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I Trust the Consumer [1]
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Date: 2023-03-26
Child reading a book.
The following poem is my mildest attempt to protest book banning...
I Trust the Consumer
I'm not much for banning books,
Regardless of their content,
By what right of freedom
Does someone else have
To tell me what to read?
Personally, I am quite good
At self-banning books
From my reading list
And am as happy to let others
Decide a book's "to be read" fate
For themselves.
I find it funny that
In forcing books off the shelves
Of school libraries,
The Bible falls into the "horror zone"
Of forbidden matter,
Although, I have often wondered why
Lot didn't just travel down the road
To the next town,
For husbands for his daughters
And a new wife for himself…
**
When I was in fifth grade
I checked a book out of the school library
About a silly looking Martian visitor
Conversing with an Earth man,
After ten pages, I couldn't continue
I was too shocked –
The Martian used curse words
In almost every sentence
And I couldn't handle reading them –
I took the book back.
In sixth grade, I checked out the book again
And read it all the way through,
It was very fucking amusing.
**
Want to protect a child's mind
Or morals?
Teach them how to think
For themselves,
And they will mostly make
The right decisions
On what to read or do.
As that old saying says,
When going to purchase
A book to read
Let the buyer be-aware!
Carl Scott Harker ©2023
___________________________________________
It seems to me that one of the things anyone who has children in their lives can do is this: Improve their thinking skills and support teachers that do the same. (I would have written “critical thinking,” but the use of the word “critical” seems to be banned at the moment...)
__________________________________________
My latest book of poetry is now available on Amazon, you can find more great poems in here: An Engineer of Words.
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