Uncensored
If hiding my nipples
could protect me
This cotton shirt would
feel like armor
If blanking out bad words
could erase them
These stations wouldn't
play "Crazy Bitch" at all
Take my tongue
pull it from my cheek
to check the branded bans
still healing there
Which trespass will land me
in jail? Retarded was
a useful word when first I learned it
It wasn't just slowing down
it was purposeful grinding to a halt
Our discord is being retarded
again
Words are not at stake
Ideas are
Our fear of being misunderstood
should not stand between us
and our willingness to say
All that we see in the world
is not well
is not even okay
We have a right to speak for ourselves
and in all your talk of ableism,
Stanford, you forget
Just how many cannot speak at all
and how they would die
for what we demand--
the language of dissent
Photo by Allyssa Olaivar on Unsplash
#Censorship #language #badlanguage #StanfordList #Freedomofspeech