Contributor: Shaquana Adams

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Be not,
a tyrant with little power,
But enough to crush a soul.
Discourage
the belittling of one human
By another.
Stop
the bloodshed from ones
Wrists and neck.
Be
A HERO.

In fifth grade
Some big breasted light skinned girl
Looked down on me and said
“You’re ugly”.
And me, so young
And innocent went home
And said in the mirror “I’m not ugly”
but when I was bullied again
it was harder to believe those
words the mirror spoke.
And then one day some girl came up to me
Tall girl who was as intelligent as people come. She said
“You’re not ugly”
“You’re not ugly”.
I turned on my heel, looked in the nearest
mirror and said to myself
“I’m not ugly”,
“I’m not ugly”.
To this day, no one can put me down
Because of that one girl who saw
What the bully did and
Decided to take a stand and
Let me know that I AM
Somebody.

The boy I knew
Who had to hide who he was from his
Peers because they would think he was
Queer, different, a fag.
He has stood many times
Arms over the sink
One arm bent with a blade pointed at
The other arms wrists
Contemplating the pros and cons
Of his wretched life.
Until one day I saw him crying
And I told him “It’s OK to be gay.”
“I like you just the way you are”
Today the world knows he loves men,
He is admired for his fashion,
hell he struts his stuff better than me
Because he knows that
He IS somebody.

The big girl who always sat
At the back of the class
Was ostracized for her weight
The skinny girls called her names to her face
And behind her back but still loud enough
For her to hear. “Pig, fatty, boulder…”
She heard, she cried, she wrote in her journal.
Then one day she met my gay friend
and he told her “Your smile is so
beautiful”.
She didn’t believe him. She thought
No one would ever compliment her
Anything.
He took her hand and said
“Don’t let those skinny bitches
Make you sad. You are more beautiful
than their personalities will ever be.”
The big girl walked home that day with
Her head held high
Her hips swaying proudly from
Side to side.
When she got home she snatched up the
nearest teen magazine
She could find and said to the popular yet petty paper
“Despite what you think:
I AM somebody”.

A young man with cerebral palsy
Was harassed one day by some
Punk who wanted to know why
He moved the way he did.
Why he talked the way he did.
Even knocked him to the ground
If only just to see how fast he could get up
With his crutches.
The young man thought he would never find
A girl to see past his weird movements
His stuttering, his mannerisms.
Until one day the big girl asked him out to
Prom. And on prom day she danced with him
Crutches and all, watching every step,
Not missing a beat,
And when he finally asked her what she saw in him
She said
“I see kindness, I see hurt”
He asked why she wanted to go to prom with
Him, half expecting some wise crack or pity filled
Response. She answered “because I like you. You are
smart and thoughtful. You’re a gentleman”.
Today the man with cerebral palsy may not walk
Like you he may not talk like
You, but leave your woman alone with him
And you will be sorry.
Because he’s got that gentleman swag.
And if you’re lucky enough to keep your girl
She will wish every day that you were more
Like that man
All because once upon a time
Somebody showed him that
He IS somebody.

A Human Eliminating Ruthless Oppression. A HERO.
There is no membership fee,
No criteria to be met,
No initiation.
Spread the word people, bullying is real and it is powerful.
Tell your neighbor something good,
tell your enemy something good,
and tell your friend something good.
Because you never know when someone might need reminding
that they are somebody.


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Shaquana Adams is an internationally published poet with a fondness for the color purple. Her poems can be found in Napalm and Novocain, Dead Snakes, Inkapture, Snow Island Review, Bicycle Review, Verse Land, and The World of Myth. She is quiet on the outside but goofy on the inside and writes because the best thing about writing is that she can say what she needs to say. It is an awesome experience.

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/QuanaWana
Website: http://quanawana.weebly.com/