From Greatness Too Is Meant for You, an unpublished 2014 manuscript by Adetimilehin Inioluwa Victor (Vic’Adex). Lightly edited for grammar while preserving the original voice.

Shall I be the next on the no fly zone?
Perhaps promoted to the terrorist watch list
Shall I be updated to the most wanted?
Because clearly I’ve had enough

Yea I should sit and wait
And play with hope
Trapped in Pandora’s Box
But wait, isn’t that what parents did

And look now how that worked for them
I am the son of the black soil
The Sahara, the Kalahari
I was born free but as I grow

It became an illusion
I no longer care.
I have shed the shells
Of my puny fears

Because!
By all means necessary
I declare my rights to be human
I refuse to believe

In the bankruptcy of justice
I will no longer
Sit in shallow caves
I’m prepared to die

For it is
Give me liberty
Or give me death
Freedom with pains

Rather than
Chain with tranquillity
Again I ask
Shall I be the next at the gallows?

Sentenced from 25 to life?
Shall the next bomb
Ka-boom at my house,
Or the next berretta

Empty its chambers into my heart,
Because I have had enough
But you are too weak
To care!

Really?

Editor’s note: First drafted in the early Vic’Adex voice and preserved here as part of the Words on Rampage archive.