A Land We Know | Teen Ink

A Land We Know

August 29, 2010
By PoeticJazz BRONZE, Lumberton, North Carolina
PoeticJazz BRONZE, Lumberton, North Carolina
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

Favorite Quote:
“When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.” - Audre Lorde


Welcome to the land where prosecutors fall victims to their own crime.
Here is a land where speculation thrives and conviction is combated.
Hypocrisy is practiced as if it were law.
Cruelty is a tool that fixes all evil.

Here are a people who have been taught that it is easier to live in shame and fear than faith.
Beneath the reign of a court that uses legal standards to determine the hearts of men.
Here, in this land, forgotten is the hearts of men.
Or if it is not the heart they forget, it is the soul they crush under the weight of moral stones.

This is a land where the sin of murder is holy.
To free of evil spirits they bind life with death and call it “God’s work.”
No one can escape the wrath of wrongdoing.
The highly revered of them all can fall suspect.

They called this land Salem.
Here you can see human cruelty praised in the name of righteousness.
But I, I call this the land of man.
This is the land where internment camps are authorized for humanity’s sake.

This is the exact soil that saw profits from the exploitation of cultures and shunned individuality.
Here they go above and beyond to protect a name. And I’m hoping in between this constant repetition you might find that you have also been here.
Here, where right is wrong, and wrong is…wrong.
Yet during the hours where it appears that no one is looking, you can catch the powers to be somewhere tap dancing in between.

The author's comments:
Theme: Human Cruelty In the Name of Righteousness

This piece was a project I chose to do for a literature assignment in English assignment on The Crucible by Arthur Miller.

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