I am not the helpless kind
I do not sit and open my mind
To terrorists or those who don’t know me
I do not wail and cry for mercy.
In truth, the hardest thing
Is being told to sting and sting,
Being forced to strike and strike,
Strike and strike and fight and slice.

My conscience wails within me
Everything that I can see
Dying, dying, pain, death
Do I have the right to take away breath?
Who handed me the rights of God?
Who appointed me to the firing squad?
I have no right to take their lives
While I walk away and wickedly survive.
What if they turned and pointed their guns
And terminated a life, still so newly begun?
Of course it would not be fair,
To steal everything without even a care.
How could someone be so lacking of compassion?
I sense around me all their pain
My victim’s once-lively faces turn ashen.
Slowly, the red blood empties their veins.
How can I hope to feel alive again?

A look in the water beside me provides
Distinction between them and myself.
My self-condemning thoughts gently dissolve.
For they kill and torment and scare mercilessly
Have no compassion for helpless pleas
They have not a drop of empathy
And that is what separates them and me.
They wage war for their envy, their greed and money
While I stand, a wall between my beloved and my enemy
I fight for my freedom and family
The newborn who cries out from her cradle.
I fight because I am able.
I kill because I am forced.
Through violence, laws of peace I enforce.
Through my struggles, at least I guarantee
I fight because freedom isn’t free.