I’m not a poet.

A more fitting description would be an “entertaining complainer”. Like a poet, however, I am very precise with my words; shaping every sentence to maximize its sonic and content value. It was disheartening, then, when I would be asked to speak the words I had so carefully joined together only to be told that some of the words are BAD and that I should not say them. It would be especially upsetting being told this five minutes before I’m set to perform at a step show where some Black Greeks would be skirting off the stage to the Ying Yang’s “Whisper” song. It would be especially upsetting when I would have to re-imagine my entire poem two minutes before I’m being introduced to a group of East Oakland high school students murmuring, “who the fuck is this nigga on stage?”

I wondered who had deemed these particular combination of letters so detrimental that regardless of context, purpose, or intention, it was absolutely necessary that they be hidden from our youth and only uttered in private? Who had exiled these words from the English language?

All I knew and all I ever knew is that this is how it was and apparently how it would always be. Nobody questioned or challenged it. This was law. No, wait, it was even bigger than that. This was scripture.

Except it wasn’t.

It was something that was just kind of added in. You know, like, Jesus had blue eyes or that God looks like Santa Clause.

I say we stop lying to our kids. I say we stop mixing arbitrary law with purposeful law. I say arbitrary law should not be accepted in a society where only purposeful law is needed. I say we stop demonizing what we will abuse to punish ourselves and others with when we are most destructive. I say we judge the harmfulness of language by the expressed meaning and not by the inclusion or exclusion of a set of prejudged words. And most of all I say fuck, shit, ass, damn, and bitch when I need to say it. Because sometimes I need to say it. Just like I would need to say any other word that would help to capture this world from my very particular perspective.

We gotta get rid of some myths. Here goes one: