This tale of four is one of great sorrow,
But within the dreary, a light shall seep,
Its lesson is one not just to borrow,
But one that's vital, one which you should keep.

Meet Jane, a girl with lots of ambition,
She was strong like a bomb that’s atomic
And she lived her life with one vast mission,
A mission to one day be a comic.

Because of one fact, this dream was cut short
The fact being that female was her gender,
The critics judged, her plan was theirs to thwart,
Misogyny caused her to surrender.

She gave up on her dreams, lost all her faith
The hatred was too much for her to bear,
Her life in shambles, she became a wraith
Refusing to laugh, she lost all her flare.

For Lee, the consequences were more dire
His is a tale where major hate takes place,
The detest felt towards him burned like a fire
And it was due to nothing more than his race.

His skin tone was viewed as less than the norm,
So by his peers he was ambushed by slurs
In his head, dreary thoughts began to form,
He succumbed to the hate, his death soon occurs.

Although her story does not end in death,
It is still an important one to tell,
In this story we meet a girl named Beth,
People around her did not treat her well.

For Beth was different from most of her friends,
While they had eyes for the opposite sex,
Her desires were seen through a different lens,
Where theirs were concave, her lens was convex.

Due to this difference, her life was harder
They made her feel confused, conflicted, lost.
Depression gripped her, it would not barter
It took control, it was a numbing frost.

The conclusion of these somber events,
Is the story of Greg, a soul so pure.
The people against him hid in dark tents,
And pulled him close, as if they were a lure.

Greg was quite different, special he was told,
His mind worked slower, which caused him to ache.
They mocked him with glee, as if they struck gold,
Making him feel like he's just a mistake.

As you can see each story ends in grief
Each protagonist trapped in a pig pen,
Failure, sadness and death act as a thief,
It’s happened before, and will happen again.

Within the shadows, their bullies remained,
Waiting to strike their next unlucky prey.
They all thought back to see what they had gained
Nothing came to mind, and guilt made them pay.

These stories are the same in one respect
This similarity being the cause
Discrimination is the main suspect,
It clamped down creepily with careless claws.

If hate's a flower, bigotry's the stem,
It takes away dreams, joy and even life.
This hate has to stop, we can’t just condemn,
We are who we are, that’s no reason for strife.