Disappearing words

Unoccupied shelves

Dissipating passion

All concerns deserted or abandoned

Vacant stares

Where once there was fire

Desire

For truth

For stories and voices

Who dares

Speak

Out of Darkness

Who dares

Speak

For perspectives fading into obscurity

For all the fading colors

The Bluest Eye(s) and the Color(s) Purple and

Beyond Magenta and all the Shades of Grey

Who dares to be

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

When the Monster

Comes to ban your books?

Will you Feed the Monster

With your fear?

The Things They Carried

Are ignorance

And an assumption of power

Shallow displays of might

Seeking to cut out the tongue

And silence the words

To prove their lies

Only amplify their fear

Of what writers will say

“Books that the world calls immoral are books that show its own shame.”  *

See your shame on display, lists as memes and graphic tees

Books as objects of terror

Myopic masses

Seeking to suppress truth and perspectives

Don’t need Thirteen Reasons Why

Their Awakening

Is to Feed the next generation

On a diet of censored stories

Relegating Revolutionary Voices into oblivion

Glass Castle dwellers and

Stone chuckers

Raising them up to be incapable of exercising

Independent thought

Burned words

And charred pages

In their wake

“Ideas are incombustible

And therein lies your real fear” **

Who dares to

Speak out

In this Brave New World

Against the Hate they serve

Freedom of expression sits next to freedom to offend

Painful language and painful history

Are lessons to be absorbed

Not guilt trips to avoid

Experiences and Voices are not

Inappropriate

Censorship equals violence

Against the community

And allows oppression

In perpetuity

Who will Speak

And denounce those who fear

Two Boys Kissing

Denounce those who fear

Queer books and Handmaid’s Tales

And the Part-time Indian, and Black and Brown Voices

Those who hide

Behind the Mandates and the Mantra

 Of Parent Choices

We Are Ants and

Mockingbirds and mockingjays

And Mice and Men and Caged Birds

We are Harry and George and Anne and Jazz

And Wallflowers and Kite Runners and Hills Climbed

We are The Givers of

Beloved speech and Scary Stories

We are Art

We are Dangerous

We are Ideas

We are exactly what you need to know

“Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance.” +

*(Oscar Wilde, Dorian Gray)

**(Ellen Hopkins)

+ (Laura Halse Anderson, Speak)

(Notes: Banned Books – titles and partial titles- are in Bold Face type, allusions to Banned Book titles are italicized.  Source: American Library Association’s list of top 100 most banned and challenged books  https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/84473-ala-releases-list-of-top-100-most-banned-and-challenged-books.html

Inspiration and indirect quotes taken from Goodreads quotes on banning books, writers include George R.R. Martin, Oscar Wilde, Ellen Hopkins, Stephen King, Laura Halse Anderson, Henry Steele Commager, Deborah Caldwell Stone, Toni Morrison, Pete Hautman, Stephen Chobsky, James Howe, David Connis, Marcus Sedgewick, Wole Soyinka  https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/banned-books )