Censorship, by Stan Rice

The goons are at the gate again.

Beware my friends,

Lest they be you.

We are in the skeletal stage.

The bloom is still in the wood.

Beware my friends

Self-censorship

For the book unwritten

Is the book burned.

Literalists of all stripes

Wipe their knives

On their long skirts

And take back the night.

The devil is always naked.

His pants are always too tight.

He can rape you with a beam of light.

Beware my friends.

They beat the gate

To the same old tune,

For they have seen Satan,

And they mean well,

And they are the goons.

From “Fear Itself” Poems by Stan Rice. (Kopf: $20; 93 pp.)