Stamps on the pages

of the letter to my dad:


Not To Be Censored.

Relationships of divers nations
          crystallize in Terrible Times:
alliances divide along
          Terror/Anti-Terror lines.

The paradigm is surgical:
          eradicate the cancerous cells.
So privy nations operate
          on Terror's malignant network of Hells.

The human species balances
          upon the precipice of Fate:
voices clamor on Freedom's side;
          dogma grips the side of Hate.

And one God watches, knowing They
          have and will defeat the Beast.
But who's the Beast? "It's them!" points each.
          May the best team win, the other cease.

No one's listening,

so there is no censorship --


of the protesters.

A problem with fiat centralized money
   Is that monetary accounts can be frozen
      Censoring people or nations who refuse
         To follow the narrative of those in control
            Monetary officials who decide who can use
               Money and who is not allowed to use money
                  Because of their beliefs or ideas or support
                     Therefore
                  Because people hold varying beliefs in life
               Let’s use a money that can’t be frozen at all
            Because this money remains private property
         Money that can be held and used by those
      On opposite sides of any issue or decision
   A bearer asset that is censorship resistant
This money exists - the solution is Bitcoin

What's the fear that feeds the ink?

Who holds the censor pen?

Blacking out lines before they're uttered?

It's my dad, calling my mom "dramatic".

It's my mom, hurt in her eyes, saying "how could you". When I didn't mean to, or I didn't know, or I didn't properly gauge her reaction in advance.

It's online misunderstandings, always assuming the worst intentions: that I'm bad, or bigoted

That I'm dumb, uneducated or boring, redundant or mean.

It's previous partners and broken hearts

When what I couldn't give was mistaken with cold-heartedness, or stinginess or uncaring.


The good news

The truly good news

Is that I am non of those things

And I'm watching, as I speak

I'm watching that pen run out of ink

I'm the yummy prophet hey
You shouldn't have killed me.

what is worse
a picture of a *****
or a picture of a gun
for some reason
we have it in our heads
a **** is wrong
but somewhere someone
is thinking how cool
it would be to shoot someone

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                               A Child’s Garden of Worse(s)

                   Some poets wrote verses which were not meant
                   to charm the reader but to get them a Stalin prize.

                  -Yevtushenko, A Precocious Autobiography, 1963

The children who are permitted to live
Are not permitted to read what they want
When they ask for adventures our censors give
Ideology, instead of a jaunt

The children who are not submissive to the code
Not following this week’s fashions in science
Or who presume to kick against the goad
Will be inclusively loved into compliance

And from the Hippocrene a taste, a drink?
Oh, no! Children are now forbidden to dream or think

mouth, covered in tape
still, silence was conquered
noise can still be made
if you get creative

I.
Fireman, censor of literature and destroyer of knowledge, with his mighty flamethrower. He loves his work. He loves trouble and strife. He loves fascination with the people next door. Mostly, he loves his hammock. But sleep will be his final unrest.

II.
A gift for the darkness: reading from the forbidden kept hidden in the air-conditioning duct. The walls within turn on and off like Cora Pearl. His wife listens to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleep-walking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. They walk on as an extinguished connection. In the flickering of his eyeballs, he dreams of driving recklessly to Dover Beach and drowning her.

III.
Burning bright. He is burning so brightly. In the factory of mirrors, he takes a hard look. He's a flammable book. And it's a pleasure to burn. "What are you doing?" She asks. "Putting one foot in front of another." He answers.