No Kings

No Kings

You do not crown yourself with fear
and call it law.
You do not brand truth a traitor
and expect silent acceptance to bless you.

We have seen men like you,
fists full of flags,
hearts empty of country.
Men who speak in thunder
but crumble in light rain.

No kings. No crowns. No fear.

Justice does not move for applause.
It does not bend for rage.
It listens to the smallest rooms,
waits for all the voices,
and chooses the slow grace
of truth
over spectacle.

No kings. No crowns. No fear.

We were not made to be ruled
by temper or threat.
We were not made to be ruled at all!
Rulers forget that even the quiet ones
have weight.

The stranger at the border.
Queer kid in a town with no safe place to hold hands.
Nurse with blistered feet and a borrowed car.
Veteran sleeping on concrete, two miles from the Capitol.
Protester on the sidewalk.
Child translating for their grandmother at the clinic.
Mother, hands tired from carrying a life uphill.

You do not reign over the pause
where breath becomes witness and speaks,
where dignity lives.

No kings. No crowns. No fear.

Let this be the country
where no one must prove
they are worthy of justice.
Let this be the country
that remembers:
power is not inherited,
power is not owned,
it is borrowed.
And it is brief.

No kings.
No crowns.
No fear

-nl
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