ISAIAH SIMON, 18

Isaiah Simon was born in New Orleans. He started Echo.Echo, a poetry club, with fellow New Orleanian and Student Delegate, A’lyric Thomas. Echo.Echo is a youth poetry group with the mission to build a community of writers that push one another in their writing and grow creatively. Simon has competed and won first place in many New Orleans writing competitions.

Simon has seen his life change through writing and hopes to provide that opportunity for his peers and youth in the future. His biggest achievement is winning a NAACP award but his work is not about the awards. He says that he thinks more about the souls he will change with his writing. He has endured a lot of tests in life after having a mother who suffered illness, and losing his father. He fuels this energy to create change in this world and waits for his moment where the world can see his name in lights.

Simon plans to attend college to study mass communications and minor in psychology. He hopes to utilize these skills and knowledge to spread love and open up his own therapeutic writing center.

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by Isaiah Simon

My soul has died but I’m waiting on the resurrection
Or waiting on man to put holy oil on that dead soul and push it down to the pits of hell just so it can rise up  and say I have been delivered
Forgetting that it was man that pierced your side starting when you was five taking every ounce of your innocence just so they can get back at the person who raped them too and it was man or you can say your family who unconscionably hung you up on that cross just because they couldn’t understand you so they needed to make you an example of you
But you understand that you have to die for the sins that people have committed on you
My soul has died and I’m waiting on the resurrection
The time when I can have a soulful cook-out, I will, and have the same people who celebrated my death to come and celebrate my new life
So I guess I need to repent in order for this to happen so let’s pray I repent for every person who called me gay
I repent for trying to find someone to worship my soul in all the wrong places
I repent for the suicidal thoughts that run through my mind every day
I repent for the hurt and pain that man has caused on my life
I repent for your parents divorce crushing your dreams to find love
But most of all I repent for having to repent for something that was out of my control
My soul has died and I’m waiting on the resurrection
Or maybe my soul wasn’t dead, it was lost in the hands of man and I was waiting to find it