Censorship In The Arts

A poem about the line between art and filth.

Photo by Freddy Kearney on Unsplash

First Amendment

The poet only wrote odes to the sensation of excrement

violently pushing through his colorectal exit

some three thousand works over the course of several years

twice or thrice daily with vivid metaphors and similes

some lasting dozens of stanzas in creative formats

with blasphemous biblical symbolism

and unexpected references to canonical literary classics

and he self-published his work in a towering tome

covered with a vulgar print of goatse in pop pulp comics style

he printed himself at great cost

delivered to his home in bulk on a pallet every month

and he snuck in copies at bookstores to leave on every genre’s shelf

and planted copies in as many thrift stores

and school libraries as was geographically practical

until infamous

and eventually legislatively censored

convincingly quite unconstitutionally