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Feb 2021
Bring your chin to the edge of the table and roll your tongue out
flat like a dead slug, take a scraping of your taste buds
conventional speech will now be banished, puns vanish,
in conversation, dense condescension, identify by sleeve
trust isn't earned anymore, intercept all personalities as duds,
that's what you rotate in circles for, segregated communities, one cannot always deceive  
cut the scarlet letter for your disorder in the roof of your mouth if the warnings are something you somehow mismanage
don't you realize you're living with everybody's instability?

Before you're down a dead end road,
slow down and process the information overload
there's no privacy in the path of progress,
your secrets better not exist, regress, be meaningless or harmless
literal translations marked in the margins by martyrs
dancing like satyrs on their victorious gravesites, the effort a culmination, they pun-ish  
for all the good their culture does in vindictive service to selective silence, it seems remiss
that essays and humor, misunderstood wit; one misstep all they lash
dyers on hills who recolor the grit and reality of the past
censorship is a dangerous tool
ask any oppressed voice

Censorship changes history's very imagery
omits thought, will, obstacles and triumph and choice!

You are human, your nerves are raw and your heart beats like a drum
when the hand that strikes it stirs your blood, let the outcries come
poetry is unbridled in revolution, furious in chains
a brand that scars the bleary eyes behind all stifled ideas, corked within your brains
the thunder of marches inspired by speeches, the movements and power wielded by wordsmiths
sheer influence that shames Mjolnir or Excalibur, when a million speak as one, cry as one, the tears of one million are torrent rains
within the wildest eyes, brightest minds, purest hearts and kindest souls, waits this now-waning gift
for who can rightly rise in today's vast opera of need?

They call for everything all at once, who can genuinely lead?
All I can say to be honest, not certain, but true
is that thinking different isn't bad;
it's a waste of being an individual to let anyone else do your thinking for you.
write
please read and enjoy
Tom Shields
Written by
Tom Shields  28/M/Texas
(28/M/Texas)   
93
 
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