coal but one that is sweet and fresh): this was a fictitious time. In spite of what my senses told me, the time from over there, belonging to the others, was the real one, the time of the real present. I accepted the inevitable: I became an adult. That was how my expulsion from the present began.

It may seem paradoxical to say that we have been expelled from the present, but it is a feeling we have all had at some moment. Some of us experienced it first as a condemnation, later transformed into consciousness and action. The search for the present is neither the pursuit of an earthly paradise nor that of a timeless eternity: it is the search for a real reality. For us, as Spanish Americans, the real present was not in our own countries: it was the time lived by others, by the English, the French and the Germans. It was the time of New York, Paris, London. We had to go and look for it and bring it back home. These years were also the years of my discovery of literature. I began writing poems. I did not know what made me write them: I was moved by an inner need that is difficult to define. Only now have I understood that there was a secret relationship between what I have called my expulsion from the present and the writing of poetry. Poetry is in love with the instant and seeks to relive it in the poem, thus separating it from sequential time and turning it into a fixed present. But at that time I wrote without wondering why I was doing it. I was searching for the gateway to the present: I wanted to belong to my time and to my century. A little later this obsession became a fixed idea: I wanted to be a modern poet. My search for modernity had begun.

What is modernity? First of all it is an ambiguous term: there are as many types of modernity as there are societies. Each has its own. The word's meaning is uncertain and arbitrary, like the name of the period that precedes it, the Middle Ages. If we are modern when compared to medieval times, are we perhaps the Middle Ages of a future modernity? Is a name that changes with time a real name? Modernity is a word in search of its meaning. Is it an idea, a mirage or a moment of history? Are we the children of modernity or its creators? Nobody knows for sure. It doesn't matter much: we follow it, we pursue it. For me at that time modernity was fused with the present or rather produced it: the present was its last supreme flower. My case is neither unique nor exceptional: from the Symbolist period, all modern poets have chased after that magnetic and elusive figure that fascinates them. Baudelaire was the first. He was also the first to touch her and discover that she is nothing but time that crumbles in one's hands. I am not going to relate my adventures in pursuit of modernity: they are not very different from those of other 20th-Century poets. Modernity has been a universal passion. Since 1850 she has been our goddess and our demoness. In recent years, there has been an attempt to exorcise her and there has been much talk of "postmodernism". But what is postmodernism if not an even more modern modernity?

For us, as Latin Americans, the search for poetic modernity runs historically parallel to the repeated attempts to modernize our countries. This tendency begins at the end of the 18th Century and includes Spain herself. The United States was born into modernity and by 1830 was already, as de Tocqueville observed, the womb of the future; we were born at a moment when Spain and Portugal were moving away from modernity. This is why there was frequent talk of "Europeanizing" our countries: the modern was outside and had to be imported. In Mexican history this process begins just before the War of Independence. Later it became a great ideological and political debate that passionately divided Mexican society during the 19th Century. One event was to call into question not the legitimacy of the reform movement but the way in which it had been implemented: the Mexican Revolution. Unlike its 20th-Century counterparts, the Mexican Revolution was not really the expression of a vaguely utopian ideology but rather the explosion of a reality that had been historically and psychologically repressed. It was not the work of a group of ideologists intent on introducing principles derived from a political theory; it was a popular uprising that unmasked what was hidden. For this very reason it was more of a revelation than a revolution. Mexico was searching for the present outside only to find it within, buried but alive. The search for modernity led

Through a crowd
of homeless Vietnam war vets
Betcha I'm textin looking for more ***
From ****** galore
Open the back door and explore

Wreck that ***** (then I'm on to the next)
Next level ****, I'm on one at best
Deftly slip a little in your sister's sip
Now I'm caressing her *******
Hoping and praying my conquest ends with ******!
Yes, I confess I'm grotesque,
but I have finesse
I play that ***** like a game of chess

Bare witness -
I only ***** with the fattest of *******
Robbed a ******'s V-card
Now I'm charged with theft

I'm possessed and I have Tourette's
Ingested some drugs at the playground
Now I'm getting undressed
Digest my suggestive rhymes
I'm just a poor kid repressed
Manifest my pervertedness
My mind is a mess,
a nest
of enmeshed ******

And I obsess for excesses of distastefulness

It's disgraceful
My biracial angel
When I go directly from **** to ******
- In the blink of an eye
My *** game is fatal
Robbing the cradle & writing fables simultaneously
Screaming banzai!
Whilst I swan dive
straight into your ***** hole
& disable it

I'm insatiable,
Your mind is impregnable
Cause the impeccable mental images
I paint aren't erasable
Incomprehensible and intangible
Yet undeniable, I'm a despicable imbecile
Gazing in the peephole
Took a blindfolded stroll
down ***** lane and I'm on patrol
for an ocean of blowholes hundredfold

At the club so I dropped a bunch of Ecstasy
Take my shirt off so the ******* can all laugh at me
Tryna get the best of me
So I spite them out of jealousy
And absently drift away
through my mind to pornographic fantasy
My rhapsodic masterpiece
A mental form of ******
Getting busy in the squishy
til I'm dizzy in the hizzy
Swag, I do it valiantly

Turn it up this my jam
~Little ditty, bout jackin Diane~
Still a pity, too bad she's a man
Greasy ***** slap your eggs on my ham
If you'd prefer,
I might lend you a hand
Ram bam
bite the pillow I'm coming in dry
Don't be shy
Turn down for why
Either way have you in chains
by the end of the night

I'm a nemesis
***** slapping feminists
For emphasis
Hit em with a left fist
catching equal rights and ****
Yes I reek of cannabis
Can't handle bars I spit
Snide *******,
blame it on my pride and prejudice... ugh

I'm just a ******* egotist
An unrepentant hedonist
Check out Cunning Linguist
He da hypnotistic lyricist
This is my hypothesis
Maybe I'm just a nihilist
Detonating bombs
Catch me on the terrorist watchlist
Yes my words are devastating
But in your mind are resonating
Penetrating brains til it all begins disintegrating

I'm plastered
Falling over backwards
Mental state is fractured
Now watch me while I stagger
Tell your mother run for cover
Finna kidnap her

Pop pop
Got this **** on lock
Seeing double vision
Catch me jizzin in my sock

Steady speaking nonsense
Nearly unconscious
Bailing from the cops man
Too much Dwayne Johnson

I was 11 but you touched me like I was 22
Now I'm 22
and I finally realize how wrong that was of you

You were my best friend's dad
And you had been drinking
I tried using that as an excuse but what was I thinking

I keep telling myself it was nothing
But trailing your fingers along my waist and down to my **** is evidently something

I repressed it for years but it finally came to the surface
Our brains hide these things from us on purpose

I'll take my experience and let it go
Because nothing would hurt more than being belittled by the people that I know.

The curtain on the
CPAC convocation rolls back,

as the revolution
in Tahrir Square boils.

America’s theater
of deadly political

absurdity commences;
to witness demagogues

recite holy scripture to
evangelize a religion of war.

A heavily invested
audience marvels

at the marionettes
pirouetting on strings

jigged along by hands
of invisible puppet-masters

donning dark masks of
clever 503C llcs

disguised in self serving
hues of red, white and blue.

This grand folly of masquers
conceals a fatal pantomime,

a cast of reactionary characters,
Neo-Conmen auditioning for

the leading role in a lurid play
of a deadly nation projecting
a dying imperial preeminence.

The martinets engage zero
sum games where the victor
belongs to the despoilers,

and the merchants of death
richly confer multimillion dollar
reasons for being, underwriting
the gilded egos of candidates

and their infatuation with the
vanity of feigned power.

These master rhetoricians
skillfully lather up the crowd

by pandering to basest
xenophobic nationalist
instincts and fantasies
of laissez-faire proclivities.  

Slathering on the partisan
pretense in layers so thick

a master chef, armed
with the sharpest Ginsu Knife

couldn't slice a hock tip
of blood red meat

hurled into the crowd of
gobbling Republicons

howling and yodeling
it’s derisive acclaim.

The rankled party line,
gibberish talking points

are hammer blows of
incessant propaganda,

so cocksure that any room for
doubt is crowded out by the

phantasmagorical McMansions
of hyperbole they ***** in

the pliant minds of their
gibbering minions.

The candidates preening for
president show off their

falangist affectations
in eager duels of oratorical

one upmanship; constantly
jockeying to outflank their

other Neo-Conmen opponents,
always concluding their brutish

diatribes with a solemn
denouement of a Republicon

psalm ending with a
Holy Hosanna Hallelujah

to the Ronald Reagan
Heavenly Buddha.

Punchline of the holy Amen
“what would Reagan do?”

to remind the faithful
to remain the faithful

bearers to the fiction
of dead Reaganism.

Evoking anything
Ron and Nancy

induces sanctioned
comportment of a

slow simmering
******* eubellence

providing a welcomed
relief of repressed
libidinal energy.

The mention of Goldwater
sends GOP acolytes to

pause in reverence,
envisioning Barry and

Ronnie looking down
from heaven upon the gathered,

inciting immediate ruminations
of falling dominos and

the viability of a
tactical nuke strike

against Ayatollah’s
underground
uranium factories.

The host of Neo-Conmen,
new age Falangist pitchmen

belch from the dais,
in ever increasing alacrity,

the stirring drum beats
and slick videos,

of glorious warriors
winning the battlefield

with the rippling glory
of the Stars and Stripes

flowing in a continual
loop behind them.

Romney,
Bachmann

Gingrich
take center stage,

goose stepping
to the roll of piercing timpanis.

Words slither
out of their mouths
like poisonous snakes.

Lies, hiss through
their teeth.

Open mouths
expose Black Mamba
fangs, dripping with venom.

Eyes squint
as their reptilian brains

implore the besieged
to flee from the
light of truth.

Seeking refuge in fear;
yet on the ready

to coil and strike;
while trembling

in ignorance,
exalting loathsomeness

worshiping violence;
they remain

poised to unleash
first strike armies;

boastfully evoking moral
platitudes of Bush Doctrine
prerogatives.

Trembling in ignorance
worshiping violence

exalting fear,
these dogs of war bay

to unleash armies
against the

Godless apostates
that threaten

to expose the
stasis of their

Capitalismo-Judeo-Christian
view of the world.

They have hijacked
the great faith traditions

to serve a narrow
political aim

and relish any
opportunity to

demonize Islam
in service to their lies.

Watch as they
they crouch down

on the dais to
open the nest

of vipers welling
deep within the
bowels of their souls.

They find relief
by excreting their

spawn of deadly asps
into the veins of

cable news networks;
scoring political points

with the terrorized
children of Faux News

capturing battalions
of straw men villains

to rise atop meaningless
straw polls.

They agitate for a second
American revolution

by injecting the venom
of fear and lies

into the body
politic.

Ron Paul
stands alone,

perplexed why
American's love

war as much as
they hate civil liberties?

Cheney and
Rumsfeld brood.

The people of
Iraq and Afghanistan

fail to embrace their armies
of liberation that run up

unfortunate collateral damage
body counts required to sustain
the American way of life.

Ever the defender of
democracy and liberty,

Gingrich slams Obama's
condemnation of Suleiman

"hes an able diplomat."
Gingrich  forgot to add

that Suleiman is a
skilled torturer and

an able tyrant any self
serving democracy would
be proud to call ally and friend.

Cheney and Rumsfeld
remain flummoxed.

Their armies of liberation bogged
down in the marshy Blackwaters

of intractability;  trying to solve
the conundrum of the diminished

equity returns of asymmetrical
warfare.  Spinning the math

to justify building aircraft carriers
to **** a gnat.

The families of dead soldiers
surround them and wave dime

store flags hoping the plastic
eagle remains fixed atop the pole.

Perpetually smiling
Michele Bachmann
raises the specter
of Muslim Brotherhoods
taking over Egypt.

The persecution of Christians
and the escalating war on

Christianity have the Crusaders
up on their seats waving Excalibur
once again.

Gingrich pink cheeks
flush with the cash

of a Zionist casino
entrepreneur

doubles down, stacks
his chips high.

“The Israeli Embassy
in Cairo was overrun
by angry mobs.”  

“Is this a precursor of
cancelling the peace treaty
signed with Sadat?”

“The pullout in Iraq hands the country to
radical Shiites effectively handing our
hard won victory to Iran.”

“Israel is threatened and will not
permit Iran to acquire nuclear

weapons. A nuclear empowered Iran
will not stand!”

“We mustn't let do nothing Obama
threaten the safety of our good ally
Israel.”

CPAC willingly holds the deadly asp
to the breast of a proud nation.

Urging, coaxing it to gently sink
its teeth into the sacred heart
of our dear republic...

John Lee ******
Crawlin King Snake

CPAC 2011

Matthew 23
Brood of Vipers


jbm
Oakland
2/10/11

A dream once was had-- for two to be equal,
For this is the land of the free,
Free for you; free for me.

Often we hide our faces, as if we were the ones shamed.
Instead of standing up with another,
Repelling awful names.

Silence has a power, often more than sound.
Silence tunes your true voice,
Silence shakes the ground.

Silence is the foe, when words need to be said.
Silence is the killer.
Silence marks the dead.

Young students go to school, all shades of different skin.
We all threw rocks and names,
Wanting equality was their sin.

Did it matter? Their race was who they were.
A few rose voices,
Others’ silences were fists furled.

What does it matter, of what color their skin?
Here comes another battle.
Here it comes again.

Silence is the foe, when words need to be said.
Silence is the killer.
Silence marks the dead.

If one was gay, would he not be a being?
Should you let others mock?
Does silence stop the grieving?

No, the pain is still there, still loud.
The silence is louder.
Silence is all around.

The names, the hate, all can be repressed.
Silence is the fermata.
Silence has the stress.

Silence is the foe, when words need to be said.
Silence is the killer.
Silence marks the dead.

What is the solution, to this lack of sound?
Simple.
Make it loud.

A word of hope, ringing upon new ears.
A word of sympathy,
Erasing all the fear.

A smile, a hug, a song, a dream,
All to be had,
All to be seen.

Shout against repression, against hate.
For we are all equal,
All the same final fate.

Silence is the foe, when words need to be said.
Silence is the killer.
Silence marks the dead.

Stand together, as one. Make the stand.
Stop silence, create music,
Ring it through the land.

With your words create harmony, create rhyme.
Create thirds and fifths,
Stronger than the flow of time.

Why must we stand alone? Aren’t we all brothers?
Did our ancestors fight?
Protecting our dear mother?

Hand in hand we’ll rise, voices speak as one.
Cruelness and evil gone,
Silence on the run.

Silence is the foe, when words need to be said.
Silence is the killer.
Silence marks the dead.

If we do not help each other, then who will assist?
Together we will rise,
Or fall together into the abyss.

Gay or straight, or be it black or white,
Whether you believe in god,
We’re all human, right?

We all feel, we all hear and see.
We can all make words,
We all breathe.

Silence is the foe, when words need to be said.
Silence is the killer.
Silence marks the dead.

So why must we be made different, called by our opinions or race?
Why must we be judged,
Simply by our face?

No more, I shout. No more the hate.
No more discrimination.
This is our fate.

No more injustice, social and the silence.
No more acts of anger.
No more senseless violence.

Let brothers protect brothers, let friends be friends,
For we are only human.
The same mortal end.

Let sisters love their sisters, let strangers be strangers no more.
For we are only human.
Our heart is our core.

Silence is the foe, when words need to be said.
Silence is the killer.
Silence marks the dead.

I will stand alone, if that is what it takes.
I will raise my voice,
Singing with quick haste.

I will be the difference, the smile to the weak.
I will help protect,
Helping shield the meek.

I will celebrate the differences, that make you and me.
I will turn the lock,
My voice will be the key.

Soon my friends will join, creating a choir of light,
Singing against the hate,
Harmonies strike the night.

Silence will not be my tool, silence is not my friend.
I will make my voice count.
I will make this hate end.

Silence is the foe, when words need to be said.
Silence is the killer.
Silence marks the dead.