Tuesday 19 December 2017

a villanelle on proscribed words


Our hold on freedoms can be slender;
fascists hate all instinct of diversity.
They have a special loathing for transgender

people, and would cheerfully amend the
law to strip your bodily autonomy
with fetuses; yes, freedoms can be slender.

Vain, the science-based arguments you tender
them on climate change; and, honestly,
they really really hate folk who’re transgender!

Attempts to reason are a waste of effort, when the
evidence-based approach hits dogma; see,
the freedom to speak truth is really slender.

Vulnerable as we are to such gross men, the
entitlement they wave can surely be and must be
fought; for freedom may be slender
but it’s our own, whether we’re cis- or we’re transgender.

Whatever this poem's dubious merits as poetry, it is intended primarily as polemic, containing as it does the seven words apparently declared undesirable for the CDC, the USA's health body.

(my thousandth post! Crikey!)


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