You tell me to remain objective,

To keep my emotions out of it,

To speak in a calm, steady voice.

 

You ask me to remain passive,

Allowing you to choose your beliefs,

Hiding away my opinions.

 

You forget that this is my lived reality,

And this oppression wears at me daily,

Like wind against a rock

As I slowly crumble into dust.

And I refuse to be crushed

By the mighty force of

This overwhelming hegemonic voice.

 

I refuse to stand by

Remaining an alien on my own planet.

I am not a foreign species on which to experiment.

I am not your object to probe, observe, and quantify,

So you may understand what I am.

It is not my job to educate you,

It is not my body’s job to be your science project,

And it is not my voice’s job to remain silenced,

Assimilating itself into the social majority,

An interwoven mesh of barbed wire

That cuts deep into my flesh.

 

Daily, I am told that I do not exist.

I see it in commercials,

I see it at school,

And I see it in your eyes.

I am a sin and you have come to save me,

But I don’t need your salvation,

And I don’t need your false god that sits upon the clouds.

 

I don’t need a miracle

From your wizard of Heaven

Waiting to be revealed as just another man,

Hiding behind a cloak of hatred and evil.

 

I am more powerful than any god.

I have the power to live in a world that wants me dead.

I have the power to sicken you.

And I have the power to remain human in a land of docile robots.

 

Fuck you and your objectivity.

I need freedom.

I need consciousness.

And I need subjectivity.

 

Your objectivity is cold and harsh,

And it’s sterile touch and barren landscape

Bite at my words, my deeper self,

As I struggle to remain afloat

In a sea of zombies.

My lungs gasp for oxygen in an atmosphere

clouded with an ubiquitous poison that suppresses

analysis, subjectivity, and discovery.

 

But my emotions,

And my refusal to remain calm,

Overflow.

And they spread across the world,

Unable to wash away the wounds,

But capable of making you as uncomfortable

As I am…

Every

Fucking

Day.

 

And so I stand,

My feet in the sand,

As the tide grows stronger

And the ground beneath me washes away.

The roots of my words, my emotions, my soul

Extend deep within the earth,

Planting me in the ground,

Making me unmovable.

The waves of passivity are strong

And they crush against me,

Attempting to soften my edges,

Make me shiny and pretty

Rather than the ugly, pointed mess I am.

 

But my wounds are deep,

And the pounding of the waves

Only makes me more insurmountable,

Etching the words I write

Deeper into my flesh,

Deeper into the sand.

And as the waves hit,

The words sing from my soul

Like a siren’s voice,

Calling all who here,

Ringing deeper into your consciousness.

 

For poetry is stronger than objectivity,

And it connects me with you and you with me,

and you with them and them with me.

And in it I exist,

Fully and Harmoniously as Me.