Warning: This work has been rated 16+.
Childhood is dead!
Glorious day,
When my sister
Of four can say
Seven syllables at once—
“Homosexuality.”
Knowledge is free!
Wonderful hour,
When my sister
Of five has the power
To take a college class—
“Sex Ed 101.”
Innocence lost!
The LGBTs
Have stripped away
The bathroom markers
That kept the peds at bay—
“Transgender.”
Pedophiles—
Chimeral beasts!—
Hid under the banner
Of love unhindered by
Social constraints, and left
My sister molested, to cry—
“A man raped me.”
Yes, love is pure,
Love is kind,
Love is not just
Of the mind.
Love cannot be
Constrained by
Our biology,
But must be free
To be what we
See through our eyes,
Our hearts, our minds.
But love’s cliché,
Love’s abused,
Love’s not sacred,
But confused
With our wardrobe,
Something we put on
And take off at will.
“Being gay is not okay.”
Yet to the same
Some will say:
“I didn’t choose to be this way.
You try being me for a day,
And see if you can live
With taunts and threats
And suicide.”
So from the safety
Of the rules
Let us fly!
Destroy the dam
That holds at bay
The darker side
Of humanity.
It's plain to see,
Our children will
Bear the brunt
Of social ills,
And predator hunts.
And yet we cry, “Let them be!
They want to be like you and me.”
Oh, let them in!
How selfish of me,
To see the wolves
In sheep’s clothing.
This battle isn’t cut and dry.
White and black were lost long ago,
When “Civil Rights” was the cry:
The last bastion of sharp definition,
When right was right
And evil wrong,
And black and white
Were on both sides.
But now we see the march
Of gray rainbows,
Who rain hate on holy ground,
Who thunder against my God.
‘Sanctuary’ can’t be found,
But beatings from their verbal rods.
My sister’s been lost to the tide,
Too scared, in her own eyes,
To have a man.
Now they’re just “guys.”
And from her pain
She’s found a girl
Who only says,
“I love you.”
Swept by the storm
Of words from so-called friends,
My sister has a shrunken form
And anorexic bends.
She only eats the verbal pain
Dished out by two-faced shams,
And hurts from fighting against the grain
Of stupid pug-faced hams.
Her wrists are red
And streaked.
They match now, you know.
Two heads
In wooden beds,
And six feet below.
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139,565 Literary Works • 672,608 Reviews
Way to stand up for your faith. Things like this DO need to be said even if people don't like to hear it. Based on the comments below I think that you have revised this poem to make it sound better. So all I can say is good job!
Hey Dragon,
I actually agree with what Kyllorac had to say about a lot of the content/interpretations. I also interpreted the poem as transphobic/racist in parts, was this your intention? Or, if this wasn't your intention, what was? Knowing this could help you in future, or in further revisions if you wish, because you want to keep your reader in mind. After all, is your reader not the reason that you write and want to communicate with or to inspire? What are you communicating or inspiring if your reader happens to be someone who is transgendered? Is it anger that you want to evoke?
Essentially the way the poem is structured seemed to me to be one long, rambling didactic rant with some rhymes thrown in here and there.
The thing about poetry is that a lot of people when they write it, they write poetry to say something, but poetry isn't about holding a megaphone to someone's ear, it isn't about morals, and it isn't about message. When you boil poetry to do those things, it reads more like a blog entry and it becomes self-indulgent. Poetry is about language, it's about the way you put things and how well-done the words are arranged on the page.
You have a very serious topic here, but you also have the sing-songy effect of rhymes and the anachronistic "tis", the "LGBTS" "peds" "rainbows" "rods" "beasts" all of these words along with the rhyming of these words act to belittle your subject, and this just makes things more offensive and disrespectful, almost like a joke.
I hope this helps,
~ as always, Audy
I've done some edits based on Kyllorac's comments, so hopefully the intended message comes out more plainly.
Hello, dragonofphoenix. I don't think we've had a chance to chat before, though I hope we do get a chance after this. With that said, I'm going to tackle the aspect of this poem everyone else has been avoiding: the topic, and your handling of it.
I will preface this by saying that there are a lot of LGBTQIA members here on YWS, that I am good friends with quite a few of them, that a fair number of them are people you are probably friendly with too, and that this poem of your has deeply hurt so many of them because of the transphobic things you've written and insinuated in this piece.
I would also like to clarify that whether or not you agree with or believe in the existence of homosexuality or transgender people is not the issue here. Rather, the core issue with your treatment of this topic is the transphobic manner in which you've tackled it, and it truly is transphobic. This piece essentially states that all transgender people are pedophiles or otherwise deranged, inhuman creatures whose sole purpose for existing is to destroy otherwise good and moral people, which is untrue; whenever something demonizes a group of people to the point that they are subhuman, it is a form of hate speech and an expression of phobic views of that group.
I'll be going stanza-by-stanza and pointing out how exactly certain parts are transphobic and/or factually inaccurate.
The first stanza has no real issues, but the second stanza is a completely different story. Sex Ed is not a college-level course; most colleges I know of don't even offer it as a course option as you're expected to have already taken it by the time you enter college. It varies based on where you live, but it's not uncommon for Sex Ed to be taught in middle school, though it's most commonly taught in high school. I myself had Sex Ed in both middle school and high school, and considering I attended a Catholic school until high school, having younger children take Sex Ed (with parental permission) is not a curriculum choice exclusive to public schools.
The third stanza is where things get really transphobic by outright stating that transgender people are pedophiles. For starters, pedophiles have a sexual interest in children, while transgender people are those who feel the sex assigned to them at birth does not align with their actual gender. Pedophiles and transgender people are completely different things, and by conflating being transgender with automatically being a pedophile, it's not only factually incorrect, as transgender people can be of any age, including pre-teen, but it's also slandering and dehumanizing transgender people.
It's also fallacious to say that "the LGBTs" have stripped away the bathroom markers. Aside from the fact that "the LGBTs" don't exclusively write or enact policies (most lawmakers are not LGBTQIA), not all of "the LGBTs" are transgender, and not all of "the LGBTs" care about transgender rights or representation, since they're more concerned about their own issues. Contrary to popular belief, the LGBTQIA community isn't a single, unified movement, but rather a collection of smaller communities that occasionally come together to fight for equality, and there are huge variations in opinion and goals between all the communities and their countless sub-communities. Blaming "the LGBTs" for allowing pedophiles into bathrooms is quite ignorant, as a result, especially considering that most public bathrooms aren't policed, so anyone who wants to can realistically go into the opposite bathroom without any great hindrance regardless.
The fourth stanza is where this piece begin dehumanizing transgender people by calling them "chimeral beasts", which, aside from being an inaccurate description as chimeras are amalgamations of multiple creatures, also conflates transgender people as being subhuman, without reason or conscience. It also, especially in combination with the previous stanza, blames all transgender people for perpetrating rape when, in fact, LGBTQIA people are disproportionately the targets of rape and other forms of violence, especially "corrective rape".
Stanzas 5-7 aren't problematic on their own, but the eighth stanza is problematic because of how it dehumanizes and demonizes transgender people by referring to them as (sexual) predators and wolves, and attributing malicious deception to all transgender people.
The ninth stanza reads as extremely racist with how it mourns the rise of gay pride marches right after referencing the Civil Rights movement... With the current structure, that stanza reads "morality was decayed by the Civil Rights movement, and now there's no stopping the further decay of morality and persecution of Good Christians".
The tenth stanza is problematic because of how it ties back to the fourth stanza. If you recall the "corrective rape" I mentioned, such assaults arise from the mistaken belief that rape switches a person's sexual orientation. The thing is, rape does not, though it may be a factor in whether or not a victim is able to pursue a lasting relationship with anyone else, period. Rape is an incredibly traumatic experience, and it's far more common for a victim to become completely averse to sex entirely than for them to "switch" sexual orientations, especially as most heterosexual rape victims remain heterosexual after being raped. The tenth stanza essentially propagates the mistaken and extremely harmful belief that rape affects sexual orientation, and it's this belief that leads to horrible hate crimes like "corrective rape".
The final stanza's main issue is how it essentially reduces the sister's suicide to the fact that she was lesbian, end of story, rather than to other causes that, while briefly mentioned earlier, are ignored in the rest of the piece. People don't commit suicide just because they are one thing or another; rather, they commit suicide as a result of constant, endless, negative reactions to who and what they are, especially from the people closest to them, which erodes their worth as a person in their own eyes to the point where they believe there is no point in continuing such a worthless existence. The final stanza essentially says that being LGBTQIA will automatically lead to a sinful death by suicide, which is not true, and shifts the burden of social responsibility for the suicide from the people responsible for eroding the sister's self worth onto the sister herself, which is a form of victim-blaming.
Hopefully you will consider all the things I've said in this review. Regardless of whether or not you believe or agree with homosexuality and transgender people, it's worth remembering that they are still people, and anything that dehumanizes a person and eliminates their dignity as a human being is hateful. It's not our place to judge the sins of others, yet by dehumanizing other people, one judges another and finds them to be so sinful, they are no longer human; such judgement is perhaps the greatest sin of all because it deprives those judged people of the love they are due simply for being born as human beings on this Earth. Essentially, it's a case of hating the sinner as much as the sin, and that is not right.
While I respect your opinion, the underlying premise of the poem is pedophiles that hide under the auspices of being 'transgender.' Thus I treat them as 'beasts' throughout the entire poem. The 'racial' comment actually meant that we've lost a definitive 'black and white' to today's issues. And that wasn't how I was portraying the suicide, although you took it that way.
You're going to have to focus specifically on pedophiles who masquerade as transgender then, because right now, the structure points to ALL transgender people being pedophiles, which is a HUGE problem as I already explained in my review.
What you intended or not is irrelevant when it comes to how others have interpreted your piece, and quite overwhelmingly, the interpretations were "all transgender people are pedophiles", "transgender people are inhuman and malicious", "rape forces people to change their sexual orientation", and "being homosexual causes people to commit suicide". Again, I already explained why these are problematic in my review.
Also, I personally find it horrifying that you equate the "black and white" of racism to the "black and white" of morality. They should NEVER be equated.
Apologies for the multiple replies. It kept eating my reply otherwise. -_-
I know the frustration. First two acknowledged. With the third, what I meant was how cut and dry Civil Rights was. Racism is WRONG, which makes that a black and white issue in that sense, but the homosexual issue is much more faceted than racism. Racism was a pretty straightforward issue: right was right, and wrong was wrong.
So then you acknowledge that, intentionally or not, this poem is transphobic? As for the racism, that runs completely counter to what the poem says: "This battle isn't cut and dry. / White and black lost long ago, / When 'Civil Rights' was the cry. And to our never-ending woe / We see the march / Of gray rainbows."
As I already mentioned in my review, it reads that the lack of moral clarity and gay pride marches are direct results of the Civil Rights movement. There is a huge amount of disconnect between what you are saying now and what the poem says, and you really need to resolve it.
It can be interpreted that way perhaps, as you have pointed out, so I will look into that. This isn't a finished piece yet, and I need to give it some time and space to better evaluate what needs adjustment.
Just wanted you to know I've done some editing to the poem and tried to bring out the intended message more. Hope those changes improved it.
They didn't, and in some places, like the ninth stanza reading as even more racist than the original, the made things worse. The addition of the new stanza is a step in the right direction, but the forced rhymes in there, and especially the line involving "stupid pug-faced hams", make it read like a joke. Additionally, none of the edits addressed the structural issues that made this piece read transphobically.
This piece needs much more than just a new stanza an some rephrasings to make the intended message clearer since the structure of the poem is still talk about LGBTQIA in general, the one specific case, and then back to general. At this point, I'd say that scrapping this entirely for a fresh rewrite might be easier than revising it.
Hi there! Lucrezia here for a review.
Okay. Um... wow. Like some of the reviewers below me, I'm kind of speechless (and that doesn't happen to me often). This is a very controversial piece you have here. I disagree with it, but I'll ignore my own beliefs to give you an unbiased review on just the writing itself.
I liked the rhyming scheme. Your choice of wording was very interesting. It was so easy to read because everything flowed together in such a pretty way.
I saw no grammatical/spelling stuff to point out, even though I actually reread it several times over (and only partly because I was still trying to make sense of everything). And like sophiamh, my head's still spinning and probably won't stop spinning for a while...
I think you have a unique writing style, and one that is certainly memorable.
Since I have no real grammar stuff to point out, this will have to be a short review. Keep writing.
I think this was written really well. The rhymes were good (first time I've ever said that for something that's not firmly structured), and you used good poetic devices. There is truth in here as well. The way you presented the content in this with the patterns and all made me want to keep reading. I just wish that you would put a tie-in to the title in the final stanza.
There were a few places where I think your line-breaks were just too many, but those same line breaks added a good tone to your poem that matches the theme you're trying to have here.
I'm looking for some specific parts that I think I could help improve, but I can't find any so this review will have to do.
Keep writing.
~fortis
Eh... But...
Eh... That's not true, and...
Eh... That's just plain messed up, but...
Sorry, but I can't... I just... that was very... in some ways, offensive, but I'll just let other writers speak for themselves, but you know, this will piss some people off. I'll just take @sophiamh 's approach: just write about the technical stuff rather than the content because I am not the argumentative type. Then again, no one says you can't state your opinion on here.
As always, you're a good writer. I mean, not much I can say about it. The flow's good, a little iffy in some areas, but that's your style, right? You're writing's really progressed. All I can really say is: don't stop.
Oh, nevermind. Structurally, good poem.
how do you mean nicer? You realize that he may take those other poems rather offensively?
oh boy I mean OH BOY . . . if some people on here see this
Wow. That was amazing. I think that the awesomeness of a writing can be determined by how long the reader has to wait after he/she has finished reading it and just think. I think it can be measured by how long it makes the reader's head spin. Well, my head is still spinning, and I don't think that it will stop for a while. My favorite part was this stanza:
My sister’s been lost to the tide,
Too scared, in her own eyes,
To have a man.
Now they’re just “guys.”
And from her pain
She’s found a girl
Who only says,
“I love you.”
I think it's sweet and provides a good contrast for when she dies in the next stanza. I assume she dies? The only thing that I would change is that you have every letter at the beginning of a new line capitalized. i would only capitalize letters when they would be capitalized in prose. I really liked your use of line breaks, but there were a few places where I think it could be broken a little better. Keep in mind that, like sentences in prose, lines are the unit in poetry. Each line should mean something. If a line doesn't, you should rethink the break or cut out the line. took me a little bit to find these nit picks because the poem was so amazing. I'm still replaying it in my mind. I look forward to reading more of your work. Keep writing!
I don't know what this means? It was good though. it had a lot of power to it and it shows how bad things are. there seems to be a lot of different aspects in it and to me it doesn't show all one theme. If it was meant that way than cool. Sorry I hope this was not to harsh. I look forward to reading more from you though.