Author’s Note
This installment dives into systemic inequities, confronting racial and social injustice head-on. It examines the anger and frustration that fuel action, and the costs of speaking truth to power.
WOKE (Part 2)
Poetry by Rowan Evans
They say a lynching was a suicide,
I guess being black took his life.
The headline reads fiction,
But history whispers cruelty in the wind.
I stay WOKE, because sleep is luxury
Reserved for those blind to rot.
Hands build monuments to lies,
While bodies disappear, uncounted, unnamed.
“Calm down, it’s over,” they tell me,
As if oppression is a bedtime story,
As if my fury is a tantrum
From someone who dares to notice.
I rage for mothers, fathers, children
Erased in official reports,
For those who fell while the world looked away,
And those trembling, forced to pray.
I write in neon ink, in fiery scars,
For the voiceless who scream in the dark,
For every injustice whitewashed,
Every truth buried beneath silence and sand.
I stay WOKE, because breathing here
Means noticing horrors, refusing witness,
Carrying the weight loud, unbroken, alive.
They may call me terrorist, troublemaker,
But I call myself awake,
And I will not blink while the world sleeps.
Not while power smiles over the dead,
Not while history repeats its cruel refrain.
The fire grows hotter. WOKE Part 3 Finale: Carrying the Fire of Truth → confronts the unyielding struggle for justice and the voices the world tries to silence.
← Return to WOKE Part 1: Staying Awake in a World of Injustice
Poetry by Rowan Evans 