ren08642

[ren08642]

Speech on the Current State of America

As I stand here today delivering this speech, I stand on the very same land that was stolen from my ancestors through means of force and senseless violence. Today, I see the same violence I recall reading about in Textbooks handed to me by my Texas history teacher. From the very beginning, America has made it clear that this is no place for us. This is no place for the immigrant, the poor man, the elderly, or the colored. As a Mexican American, I see blatant racism in my everyday life. The Mexican American has never known a day of peace in America. However, I still sit alone on my bed, wondering how the rich and powerful in this country can stand to be so openly hateful and vile towards the innocent and vulnerable seeking aid. Days after Donald Trump was elected, a helicopter collided with a plane in mid-air before bursting into flames and crashing into the Potomac River. This along with other events is surely representative of the future of his presidency, down to the Potomac River being the sight of such an omen. As I turn on the news every morning I am reminded of the state of this country; sliding down a slippery slope into a ruthless dictatorship driven by a child only taught hate. As I step out into the world I am suffocated by the easily misguided supporting the fall of this country with everything they have. Still, though, a small group of the compassionate among a sea of powerful ignorance is doomed to lose. In other words, there is strength in numbers, and hateful ignorance has numbers. Due to this, my brothers and sisters are being shackled with heavy chains and hauled to Mexico swiftly. For once I felt as if I had been transported to the 1800s in the very same spot I stood. I saw people who looked like me being raided, forcefully arrested and shipped country borders. I ask the government why. Why must you wrongfully raid your most faithful, your most vulnerable, and your most innocent? The government responds in a clear and shameless tone, "We don't like your skin tone, your culture, your people. Unfamiliarity terrifies our ignorant brains and in response, we shall exterminate it by any violent means necessary". The America I live in seems more like a joke to me now. A felon with little diplomatic and political background shamelessly leading a group of hate and ignorance, hellbent on seeing my blood spilled. My blood will not spill. I will go to every courthouse in America and scream at every passerby "My blood will not spill." I will walk with my handcuffs linked to my shackles, blood pouring down my face and my voice raw from screaming. Sweat will drip down my neck, dripping onto my blue cot in a cold cell. My head will be cut from my body. Still, I will scream louder than my body can handle, and my message will never change. We will survive hate. We won't ever leave. This land is our birthright. Ignorance will not represent us. My blood will not spill. We shall overcome.

Today marks the beginning of what the news calls the Canadian-U.S. Trade war. I believe this is one of several wars our country fights at the moment. Mass deportation, criminalization of the innocent, Racism, and much more- too vile to mention. Even when white supremacists have killed every last Mexican in the country, we shall survive. If not for the future of Mexico, love, and adversity, then for its past to be honored.

[ren08642]

Masterlist

Non-fiction Stories

🔒-Four Perfect Hours- A story about an encounter

Poems

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Vents

🔒-Do I look like him- A vent about having an absent father

-Robert Wun AW24- A vent focusing on creative imagery

Quick letters to the public

-Speech on the Current State of America- Self-explanatory

[ren08642]

Robert Wun AW24

I hear drums beat rhythmically, approaching from behind. Soldiers in red wail on their bass drums with relentless and imposing devotion. The soldiers hold themselves with the same equanimity as the Lord's angels rescuing Peter from his iron cell. The resounding, thunder-like strike of the drums in unison vibrates slowly through my body, starting from my feet and absorbing into my heart.

Inside my head, there is nothing but a white lime-wash wall. Child-like scribbles and sketches in various shades of waxy crayon cover the uneven eggshell walls. Layers and layers of wax hold memories and stories that describe everything from gut-turning terror to innocent bliss. The vibrant colors on the wall meld into an ugly, muddy buildup; I mistook it for a dark purple wall. The coats of chroma resemble a healing skin graft, splotches of scabs and puss disguising the soft flesh underneath.

I grab my hair frantically, banging on my skull with a closed fist as if trying to break down a door, behind which a woman hanging from a rope swings. That urgency, despite resignation, is mirrored exactly in my actions. My breathing matches the 169 bpm drum strikes that the soldier's chorus approaches with. As my fleshy limbs tremble, I am reminded of my weak cage, the spongey layers that cover layers of coincidental miracles and cosmic anomalies. My soul is trapped inside a tender shell of sinew and tissue. The shell has a certain expiry date of which I know not. As someone diligently scribbles lines of crayon into the ivory bone of my skull, my cage activity rots around my porous bones.

Suddenly, a drummer steps out of his colleagues' organized and practiced formation. He walks towards me with even, ridged steps and utters, "You know what you must do." And I do. I must cut my soul from the cocoon that rots around it.

Act 2.

The tendons are most resistant to the sawing motion of the OXO kitchen knife I hold in my infirm grip. One might expect me to describe the process of removing my soul as hammering the image of Ixtab from a refined block of marble. Instead, it closely resembled slicing a foamy specimen of grape agate from the middle of a bloody porchetta. The smell of Iodine and freshly cut chicken breast fills my nose as bright red secretion frantically spills from my neck onto the framed photograph of my anticipatorily optimistic pregnant mother.