Poetry Friday: Banned Books Week Edition

A short article about the history of banned poetry is posted at Poets.org. I found it amusing that Shel Silverstein's How Not to Have to Dry the Dishes was considered subversive. Really, dish-drying tikes are devious in their avoidery all on their own. (Avoidery = the intricate task of avoiding an onerous task without seeming to do so; related to embroidery, the verbal embellishment of facts used to cover for the same.)

Surely there is more banned poetry. After all, a poem can be committed to memory, unlike most books. And when banned words enter your brain, well...


Annunciation

Blessed, blessed
are you, for

I
will make you weep
when the light hits the grass
in the morning.
I will make you crave
conversation like red
meat, lay you
weak, at the feet
of strangers. I will open
lives like vistas
before you
that you will never
seal.

Every
beautiful thing
will come to you and press
against your flesh.
There is nothing
that will not call
your name, nothing
that you will not long
to possess, nothing
that will not offer up red
kisses, coupling,
seeping into the roots
of the world.

I
will deceive you,
tell you all you need is a
mouthful, but in truth,
I know the desire
I infect you with is
boundless.
See, how the red shoes
I bind to you prick
your feet,
hungry for the beat
and sway
of word upon word.

Blessed, oh! blessed
are you.

---Sara Lewis Holmes (all rights reserved)

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Jennie at Biblio File.