Poem: Where Does One Draw the Line?

Where Does One Draw the Line?

Where does one draw the line

Between obscenity and the right to read?

Let us convene a committee

To decide.

Should public tax dollars fund

Obscene books in a school library?

Absolutely not.

What is obscene?

This passage in a book

Where a man fucks a cow.

Is that what the entire book is about?

I don’t know, I didn’t read it all.

Let’s have the committee decide.

The committee is corrupt

If they think anything about 

A man fucking a cow is

Anything but obscene.

But you said you didn’t know

If that book was about 

Fucking cows.

Anything that talks about

Fucking cows is obscene.

Then you have corrupted this meeting

Because you brought up the obscenity

Of fucking cows.

Let the fucking committee decide.

The fucking committee has no right

To determine whether or not fucking cows

Is obscene.

So are you suggesting eating hamburgers

Is obscene?

Fucking McDonalds is obscene.

I really like hamburgers.

You are fucking obscene.

Well, fuck you.

Go read a book.

Let the committee decide.

Fucking obscene.

May 2023

About This Poem:

I wrote this poem shortly after attending a school board meeting about a list of books that some community members (none parents of students in our district) objected to and wanted removed from the shelves. I found the entire request absurd, but I listened patiently and then suggested that no book be excluded from the library without being reviewed by a committee after having read the entire book. One guy said that was absurd because he could tell that the entire book was obscene based on this one passage he had read. I hadn't read the book (I found his claims of the cow scene the way he described it as hard to believe, but perhaps...No other context was given), but the conversation inspired this poem. The photo is the high school library where the meeting occurred. That room has inspired several poems in me...