free speech poems Archives - Best Poetry Online

A Paranoid Afternoon, I Am Fugitive | Rahul Ganguli

come’on || let’s discuss
let’s argue
be controversial
let’s think
thinking unaccustomed
quarrel tictoc
::
Lenin / Stalin / Gandhi / Pig Farm / treat

come’on || let’s o play discuss
to coat ballot / balloon
multiplied / divided
harvested crop
stupid stomach
wind up whole day
lay out mat

come’on || let’s make ~ pregnancy
have an abortion
let’s stock womb
wombs stock over ~ public

come’on || let’s questioned
” battle
black peace / doomed brain

let’s see || see & match
sewing machine
mapping / people / land / water
::
power source
gun barrel
Marx to Mao
political to politics
Modi / RSS / Babri / good days / economy
heaven / hell / gold / cultivation / suicide
::
? whatever I have’een read
don’t remember
history / America / BBC / shark
_____ funeral pyre

(in support of rebel poet Varavara Rao)

Leaven for Their Bread | G. Louis Heath

Write in rhyme or free verse, we are an enemy of
the state, even in free states, like England and the
USA. The power elite may read our poems to add
diversion to routines, moving levers of vast power.
But, down deep, their minds are ill-at-ease with pesky
poets who question all. They smile at us, as we stab
pens deep beneath the surface, to shine the light of
dissident minds unfettered. But trust me, they do not
smile inside. Look closely at the velvet glove on the
iron fist. In angry times unraveling, we may feel its
wrath.

Unwelcome as our best poems are,
it is our duty to write,
and write, and write some more.
We know that whole societies
can go insane
without our leaven in their bread.