âYou were not born to bow.â
Somewhere between the headlines and the hush, someone is waiting for a permission slip that will never come.
This is for them.
This is for the ones who feel the grief in their bones but donât know what to call it.
The ones who are exhausted from trying to scream in a world that insists on muting them.
The ones who never asked to be warriorsâbut know, deep down, they were born in the breach.
You are not crazy.
You are not alone.
You are not the only one who sees whatâs unraveling.
You just havenât heard your voice reflected back at you loudly enoughâyet.
Let me be clear:
Art has always been the beginning of the end.
Not the end of hopeâbut the end of illusion.
đ Art Is How Revolutions Begin
When people say âart canât change the world,â what they really mean is:
They hope it wonât.
Because art doesnât just decorate a movement.
It ignites it.
Art names what power tries to keep nameless.
It turns whispers into war cries.
It teaches a population how to feel againâand feeling is the greatest threat to apathy.
Every time a dictator rises, the poets disappear first.
Because poets donât wait for permission.
We write it.
âđź The Real Power of a Single Poem
If I could only write one poem to sway a nationâone poem to burn in the throat of every reader until they movedâ
this would be it.
Itâs not meant to be safe.
Itâs not meant to be palatable.
It is meant to remind you that silence is not safety, and compliance is not peace.
This poem is not metaphor.
It is matchstick.
Keep scrollingâthe poem is only the beginning.
đĽ We Are the Spark
The Boston Tea Party was vandalism.
Rosa Parks broke the law.
Stonewall was a riot.
None of these moments began with power.
They began with peopleâ
And people began with words.
Thatâs what theyâre scared of.
Thatâs why they ban the books.
Thatâs why they police the language.
Thatâs why your voice feels like a loaded weapon in your throat.
They donât fear violence.
They fear vision.
𧨠So Letâs Be Very Clear:
This is not just poetry.
Itâs protest.
This is not just language.
Itâs a lantern in the dark.
This is not just a Substack.
Itâs a signal flare.
If youâre waiting for the revolution to begin,
this is me lighting the match.
No kings.
No cages.
No gods but the ones we make of each other.
đŻ Before You Go
I donât need you to agree with me.
I need you to feel something.
If this poem moved you, pass it on.
If this message stirred you, donât scroll past it.
We are not powerless.
We are precisely the threat they hope we never recognize.
Ring the bell.
Burn the script.
And speak like the universe is listeningâ
Because it is.
Unapologetically yours in protest,
âRebecca M. Bell
â
đ Filed under:
Revolutionary literature, poetic resistance, cultural insurgency, Molotovs in meter, permission slips for the unruly
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